Grampus Pip Shimizu to Climb to Second

After three games, it is really still too early to be thinking about the league table, but Nagoya's 3-1 win over Shimizu sees them rise to second at this early stage of the season. A more significant fact may be that after five games (3 league, 2 ACL games), the team remains unbeaten.

The return of Magnum and Nakamura to the starting lineup, along with an improved performance by Ogawa, proved too much for S-Pulse to contain as they conceded their first goals of the season. Although, Davi and Yoshimura bagged the goals, two of them came from an assist by Ogawa.

This game was also significant in that Masaya Sato again saw action as a sub for Shohei Abe. This suggests that Sato has improved enough to earn a regular place on the bench, and this greatly increases the team's chances of success this year. As regular readers will have noted, it was the lack of cover for Abe's position that most worried us about the defense this year. It looks as though these concerns maybe resolved by Masaya's emergence as a serious contender for that position.

Grampus
Seigo Narazaki
Hayuma Tanaka, Maya Yoshida, Takahiro Masukawa, Shohei Abe (Masaya Sato 87)
Magnum (Kei Yamaguchi 73), Naoshi Nakamura, Keiji Yoshimura, Yoshizumi Ogawa
Keiji Tamada (Keita Sugimoto 89), Davi
Scorers: Davi 25, 89, Yoshimura 76

Shimizu S-Pulse
Yohei Nishibe
Daisuke Ichikawa, Naoaki Aoyama, Keisuke Iwashita, Arata Kodama (Kosuke Ota 80)
Akihiro Hyodo (Jungo Fujimoto 67), Teruyoshi Ito, Masaki Yamamoto (Takuma Edamura 67), Kazuki Hara
Frode Johnsen, Shinji Okazaki
Scorer: Okazaki 80