Grampus Sink Into Bottom Half

Two clinical first half goals by Matsushita, the first after a Pedro Junior shot cam back off a post, saw Nagoya fall to their third league loss in a row. Tamada had a perfectly good goal, from a lay-off by Davi, disallowed midway through the first half, which would have evened the score. However, the officials inexplicably ruled the goal out despite no trace of offside or a foul by either Tamada or Davi. As it was, Grampus did not get on the score sheet until just before the end, when he tucked home a through ball from Tamada.

The return of Magnum to the starting lineup backfired as the out-of-touch midfielder promptly picked up two yellow cards ad was back in the dressing room after less than half an hour. The Brazilian was still incensed by the disallowed goal, which may have been ruled out due to his play in the buildup, although the infraction was awarded on the six yard line while Magnum's play had taken place more than 30 yards away.

Albirex Niigata
Takashi Kitano
Jun Uchida, Mitsuru Chiyotanda, Kazuhiko Chiba, Hiroshi Nakano
Isao Honma (Ju Marques Davidson 37), Marcio Richardes, Toshihiro Matsushita
Kisho Yano, Hideo Oshima (Cho Young Cheol 77), Pedro Junior (Atomu Tanaka 89)
Scorers: Matsushita 5, 43

Grampus
Seigo Narazaki
Hayuma Tanaka (Keita Sugimoto 71), Maya Yoshida, Takahiro Masukawa, Shohei Abe (Akira Takeuchi HT)
Yoshizumi Ogawa, Naoshi Nakamura (Kei Yamaguchi 67), Keiji Yoshimura, Magnum
Keiji Tamada, Davi
Scorer: Sugimoto 89