Own Goals Sink Vissel

Despite the league very generously crediting Hiroshima's first and last goals to Hattori and Sato, they were in fact deflected past the hapless Enomoto by Kitamoto. Not that Sanfrecce were not worth the victory, they were much the more effective attacking team throughout the contest.

The return of Okubo had little effect in the first half for Kobe, as Marcel continued to occupy an unjustified slot in the starting line-up. Things improved after half-time, when the static Brazilian was replaced by rookie Kusunose, as Vissel raced to an improbable 3-2 lead. However, they were unable to hold back the purple tide and were eventually washed away in the last five minutes of the game.

Sanfrecce Hiroshima
Hirotsugu Nakabayashi
Tomoaki Makino, Stoyanov, Kohei Morita
Mikic, Toshihiro Aoyama, Koji Nakajima, Kota Hattori, Yojiro Takahagi
Yosuke Kashiwagi, Hisato Sato
Scorers: Hattori? 1, Makino 44, Kashiwagi 84, Sato? 85

Vissel
Tatsuya Enomoto
Toshihiko Uchiyama, Kunie Kitamoto, Tsuneysu Miyamoto, Yosuke Ishibitsu
Hideo Tanaka (Park Kang Jo), Ryosuke Matsuoka, Ryuhei Niwa, Yoshito Okubo (Takayuki Yoshida 71)
Marcel (Akihito Kusunose HT), Hiroto Mogi
Scorers: Okubo 46 (PK), Ishibitsu 50, Mogi 66