Hope Springs Eternal in Hokuriku

Nagoya surge to a 3-2 win, after trailing 0-2 at half time. Maki, Tamada and Magnum doing the damage in front of 18,000 fans. Good to see that many fans turn out in Kanazawa, many of whom were locals. It is good news for the league that so many people turned out for game far away from home on a Sunday evening.

As for the game itself, the good folks of Kanazawa got to see a cracker as Magnum scored a last-minute winner, thanks to another Matsuyo howler. The Gamba 'keeper must have relatives in Nagoya. This is the second time this year he has gifted us the three points.



Although the statistics may say that the number of shots was even and that we had the greater share of possession, Gamba had the better quality play for most of the game. The main difference between the first half and the second was that Grampus did a better job of closing down Gamba and given them less time to dwell on the ball. Meanwhile, Gamba paid the penalty for not getting that all important third goal, especially in the first half when they could, and should, have scored another couple of goals.

Ultimately, the result was down to the quality of the players between the posts. We had Narazaki, who made a couple of fine saves to keep us in the game, and Gamba had the hapless Matsuyo. Narazaki's injury early in extra time, after he fumbled an Endo shot, proved decisive. It was the treatment to his injured wrist that meant there were close to six minutes of extra time, rather than just the four originally indicated.

Gamba Osaka
Naoki Matsuyo
Akira Kaji (Kazumichi Takagi 84), Sota Nakazawa, Satoshi Yamaguchi, Takumi Shimohira
Hideo Hashimoto, Tomokazu Myojin, Yasuhiro Futagawa (Hayato Sasaki 66), Yasuhito Endo
Leandro, Lucas (Cho Jae Jin 84)
Scorers: Endo 14, Lucas 41

Nagoya Grampus
Seigo Narazaki
Maya Yoshida, Milos Bajalica, Takahiro Masukawa, Alex Santos (Shohei Abe 68)
Yoshizumi Ogawa (Tomohiro Tsuda 72), Naoshi Nakamura, Keiji Yoshimura (Yuki Maki HT), Magnum
Keiji Tamada, Igor Burzanovic
Scorers: Maki 72, Tamada 81, Magnum 90+5