Trail of the Lion King

It’s Chuseok again in Korea. The time of year when dutiful Koreans return to their hometown to pay their respects to their ancestors and not so dutiful non-Koreans head off on holiday somewhere.

This year Jen and I went to Japan, staying in Kyoto for four nights and taking the opportunity to look around the Kansai region. As ever I made a point of seeing what sporting events were going on and as luck would have it Gamba Osaka were at home to Kashima Antlers in the J-League on our first day there.

We caught a morning Eastarjet flight from Incheon to Osaka Kansai and were in Japan by eleven o’clock. It took a while to get through immigration and then collect our Kansai Rail passes so we decided to get some lunch at the airport from a cafe called Beef Bowl. It served, as you might expect, bowls with beef in. The best bit though was that you made your choice at a vending machine by pressing the button with the appropriate photograph, inserting your money and then handing your printed ticket to the man behind the counter. As someone who speaks no Japanese it could only have been bettered if the beef bowl had been dispensed from the machine rather than a ticket.

After lunch we took the train to Shin Osaka station, dumped our bags in the left luggage and then took an hour-long journey by subway and monorail to Gamba Osaka’s Expo ’70 Commemorative Stadium. I’d tell you the names of the subway stops but I’ve forgotten them. The lady in the Tourist Information at Shin Osaka knows though, so you can ask her.

Expo ’70 Commemorative Stadium, Osaka.

It was fairly busy outside the stadium with cheerleaders putting on a bit of a show and with plenty of people milling around the stalls selling food and merchandise. Jen and I made our way to a bar where I got some unspecified meat on a stick and a Suntory beer.

The queue to get in at the Curva Nord.

We would probably have spent a little longer at the bar but it was starting to rain and as neither of us had brought a coat we thought it better to get some tickets and make our way inside. The tickets started at 2,500 yen and went up to 5,500. We got two top-priced ones in the main stand (described as box seats) on the basis that they might have a better chance of being under cover. No chance. The small canopy covered only a small selection of local bigwigs and sponsors, everyone else in that stand and the rest of the ground found themselves exposed to the elements.

The fans in the opposite stand had all brought their coats.

Despite the weather the twenty-one thousand capacity ground was about two-thirds full. The home ‘ultras’ had the North stand to our left with the visitors taking up a decent chunk of the opposite end. Both of those sections were standing areas, the new modern kind with barriers between each row. It lent itself to a great atmosphere with both sets of fans making a racket throughout the game.

The home end.

The singing was all quite well organised with one bloke and his megaphone leading the chants. He’d generally have to just give them one line and with a couple of couple of drummers chipping in, the whole end would take it up.

“C’mon Gamba”

It was a similar situation at the Kashima end, although with fewer fans. It’s over three hundred miles from Osaka to Kashima so it was still a decent turnout. Although I suppose the bullet train might just cut the journey time a bit from what you’d expect.

The away fans.

Both sides have been struggling this season and with only a handful of games to go Gamba are in the relegation area and Kashima just outside of it, five points ahead of their hosts. A win for Kashima would probably be enough to ensure that Gamba wouldn’t be able to catch them.

After a cagey opening ten minutes the visitors took the lead through Renato Caja, much to the delight of their fans.

Tits out for the lads.

It wasn’t to last though and midway through the half Brazilian Leandro equalised for Gamba Osaka. It probably spared him from a half-time bollocking as he’d missed an absolute sitter a minute or so before.

Osaka celebrate their equaliser and a new baby for someone.

Parity didn’t last long though as Junior Dutra became the third Brazillian to score, putting Kashima back in front just before the break. There was another Brazilian on the visiting bench, Juninho. Not the real one or even the fake one who used to play for Lyon. A fake, fake one I suppose. I checked him out on Soccerway and he’s about five foot ten. That’s odd, I’d always thought that Juninho was Portuguese for ‘Shortarse’ or something. It seems an odd choice of nickname, especially in a country like Japan where he’ll be taller than most of his teammates.

At half time we took refuge from the rain and I got myself another Suntory. As in Korea, ramyeon seemed pretty popular as a snack, along with the meat on a stick that I’d eaten earlier.

Half-time snack.

The rain eased off in the second half, but with a wet pitch both teams pinged the ball about and created plenty of chances. Gamba were attacking the home end and went close on a few occasions.

Endo curls in a cross.

We headed out with five minutes to go as we had stuff to do and were keen to beat the rest of the crowd to the subway. Unfortunately that meant we missed Leandro’s injury time equaliser, his ninth goal in five games. Forty minutes later we were back at Shin Osaka station and then onwards to Kyoto.

If you like watching sport then Goyang would be a pretty good place to live. Whilst they don’t have a K-League team or a top-tier baseball side, they’ve got football teams in the National and Challengers leagues and an independent baseball team that takes on the KBO reserve teams in the Futures League. If that’s not enough there are also basketball and ice hockey teams.

The only one of all of those that I hadn’t yet seen was Goyang FC of the third-tier Challengers League. I had been to their ground before though, having briefly watched a few minutes of a Sunday League match after an ice hockey game at the SPART complex a couple of years ago.

Goyang’s ground is easy enough to get to. You take Subway Line 3 to Wondang and then come out of Exit 5, turn right in the direction of City Hall, cross the road and keep on in the same direction. You’ll pass a group of six old biddies sat on some benches.It’s probably ok to use them as a landmark as I suspect that they are always there. Not necessarily the same ones as it’s a squad game these days, but day or night there will be half a dozen of them.

Keep on straight ahead.

After about three hundred yards you turn left, in the direction of Seongsa 2(i) – dong Community Service Center, follow the road up a hill passing a few shops and restaurants. When you’ve walked for around another one hundred and fifty yards you turn right at apartment block 505 and then wander down that tree-lined road until you see the ground on your left.

There are stands down the two longer sides of the plastic pitch, one with a roof, but nothing behind either of the goals. I made a rough count of the seats and I’d estimate a capacity of two thousand, five hundred which was probably two thousand, four hundred more than was necessary. The main stand was home to about eighty people, many of them families where the small children spent most of the game hitting the even smaller children.

The Main Stand. Probably named after the Boro’s Curtis Main.

The opposite stand was home to the Ultras. Or in the case of Goyang, the Ultra. In a country were people rarely see any merit in an activity unless large numbers of others are doing it too, Goyang gloriously had one fan. He did his bit though and the only times that he stopped singing all afternoon were whenever he briefly paused to berate the referee.

Man Of The Year. Any year ever.

Paju initially weren‘t much better in terms of support, with only two supporters having made it by kick-off time. I liked the idea that both sets of fans (can you call one fan a set?) could have taunted the other with the traditional “You should have come in a taxi“ when in reality they could have shared the cab and still had room to offer a lift to the next bloke at the rank. Paju spoilt things a little when another four fans turned up ten minutes into the game.

Paju fans. Mean and moody.

Paju were in luminous green shirts, whilst Goyang were wearing what looked like American referee shirts with thin black and white stripes. Goyang are bottom of their section of the league and with the visitors pushing for a play-off spot an away win seemed the most likely outcome.

Both teams kept it tight in the opening half hour and neither keeper got his knees dirty.  Although I suppose on a plastic pitch that would have been unlikely no matter how much diving around they might have done. The closest we came to a goal was when a Goyang free-kick bounced harmlessly through to the Paju keeper who whilst attempting to catch it just under the crossbar caught one of his feet in the netting behind him and nearly conceded the sort of goal that would have made every ’cock-up’ video going.

Almost Goal of the Season.

With ten minutes to go to the break, Paju brought on a couple of subs. It’s always embarrassing to be taken off in the first half if you aren‘t limping and one fella in particular, Lee Jae Hyung, threw a right strop, hurling bits of tape to the ground and whipping off his shirt long before he reached the changing room. I wondered if the Paju coach had been expecting an easy victory and had taken the opportunity to play a couple of fringe players before being forced to revert to Plan A when they were unable to make the breakthrough.

Mean as it seemed though, it worked, and before the subbed players could even have found time to key the side of their manager’s car Paju were ahead. Centre half Jung Sung Jo had come upfield for a set piece and although the move broke down the ball fell nicely for him and his shot from fifteen yards was deflected into the net.

One – nil to Paju.

At half-time the Paju players went to the dressing room but the Goyang coach sat his players down by the touch-line and held his team-talk on the pitch. He didn‘t seem angry with them, I think it was more a case of him just enjoying the good weather. He used three water bottles to demonstrate positioning and movement, the gist of it seeming to be that one player should run in-between two of the opposition, drawing them both with him.

Half-time.

The opening twenty minutes of the second half were as cagey as those of the first with both sides passing the ball well but not creating much in the way of chances. I didn‘t notice too many occasions where a Goyang player was able to draw two of the opposition to him. It’s possibly harder to do with real people than it appears to be with water bottles.

The game came to life in the last ten minutes. Goyang captain Lee Sang Ho did fantastically well to keep a wayward shot in play, he cut in towards goal and pulled the ball back for  Park Joo Young who somehow put his shot both high and wide when it would have been far easier to score. It wasn‘t quite as bad as Kanu’s against the Boro a few years ago but he should have scored.

A couple of minutes later Park Joo Young had a shot deflected past the post, he should have scored from that one too. It didn‘t matter much though as shortly afterwards the Goyang pressure paid off when Lee Sang Ho curled a shot home from the edge of the box to make it one each.

Random action shot.

We then had a few minutes of end to end action as both teams chased a winner. Goyang had the ball in the net at one point but it was disallowed for pushing. As we entered injury time Goyang broke clear but the Paju keeper, Jang Bum Guk, managed to dash from his goal and clatter the striker, knacking one of his own knees as he did it. After a few minutes of treatment that seemed to consist mainly of someone twisting his leg to check that it was still attached to his torso, he limped off and was replaced by the sub goalie Yu Jung Hoon.

At the other end Paju could have won it with the final kick of the game when a flick on from a corner was skied over the bar from inside the six yard box. That was it though, two points dropped for Paju but a point gained for Goyang. All that was left was for both teams to jog over to their supporter(s) and show their appreciation.

Suwon City against Ansan H was the second National League game of the day for Jen and I. The problem though, was getting there. We’d watched Yongin City take on Busan Transportation earlier in the afternoon and had an hour between the games to get from the Yongin Football Centre to Suwon’s Civil Stadium.

We’d arrived at the Yongin Football Centre by taxi but the downside to watching games out in the countryside at a venue surrounded by not much more than fields is that it’s not quite so easy to find a taxi when you want to leave.

We’d stood at the roadside for a few minutes without seeing a taxi when I decided that I might as well stick my thumb out and try to hitch us a ride. As a kid I used to do it all the time, hitching to Boro games, up and down to London, across to The Lakes and in the summer that I left school, around France.

`Vers Avranches, si vous plait’

Hitching had worked for me in Korea a couple of years ago when I’d been stuck at a National Park with a potentially lengthy wait for a bus back into town. On that occasion the first car to approach screeched to a halt and a Korean couple eagerly took the opportunity to practise their English on me.

It was a similar situation this time and a car stopped for us within a minute or two. The couple were elderly and and spoke little English but they very generously went out of their way to drop us at the Yongin Bus Terminal. They did suggest to us that if we were intending to make a habit of watching lower league football in remote locations then we might want to give some thought to buying a car. Fair point, I suppose.

With kick-off nearing we took a taxi rather than a bus from Yongin and half an hour later we were at Suwon Civil Stadium. Jen and I had turned up there for a game earlier in the season but the ground was still being refurbished at that time and we ended up watching Suwon City play their match in the Big Bird Stadium of their K-League neighbours instead.

The place certainly looked as if it had been smartened up. The seats were new and seemed larger than usual, the running track had been relaid and there was enough fresh paint about the place to suggest that a Royal visit was imminent.

I was pleased to see that the old floodlights had been kept.

In a nice touch a tower similar to those in the Suwon Fortress wall had been included behind the goal to our right. It looked completely pointless, which makes it even better in my eyes. I did wonder as to whether they had knocked one of the originals down to provide the building materials. Next time we visit I’ll try and have a closer look.

Just in case the Japanese decide to invade again.

There were probably about three hundred fans in the stadium, most of them in the main stand where Jen and I were sat, with maybe fifty or so Suwon fans singing behind the goal to our left. There were a lot of young girls amongst them and at times they seemed more like a baseball crowd than a football one.

Suwon City fans beneath the scoreboard.

Ansan had brought seven fans with them. Despite their low number they put the effort in and supplemented by two drums and one of those metal things that the Buddhists bang the seven of them kept the noise levels up.

“Give us an H”

Suwon were in their usual red and blue stripes with Ansan in yellow shirts and blue shorts. Imagine Crystal Palace playing Sweden and you wouldn’t be too far away. Every time the visitors put a cross into the box I was half expecting Henrik Larsson to get on the end of it.

Palace defend a Sweden attack.

It had still been nil-nil when we had arrived ten minutes into the first half. Suwon had most of the play but it was Ansan who had the ball in the net on the half hour. Unfortunately for them the linesman had his flag up for something or other and it didn’t count.

Ten minutes later Suwon opened the scoring with a diving header from Park Jong Chan. They doubled their lead in the second half when a shot from the edge of the box squirmed under the Ansan keeper’s body. A couple of Suwon fellas chased it over the line to make sure with Yoo Soo Hyun getting the credit for the goal.

Second half action with the floodlights on.

Whilst there were plenty of chances in the remainder of the second half there were no more goals and Suwon took the three points.

Yongin is a hopeless place to get to if you live anywhere else in Korea but Yongin. Or at least the Yongin Football Centre is. There is some sort of folk village theme park in Yongin and it’s easy enough to get a bus straight to there from Seoul but their National League football team, Yongin City, play quite some distance out of town and it takes a lot more effort.

Jen and I took the 5000-1 bus from Gangnam, then changed to the 5005. The next step would have been to catch the 94-1 bus and then walk about half a mile through the countryside. When we got out of the second bus though, the chances of finding the third looked slim. We didn’t fancy standing in the blazing sunshine by the side of a road in the middle of nowhere and so flagged down a taxi instead.

Twenty minutes and fifteen thousand won later we arrived at Yongin Football Centre. There are five pitches in the complex and Yongin were taking on Busan Transportation on the one with the full length stand. It was late afternoon by this time and the only seats in the shade were in the back row. To make matters worse there wasn’t a single seat with an unobstructed view of the pitch.

The main problem was a VIP section in the centre of the stand that jutted further out than the sections either side of it. The view was then further reduced by the stand being so close to the touchline that you’d have to stand at the front railing and lean over if you wanted to see what was going on directly below.

View from the back row.

Busan were in an all-white Adidas kit that had the old school three stripe numbers. I’m of the age where I shouldn’t really notice things like that, never mind think how good it looks. Yongin were in all blue with much less noteworthy numbers on their backs.

Another view from the back row.

Fifteen minutes in and the heat was too much. We moved out of the sun and walked around behind the goal to sit in the shade near to the corner flag on the other side. A few people followed us, some sitting inside the fence, others peering through it. Whilst sitting on the shaded grass made the heat that much more bearable, we did have to put up with ants running over our feet and legs. You can’t have everything though.

Busan probably had more of the first half possession, they certainly had more of the territory and hit the bar just before the break. Mind you, Yongin went straight down the other end and should have scored themselves.

We watched the rest of the game from here.

At half-time it was still goalless and in addition to the ants we got a swarm of dragonflies. They were a couple of inches long and, if dragonflies do that sort of thing, could probably have given us a nasty bite. It’s possible that the dragonflies and the ants were attracted by my lunch of sausages left over from breakfast served with roasted vegetables left over from the day before. Four cans of Cass washed it down.

Much better than dried squid.

As the second half drifted on lanky striker Cha Chul Ho emerged as the main threat for Busan but they still couldn’t take their chances. There was a strange incident after an hour where it wasn’t clear whether the ref had booked Busan’s Park Seung Min. He had the yellow card in his hand but seemed to be daring the player to say one more word, after which he would no doubt have waved it with a flourish. To the disappointment of the crowd and the ref, the player stayed tight lipped and it looked like the card went back into the ref’s pocket unused.

Goalmouth action.

I estimated a peak of around a hundred fans, although by the end it was probably down to thirty. I didn’t notice any supporters from Busan although maybe the heat, ants and dragonflies were keeping them quiet. The official attendance was announced as one hundred and two and as I’d probably not counted Jen and myself in my estimate, perhaps I’d got it just about bang on for once.

Don’t know if these were players, fans, coaches or passers-by.

Fifteen minutes from time Lee Young Woong squeezed a header in at the back post for Busan to give them the lead. It was no more than they deserved although I’d had my doubts as to whether they would ever manage to make the breakthrough.

Lee Young Woong celebrates with his team mates.

In injury time Busan keeper Yeo Myung Yong pulled off a good save fron Yongin sub Kim Yeon Gun to ensure the three points for the visitors and keep them in a play-off position.

Seongnam is the easiest K-League team for Jen and I to get to from Yeoksam and with their Tancheon Stadium being only a ten minute walk from Yatap subway we were there a good ten minutes before kick-off.

As the teams lined up for the National Anthem I noticed that Lee Dong Gook wasn’t starting despite having scored the winner against Gangwon three days earlier. He was on the bench though, his place having been taken by Jeong Seong Hoon. I’m not much of a fan of Mr. Jeong, to me he just seems like a fairly static target man with not much of a first touch. Still, with the K-League teams currently playing twice a week, I suppose you’ve got to make changes now and again.

All stand for the National Anthem.

We’d decided to sit in the East Stand mainly because it meant we didn’t have to walk as far to get into it as we would have if we’d chosen the larger West Stand opposite. It was busy by Seongnam standards with a few hundred people in it and we had to walk most of the length of it to find the quietest section.

View from the East Stand towards the Jeonbuk fans behind the goal.

Jeonbuk had a new right back that I hadn’t seen before, Ma Chul Jun. He hadn’t been getting a game at his previous club Jeju and had been brought in to replace Choi Chul Soon who has recently cleared off to do his military service. Ma looks a bit of a character. I can’t work out if he has an odd shaped head or whether it’s just a particularly dodgy haircut. Nevertheless, he made a good impression, both defensively and in getting forward to support the attack.

Ma Chul Soon chases back.

Jeonbuk had brought a couple of hundred fans with them, whilst Seongnam had their usual hardcore of thirty or so behind the goal to our right. They also had a couple of dozen fans over in the West Stand. These fellas had a few banners but didn’t seem to get too involved in the singing. When you’ve as few fans as Seongnam has it strikes me as a bit counter-productive to split them up.

The ‘other’ Seongnam fans.

Seongnam are in the bottom half of the table but managed to take the game to league leaders Jeonbuk. They carved out the better of the opening forty-five minutes but didn’t really give the veteran visiting keeper Choi Eun Seong anything overly strenuous to do.

The half-time entertainment consisted of about fifty people milling about and taking part in something that I couldn’t fathom. With Seongnam being owned by Sun Myung Moon’s Unification Church I was hoping we might be in for a mass Moonie wedding. If they did all manage to get married before the teams came back out again then they did it with a minimum of fuss and even less confetti.

Moonie Wedding.

After an hour Jeonbuk made the change that I’d been waiting for and replaced Jeong Big Spud with Lee Dong Gook. The ex-Middlesbrough man contributed more to the general play, but opponents Seongnam still looked the better side. In the absence of any goals to report I’ll pad this out with a photo of the sun going down.

I used a fancy setting on my camera.

Now normally I’ll raise the excitement levels by mentioning what I had for my tea. Not this time though. But I can let you know that the lads in front of us were eating dried squid. It wasn’t the usual rubbery stuff that you heat up on a portable gas stove and could re-sole your shoes with, it was more of a wafer. As they look nothing like squid I’m a little dubious about what goes into them and suspect that, as with sausages, it’s probably the eye lids, lips and hooves that form the basis of the ingredients.

Mmmm, reconstituted squid.

Seongnam couldn’t make their superiority count and the game finished goalless. Jeonbuk stayed top of the table whilst Seongnam continued to potter around below halfway.

It was a quiet weekend for sport. The National and Challengers football Leagues were still on their summer breaks and the second tier baseball Futures League teams were having a weekend off as well. Jeonbuk were in town though for a game against Suwon Bluewings and so Jen and I decided to go along to that one.

The original plan had been to walk around the Suwon Fortress Wall before the match. I’ve done it before and it’s a pleasant enough way to spend a few hours. It’s the wrong time of year though for that sort of thing with all the rain and so we decided to visit a few coffee shops instead. I can guess what you are thinking. Something along the lines of my balls are now being kept in a jar and in ordinary circumstances you’d have a point. I mean, why would you go to a coffee shop? It’s easy enough to make a cup of coffee at home so what makes women pay four quid a pop to drink it with a bunch of strangers? To my mind it’s as odd a thing to do as choosing to leave your house to use a public toilet rather than your own.

These weren’t normal coffee shops though. They all had a bit of an animal theme ranging from dogs to cats to sheep and to my mind that makes it a fine way to spend some time. The dog place was first and it had a rather cunning business plan which involved people paying to board their dogs whilst away on holiday and the dogs then spending their days wandering around a cafe whilst customers who like to pat them on the head paid further over the odds than normal for their tall skinny lattes. Any cash that people had left could be used to buy snacks for the dogs, removing the need for the cafe to feed them. Genius really. Although I did wonder what the owners would say when they came to collect their dog and discovered that Fido had gained three stones in weight within a fortnight.

Surprisingly very few children had limbs bitten off.

There were an assortment of canines, starting with some about the size of a guinea pig, one that looked half husky, something that was probably close to being an old english sheepdog and in the corner an overweight arthritic beagle that had to drag its back legs behind it whenever it wanted to secure its share of the snacks.

It could probably have ran for miles a week or two earlier.

The cat cafe wasn’t as good, mainly because it smelt like a room with twenty cats in it. You couldn’t feed them so just had to sit there and wait for one to wander over and sit on your knee or go to sleep on your table. We had to remove our shoes and disinfect our hands before we went in, but really that was all the wrong way around. I’m sure I smelt like a mad cat lady for the rest of the day.

It smells much better in the photos.

Next up was the sheep place and that was the worst of the three, primarily because there were no sheep. A sheep cafe without sheep is just a cafe. A fraudulent cafe if you ask me. A sign by the empty pen advised that they were away for the summer. I bet they were. Gone to live on a farm, I imagine. What are the odds that when their holiday is over they will be replaced by new ones half the size and age?

They’ve gone to a better place.

So, after visiting a year’s worth of coffee shops in a single day it was time for the football. Suwon and Jeonbuk are two of the main contenders for the K-League title but have had contrasting fortunes lately. Jeonbuk had only dropped a single point in the last nine league games whilst Suwon had slipped to four points behind the visitors with 5-0 and 3-0 defeats in their last two games.

Jen and I got to the stadium early to make sure of a seat under cover in the East Stand and slowly worked our way through a box of fried chicken and a couple of bottles of red wine. Lee Dong Gook was starting up front for Jeonbuk and both Brazilians were in from the start. There had been reports before the game that Luiz had agreed to join UAE club Al-Shabab and so it was good to see him keep his place.

Both sets of fans were impressive, braving the rain in the uncovered ends of the stadium. The official attendance was given as 17,645 but I’d have estimated it to have been somewhere between eight and ten thousand. That’s still pretty good when you consider the weather.

Suwon fans.

Jeonbuk were well on top in the opening fifteen minutes, so much so that their ‘in-running’ price of 6/4 seemed exceptional value. Unfortunately the storms must have been affecting the phone signal as I couldn’t get my bet on.

It took half an hour for Jeonbuk to make their superiority count with Eninho’s pace drawing a foul in the box. He tucked the penalty away himself. We were into the final fifteen minutes of the game before Jeonbuk got their second. Lee Dong Gook broke down the right and delivered a perfect pass for Lee Seung Hyun to stroke home.

Jeonbuk fans

Two minutes from time Luiz brought his Jeonbuk career to an end with an easy finish to another counter-attack. His emotional celebration of his goal made it clear that he was on his way and it was as good as confirmed at the end when his team mates tossed him into the air.

That’s all folks.

Luiz was last off the pitch and with it still pissing down we were happy to hang around and see him off. He’s played a big part in Jeonbuk’s success over the last few years and I’ve always felt that they looked a stronger team with him in it. Best of luck in Dubai, fella. You’ll probably get less rain there but I doubt that there will be the same diversity of coffee shops.