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Well, so much for that. Gamba Osaka underlined the gulf in class between the A-League and J-League on Wednesday night with a performance in the first leg of the Asian Champions League final that was as comprehensive and crushing as Operation Urgent Fury, the US invasion of Grenada in 1983.
I wrote a column for The Roar on Wednesday morning that tried to give some credit to Australian teams for our “physical” style of play, but Aurelio Vidmar’s team, puzzlingly, didn’t even look to fall back on that tactic. The entire XI, plus the coaching staff (who, it must be said, cast a faintly ridiculous air with their walkie-talkies; fat lot of good they did) appeared completely at a loss about how to counter the fast, controlled, economical and astonishingly attractive play of Gamba.
What passing. It was a joy to behold.
There wasn’t one minute of the match where Adelaide looked in the hunt, which is a massive credit to Akira Nishino’s side. Adelaide aren’t chumps, but they looked third rate against Gamba, who dazzled Melbourne Victory away in similar fashion back in April, which I wrote about for The Roar.
Back then, speaking of an interview I did for Pim Verbeek for a magazine, I wrote: “Verbeek was nostalgic about Japan, waxing lyrical about the facilities available to coaches, the money invested in the development of junior players, the infrastructure of clubs, but mostly the technical ability of Japanese players. They didn’t always score goals, he said, and that wasn’t always a positive, but they could produce some beautiful possession football.
“The Japanese play combination football,” he told me. “More Brazilian influences than European … in Japan, they always try to build out from the backline to the midfield to the striker and back and that’s the way they prefer to play.
“[Against Melbourne in April] the Japanese side treasured the ball (55 per cent possession is telling), not wasting it for a moment, conjured some magical passing in midfield, were quicker, defter with their trapping, and overall their touch all over the park was superb.”
Half a year on, nothing had changed on the evidence of what we saw on Wednesday night. They were in every way superior to Adelaide.
The Australians didn’t produce one shot on target in 90 minutes and not even a decent one off target.
Apologists for Adelaide will point to the two basic defending errors that resulted in the Japanese side’s two goals before the break, but that does Gamba a disservice and casts a flattering light on Adelaide’s performance where there should be none.
It was a horrible effort from the Reds. Their worst game since the 6-0 demolition by Melbourne Victory in the grand final of “Version 2.0” of the A-League.
Michihiro Yasuda on the left was utterly dominant and his goal, Gamba’s third, was richly deserved and beautifully taken.
Hayato Sasaki on the right was equally a handful, and repeatedly left Adelaide defenders eating his dust with his explosive turn of speed and magical footwork.
Both men are tiny. Yasuda 173cm, Sasaki 167cm.
(Another lesson for the A-League here? Who needs tall timber when veritable homunculi can cut apart a storied and towering defence like Adelaide’s with consummate ease?)
The talk of an Adelaide fightback next week is patent nonsense if they play anything like they did on Wednesday, and they’re going to have to do it without Ang Costanzo and Eugene Galekovic, who will be
suspended.
Something Vidmar needed like a hole in the head.
Australians love a scrap, we revere the talk of “fighting spirit”, but frankly I think Gamba has already won the title.
There wasn’t one player or one aspect of Adelaide’s play that I thought could present problems for the Japanese side in the return leg.
They had the Reds’ measure in every conceivable way and, most impressively, it was a win arrived at almost entirely with Japanese players. Gamba’s Brazilians, Lucas’s opener aside, felt almost peripheral to the action generated by Gamba’s stellar midfielders.
We have much, much more to learn from Japanese football than even I thought.
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