Three Weeks of Football

Last year I posted about our local football team ‘Fagiano’ being in J1 for the first time. My interest in the team and the Japanese football league has only gotten stronger since then. This year, the main season has been moved to August to match the league timings in other countries. So, during this part of the year, the J-League has decided to do a special one-time tournament league which has separated the teams into East and West. This also means it is half the length of the regular season. It has an irregular schedule, and by chance we ended up with three home games, three weeks in a row. All of them were luckily on Sundays too. I did not want to miss this opportunity, so I went to all three.

I thought it would be hard to get tickets, but it was surprisingly not a challenge at all. While a lot of seating areas sold out quickly, some took a while to eventually sell. I got to see games against Gamba Osaka, Nagoya Grampus and Kyoto Sanga F.C. All three games were exciting to watch, and our new players stood out a lot. I also feel like we were the better team in all three games, even though the results were a little mixed. In English, we like to use the phrase ‘growing pains’. But I think with more time, we can become one of the strongest teams in the west league. We have managed to pick up more points since these three games, so I have some hope.