“The Kings of Asia”

Yesterday was the final match of the 2011 Asian Cup soccer games that were being held in the country of カタール国 (Qatar).

The Asian Cup is a soccer competition of countries in the Asian region (including Japan, North and South Korea, China, Vietnam, Iran, Saudi Arabia, Australia and others) and is held every four years.

I’m not really a big soccer fan. I think the Japanese comedian “Beat Takeshi” had an excellent idea to improve the game of soccer.
But I did watch the final match last night. It was Japan’s “Blue Samurai” vs Australia’s “Socceroos“ (maybe it’s a cultural difference…but don’t Australian people think the name “Socceroos” is embarrassing?)

As is “par for the course” for the game of soccer, the score of the Japan v. Australia game remained 0-0 for almost the entire match…until Japan’s Tadanari Lee (who is actually a naturalized Japanese of Korean descent) scored the only goal of the entire game.

Tadanari Lee of Japan's "Samurai Blue" national soccer team.

So now Japan are the 2011 Asian Cup soccer champions.

The Japan team was crowned the soccer "Kings of Asia".

So now out of the fifteen “Asian Cup” soccer competitions that have been held since these games started in 1956, Japan has been the champion team the most often.
Japan has held the title four times: in 1992, 2000, 2004 and now in 2011.

Here is a four-and-a half minute video of the highlights of the Japan vs. Australia champion game that was played last night (2011 January 29).
The video shows the failed goal attempts (which are a regular event in a soccer game) and the winning goal (which was actually quite excellent teamwork between aforementioned Tadanari Lee and Yuto Nagatomo):

(The photos in this post are from the Official Asian Cup Games website.)

How to improve the World Cup…use binoculars

The 2010 World Cup has begun. The World Cup is the international soccer championship games.

(I wrote this post about a drink Pepsi-Japan released recently in honor of the World Cup.)

I don’t think soccer is a very exciting game. But I remember seeing on TV here about ten or so years ago a soccer game organized by the famous Japanese comedian Beat Takeshi that was much more entertaining than how the game is usually played.

He made all of the players wear binoculars strapped by their faces. It was quite funny. Beat Takeshi always has excellent shows even today.

Of course someone put it on YouTube.

This is how soccer should be played: