Agent Orange Reports: Happy Birthday! It's The Hate Index

I was thinking of doing a huge, probing essay into the detail of yesterday's epic battle between Omiya and Shimizu S-Pulse, delving into the minutiae of a true Naranja Classico... but I didn't watch said game. And after perusing the stat sheet, I'm glad I decided to sleep in and walk to McDonalds (speaking of hate, the new Mr James campaign just bugs the hell out of me. I don't mind stereotypes so much, but why don't they ever target the creepy Swedish dudes that inhabit my domicile?).

Also Frode Johnsen, yeah... don't do anything at all against FC Tokyo in a knockout match, but come out like a ball of fire against Omiya. Again. I can taste the bile in my mouth right now. Combine that with the fact that it's September. September means birthday month for not only our esteemed czar of the blog but also yours truly, as well as no fewer than five members of Team Orange. September is also the month in which Ardija decides to tank. In the past five years, Omiya has a gaudy 2-0-14 record. Can you guess who was in charge when we got the two wins?

All of that has me just in a boil, so... HATE INDEX IT IS!

18. JEF UNITED - I put them at the bottom of the hate index as a show of solidarity. Our friend F2FF detailed the incident between a disgruntled JEF fan and an Omiya supporter during the game last month. I don't like fan violence and stuff like this outrages me as much as the next guy, but I seriously think it's one idiot and not the start of something nefarious in Chiba. Add to the fact that F2FF is not alone among the Chiba bloggers and fandom in rightly calling out the moron who decided that he wanted to use his flag as a club. I don't imagine that we would see that at some of the other more, um, excitable groups of supporters. I'm not a fan of the parade of Eurosnobs that mismanage the club, or of Seiichiro Maki - but I do like the fans and appreciate them stepping up and saying something.



17. ALBIREX NIIGATA - Gamba loses yet another striker and instead of doing what the rest of the league does and scout foreign leagues for a prospect, they go and gut another squad. I'll discuss them later. Anyhow, Niigata seems to chug along behind the glorious foot of Marcio Richardes. Now a rumor comes out in WSD that Urawa is in pursuit of the dynamic playmaker to replace the eroding talent of Robson Ponte. Super! The second biggest fanbase in Japan gets bled of their top foreign talent and Urawa and Gamba get to waste more Brazilian stars. Amazing J!!!

16. OITA TRINITA - I have to pat myself on the back on this one. Ken Matsushima at Rising Sun News almost said they were going to drop, but as far as I know I was the only person to call Oita being a disaster this season and going down to J2. I didn't think that they would be historically bad, but there was alot of quit on this squad and they showed it. Because I hate them, it only makes it better!

15. VISSEL KOBE - They hired Toshiya Miura, they gave us four points and I got to see a penguin. Hell, they might be my second favorite team.



14. YOKOHAMA F MARINOS - Well, a hearty and belated congratulations goes out to to the Tricolore for getting one over on us in the league. Of course, they went out and dropped points to Kashiwa and Chiba, doing us no favors. They also managed to bomb out of the Nabisco Cup again AND lose their keeper in the process for a good six-game stretch. That's why I can't stand the Nabisco Cup - teams who go full throttle for it always end up dropping in the late rounds and inevitably lose a key member to injury, like Shimizu and Naoaki Aoyama. Not good for a team perilously close to relegation.

13. OMIYA ARDIJA - Yeah, yesterday was predictable and frustrating. Somehow, the core of this team is just afraid of being successful. I think the big problem is that we have a team now that is full of J1 players. Bench players who can come in and contribute for about 20 to 30 minutes a game, we are playing them the full ninety. I do like the Masakazu Kihara pick-up for next year, but I'm not sure who gets dropped in the process. Is this the end for Daisuke Watabe? Nineteen years old and finished with the squad? I'm most upset with the fact that I got caught up in the post-Kashima euphoria and am disappointed again by another flat offensive effort. Two steps forward, two steps back - where does that get you?

12. KASHIWA REYSOL - A combination of luck, lackadaisical oppostion and decent play have the squad close to safety. I'm upset about this because, (a) I don't think Nelsinho is that great a coach, (b) Yoshiyuki Kobayashi is yet again stuck in reserve league hell and, (c) I'm really hoping they drop so we can go after Minoru Suganuma, as opposed to us dropping and getting gutted by them. I'm a bit nervous talking about skimming for other squads' players when we ain't safe, again. Here's hoping they suck again by November, so we can return the 4-0 pasting they handed us last year.

11. MONTEDIO YAMAGATA - I kind of stopped thinking they were helpless after they came to Omiya and kicked us in the teeth (with help from the odius official Okada). I got tired of them after their sixth or seventh win where they attempt only two shots and bunker for the other eighty-plus minutes. They're surviving, but I don't have to like it. I'm a bit torn on today's game against Urawa. If they win then Urawa keeps spiraling out of control and gives me hope of them going back down to J2. While not great for the bottom line, it would be fun to test the theory that their minions would remain loyal no matter what. However if Montedio wins, we drop to 15th so... psst, Nazis... check the attic!



10. SANFRECCE HIROSHIMA - The greatest show on turf keeps rolling. Good for them to stick together through a relegation battle and come to hit top three. I am kind of annoyed at the whole boy band youthful exuberance and wacky hijinks show after every victory, but they win so they get to gloat.

9. NAGOYA GRAMPUS - You guys get to go down a couple notches if you give the same bad performance that you did for Kashiwa. I swear to God I hate when teams bend over for teams that are close to us in terms of placement and then come out with their best performances for Omiya. Focus on the ACL. Don't worry about us.

8. KYOTO SANGA - Exhibit two in the parade of teams that do us no favors. Drops too many points to bad teams not wearing Orange and playing in a park in Saitama.

7. KAWASAKI FRONTALE - The diving is getting old. Naoki Ishihara got called out (rightly) for diving against Kyoto. It was a little over the top when the JFA decreed that he was a player that was in effect a worthless human being but in Naoki's defense, at least he grabbed the part of his body where the contact was made. Juninho grabs his nose after being pushed in the back. What does he get for that? Not a whimper from the intelligentsia at JFA headquarters.

6. SHIMIZU S PULSE - FRODE JOHNSEN IS THE DEVIL! Wonder who he's going to recommend joins Tromso this year? Rest of the team... ehh. Four games in a row that we have not scored against them and a seven-game winless streak dating back to 2006 in all competitions. Ewww.



5. URAWA REDS - Ohhh, I'm sure that they will be back up in the rankings by the end of the month, but now it's gone past the fun part with their inefficiency. It's kind of sad... and really annoying. And I hate the fact that, yet again, they are trying to take good parts off of Albirex so they can misuse them. Edmilson and Marcio in Niigata were a thing of beauty that those fans appreciated. Edmilson and Marcio in Urawa will be painful to watch because no matter what they do, those fans will clamor for Tsukasa Umesaki and Tatsuya Tanaka the minute the team doesn't do well, or they will complain that they are beneath the great pedigree of Urawa foreign imports and they should be sold and guys from Germany should be brought in for yet more annoyingly negative football. See, I'm already getting angry at them again.

4. JUBILO IWATA - You deserved to lose at Kumagaya. You deserved to go down last year and a part of me hopes that you go down this year. Lee Kuen Ho covered up the stink for a while but you're really not that good and the defense is atrocious.

3. GAMBA OSAKA - Why is nobody tearing garments over the influx of "retail electronic money"? Seriously, what's the difference between them overspending on Brazilian players and Qataris doing the same? Nothing. That's what. You want to blame someone for the whole "money is ruining the sport" brouhaha? Blame Gamba. They are Ground Zero in this whole little fiasco.

2. FC TOKYO - Here's hoping you have a glorious run in your efforts to win the Nabisco Cup. And then you go to LA and have a preseason of playing against the likes of Orange County Blue Star and SoCal Seahorses before you get embarrassed by the LA Galaxy and a faceless thug Chinese team before coming and hurtling to the depths of J1 like Oita. You earned it! Are you gonna try and get UNICEF to sponsor you too?



1. KASHIMA ANTLERS - Funny they would be put here after we beat them, but it's not so much them (nice hack job, though, Daiki Iwamasa) as it is their increasingly insufferable manager Oswaldo Oliveira, who is taking the art of whining to a higher level. From Shintaro Kano's column: "But the player, he knew Marquinhos was going to score. So he hit the head of Marco. Of course, this is clear even from my position. He didn't mean to hit the ball, he meant to hit Marco. Kamikaze, sure."

So Olivera pretty much is saying that Yasuhiro Hato is a dirty player who is attempting to injure a player intentionally. Do I have this right? Am I missing something? Yasuhiro Hato? Really? From what I saw - you know, right alongside the net in a position that wasn't blocked by sixteen players and spanning all the way across the field - was two guys going for a ball and colliding violently. I saw one getting there before the other and getting his head on the ball, the one who in Oliveira's world wasn't attempting to go for the ball at all.

There's a lot of things that you can call Yasuhiro Hato and Lord knows I have. Dirty isn't one of them. Osvaldo tends to have a bit of the cry in him whenever results don't go his way. And it's starting to get a bit annoying. Mitsuo Ogasawara went studs up into a guy during the game and Iwamasa tripped and bodyslammed Ishihara on numerous occasions. That's dirty. But no one ever says a peep about those actions. You lost, deal with it. Stop being such a bedwetter Osvaldo.

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