Juventus have arrived, and tonight will be their game against Yokohama F Marinos. I'm going to assume that most of the usual suspects from Marinos (minus Nakazawa, of course) are going to be starting. But it will be interesting to see coach Okada's forward selection. Will he start with Kubo or sub him in the second half? It would be extremely valuable to see Kubo play against top players like Juventus to get a feel for how much he's recovered his game since returning from injury. I'm not going to expect a goal from him, but just to see how he moves and makes his decisions on the pitch.

There has been relatively little fanfare for the arrival of Juventus. (Absolutely none for Hamburg, who played against Urawa Reds yesterday and won 2-0.) There was footage from the press conference (Nedved and DelPiero in attendance) on Sport! yesterday, but I was actually expecting more of the crazy hype that we saw with Real Madrid or even Barcelona last year. I guess the difference being Beckham and Ronaldinho... And half the sports writers and camera crews in Japan are off scouting around in UAE and Bahrain for the NT matches, so I guess the networks just didn't have the extra people. Kind of a relief that we aren't embarassing ourselves in front of visiting teams like we have in the past. The press conference was pretty banal, but Juventus were very gracious in their comments. It was the first time for Nedved in Japan, but he said that he was sorry they weren't going to have enough time to really see Japan. Probably one shopping spree is scheduled... Maybe if you camp out in Akihabara (the electronics store town) you may catch them.

As for the Hamburg/Reds game, it was not televised on either regular tv or the net so I only saw about 5 seconds of goal clips. I also heard that Urawa had a hard time populating the stadium -- the attendance was just over ten thousand, which I guess must have been a disappointment for them. The general commentary about Urawa's performance was that they weren't able to make any promising shots on goal. But they did have speed against Hamburg. But Hamburg had both height and a desire to fight at any cost -- Hamburg won the air, and also stopped Urawa's speed by tackling. In other words, Hamburg showed that "pretty" is not necessarily the ideal, and to get results you have to be willing to throw yourself into the game. It would have been interesting to watch -- I do watch Hamburg on cable off and on, so I know the team fairly well (not really a favorite team of mine, but I have the basics down).

The Juventus/Marinos game, as I said before, will be televised (delayed video broadcast at midnight) on the network tv, but you can also watch it live on the net. It's free, and the registration process if very simple. I'm not sure whether people accessing from overseas can also hook up, but I haven't read anything to the contrary so I think anyone will be able to watch. If you need help with the Japanese in the registration process leave a comment or send an email -- I'll walk you through it. I'll come back with my impression of the game afterwards, but I want to just plain enjoy the show. Hopefully it will be a good match with exciting play from both sides!