Japan 1 Russia 0
Inamoto 51

So, the Japanese win their first ever World Cup finals game - at the expense of Russia!!! By heck, the Japanese worked so hard and flew around at such speed, that the Russians could hardly keep up with them (or Herr Merk, the tooth extractor). The energy level was simply amazing - and they kept it up for the entire match! You can't help but to feel delighted for them. The big star of Japan (Nakata) didn't contribute an awful lot, though slightly more than Sukur had in the previous match (there's a common denominator there somewhere) and I think that the Japanese would be justified in adopting themselves a new hero - any one of the other lads who played today! Probably Inamoto would've earned the man of the match award; not just for scoring that crucial goal, but for excellent play all around. Another good contender would be Toda (who, through a nifty bit of razorwork, has changed from the red Elvis to the red Chingachgook) - but they were all excellent. Well done Japan!!

Well done Japan on the playing front, but I must say that I am not enamoured by this stadium - and this is where the final is to be played. The crowd is miles away from the play. I doubt that the BBC will be totally enamoured by the standard of commentating in this match either. Barry Davies flummoxed us all with insisting on commentating in the manner of logic puzzles (and "Japan are in yellow"????????). He could well be in the deepest strife, however, for not having a single clue that the man who the cameras focussed on, on more than one occasion, was the Japanese Prime Minister ("he must be important in Yokohama, but we haven't been told who he is"!!). Goodness me, the man's been on telly enough lately!!

Top marks to the man in the crowd who took a photo of himself on the big screen.

Teams

Japan: Seigo Narazaki, Naoki Matsuda, Tsuneyasu Miyamoto, Koji Nakata, Tomokazu Myojin, Junichi Inamoto, Kazuyuki Toda, Hidetoshi Nakata, Shinji Ono, Takayuki Suzuki, Atsushi Yanagisawa.

Russia: Ruslan Nigmatullin, Yuri Kovtun, Yuri Nikiforov, Viktor Onopko, Andrei Solomatin, Valery Karpin, Yegor Titov, Alexei Smertin, Igor Semshov; Marat Izmailov, Ruslan Pimenov.

Referee: Markus Merk (Germany)

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