Footballs long and winding road

Well, it is the end of the football season, and whilst I would love to comment on my Phoenix, and how they did, I just plain did not get to see them enough, however, I will be offering some thoughts on the season ahead.

However, with the Champions League final hoving into view, I though I would offer a few thoughts.

Well, put it simply, in spite of Rafa and his somewhat odd belief that Liverpool is better, the table does not lie. United won the league. They are currently the best in England.

It was a long and winding season with Liverpool jumping off to a fantastic start, whilst United's machine groaned into action. By Christmas, Liverpool where 14 points clear.

By the end of the season, United had not only hauled that difference back, but overtaken Liverpool, and put 4 points over them. By any yardstick, that is the mark of a champion-quality team!

Chelsea's season was full of "what ifs." A club stocked with excellent players, and at the start of the season, they had Scolari who was touted as a fantastic international manager. However, for whatever reason, he was deemed to be unable to cut it at club level, and was axed. Chelsea struggled to relly gel and get going. Though they did keep close to Liverpool and United. What would their season have been like had they had Hiddink from the start? However, since he is going after the FA Cup final, it is purely a rhetorical question.

Arsenal was another season of total underperformance. Wenger has built a squad of talented young players. However, they are sorely lacking an experienced older player who coul control the younger players. Something United have with Giggs, Scholes, and Van Der Sar. Arsenal has Silvestre. Who lets face it, was a good squad player with United, but not THE heart of the defence. It is something Wenger has lacked all year, leaving them to duke it out with Aston Villa for large parts of the season, and where in real risk of finishing out of the top 4. Having said all that, they will have to qualify for the Champions League, and there are going to be some pretty tough teams that they could draw. Celtic, amongst them.

United themselves are in the process of pulling out a pretty amazing season. League Cup, World Club Cup, Premier league, and through to the finals of the Champions League.

United have played a huge amount of games, and 2/3rds the way through, the squad looked jaded and tired. Only to roar back, and stamp an end on the slump with a demolition of Arsenal.

Ronaldo has not had the same sort of year that he had last year. However, that was allways going to be unlikely. He has still delivered, and plenty of other players have stepped up and played their part. Rooney has a few, along with Berbatov, and Tevez. Who may yet end up as a United player come the end of June. We wait and see on that score.

The foot of the table has proven even more interesting. But to be frank, the teams that dropped are the ones to deserve it.

West Brom: By far an away the worst in the league. Played good football, but left huge gaps all over the place which Premier League teams have the capability to exploit, whilst last year, other clubs failed to do so.

Middlesborough: They stink.Naff manager, and stupid decisions. Enough said.

Newcastle: Been a big club on a slide ever since Keegans tirade about Ferguson on TV. A slide that has only been accelarating ever since then, to take on a fateful dive when Ashley took over the club. Poor players, too many managers, a total lack of self-belief. The club has been totally poisoned inside and out. The relegation will give them a chance to clear out the locker room, and purge the system. Hopefully they can re-build, and get back into the top flight. However, be warned! Leeds United are a big club, and look where they are...

Of the clubs who have replaced them coming up...

Wolves: Champions of the Championship, and rightly so. Played good football, scored lots of goals. Have a pretty good defence, and in Mick McCarthy, a manager with a pretty good history. A loyal fanbase will expect them to make more of a fist of it than the last time they where up. Hopefully they will have learnt from past mistakes.

Birmingham: Another club with plenty of of good football in it. Well organised, and hopefully willing to learn from the past so as to avoid the drop next time round.

Burnley: Whilst I was rooting for Sheffield United (sorry Dad!) I was happy to see them come up.  A plucky team that likes to play football the right way. A solid team that just got on with the job last year, and surprised everyone. Sorry Burnley, but it is likely you will take West Broms place as the whipping boys!

OK, prediction time. The season is just over, so lets get on with the pointlessly optimistic predictions game!

Champions: Manchester United. Everyone says next year is Liverpools year as they keep on improving. However, Sir Alex Ferguson will look at his team, and see where it needs help, and will strengthen likewise!

Runners-up: Liverpool. Relying on Gerrard and Torres is too much pressure! They need more players like them, and I dont see them bringing in enough over the summer. If one gets injured, Liverpool hurt, and they start dropping silly points.

3rd: Arsenal. I suspect they will improve, maybe taking the FA Cup along the way, or the League Cup, but the club is a long way back from United and Liverpool at the moment.

4th: Chelsea. Lets face it, these are the top 4 in England. I predict 4th for Chelsea. Why? No idea. They need to bring in a top manager, and THEN he needs to get a handle on the squad. Didnt work out so well for Big Phil did it...

OK, that is the top, and for the bottom...

20th and first to be relegated: Sorry. Burnley. Well organised a club it may be, but it is a mote compared to United. Coming up from 6th means there is a massive gap in the playing levels for the team, and financially, they will struggle to compete with those round them (after all, EVERYONE has access to the Premier Leagues wealth!)

19th: I am going to go with Hull. They have had a good ride, and if they get some good players in over the summer, they may survive. However, I dont see them repeating last year and grabbing their survival points in the first half of the season. Its going to be a long slog for them.

18th: Birmingham/Stoke. Simply, there is going to be a whole bunch of teams duking it out at the bottom end, with no-one able to build any kind of safety net for themselves, and I am goingto cop out and say that for both of these teams, if they dont make some smart moves, they will find themselves down in the mud. It does not take much to drop down there!

Anyhoo. That is it for now.

I may do a write up after the Champions League Final. Depending on how I feel...

Those Damn Foriegners!

Well, the government want to introduce a new form of ID card for foriegners, detailing biometric information, personal history, visa information, home details, etc. This ID card will be open to the Police and to many governmental departments. It will prove to be quite expensive, and the government has not totally worked out how to protect the individuals who will be targetted by this new card scheme.

They seem hell-bent on introducing it, riding in on a vague feeling of unease to an influx of immigrants into the country.

Sound familiar?

It should.

It is something the Japanese government wants to do.

You thought I was talking about the ID scheme of the UK government? 

Well, both have pretty close similarities, whilst the Japanese scheme will go further than Labours scheme. And unfortunately, the Japanese people do not have a strong history of human rights protests, so are not getting up in arms over it. Especially since it does not affect them, just the "gaijin." However, there is rumblings that whilst us gaijing are a suspicious bunch, that this is getting too far and treating us as criminals, rather than jsut 2nd class citizens, which we are.

As it stands, I have to carry my Aliens Residence Registration Card ("Gaijing Card") at ALL times. If I dont, and the Police want to check, I am hit with up to 1 year in jail, and a 200,000 yen fine. The card allows me to access local services should I need them, and I have to re-register every year at the local city hall. It is a pain in the arse, but the local city office does not really worry too much about me. In fact, the national government recently gave everyone 12,000 yen as a present, and the Kashiwazaki city office actually went to the trouble of translating the application form into English to help us dumb gaijin. OK, the translation was pretty mangled, but we managed to get through it all OK!

However, these registries are only held locally. Meaning that the national government has no idea what is going on, and the local governments are getting up the national governments collective nose by being NICE to us foriegners and helping us out!

So, the new plan is to scrap the current system, and replace it with a "better" system.

First off, I will no longer have to register at some small web covered, hardly used desk in the city hall, but will be properly registered on the main database, and enjoy my own residency certificate (juminhyo). Visa limits will be lifted to a maximum of 5 years from the current 3, and access to local services will be even easier than now.

However, on the other hand, they plan to tighten the noose around my neck with the devil hidden in the detail!

The new card will be the same as before with the same details as before. Home address, visa status, workplace, pghoto, etc. However, all this will be encoded on to a chip. Similar to the new chipped passports.

What is more insidious is the punishments.

This new system will be operated centrally, rather than from the local city office. This is where it starts getting iffy. At the moment, you have 2 weeks to report to the local city hall and report your arrival and they issue you a shiny card within a few days. Here in Kashiwazaki, its a 10 minute walk away. Under the new system, we will still have 2 calendar weeks, but we will have to report to an immigration office. Mine is on the wrong side of Niigata, an 90 minute drive away, and seriously understaffed. This gives me pretty much zero flexibility with regards sorting out any changes to my visa. 

To make it worse, if you dont report any changes to your visa status, which can be something major like changing a job, all the way down to change of school, change of address, birth/death/or marriage. If you enjoy any of these, you have 2 weeks to report it. If not, 200,000yen fine. Fail to report it within 3 months? Lose the visa, no right of appeal.

The IC chip can be swiped to access its information. There has been talk of making foriegners submit to a scan every time they want to enter a public building (the initial list included places of public gathering, such as soccer stadiums! Needless to say, the Japanese government has, at least, recognised the stupidity of THAT one!)

Not only that, but it looks increasingly likely that the Police will be given remote scanners to scan IC cards remotely. Meaning that I can be scanned and tagged by the Police at any time, without my knowledge. They can keep track of me 24 hours a day, just by driving a car past my apartment! Also, this means it is likely that foriegners are going to be targetted by criminals who will "rip" the identity information off my card, and use it when committing crimes.

Not only that, but it will take racial profiling to whole new levels, as the Police scan a crowd, find a foriegner who does not have a card, only to find they are naturalised Japanese. And there are plenty of those!

Needless to say, protests are beginning to spread, and I will DEFINATELY be buying myself a scan blocker!

Orwells "1984" is getting ever closer...

PANIC!!!

OK, I have had a blast living here in Japan. I have made many friends here, met a beautiful woman, had a great time. I have no regrets about moving here.

Ok, maybe one...

However, this sojourn could be coming to an end.

My visa is up for renewal, and duly, off I trotted to the immigration office to enter my paperwork to renew my visa for another year at Niigata airport. It was actually really busy when I got in, got my grubby mitts on the application form and duly filled it out, and handed it all over for processing.

Had a "moment" in there, bumped in to Marcio Richardes. OK, I know, does not sound dramatic, but he is one of the Brazilian players who ply their trade with Albirex Niigata. He is a very good player in the J-League, but very much a one-footed blayer. On his right, he is fantastic. It is good enough to get into any of the top European leagues, but his left is utterly rubbish, so on balance, he gets to be a star in Japan.

However, like allways when one bumps into a soccer player, one is struck with a realisation.

They are ALL tiny. And he had bad skin.

Anyhoo. Back to my problems.

Once the paperwork was in, all I had to do was wait for a letter telling me when to return to get a stamp in my passport. What I got instead was a letter demanding to see copies of my Kashiwazaki City tax. OK... Not such a problem, but the letter arrived the day before the Golden Week vacation, which meant I had no time to get that information and send it. So, I had to wait before I could get in to the city office to get the information, which I duly did.

So, now, my visa expires tomorrow (Friday) and I have no idea what is going to happen!

OK, it should be fine. Since in my passport it does say I have applied, I think that will cover me for now, but I would not put it past the Japanese government to send the heavies round!

Whilst I would be sad to go, and would be heartbroken to leave Yuko, the silver lining here is that I would be able to get to see more Phoenix games! 

But I dont think it will come to that...