The Nerdy Years (Part One)

Apparently Verdy were originally brilliant.Top dogs in the early days of the J League. They have two stars above the Verdy crest to prove it and Mrs. Nerdy to back up all known facts and observations about the exploits of King (Numpty) Kazu, Ramos, Kitazawa and the gimp with the big ears whose name esca....ah no, it was Takeda.
It was 1993 when it all kicked off, Wolves were shite, England were shite and the J League opened it`s doors....to every over the hill "superstar" still able to run on fumes...... If you want to read about this part of the story of the J League please look somewhere else because although Mrs Nerdy was here to tell the story; quite frankly she doesn`t care these days.

Fast forward to 2000/1...Rainy season, absolutely pissing down at Tokyo Olympic Stadium, Tokyo Verdy v Kashiwa Reysol. 60,000 ish seater stadium, maybe 5,000 people there. In the home end were maybe five or six people with flasher macs,samba snare drums and a ton of enthusiasm. In the middle were a bigger group of people with bigger drums and maybe better flasher macs. We had got tickets for the game and sat down on the Olympic Flame side of the ground.

We were sat down for about 10 minutes then moved because it was too quiet. We went to the Verdy end first and asked a guy why there were TWO bands??  Apparently there used to be just one band but they fell out. Subsequently  the "splinter band" had been forced to the left behind the home goal...they also only struck up there noticabley smaller "hand held" drums when Verdy were attacking......oh the shame of it all!!. We sat down in the pissing rain watching a game played out between two TERRIBLE teams. The only thing that stood out was one player.....and he was probably the reason (apart from the fact that Verdy`s soon to be new ground at Chofu was the closest to my house at the time...)  that made me choose the currently 25th best team in the J-League........