Shanghai Lions FC

Saturday, September 20th 2003. Tianma soccer pitch.

The first game of the official season kicked off at 11:00am, Shanghai time. Les Bleus had good positionning in the first minutes, allowing them to control the ball most of the time. This domination was soon rewarded by the first goal of the season. On a shooting opportunity, a Japanese defender had no other choice but to stop the ball with his hand on the line. Penalty logically granted by the referee, even if we could wonder why the defender was not shown the red card... Damien scored. Several minutes later, the same Damien dribbled his way into the box, and was brought down. A second penalty whistled, and Damien scored again! 2-0 at half-time, a good start.

When the team came back on the pitch, it was a different game. Five players were changed on the french side. Organization went down, and the Japanese, as always back with spirit, took control of the game. It did not take time before they changed the face of the game. One, two, three goals went in... Les Bleus team was changed again, and tried to reverse the score again. Japanese even scored a fourth one. Final score: 4-2.

Coach comments: "We played great football in first half. But our mistake was to think the game was won at half time. And I shouldn't have made so many changes at that point. I take my responsibilities, it was a mistake. But we learn from mistake, and there are hopes according to the way we played in the first half. Congratulations to the Japanese for their great spirit!"