Gamba Osaka Pride is One Year Old!

It gives me great pleasure to tell you all that Gamba Osaka Pride has reached its first birthday today (18/12/2013). I decided to start this blog in the hopes that I could get my passion for this wonderful team out of my system as I simply had no-one to share it with. I also hoped that maybe somebody would take up watching Gamba or at least the J.League.

So first of all I would like to thank to each and every single person who has visited my blog. It takes a lot of time and effort to get keep this blog updated and in a good state so when people take their time to read it and share their opinions, it means a lot. So thank you for your support for this first year – I hope there are many more!

Secondly, I think I have really improved on my writing skills as the year has gone by and I have even had an article published in JSoccer Magazine, which is run by Kobe-based legend Alan Gibson. I wish everyone would buy the magazine as it was what got me started on the J.League. I hope to be writing more for Mr.Gibson in the future, as well as great sites like japanfooty.com for which I have a piece in the pipework.

I managed to get to Japan this year, specifically Osaka of course, where I had the time of my life and got to see 6 out of 7 games whilst I was there. All were pretty important ones too: Tokushima Vortis (H) 2-0), FC Gifu (A) 8-2, JEF United Chiba (A) 0-3, Giravanz Kitakyushu (H) 1-1, Vissel Kobe (H) 3-2 and Fagiano Okayama (A) 3-2. I cannot wait to get back to Osaka for my year abroad at Kansai University.

But without further a due, here are some great stats from the blog in its first year:

Total Views: 10,212
Busiest Day: 11th October 2013 – 218 views, 194 visitors
Busiest Month: May 2013 – 1,086, 623 visitors

Most Popular Article: 25th April 2013 – Takashi Usami will leave Hoffenheim – 370 views
Most Popular Preview: 13th October 2013 – Omiya Ardija (Emperor’s Cup) – 360 views
Most Popular Review: 22nd September 2013 – Matsumoto Yamaga FC (A) – 222 views
Most Popular Player: Yasuhito Endo – 87 views

Most Visited Countries: Japan – 3,370 views & United Kingdom – 1,633 views
Number of Visited Countries: 100

Number of Posts: 127
Number of Words Typed: 134,647

New Blog Media

I just wanted to give a quick article on the new media outlets for the blog and where to find them, as some of you will not have known that I now produce a podcast and I have made a Facebook page.

So to begin with, let’s start with the podcast. It was created, eventually, last week (28^th February) with a lot of help given to me by the @JTalkPod so that it could all be properly set up. He gave me advice on where to upload it, which in the end cost me £28 for the year, and also how to record the material over Skype with my friend and Swiss Gamba fan @sebinomics, the creator of 90minutes.asia. We collaborate together for one another’s projects and it is real fun. We will record after every match day to give you in-depth analysis, our opinions and thoughts on the Gamba games, as well as talking briefly about the rest of the league and where the result leaves the team in the table.

You can find the podcast in several places. Firstly on the blog home page on the left-hand side, you will see the three most recent podcasts – you will also see a “podcast” tab at the top of the page which will lead you all of the podcasts. These podcasts are all stored on gambaosakapride.podbean.com and you can access and download the podcasts there if you so wish. Alternatively, you can search “gambaosakapride” on iTunes and you will find every podcast there to download. If you subscribe, you can download the podcasts as soon as they are uploaded.

We are definitely not professionals on this matter but it is extremely fun and hopefully informative for the fans. If you would like to guest on the podcast – given that you speak English and watched the match on that specific day – just comment on the podcast page, leave me a tweet on Twitter or leave a message on the other new media page.

That’s right! A Facebook page. I know that not all of you will use Twitter so I wanted a place on Facebook where I could post all new written pieces, links to the podcast, news, match news, injuries, streams of matches etc. You get the idea. But I also wanted a place for real Gamba love and discussion – I want people to contribute to the Gamba Osaka foreign community, as well as speaking with Japanese people if they speak English! It’s also another way to spread the word of Gamba Osaka and my blog and podcasts.

So that’s all I wanted to say! I hope you can join Gamba Osaka Pride’s growing community! And I now have over 100 followers on Twitter in just 11 weeks. Amazing stuff. I am having a great time learning more about the team and meeting new fans alike. Thank you everyone for your support. I hope you all appreciate my hard work but also give me suggestions to improve. I want the best for you guys!

Plans for Match Previews, Reports and Analysis

Given that the only ever J2 campaign will begin for Gamba Osaka next Sunday (3^rd March) against Kyoto Sanga at Banpaku, I thought I would detail how I will go about writing match previews, match reports and finally analysis. This will give me a consistent structure on how to present information to you as well as to give you the limitations of what I am doing. As this is the first time that I have blogged, it might be a bit trial and error but we shall see what happens.

Match Previews:

• Introduction of the match (location, date, time etc.)
• Recent results and current league positions of both teams
• Historical data about the match
• Opposition strong point
• Opposition weak point
• Expected Gamba line-up
• Gamba player to watch
• Prediction of the final result

Match Reports:

• Introduction of the match result
• Team Line-Ups and Substitutes
• Run-through of what happened
• Key battles (won and lost)
• Key moments/turning-points in the game
• (Gamba) Man of the Match
• What the result means to both teams

Analysis:

• Video format if I can get hold of in-depth match highlights
• Analyse recurring themes, good/bad positioning, good/bad refereeing, goals and key moments
• If video is not viable, I will not do this part as it might be too difficult to analyse without video input

These points should give you a taste of what I will try to do. Whether or not it works, only time will tell. Analysis hinges upon video highlights. If anyone can help with that, please leave me a message.

I will be testing out some skills necessary for all of this using the Sanfrecce Hiroshima v Kashiwa Reysol match which takes place on Saturday 23^rd February. If anyone has any tips or advice on software, where to find long highlights or things I should include, leave feedback below.

The revival is near!

Recent Blog Updates

I thought I would write a quick piece to let everyone know about the amazing amount of work I have put in over the last few days to ensure that the blog is all set to go for the start of the league campaign.

Before all that, something I should have mentioned is that the fixture list was released last Friday, giving Gamba four massive home games against Kyoto, Yokohama, JEF and Verdy at home whilst have four long-distance away days to Nagasaki, Kumamoto, Sapporo and Yamagata. These first eight fixtures could well set the tone for the season as it looks like the most difficult stretch of games for Gamba. On a personal note, I will be in Osaka for the home games against Tokushima, Kitakyushu and a lovely Kansai derby against Kobe. Tickets are all I need.

Now back to business. I have now made a player and a staff page with individual photos. These are linked to individual pages containing mini, uniquely hand-made profiles for all players and staff, as well as complete histories for each player. These contain their number of appearances and goals in every single competition. All in all, that took four hours on Tuesday night, then around eight hours on Wednesday to complete.

On Thursday, I created a complete account of Gamba’s history as a J.League member, all the way from 1993 until 2012. I kept making mistakes which was infuriating but rectified all of them before publishing. Only took another four hours or so of meticulous work. Then at 1:30am, instead of going to sleep, I decided to make a new banner, adding more personalisation to the blog. The banner itself includes the team badge and the 2013 logo 「復活」. That took half an hour.

Finally today, I added another page called “The Net”, where you can access all of the best English-language resources about the J.League, as well as a few websites in Japanese that are imperative to visit, even if you have to use Google Translate. Please support all of the guys mentioned on that page and please buy JSoccer Magazine. Alan Gibson does a wonderful job so email him – alan@jsoccer.com – to get a good deal now. Time spent – half an hour.

So that is my piece completed, along with about 17 hours of work to show for it. If you have any suggestions for the site, please do not hesitate to tell me. Thank you all for reading this blog and let’s keep spreading the word of the J.League together.