Sunday 13th May was a pretty epic day for English football. Sometimes living so far away from home means I can become a bit disconnected from English culture, that is not the case with the Premier League though. You can watch it anywhere and with the invention of the internet you can discuss it with people worldwide on services like Twitter or even stream BBC radio coverage. It was truly wonderful to listen to that last day of the 2011/12 season, I won’t go into the details but I feel that it is best summed up by this tweet from the phenomenon that is Danny Baker.

Football. Fucking football. Imagine not being into it. Those poor, poor half-alive bastards.

— Danny Baker (@prodnose) May 13, 2012

What I had missed out on was actually watching Sergio Aguero’s winning goal. Imagine my delight when a friend sent me a YouTube link to it with commentary that sounded very familiar.

The man you can hear there, making an amazing moment even more sensational, is Juan Manuel Pons. El Bambino, as he is known, is an Argentinian football commentator who works on FOX Sports’ Latin American Premier League coverage. He has built up quite the reputation because of the unusual way he calls goals.

Not content with simply yelling out “GOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOL” like so many of his Latin contemporaries he often sings a little song too. These odes are pretty amazing and he goes to some lengths to bring them to the public, for the regular goalscorers he will even bring records to sing along to. Although if an unexpected player grabs a goal he does have to think quickly to come up with something.

I remember the first time I watched the Premiership in Colombia. It was a game between Arsenal and Southampton that had a rather unexpected result, Rory Delap had managed to score twice. The first goal was greeted in a normal fashion but by the time Delap had bagged the second El Bambino had thought of something. He repeatedly said “Ro-ry-De-lap” while rubbing the microphone. As you would expect, this grabbed my attention. For the rest of that highlights package I gleefully awaited each goal, if only to see what he would do.

Until I watched the clip above I had half forgotten about that commentator and as a fan of odd goal commentary I was so glad to find him again. I have searched YouTube high and low for examples of his work and I hope you enjoy this playlist as much as I do.

Following on from the men’s win in the Asian Cup, Japan’s soccer success continues with the Japanese women’s football team winning the Women’s World Cup in Germany. Well done to them, I didn’t watch any games but I am told they played well and deserved their victory.

Going by this video on Time Out Tokyo, it seems that I wasn’t the only one who didn’t really know much about them.

The main thing that stuck out for me though was their choice of nickname. The women’s team is often referred to as Nadeshiko Japan.

Nadeshiko (or なでしこ) is the Japanese name for a plant whose scientific name is the very unladylike Dianthus Superbus. It grows in northern Asia and also in Europe. It’s English name is the far fairer but still not really that feminine, Large Pink.

However, the Japanese ladies team was not called Nadeshiko because of their desire to be a really convenient mass transit system or a building in Portland. It was called this because of the Japanese ideal of Yamato Nadeshiko (大和撫子).

Yamato Nadeshiko is a term for the ideal traditional Japanese woman. Perhaps this is now an antiquated notion but the model Japanese lady was once considered to be feminine while being chaste and devoted to her husband. She would never disagree publicly with her husband but if she felt she could guide him on the right track without him losing face, she would. Also she would appear to be delicate (like the nadeshiko) to the outside world but actually be strong enough to raise children and do the housework. The term comes from Yamato (大和) which is one of the many words referring to Japan (the two kanji mean ‘big’ and ‘harmony/Japanese style’) and the aforementioned Nadeshiko.

Being the big geek that I am though, the word Nadeshiko stood out for me because it flung my mind back to an old anime series which went by the name of Martian Successor Nadeshiko. This show not only keeps up the anime tradition of having silly names for everything but also has big giant robots too.

Released during the Evangelion boom, when I was basically hoovering up every anime I could get my hands on, it somehow passed me by. Apperently it didn’t take itself too seriously (which is how I like my fiction) but for some reason I didn’t take to it. Maybe it was simply because my local library didn’t have it available to rent, I’m fickle like that.

Elsewhere in the world of anime and manga, there is a Japanese comic and animation going by the name Yamato Nadeshiko Shichi Henge. Again, I’m not sure about the plot but what is interesting here is how the title was translated. Rather than translate it directly, the original title being something to do with perfect Japanese women and kabuki dances, they chose to call it The Wallflower. According to the urban dictionary a wallflower is “A person nobody pays attention to, and fades into the background, but are really genuine and interesting people if you take the time to get to know them”.

Perhaps Wallflower then is the perfect name for the English women’s football team, given how coverage in the UK was hidden away behind the red button. If they follow Japan’s lead with a flowery nickname, maybe one day they will win something.

Most of my research for this post was basically taken from links stemming from Wikipedia’s nadeshiko disambiguation page.

キリスト教の国で神様と奇跡は深いつながりがあります。
In Christian countries God and miracles are closely linked.

もし神様に祈ったらたぶん奇跡がおこります。
If you pray to God then maybe a miracle will happen.

昔、よくイエスとかマリアとか神様があらわれました。
A long time ago the likes of Jesus, Mary and God would often appear.

ロールズはフランスで有名な場所です。
Lourdes is a famous place in France.

マリアが温泉にあらわれた後、毎年おおぜいの人が温泉の水で病気が治ると信じてそこに行きます。
After Mary appeared in a spring there, every year millions of people go and believe that if they drink the water, their illnesses will be healed.

そして、トリノで布の中にキリストの顔があらわれました。
Also, in Turin Christ’s face appeared in a shroud.

最近の奇跡はちょっと違います。
Recent miracles are a little different.

最近、どこもあらわれる人はウェイン・ルーニーです。
Recently it’s Wayne Rooney who appears everywhere.

たくさんの新聞記事をよんだことがあるとじゃがいもとかはばきとかポテチとかの中にウェイン・ルーニーがあらわれます。
I have read many newspaper articles and Wayne Rooney appears in stuff like potatoes, skirting boards and crisps.

しかし、その話しはワールドカップの時だけおこります。
However these stories only turn up around World Cup time.

As any self respecting football fan (and reader of this blog) will know, Japan won the Asian Cup in Qatar this year. As any self respecting football fan (or reader of this blog) may not know, one of the biggest reasons for that was their goalkeeper, Eiji Kawashima.

Kawashima has grown to have quite a fan base in my circle of friends, not only because he is a great keeper but also because he is a bit of a live-wire, perhaps even the Jens Lehmann of his generation. This was played out during the Asian Cup, he managed to get himself sent off for a silly challenge in a group match before coming back to save two pelanties in the semi’s shoot-out and then pull off a man of the match performance in the final.

For these reasons he has also become well liked in Japan. My friends and I have successfully started off whole bars chanting his name before (during a game obviously) and it was during one of these chants that I noticed that he makes the most intense facial expressions I have ever seen.

In honour of this, his Asian Cup victory and being recently voted Lierse’s player of the year, I have made this wonderful mosaic of his face, I wonder what he is thinking in each of the pictures.

Original Size

I hope to see him in the Premier League sooner rather than later.

A game to play to practise your Japanese while watching football.