Wednesday 11 July 2012

S-Pulse All Time Best XI + All Time Best Foreign XI

Barry Barry writes 

Announced last Saturday at our 20th anniversary game was our all time best 11. Brought to you in English, probably for the first time anywhere, here it is.

Line Up

GK Masanori Sanada

DF Ryuzo Moriko
DF Toshihide Saito
DF Takumi Horiike
DF Daisuke Ichikawa

MF Oliva
MF Katsumi Oenoki
MF Teruyoshi Ito
MF Masaaki Sawanobori

FW Shinji Okazaki
FW Kenta Hasegawa

Subs

GK Sidmar
DF Ronaldo
MF Santos
MF Alex
MF Shinji Ono
FW Cho Jae-Jin
FW Toninho

Manager

Ossie Ardiles

Head Coach

Kenta Hasegawa

Personally, I only saw around half those players in action, only becoming a regular at Nihondaira in 2004. Can't really argue with the selection, although Ono is as good if not better than any player who has ever worn the orange shirt. He's only been here a short time though, so would be very hard pushed to edge out favourites (indeed S-Pulse legends) like Sawanobori and Teru.

Okazaki has already been gone two years, but it feels like yesterday seeing him bang, or nod, them in week after week. Hope he comes back to us when he returns to Japan.

And now the all time foreign XI. It was voted as follows:

GK Sidmar

DF Jong-a-Pin
DF Eddy Bosnar
DF Ronaldo
DF Lee Ki-Je

MF Edu Manga
MF Santos
MF Oliva
MF Freddie Ljungberg

FW Cho Jae-Jin
FW Frode Johnsen

To think, Freddie made our all time best foreign eleven making only 8 appearances, and only three of those were for the full 90 minutes! Guess many people were voting for the prestige factor rather than what he actually achieved in an orange shirt.

Great to see current defenders Jong-a-Pin and Lee Ki-Je in there. No coincidence we have the joint best defence so far this season. Santos was a true S-Pulse hero in his day, and Jae-Jin's Jubilo destroying goals will live with me forever. Pretty good XI.

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