real busan 1 jinju 1

(gino nini)

Real played very well here and all day, with a lot of crisp passing and moving throughout the team, creating good chances and playing a confident game. It was a pleasure to be on the field, I'm pretty sure this is the best ever Real Busan team, and when we get our goalie Gabo back from injury it'll be the final piece in the jigsaw. This was us ~

Mouthwatering isn't it: definitely better than ever. The first half was really good, it was our first game on a full-size pitch since July, and we were clicking from the back, through the midfield & up front. Our goalie would give the ball to the sweeper, he'd push it forward to the flanks or through the middle, and pass by pass we would get the ball up the field and create chances. We have two fluid #10 type players now in Seb & Marcelo who play with their eyes, pass & move, and make a lot of cultured passes just outside the box and find our forwards with some fine passes: so good to be back playing again!

At half-time it's 0-0 and a great game of football. Is it a crime to claim we should have been leading by now? Jinju came out fighting in the second half but Real scored first, with Gino forging upfield and picking up a loose ball just outside the box and smacking it in to give Real a deserved 1-0 lead. We kept up the pressure but Jinju are not short of a lot of fight and from this point on gave us very little time on the ball and broke up those nice webs we were trying to spin. Their grit and determination was rewarded finally with an unusual goal straight from a long free-kick which flew straight over the goalie and in. A little bit like Ronaldinho's goal v England in the World Cup, except the ball was travelling so slow... again, is it ungracious to point out that Gabo our normal keeper would have caught it with one hand?

1-1 it finished, with Real coming off the field pretty pissed off with the score and not having turned possession and chances into goals but lets credit Jinju with a fine fighting second half, they deserved the goal for breaking up the play so well and putting up a proper fighting spirit in the second half.

real busan 0 jinju 1

The game starts off just like the last first half, Real taking the game to Jinju, threatening to score, but not. There were chances, Gino hit the post after forcing his way through on the right, and again from the right a shot from Mark (I think) goes in (I swear) but isn't credited by the ref. Who'd be a ref? I didn't hear one person claim it hadn't gone in. Even the ball said when asked that it went in.

Then disaster struck, as one of their guys broke his leg very noisily in a fifty-fifty challenge with Seb, and the game stops for around twenty or more minutes while we call for an ambualnce. This is the biggest drawback about amateur football, the slow response to injury like this, and we have nothing with us to help him out. Finally the ambulance arrives, and the first thing they do is take off his shoe: are you supposed to do that? We all think no no no way. Meanwhile Seb was really disturbed that this challenge ended up like that and couldn't play any part from then, two days later as I write this he's still very shaken up. For what it's worth, Seb, everyone recognizes this was a bad accident and no more than that.

Actually everyone was shaken up. Should we call it all off? We offered the Jinju guys as much but they said let's just write off the rest of the first half and start the second half (which was now reduced to twenty minutes as we'd stayed longer than permitted already) so away we went. Right away they're galvanized and take the lead, with their striker Eamon Hanka controlling a good pass and smacking it in from outside the box with his second touch: very nice, for them.

From this point it must have been a great game for the spectator, if we had any spectators, as Real sustained the most intensive twenty minutes of attacking I've seen from us all year, with Jinju pinned into the last third. We hit the post, the bar, Gino had a perfect header cleared off the line, there were several corners, shots, but the final whistle went and no equalizer. That was an awesome, electric twenty minutes which I'm proud to have played a part in ~ you could feel the intense desire to equalize, score a goal, break through, from every guy ~ but no reward though this time, Jinju won the game and that's football.

They were very gracious winners it should be said, we got drunk later over about seven hours of sitting and drinking, they bought us a couple of pitchers which was sporting of them, and are clearly a brilliant bunch of sporting, fun, clever lads. And I really really want to be a gracious loser. But ~ I can't stop the words coming out ~ the better team didn't win! Now we all want to go down there, play them over ninety minutes and see what happens because we don't feel right about this ~ feel a bit of a sinner writing that but it's what we all think at Real...

Still, if you're going to lose, then you can't pick a better bunch to lose to.