Leslie Mabon

FIFA were crowing about how Club World Cup was the most "merit-based" competition in the world. The World Cup? Not so much when it comes to Asia. Qatar and Saudi given home advantage for two mini group playoffs. Now Qatar maximise this by playing crunch UAE game in tiny stadium to limit away fans

A line of eight Parma white shirts with black crosses, from different seasons.

Earlier this week - all my ‘Crociati’ Parma tops together for the last time before one heads off to a new owner! One of these shirts is not like the others 🧐 #Parma ⚪️⚫️ 🟡🔵

Two football shirts with the nameset NAKAMURA 10. Left hand is maroon Reggina shirt; right hand is blue Japan shirt.

Day 8: Reminds You of a Loved One

These two. My wife's maiden name!

Reminder: donate here www.justgiving.com/campaigns/ch...

#CancerHasNoColours

A gallery of very similar goals, where the attacker cuts in from the left and creates a goal

Iwaki conceding in 2025 from opposition attackers cutting in from the left: a gallery

A lime green goalkeeper shirt, with the name 'Shovkovskyi' written in Ukrainian on the rear.

Day 7: Your Favourite Nameset

Has to be the Oleksandr Shovkovskyi Dynamo Kyiv goalkeeper shirt, with the name in Ukrainian!

#CancerHasNoColours

A yellow Cadiz CF football shirt with a blue collar. It has a crest reading 'Massana' but is missing the club badge.

A Panini sticker of Cadiz CF player Antonio Calderon. He has a large volume of brown hair, and is wearing a yellow and blue uniform.

Day 6: Your Oldest Shirt

Have posted this before, but it's my 1986 Cadiz CF shirt, from the first season that future Raith Rovers player, manager and Hall of Famer Antonio Calderon played for his hometown club.

#CancerHasNoColours

Two light blue and dark blue Iwaki FC goalkeeper unforms.

A concete plaza with steel beams outside a Japanese railway station. A banner reads 'Welcome to Iwaki City'

Dried fish on skewers in a fish shop.

A small shrine on a rock, over a red bridge in Japan.

Day 5: A City You Love

This has to be a city I've been to every year since 2014 (except COVID): Iwaki City in Fukushima Prefecture, home to Iwaki FC.

#CancerHasNoColours

A black and white patterned Puma goalkeeper uniform, with blue text reading 'JUBILO IWATA' across the front.

A purple Sanfrecce Hiroshima-style uniform, with a white, green and orange pattern across the chest.

Day 4: Your Most Colourful/Jazzy Shirt

Again, I couldn't choose one, so here are two - upsurprisingly both from the J.League in the mid-1990s.

Jubilo Iwata goalkeeper shirt, seemingly modelled on a World War 1 dazzle ship;
Sanfrecce Hiroshima home template

#CancerHasNoColours

A deep yellow Akranes shirt, with a black collar and text reading BUNADAR BANKINN AKRANESI on the front.

Day 3: Your Most Obscure Shirt

Not obscure to any Raith Rovers supporter over the age of 35, granted, but this is an Akranes shirt from the mid-90s, from the Icelandic league. This is the shirt Akranes wore when Raith Rovers played them in the UEFA Cup in 1995.

#CancerHasNoColours

A yellow and blue Las Palmas shirt with the nameset PAQUITO 8

A red and blue striped FC Bayern shirt with the nameset 18 KLINSMANN

A black Parma shirt with the nameset LUCARELLI 6

A white Eintracht Frankfurt shirt with the nameset HASEBE 20 and a UEFA Europa League patch

Day 2: A Favourite Player

Couldn't pick one so have chosen four:

Paquito (Las Palmas)
Jürgen Klinsmann (Bayern)
Alessandro Lucarelli (Parma)
Makoto Hasebe (Frankfurt)

#CancerHasNoColours

Three football shirts hanging up: a red Czechia shirt, a blue Taiwan shirt, and a yellow Lithuania shirt.

Day 1: A Country You Love

A trio of small countries that don't let themselves be pushed around: Czech Republic, Taiwan, and Lithuania.

🇨🇿 🇹🇼 🇱🇹

Text says: CANCER HAS NO COLOURS Day: Date Theme Day 1: Monday 7th July A country you love Day 2: Tuesday 8th July A favourite player Day 3: Wednesday 9th July Your most obscure shirt Day 4: Thursday 10th July Your most colourful/jazzy shirt Day 5: Friday 11th July A city you love Day 6: Saturday 12th July Your oldest shirt Day 7: Sunday 13th July Your favourite nameset Day 8: Monday 14th July Reminds you of a loved one Take part and donate to BLF

On Twitter, @kitnerduk.bsky.social has initiated #CancerHasNoColours. I'll do it on BlueSky as that's where I post these days.

8 days, 8 themes. Wear/share your best football shirt that fits the theme, spread the word and donate to Bradley Lowery Foundation:

www.justgiving.com/campaigns/ch...

Iwaki FC don't score many from open play, but when we do they are almost inevitably screamers. Nelson Ishiwatari is some talent, and came up with the goods again today from outside the box to beat Omiya Ardija 2-1. Kaina Tanimura's last game before moving on to - seemingly - Yokohama F Marinos.

I do feel for Iwaki coach Yuzo Tamura. With a small budget, he's kept Iwaki in J2 for 2 & a half seasons with exciting, expansive football. But every transfer window, his squad gets dismantled. Iwabuchi + Arita season before last; Teruyama + Saga last summer; Arima + Tachikawa in winter; now this.

Kaina Tanimura confirmed as leaving Iwaki FC. Less than 24 hours after the news that captain and centre-back Ryo Endo will be out for the rest of the season with an ACL injury.

Big fight for Iwaki to stay in J2 now.

Tamura - for reasons known only to himself - decided to take off one of our centre-backs today in a like-for-like substitution in the 88th minute 🤯 Can only assume the boy was carrying an injury, because otherwise that's just daft when you're trying to see out a 2-1 lead against a relegation rival.

Screenshot of Japanese football shirts on an online site. All of them are counterfeits or so-called 'concept shirts'.

Hunting for old Japanese shirts online is absolutely bloody exhausting. For every genuine one, you have to wade through fifty of these god-awful fakes 😑

I occasionally get a notification of a spike in traffic to this article, and am so chuffed to see this has found its way into videogame folklore. Even see folk on Facebook and Reddit talking in hushed tones about 'the original Master League team being Alfa Romeo employees' without linking to this 😅

Alfa Ronaldo: the curious case of the football game laced with obscure Italian car references This post has been updated June 2025, with an additional player identified thanks to the Enzo Ferrari biopic! “I know, I will give these fake footballers names corresponding to key figures in…

Was updating my personal blog, and remembered the time ten years ago when I discovered that the Master League players in the original Pro Evolution Soccer were all mysteriously named after figures from Alfa Romeo's history. That was some rabbithole:

thezerocar.wordpress.com/2015/03/26/a...

A brightly patterned goalkeeper uniform with large pads from the early 1990s. The sponsor reads 'Giocheria'.

Sponsor text on the front of a goalkeeper uniform reading 'Giocheria'. A coloured dice forms the left of the logo.

The black rear of a goalkeeper uniform from Venezia, from the 1992-93 season. The number 12 is printed in white block letters.

Copy of a Venezia team roster from the 1992-93 season. The goalkeeper in the photograph is wearing the same uniform as in the previous images.

Hit the jackpot in a charity shop in Vienna last week. Picked this up knowing nothing about it because it looked funky. Did a bit of research back home, and learned it's a match-issue Venezia goalkeeper top from the 1992-93 Serie B season, issued to substitute keeper Roberto Menghini (not pictured)!

There are bikes at Futaba Station, just north of Fukushima Dai'ichi, which can be rented with a 100 Yen coin... 🤔😅

Iwaki FC:

POSITIVES

✅ Six games unbeaten
✅ Naoki Kumata on the goal trail
✅ Another game where we scored

NEGATIVES

❌ One clean sheet in fifteen (15) league games
❌ Another game not scoring from open play

#IwakiFC #いわきFC

NEW POD RELEASE (GENERAL)

ICYMI, a new JTET episode is now live on the free @jtalkpod.bsky.social PodBean feed!

This show features a full report on J2 Round 11 from James, while Jon talked to special guest @jobanmono2711.bsky.social for the main section! jtalkpod.podbean.com/e/jtet-j2-ro...

NEW POD RELEASE (PATREON)

An all-new JTET episode is now live for @jtalkpod.bsky.social Pateons (free feed at 12:00 JST today, Tuesday 29th April)!

This week the boys were joined by special guest @jobanmono2711.bsky.social for a deep dive into Nagasaki v Iwaki (plus all the usual segments)!

A man in a red and blue t-shirt inside a football stadium.

Iwaki FC supporters in red t-shirts and with red flags, inside a large new stadium.

Iwaki FC players, in white, gatehr in front of their supporters after a victory.

A plastic cup of beer and six round 'takoyaki' balls with chopsticks.

So lucky my visit to Kyushu for family + work coincided with Iwaki FC's visit to the Peace Stadium to take on V-Varen Nagasaki. Rollicking 4-3 win that was more like Iwaki of last season with pinpoint crosses, rapid counter attacks and wild defending. V-Varen's ground very impressive too. ＃いわきFC

There were two Scottish boys there - one from Airdrie and one from Bonnyrigg! Turns out they're both represented by the Consilium agency that recruit a lot of Airdrie's players.

Entrance gates to a Lithuanian sports stadium, with a concrete mural of athletes exercising above the gates.

It was! Was free to watch the game too. Also this fantastic mural at the gates on the way in to the stadium.

A small football stadium with a little grandstand and an artificial surface.

A small group of young football supporters from behind, with a drum and flags.

A small football stadium under floodlights.

An artificial grass pitch, with large floodlights and trees behind it at sunset.

Was in Klaipeda on the Lithuanian coast for fieldwork. Took in a 2nd division game on the last day, seeing Neptunas Klaipeda beat Be1 NFA 3-0. Basketball is the main sport in Lithuania, so kudos to the 'Klaipeda Seaside Youth' who brought drums and flags! Be1 had a guy up front on loan from Airdrie!

It's been bizarre seeing the USA speedrunning every mistake the UK has made in the last 10 years. This is like the Liz Truss mini-budget. Unfortunately for them and everyone else, you can't just remove a President with a strongly-worded letter from the 1922 Committee.

That's it. We have one of the smallest, if not the smallest, grounds in J2, which will always limit revenue coming in. Our loanees haven't started too well either - problem is that good loanees don't come back as they get used by their parent club or redeployed, and good youngsters get picked off!