Q: What happens if Gamba wins but effectively gives up his ACL spot? Does Kashiwa take their place, or is it Yokohama?
Oh you mean the one off the blatent wrong call for that corner kick? Yeah I think that's the one you mean.
In that highly unprobable scenario it would go to Marinos. I think Gamba would take the ACL spot though.
It was a final without history. Kashiwa didn't want to score more and Gamba couldn't. Since a picture is worth a thousand words: And one well-known player was especially pissed off after the game...
Too bad Leandro's early goal for Gamba were (correctly) disallowed. Would probably had opened up the game a lot more. Kinda sad that even the final would turn out to be a low-scoring and fairly boring contest. If entertainment were based on only nice attacking play and beautiful goals, only the Omiya - Reysol game can be said to have been good since the quarterfinal... In all the other games the teams looked more concerned about keeping a clean sheet than try to produce chances on their own... don't like it. Anyway, congrats to Reysol, and hopefully they can be a contender in ACL next season now that they got more international experience.
I agree, so really omiya was the only team to "go for it" as Kashiwa had to play catch up. Unfortunately once Kashiwa go a goal up, they do their best to delay play and use other "tactics" to break up any creativity. Very frustrating as supporter of opposing teams, but they succeeded. Credit to them.