There are good starts to a domestic league season…and then there are ones like Al Qadisiya (or Qadsia SC) of the Kuwaiti Premier League is currently having. Through eight matches of the 2012 season, The Yellow Fort is a spotless 8-0-0 and has already opened up a seven-point lead atop the league table.
Perhaps the most impressive statistic of all: the club has scored 19 goals and allowed zero.
Al Qadisiya is currently gunning for a 15th Kuwaiti Premier League title.
Picture this: One of your club’s forwards has been fouled inside the opponent’s penalty area in just the second minute of a match. The offending goalkeeper gets sent off straight away and your club converts the penalty in the fifth minute.
Pretty much a perfect situation, right? You’re up 1-0 at home and your club has an 11-on-10 advantage for 88 minutes.
Apparently it wasn’t good enough for Nottingham Forest. The Tricky Trees seemed certain to snap their two-match losing streak following their fifth-minute penalty and ensuing 1-0 lead.
Derby County was having none of it, however, and was able to shock the English League Championship side by scoring an equalizer in the 29th minute and a game winner in the 72nd to earn a very impressive 2-1 win.
Following the match, Forest sits 22nd in the league table with five points in seven matches while Derby County is fourth, having earned 15 points in the same number of contests.
Forty-four points. That’s what separates the top club in Singapore’s S-League from the one at the bottom. Tampines Rovers hold the top spot in the S-League with 54 points through 24 matches while Tanjon Pagar United is in the bottom position, having earned only 10 points through the same number of matches.
It has been a very rough season for the Jaguars, as they’ve scored only nine goals to the 52 that they’ve conceded, amassing an incredible -43 goal differential.
Though not alone in their struggle—Woodlands Wellington has only accounted for 11 points so far—it appears that Tanjong Pagar is destined to be relegated to Singapore’s National Football League Division One for the 2012 season.
The one bright spot for Tanjong Pagar supporters this season is the fact that they do get to watch their Jaguars in top-flight football for the first time since 2004, as the club had to withdraw from competition for six years due to financial issues.
(Image credits: S-League, Jaguars)
There are good starts to a domestic league campaign and then there’s one like Bunyodkor Tashkent is having in the Professional Football League of Uzbekistan. Through its first 17 matches of the 2011 season, the club has posted an undefeated W-D-L record of 14-3-0.
As if that’s not enough to turn heads, the club has scored 38 goals and allowed seven, netting a difference of positive 31. In 17 matches!
Leading the way for the Swallows is Milos Trifunovic, a forward who has scored 12 goals in only 13 league appearances, a mark higher than the entire club of FC Dinamo Samarkand.
If Bunyodkor keeps up this run of form, the club will be likely to capture its fourth consecutive Professional Football League title.
It is a pretty impressive feat to move up a division in professional soccer. It’s even more impressive to immediately experience a high level of success in the higher division. That’s exactly what Kashiwa Reysol of the Japanese J. League has done over the past few months.
Known as the “Sun Kings”, Kashiwa has bounced around between the Japanese first and second divisions for the past few seasons. Coming on the heels of a club-worst 16th-place finish in the 2009 J2 season, the club underwent a dramatic change of fortunes by doing an about-face to claim first place in 2010, earning promotion to the J1.
So far in 2011, the Sun Kings have played quite well in the J1. Despite losing 2-0 Wednesday at Gamba Osaka, Kashiwa sits fourth in the league table with 44 points through 23 matches. A year removed from the second division, the club is currently only three points away from first place in Japan’s top flight.