It's a memory that still pains me to this day. It was a public humiliation -- and the very worst kind. There are those who can shrug off such insults. I am not one of those.
There it was -- my own worst nightmare, sprawled across the pages of one of Japan's notorious dailies: the sports newspapers. I tried to think it wasn't me. Perhaps there was someone else there with similar hair and features (FYI, Rasputin's dead - ed.), perhaps no one bought the Hochi Shimbun that day, perhaps no one looked at that page and the sick, sick lie printed on it.
But then I see it again. I see Philippe Troussier's smiling face. Maybe HE did it as one of his sick, sick jokes. Yes, he would have enjoyed that. But for me only the pain remained. It was me that the Hochi Shimbun called . . . a French reporter! The horror! The horror!
All right, so I've got over that one. We all know the sports dailies are full of crap, but when should we just shrug this stuff off and when should we fight back?
At the moment, Kashiwa Reysol manager Steve Perryman is in fighting mood.
Target: the Nikkan Sports.
On Aug. 22, Nikkan Sports published a report on its back page by reporter No Jae Jin titled: "Perryman causes internal discord in Kashiwa."
Here's a slightly edited version:
Kashiwa is already having trouble. After two games under new manager Steve Perryman, they are in 11th place. Players are unhappy with Perryman, who takes too much time practicing the basics of soccer.
One influential player said: "We take too much time practicing passing the ball and other basics that by the time we play practice matches everyone's not focused. We don't have any variety in our practices so everyone loses concentration. The quality of our practice isn't good either."
Perryman stressed that he will continue making his players do the basics. "This team is not good at moving, passing or trapping the ball and even if they had won the first two games I still would have told them that."
If the players don't understand what Perryman is trying to do, practice and one-on-one meetings are just a waste of time. (Akira) Nishino was fired for lack of communication with his players. Perryman also has this problem.
When Kashiwa played the Yokohama F. Marinos on the 18th, one Kashiwa player mentioned to a Yokohama player that "Perryman can't raise his voice against the Korean trio. We can't trust a guy like that."
Without communication and understanding between the players and the manager, Kashiwa's struggle for the championship is bound to continue.
* * *
One of my fellow foreign scribes commented: "It's not really worth commenting on; it was obviously a piece of trash." Well, in one sense it's not worth dignifying such a piece with a response, but there are issues here that do require comment.
One thing it does give us is an insight as to how the sports dailies operate and the pressure on reporters to fill up space and generate headlines. Most reporters like No, assigned to a specific team, have to file a report every day, which means they are under a lot of pressure to come up with something worthwhile. This can obviously lead to expansive versions of the truth.
Perhaps No thought Kashiwa's English boss would be an easy target; perhaps in these times of tension between Japan and Korea, the South Korean journalist had his own agenda and wanted to create some sort of divide between the Korean players and Japanese players at Kashiwa; perhaps he was offended on the day he wrote the article when Perryman refused to reveal his training plans and secrets; perhaps he was still angry at Perryman's friend and former Yokohama F. Marinos boss Ossie Ardiles, who threw him out at Yokohama for similar transgressions; perhaps he just wanted to justify the article he wrote above the Perryman piece that suggested foreign managers on their second team in Japan were rarely successful.
More than likely, No just didn't bother thinking at all. He certainly wasn't thinking like a journalist. The article is based around a couple of comments from an anonymous player or players. Without knowing who the players are, we can't put the comments into any kind of context. Perryman has confronted his players about the quotes and they assure him no one said such a thing.
"I can't say no one said it, but I can't see a lot of truth in what's there," Perryman said. "Of course, I realize that not every player is going to like me and I've just replaced a manager (Nishino) who'd had been here a long time.
"Managers, especially new managers, have got to upset someone at some point otherwise he's probably not doing his job properly. You don't win a championship by being a nice bloke all the time, because you have to make some tough decisions."
More seriously, No is basically saying that Perryman can't do his job, a far more damning accusation and all the more puzzling considering Perryman's very successful five years at Shimizu S-Pulse.
"I'm not even bothered by that," Perryman added. "The writer is entitled to his opinion, but this is not an honest way of doing it, using an anonymous source. If someone wants to say something to me or about me, let them come out and say it. Be truthful -- that's all I try to do."
Accusing a manager or a player of something as serious as incompetence makes it incumbent on the reporter to back up his story. No fails to do this in spades.
Did he contact other players or staff at Perryman's previous club? Did he try to discuss the subject with Perryman? Er, no.
And here's the reason why: Because he would have found no backup.
Kashiwa's senior Japanese player Tomokazu Myojin, currently team captain in the absence of Hong Myung Bo, refuted the Nikkan story.
"I don't know why this reporter wrote such an article. It made me sad and angry," he stated. "Nobody in the club has said they are unhappy with Perryman's style of management and training.
"Many players were unhappy that Nishino was fired, but equally they were happy that Perryman was the one who took over."
As for a division between the Japanese and Korean players, Myojin is adamant. "Nobody thinks like that at all," he emphasized.
So, no smoking gun there.
How about Perryman's former team, Shimizu S-Pulse? He left them nearly a year ago, so his former colleagues and players shouldn't be worried about criticizing their ex-boss.
Takeshi Oki, Perryman's former first-team coach at S-Pulse, had this to say: "It's always possible that one or two players will say something. It's the same in every team all over the world. There's always one or two players who don't like the coach.
"But during Steve's time here there was absolutely no problem in his relationship with the players. I can't see any merit in these comments at all.
"The Japanese press are just not balanced or fair in what they write. My advice to Steve is just to say, 'Don't worry about it.' He'll go his own way and that's the way it should be."
S-Pulse midfielder and Japan international Kazuyuki Toda points the finger at the anonymous player.
"I think the problem is with the player talking behind the manager's back; that's just not right," Toda noted.
Asked if he felt the manager's door was open for players, as Perryman always insists, Toda was quite emphatic:
"I was in there all the time," he says with a smile. "At first we used to fight a bit, but after a while we could discuss things without any problem.
"Maybe it's not always easy for a player to discuss things with his boss, especially for the Japanese; it's something lacking in the Japanese mentality.
"But if things need to be discussed, you have to do it. It's extremely important to have an exchange of views. Both sides can learn a lot from that."
Toda added that it's more than likely that the kind of player who speaks out against the manager is usually one who has been dropped or criticized. He doesn't remember any kind of talk like that when Perryman was at S-Pulse, but that doesn't mean to say everybody liked the training.
"If the training is always the same, you're bound to get tired of it," he explained. "Perryman concentrates more on the basics in order to raise the level of all the players.
"I can't say I always enjoyed it, but I know I needed it. If there's any problem, then as far as I'm concerned it's the attitude of the player that's the problem, not the manager."
Two of the Korean players at Kashiwa also dismissed the Nikkan allegations.
Striker Hwang Sun Hong said: "It's not true; the boss treats everyone equally at the club."
Kashiwa and South Korea captain Hong commented: "I think this is just typical of journalism in Japan, trying to turn one small thing into something huge. The problems outlined in the article just don't exist at Reysol."
In fact, even when Perryman was still assistant to Nishino, he was getting good feedback from the Kashiwa players.
"They were telling me how great it was that someone was actually teaching them something," he said. He also told his players and coaching staff that he wanted their input.
"In the first meeting we had I said, 'There's going to be doubts; please tell me your doubts. I'm new to you and you're new to me. Obviously, there are going to be small misunderstandings, but let's all be big enough to cope with them.' And I think they have been."
The Nikkan article, though, has cast a shadow on his relationships with the press.
"It's a real shame because I had a fantastic trust and great relationship with the press before," Perryman lamented. "I only know one way to deal with the media and that's to tell the truth, whether I'm talking about my team, the league, referees, the national team or the JFA. I'm not going to change that."
No has since apologized to Perryman, but is not welcome at the club "until his paper apologizes." Perryman has even threatened to sue to find out if the article was based on fact or fiction.
He remains "angry and very upset," but still believes in his players and his own abilities.
"I've not lost faith in Japanese players and Japanese football," he explains. "I'm still going to give my best to both -- but with some reservations about the press."
No is probably only partially to blame here. He comes from one country where the media are endemically corrupt and works in another where they are just useless. His employer, the Nikkan Sports, seems happy to print stories that rely on innuendo and slurs with no backup and no apparent control from senior editors at the paper.
But it's not a subject that can be ignored, because it's symptomatic of a broader problem of truth and lies and sensationalism and ethics in the Japanese media. And it's not just the sports dailies.
During the recent controversy over history textbooks and Prime Minister Junichiro Koizumi's visit to Yasukuni Shrine, the Yomiuri Shimbun -- the biggest-selling newspaper in the world -- printed editorials that can only be described as evil, dismissing the South Korean comfort women as "volunteers who were mobilized to work in factories." Such distortion of facts defies belief.
Such distortion of facts does not belong in a newspaper, whether it's sports or politics. Yet these lies are allowed into print and these lies are believed by many who read them.
I can laugh off being called French and Perryman will eventually shrug off the slurs of the Nikkan Sports, but when it comes to the whitewashing of evil, shoddy journalism is no laughing matter.