Olympic Fire and Football
　It was a young footballer who lit the Olympic Fire of the Sapporo Winter Games on the fire vase of the Tokyo National Stadium where the Fire for the Summer Games had been burning eight years ago. The fire for Sapporo had been carried from Olymyia, Greece, and arrived in Tokyo on the New Year's Day by plane. The torch was relaid from the airport to the stadium where the final of the Emperor's Cup was taking place. Takayuki Tanaka who is the high-school footballer in Tokyo held the torch with his hand and came into the field just after the football match was over. The fire spent a night in the stadium and departed for Sapporo on the following day. The facts that the ceremony took place before the football spectators and a footballer was appointed for the duty shows the development of the game in our country in these eight years between the two Olympic Games.

　The Final Standings of Japanese Soccer League (1971)

　Reports on Korea D. P. R.
　Three Japanese referees, Yoshiyuki Maruyama, Kazuo Yasuda and Masatoshi Nagashima recently visited the Democratic people's Republic of Korea to charge the Olympic preliminary match between Korea D. P. R. and Iraq. They brought the information about the football in the northern part of the Korean peninsula which were little known after their surprising performance of the 1966 World Cup in England.
　The second leg of the match between Korea D. P.R. and Iraq took place on Nov.28 in Pyong Yang. The Korean team included six players who were registered in the1966 World Cup team and two of them actually played from the start of the match against Iraq. They were the goalkeeper Li Chan-Myung and the midfielder Pak Seung-Zin. The Koreans played by 4-3-3 formation while the Iraqi team by 4-2-4. Thus, one Korean player could play relatively .free in midfield. In most of the cases, the free midfielder was Pak Scung-Zin and he played a decisive role in supporting attack. He scored two of the three Korean goals.
　The temperature was 28 degrees F. and the chilly wind was blowing throughout the match. Even the Koreans who were accustomed to coldness were wearing the underclothes under their shirts while the players from Bagdad had no preparations to protect their bodies from the coldness. The result was foreseen and the Koreans won the match by 3-0. Losing the first match in Bagdad, the Koreans qualified for the next round on aggregate to meet Iran.
The impressions of the Japanese referees on the north Korean football were that the Koreans were not so impressive as the reputation they won in London in 1966.
　 "The Koreans played hard enough to win the match", one of the referees said, "but they were still relied on the players of six years ago. Their young players were seems to be lack in international experience. I thought that they wanted and needed to know the informations on the foreign football of today more than we want to know about the Koreans".

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