League Season will be Delayed
　The Japanese Soccer League has decided that 1973 League Season will open in the third week in July, three months later than in previous years. Thus, the Japanese National team will be able to have enough practice for the preliminary competition of the World Cup, be held in Seoul in May.

　Toyota and Tanabe promoted
　The two top teams of the Second Division, Toyota Automobil of Toyota City, near Nagoya, and Tanabe Seiyaku of Osaka, have been promoted to the First Division. No club has been relegated, because the First Division will be expanded to a total of ten teams next season, Eidai Sangyo and Teijin Matsuyama have been promoted to the Second Division from regional leagues.

　The End of an Era
　The First Division clubs of the Japanese league took the eight first places in the Emperor's Cup tournament under the new system. No university team was able to reach the quarter finals. These results mark the end of an era in Japanese football.
　Formerly, entry to the competition was limited to only eight teams : the top four of the Japanese league and the best four of the National Inter-University Championship. Confrontation of league and university teams had always added glamour to the competition, but as of 1972, the Japanese Football Association has changed the tournament system, opening the competition to all senior clubs registered with the Association.
　The Cup Competition ' proper ' took place in December, and the sixteen teams which had advanced from the regional competition entered the first round ' proper' with the winners advancing to meet the eight Firsit Division teams of the Japanese League, which were exempt from the first round ‘proper’.
　In the first round ‘proper’, the University Champions, Waseda, were beaten by Nihon-Keikinzoku, of Shizuoka, sixth in the Second Division. Runners-up in the University Championship, Osaka Commercial University, also suffered defeat in the first round ' proper ' at the hands of the provincial league club Eidai Sangyo of Yamaguchi, which will play in the Second Division next season.
　 Only two university teams, which had met teams from the 'under-developed' region of football in the first round 'proper', reached the eighth finals, along with the five second division clubs and the rapidly developing Eidai Sangyo. In the eighth finals they met the eight first division clubs; and Chuo University, team which hail been regarded as the most likely to succeed against the league clubs, was unable to beat Towa Fudosan, bottom club of the First Division. Another university team, Keio, also lost against Yanmar Diesel of Osaka, second placed in the First Division, by a score of 4-0. All the eight First Division clubs went on to compete with one another in the quarter-finals.
　Originally, Japanese football was developed by the university teams and the regional University Leagues, from 1922, when the first inter-university match was held. However, following the foundation of the Japanese League in 1965, senior clubs, sponsored by big companies, have developed rapidly to eclipse University football, Now, the results in the Emperor's Cup tournament seem to have marked the end of an era in the history of Japanese football.

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