Bayern Munchen here
　The largest attendances of the winter season saw the two matches between the Japanese national team and the visiting West German side, Bayern Munchen, in early January. Franz Beckenbauer's impeccable ball technique and insight attracted eighty thousand spectators for the two matches at the Olympic stadium. The European champions won both of them 1-0, However the unfitness of Gerd Muller and the absence of the other World Cup stars, Uli Hoeness and Sepp Maier, was a disappointment for Japanese football supporters.

　High School Championship
　The number of teams which participate in the high school football championship has increased remarkably in recent years. Last season 2,676 teams were entered, 159 teams more than in the previous season. The national-wide television coverage of the tournament by forty commercial TV stations is the main reason for this remarkable increase. The final stage of the championship was held in Osaka in early January. Teikyo High School won the 1974 title, the first champions to come from Tokyo.

　The history of the Emperor's Cup
　Yanmar Diesel of Osaka won the league and Cup double in the 1974 season. In the Final of the Emperor's Cup of January 1st at Tokyo Olympic stadium, Yanmar beat the recently resurgent Eidai Sangyo of Yamaguchi by a score of 2-1 (1-0 at half time). The decisive goal came from Kamamoto after 22 minutes in the second half, four minutes after Eidai's equalizer. This is the third time Yanmar has won the Cup, but the first time it has won the double.
　The Japanese cup competition started in 1921 after a silver cup was presented by the Football Association in England, and up to World War II (until 1937), the competition for the trophy from English F. A. was held annually.
　In those days, the University leagues in Tokyo and Osaka played the best football in Japan. However most of the university teams did not enter the F. A. cup competition. The student players of the universities used to form combined scratch teams together with old graduates from the same university to participate in the cup competition.
　The competition was interrupted by the War, and afterwards the Japanese F. A. revived the cup competition calling it the All Japan Football Championship from 1946 to 1950, and since 1951, the Emperor's Cup. The old trophy from England was lost during the confusion caused by the War.
　In the 1950s the winners of the competition were still the "university clubs", the scratch teams of students and old graduates. But gradually many players from the universities began to play for their company teams in the cup competition. A company team, Furukawa Denko of Tokyo, finally won the Cup in 1960. This became a motivating factor in the foundation of the Japan Soccer League by company teams in 1965.
　Since the foundation of the Japanese League, the competition for the Emperor's Cup was restricted to only eight teams, the top four from the Japanese League, and the top four from the university cup championship. The company league team won the Cup every season except one, when Waseda university won in 1966, thanks to Kamamoto who was a student there at that time.
　Since 1972 the Emperor's Cup has once more been open to all adult teams registered with the Japanese Football Association. In1974, 1105 teams entered the competition, the preliminary round being held in each prefecture from April, with the Final on New Year's Day, the following year.

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