Footballer of the Year
　The football writers' association of Japan voted Kunishige Kamamoto the Japanese footballer of the year for 1974. Kamamoto received 105 ballots of the 114 cast. Kamamoto has received this award four times in the past nine years. The trophies, which were sculptured by the famous artist, Masayuki Yamasaki, were presented to Kamamoto in 1966, 1968, 1971 and 1974.
　Kamamoto is the most famous star striker in Japan. He played a great part in the double victory of Yanmar Diesel in the League and the Cup last season. He also established three new records for the Japanese Soccer League last year. He scored his 100th league goal during the season and at the end of the season his record stood at 106. Kamamoto scored a record 21 goals last season, and scored in eight successive games as well, which is also a new record.

　Pre-Olympic tournament for Group 3-Asia
　When and how will the pre-Olympic tournament for the six teams in the Asian group 3 be held? By the beginning of March, when this newsletter was printed, the answers were still not available.
　Perhaps the matter will be discussed at the meeting of the Asian Football Confederation in April, when the Asian Youth Football Tournament will be held in Kuwait. But it is doubtful that the representative from Israel, the country which is at the root of the problem, will be able to attend the meeting and so it will be hard to find the necessary solutions.
　According to news reports, Japan, the Republic of Korea (South) and Israel have all offered to stage the preliminary competition for the Montreal Olympics in their own countries, inviting the other 5 teams in the group to a centralized tournament.
　However, Korea was reported to have withdrawn its initial offer to hold the tournament and Japan is also seemingly being forced to reconsider its offer because of some serious difficulties which have arisen.
　As regards holding the tournament in Japan, the most difficult problem will be guarantee the security of the Israeli delegation from attacks by so-called "guerrillas" who are said to belong to large groups which are sympathetic to the Palestinian people.
　At the end of last February and the beginning of March, the Israeli women's handball team stayed in Japan and played two matches against the Japanese team in the preliminary round of the world championship. However, the schedule of the Israeli team was kept completely secret until the matches were over. The games were held secretly without any spectators and in front of only a limited number of journalists.
　Despite this precedent, it will be impossible to hold the football tournament under the same conditions. The competition between six teams will take longer than the handball matches between Japan and Israel, thus making it more difficult to provide security. In addition, games without spectators will put the Japanese Football Association in some financial difficulty.
　On the other hand, Japan does not wish to visit Tel Aviv if the tournament takes place in Israel, as the Japanese Association must consider the security of its own team.
　In this correspondent's opinion, the best solution is to adopt the home and away system instead of holding a centralized tournament. Although the security of the Israeli team will still remain a problem under the home and away system, Israel will play only one match in each city. In this way it may be easier to adopt the same measures as were taken in the case of the handball matches.

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