While baseball is still the most popular sport in Japan, soccer has gained popularity ever since the inception of the professional J-League and especially after the World Cup in 2002 to become a not-so-distant second. When J-League was launched it attracted a lot of foreign stars close to retirement age, and some of them are still here: Japan's national coach is Zico, and tonight is the championship final between the Yokohama F Marinos and the Urawa Reds (managed by their former player Guido Buchwald). In other news, tomorrow will see FC Porto and Once Caldes competing for club world championship in the 25th and last Toyota Cup (it will be replaced by a new format from next year), and it was announced yesterday that the 2006 World Cup qualifiers will have Japan and North Korea in the same group (together with Iran and Bahrain).