If Mechelen boss Ivan Buskens had actually seen a J. League game before signing Masahiro Endo, perhaps it would have changed his mind.

The Mechelen man, on a flying visit to Tokyo to tie things up with the 29-year-old Shimizu S-Pulse defender/midfielder, took in the Verdy Kawasaki-FC Tokyo game at Todoroki Stadium on Saturday and found it hard to be diplomatic about the quality of soccer he saw.

"I don't know enough to know exactly about the level of football here, but I think it's lower than in Belgium," he said in an interview in Tokyo afterward. "Or maybe we just had a lousy match this afternoon."