Vs Shimizu S Pulse (home) 18/10/25 J League match 34

 

Kawasaki Frontale 5 - 3 Shimizu S Pulse 

As our season slides towards a slightly disappointing and very much underwhelming end, the only thing we really have to play for, apart from an outside chance of getting an Asian competition place, is seeing how much we can better our final tallies from last year. In the post about the Kyoto game I wrote
‘With five games to go we’ve already exceeded our points total from last year and if we score more than six goals in our remaining five league games we’ll have scored more this year too. And we’d have to concede 13 goals in those last five games to have conceded more this year’. Of course another win means that we’re even further ahead of last year when it comes to points. Scoring five goals in this match means we’re just one behind last year with four games to go, so good progress on that front too. Conceding three wasn’t exactly what we needed if we’re hoping not to give away more goals than last year but hell, that's the way we roll this year. I think we’re well aware that defence has been our problem this year and that problem has been caused at least moderately by our rotten luck with injuries and suspensions. (Alternatively you could say it's because of our always inadequate attempts at having enough decent defenders and our newly awful disciplinary record). There’s no way we’re going to win the fair play award this year. In fact if there was a trophy for most reds, I reckon we’d definitely be in contention. When you discount our chances of winning the league, which I have done for most of the year, the thing I was most interested in was being the highest scoring team. For a while we’ve been fighting it out against (somewhat bizarrely) Kyoto for this title. As I write they are down to ten men, having missed a penalty and are losing 1-0 to Shonan, so I reckon we’ll finish the weekend well ahead of them on goals. Anyway, what a long and pointless intro to what I hope will be a relatively short post.

Us -

Yamaguchi back in goal, Jesiel back in defence. But of course no real changes when it comes to us stopping the other team from scoring. It’s becoming quite amusing in a way. Even at 4-0 up I think most of us weren’t feeling particularly safe and sure of getting the points. Thankfully on this occasion we didn’t collapse to a point dropping extent. There is something quite amusing when you think back to the start of the year when Hasebe was announced as our new manager and everyone said we’d become ultra defensive and boring. The absolute opposite has happened! I feel a bit for Hasebe as for most of the year choosing  our defence has been basically him always having to try to put at least one player out of position where they are least bad. I suspect when it comes to the end of the season the player who will have played the most games at centre back will be Sasaki, our left back who can also play on the right. In this match we saw on a few occasions what we’ve been missing by not having him playing at full back as he charged forward beautifully. I think it’s clear that although Miura hasn’t had a great season, (and on top of that is now injured), us having two good first choice left backs was why Sasaki was on the right. But I just wish he’d been on the left a bit more. Ok, let’s stop waffling and be a bit more succinct. Lovely goal from Kawahara, and it was really important as at that stage we were really wobbling. Well done Yamaguchi for the penalty save. It was also at a crucial stage. It’s great that we won, but given that although we went four goals ahead, at times we looked like we were going to choke again. So it ended up feeling a bit flat afterwards. Any excitement about great attacking is quite easily undercut by calamitous defending and conceding soft goals. I don’t know what the solution is. But all the same, you can’t say that our games aren’t usually full of action. Presumably the next one will now be a stinker.

Them - 

In the first half Shimizu were destroyed by us. Well, by us and also slightly by their own sloppiness. It looked a bit like they thought they were better than they actually were, with them slicing the ball off the pitch on numerous occasions. Whatever their manager said at half time did the trick though as they really came after us in the second half. There were three penalty decisions that went to VAR in this match and they got two of them. I think in all three there was certainly a bit of simulation going on on their part. For the first one you can see the guy move his leg into Tanabe's after he’s already started his dive. Definitely some dark arts brought with them from Shizuoka. And plenty of whinging too. But I say this every week really about every team. What original thing is there to say? Hmmm, their drums and rhythms are good. Not exactly original, but at least a comment that is unique to Shimizu. They brought a lot of fans too, so good for them for doing that. 

Ref - 

Kawamata is a ref that in the past I thought has been pretty decent. And I continued to think so for the first half of this match too. I think he banged his head on the door frame coming out for the second half though. Actually, considering his height that's probably not going to happen. The difference between his decisions in the first and second halves was astonishing. He definitely lost the plot after half time. Of course this could have something to do with my perception of him being influenced by the fact that we were really under the cosh in the second half. Perhaps. But I suspect the truth is something much more unusual in the 2020’s. Consider these effects: 

‘euphoria and exhilaration, then hallucinations develop […] and at a later stage slurred speech, ataxia and drowsiness occur.’

I’ve nailed it, right? Instead of going for the usual half time refreshments, I think Kawamata , shortly after blowing the whistle for the end of the first half, starting sniffing glue. I guess he gave some to Kimura on VAR too as there definitely were some hallucinations on both of their parts when it came to those penalties. After he turned one down for one of their dives at his VAR monitor there was never any doubt he was going to give the next one, which resulted from the corner he gave after changing his mind at the monitor for the previous check. Once again I think we might have been done a bit with this. Much like against Kashiwa where VAR was used to check for a red, which wasn’t given but a yellow was instead, in this match he checked the penalty, didn’t give it but changed his mind about a goal kick. Maybe I’m wrong with my understanding of the rules, but I think I read that you can’t use VAR to correct things that aren’t penalty or red card related. I’ll hate VAR as long as I live, but I’ve no doubt it is here to stay and will continue to give me things to moan about. Kawamata, kick the glue habit and sort things out. I’m prepared to give you the benefit of the doubt for that terrible second half display, but in future, just say no, and then I can go back to giving you faint praise again.

Next up, Cerezo away next Saturday. Considering that it seemed that in our area of the stadium, a lot of season ticket holders resold their tickets for this match, I wonder if the away attendance at Cerezo might be quite low. For some reason that game always seems significantly less well attended than Gamba away, which is strange as the Gamba away experience has always been a bit of a pain in the arse travel wise, and since they moved us into the attic, the game experience has become cack too. But I will be there, hoping for some more goals and hoping that we don’t do as badly as we have done pretty much every season recently there. And then after that, two weeks till the next game, because why not eh? Let’s build up the end of season excitement by making things as stop-start as possible. Lovely!  

 

Team

GK 98. YAMAGUCHI Louis 
DF 31. VAN VERMESKERKEN Sai

DF 4. JESIEL

DF 5. SASAKI Asahi
DF 15. TANABE Shuto
MF 19. KAWAHARA So
MF 6. YAMAMOTO Yuki 
MF 14. WAKIZAKA Yasuto 
FW 17. ITO Tatsuya
FW 9. ERISON (Yellow card 54') 

FW 23. MARCINHO

Subs

GK 1. JUNG Sung-Ryong

MF 8. TACHIBANADA Kento (on for ITO 81')

FW 11. KOBAYASHI Yu (on for ERISON 58')

MF 16. OZEKI Yuto (on for TANABE 90+8')
FW 24. MIYAGI Ten (on for MARCINHO 58')
DF 27. KAMIHASHI Ryota (on for JESIEL 81')
DF 30. NODA Hiroto
DF 39. TSUCHIYA Kaito
FW 41. IENAGA Akihiro 

Goals

WAKIZAKA (Frontale) 4' 1-0
SASAKI (Frontale) 7' 2-0
ITO (Frontale) 13' 3-0
ERISON (Frontale) 37' 4-0
KOZUKA (Shimizu) 45+6' 4-1
TAKAHASHI (Shimizu) 46' 4-2
KAWAHARA (Frontale) 69' 5-2
KITAGAWA (Shimizu) 90+2' PEN 5-3

Highlights 

Vs Kashiwa Reysol (away) 12/10/25 Levain Cup Semi Final 2nd Leg

Kashiwa Reysol 3 - 1 Kawasaki Frontale (5 - 4 on agg.) 

We came into this game with one foot in the final. When going ahead after four minutes we could have started making our plans for pre- and post-game activities around the National Stadium on final day. And maybe that’s what our team were doing as after we scored everything fell to pieces. It was a humiliating collapse, definitely helped along by the wanker of a referee. But when your plan after four minutes seems to be not to shut up shop, but something more like as frantically as possible try to hang on to an admittedly massive at the time lead against a team who love attacking, rather than try to score yourself, well, there’s a chance that things won’t work out your way. Thankfully Kashiwa’s shooting was absolutely shit in the first half. As it was in the previous leg actually. Sadly they managed to sort that out in style after half time, all helped along by their friend in the middle. Here are the usual headings in a slightly different order.

Us - 

I’m not sure Hasebe’s changes after the red card worked. Actually, I’m being too diplomatic here. They clearly failed completely. Maybe it made sense at that stage to try to hang on to what we had by putting some more defenders on, leaving us a bit light up front. Not sure it was a good idea to put on two players who between them had exactly 113 minutes of experience playing for us either side of our best full back who’s most recently been our only permanent fixture in the middle of defence. But to be honest, I guess Hasebe didn’t have much choice as at least one of them had to come on. The big problem was that if we conceded, the game got back to a draw and we then had to actually try to score, we’d be in big trouble. This is exactly what happened. I don’t think there is a full replay of the game online for me to check the veracity of the things I thought at the time at the stadium and to be honest, even if there were, I’m not sure I’d be up for spending any more time thinking about this turd of a performance. We absolutely didn’t deserve to win. But we probably should have been able to hang on to a three goal lead, shouldn’t we? Our Jekyll and Hyde season continues. Now there truly is nothing to play for. Which is a bit of luck as we’re totally fucked with injuries and suspensions. Bring on the end of the season. 

Ref - 

I knew we were in trouble as soon as I saw the ref was Imamura. Sorry, I should give him his full title ‘that useless arsehole of a referee with an eternal burning passion for sending off Frontale players Imamura’. I think three of their goals came from ridiculous decisions he’d given against us. We had the play pulled back for a VAR long after the game had restarted. (Rule according to the IFAB - ‘If play has stopped and been restarted, the referee may not undertake a ‘review’ except for a case of mistaken identity or for a potential sending-off offence relating to violent conduct, spitting, biting or extremely offensive, insulting and/or abusive action(s).’). We also had VAR used to give a yellow card. (Rule - ‘Yellow cards and free-kicks cannot be awarded as a result of a VAR check’). Imamura always does things his own way but maybe he’d be less infuriating if he actually followed the fucking rules. Regardless of whether the decision was actually right or not, when you have a ref who doesn’t even know the protocol it’s pretty irritating. We had an official who seemed determined to book anyone on our team who was foreign. He presumably got slightly confused by Sai’s surname. He was less fond of giving out cards the other way. It’s apparently no problem if the whole Kashiwa team chase the ref around the pitch whining, almost pushing him over. (Rule - ‘The players and team officials must not surround the referee or attempt to influence if a decision is reviewed, the review process or the final decision.’). It worked though. He changed his decision after they did it. Also fine is the whole of the bench running into the pitch when they scored. Nothing to see here! I’ve noticed that Imamura is from Aichi which might explain why he apparently hates us so much as most people connected to football from that prefecture seem to. Irregardless of how you feel about the red card and the yellow for Sai, it was the never ending torrent of every fucking decision being given to them which put the nails in the coffin which we were doing our best to build for ourselves. The Romanic yellow was insane! But by that stage it was clear that every time I shouted out disgusted at a foul from Kashiwa it was inevitably going to end up with them being given a free kick. Kashiwa’s attacking and our chaotic defending were responsible for us conceding. But Imamura is a useless arsehole and it was his attitude and incompetence that got us in those positions. In a recent blog post about a game he was in charge of, I said that he wasn’t responsible for us not winning but ‘once again he made mistake after mistake in a game but presumably went home thinking he’d done a great job.’ I think that stands for this game too.

(I’ve now somewhat unwisely watched the highlights and my fury about that twat of a ref has gone into overdrive. Their first goal was down to him to being so close to Erison as he tried to clear it that he was practically tackling him. I wish Erison had just blasted the ball into the ref’s nether regions for the dual purposes of getting a drop ball and to cause as much discomfort to the ref as possible. It’s what he deserved. The highlights video is basically just an Imamura blooper reel. The red card looks ridiculous. Did the ref really think that Uremovic was intentionally rolling into the back of the player. His initial decision of a yellow was right as it clearly was a foul but thanks to the whinging of every member of the Kashiwa team apart from the keeper who were surrounding the ref to the point that he almost fell over, he thought he’d throw them a bone. The winner looks dubious too, with Hosoya absolutely yanking the shirt of Sasaki’s back before he ‘won’ the ball. No surprise Imamura or Okabe on VAR didn’t notice that. Imamura was probably worried about getting surrounded again. If it had gone to extra time it was only a matter of time before we lost anyway, but just fuck off Imamura). 

Them - 

Worthy winners, amply assisted by that twat Imamura. But blimey they are a bunch of divers. But you can’t blame them as almost every dive got them what they were after. Away fans are always treated like shit at their stadium, so recently we’ve done our best to get there as late as possible and leave as soon as possible afterwards, spending absolutely no money there. The music they play in their stadium is the absolute shittiest of shit heavy rock. Their fucking trumpets are really tacky and really annoying. Their tifo was somewhat amusingly made up by their fans holding up yellow bin bags. I can’t quite decide if their diving and play-acting or the referee’s absolute uselessness was more annoying. I think it’s probably the latter. If we’d won this match I would have wished them luck for the league, but in the immediate aftermath of this shit show, I think I somewhat pettily hope that their season ends up as successful as ours has been. But that means I’d be supporting Hiroshima in the final. Hmmmmmm.

Next up, who fucking cares! Actually, it’s Shimizu at home next weekend. As these games are absolutely meaningless now, maybe we can play some of the other players who haven’t had a look in. Although to be honest, it’s probably only a matter of time before everyone will have played due to us having absolutely no options due to injuries and suspensions. The good news is that we’re back to daytime games now, so I can get a decent amount of boozing in after the match and still go to bed at a reasonable time. There you go, I found something positive to finish on.

Team

GK 1. JUNG Sung-Ryong
DF 31. VAN VERMESKERKEN Sai (Yellow card 45+3') 

DF 22. Filip UREMOVIC (Red card 56')

DF 5. SASAKI Asahi
DF 15. TANABE Shuto
MF 19. KAWAHARA So
MF 6. YAMAMOTO Yuki
MF 14. WAKIZAKA Yasuto 
FW 17. ITO Tatsuya
FW 9. ERISON

FW 23. MARCINHO

Subs

GK 21. ANDO Shunsuke
MF 8. TACHIBANADA Kento (on for YAMAMOTO 74')
FW 11. KOBAYASHI Yu
FW 24. MIYAGI Ten
DF 27. KAMIHASHI Ryota (on for MARCINHO 59')
DF 30. NODA Hiroto
DF 39. TSUCHIYA Kaito (on for ITO 59')
FW 41. IENAGA Akihiro (on for TANABE 83')
FW 91. Lazar ROMANIC (Yellow card 76') (on for ERISON 74')

Goals
WAKIZAKA (Frontale) 4' 0-1
KAKITA (Kashiwa) 26' 1-1
NAKAMA (Kashiwa) 73' 2-1
HOSOYA (Kashiwa) 77' 3-1
HOSOYA (Kashiwa) 90+2' 4-1

Highlights

Vs Kashiwa Reysol (home) 8/10/25 Levain Cup Semi Final 1st Leg

 

Kawasaki Frontale 3 - 1 Kashiwa Reysol 

I really need to have a think about this blog. I’ve been putting off writing this post all day and this was actually a fun game and a good result. If I can’t even be bothered after a 3-1 win, what hope is there for the next absolutely dull 1-0 defeat we suffer? Although I suppose I might have been putting it off because we basically play Kashiwa every few days at the moment so maybe that’s why I’m not overly enthused about writing about them again. The return leg of the tie is coming up soon, I’ve totally wasted today and then tomorrow and Saturday I’ll be working and busy. So this really is going to be thrown together with the absolute minimum of effort.

Us -

I thought we were pretty good. Well, in the first half anyway. Two nice goals, one penalty turned down by VAR for… well actually I have no idea and heard that I would be a bit pissed off when I saw it. I can’t find it, so perhaps the highlights packages are sparing the blushes of the officials. Again. Sung-Ryong continued in goal and did fine again. Definitely can’t be blamed for the goal. It’s a shame we once again failed to get a clean sheet but we were up against it for quite a lot of the second half so conceding just once and scoring three in total is fine by me. I guess the big talking points of the game will be the injuries. Miura off after only a few minutes and Oshima returning from injury and not long afterwards returning back to injury. Apparently both of the injuries are quite serious. Although it didn’t seem like it at the time as Oshima was initially moved up front, maybe to see if he could run it off. We’d used all our subs, but I would have thought that if it was bad we would have just taken him off straightaway. We’ll see, I guess. Well done to Tanabe for coming in and covering for Miura. He did well I thought. That’ll do for the us section.

Them -

Nothing original to say here. Not even going to mention the ‘Kashiwa Stupid’ flag. Guess I should mention one of their other flags though but this joke only works if you have Bob Marley’s ‘Buffalo Soldier’ in mind when you read the flag, which said ‘FOOTBALL SOLDIER’ (from the edge of Chiba). Couldn’t see the part in brackets but I suppose it was covered up by another flag, right? I’d say we were quite fortunate that Kashiwa didn’t have their shooting boots on. But maybe if they had done we would just have saved all of their shots anyway 😸. The stats at the end of the game looked like we’d really done a smash and grab on them, but on I don’t think Kashiwa’s many more shots told the story of the game. At the same time, not sure we deserved to win by two clear goals but I’ll definitely take it. As I said before, I’d be happy for us to win the Levain and they can have the league. Seems reasonable, right?

Ref -

Yamamoto Yudai. Was very irritated by him during the game. Will never know about that VAR for the penalty I guess. But did make a note about a terrible tackle on Tanabe in the second half which we didn’t even get a free kick from, let alone one of their players get a card. Will never know about this either. But as it was new era golden boy Yamamoto in charge we can probably presume he got it wrong. 

Next up, Kashiwa again. Hasebe will probably have to do some shuffling around at the back. I imagine it will be the same defence we finished the game with. He has said that we aren’t prioritising this tournament as we still mathematically have a chance in the league, but presumably this is what we are supposed to say and the truth might be different. So I’d expect pretty much the same players again aside from the injuries. The same result would be nice too!  

 

Team

GK 1. JUNG Sung-Ryong
DF 31. VAN VERMESKERKEN Sai

DF 22. Filip UREMOVIC (Yellow card 32') 

DF 5. SASAKI Asahi
DF 13. MIURA Sota
MF 19. KAWAHARA So
MF 6. YAMAMOTO Yuki
MF 14. WAKIZAKA Yasuto 
FW 17. ITO Tatsuya
FW 9. ERISON

FW 23. MARCINHO

Subs

GK 21. ANDO Shunsuke
MF 8. TACHIBANADA Kento (on for KAWAHARA 75')

MF 10. OSHIMA Ryota (on for YAMAMOTO 75')
FW 11. KOBAYASHI Yu 

DF 15. TANABE Shuto (on for MIURA 6')
FW 24. MIYAGI Ten (on for MARCINHO 75')
DF 27. KAMIHASHI Ryota
FW 41. IENAGA Akihiro
FW 91. Lazar ROMANIC  (on for ERISON 61')

Goals
YAMAMOTO (Frontale) 10' 1-0
VAN WERMERSKERKEN (Frontale) 23' 2-0
KOIZUMI (Kashiwa) 62' 1-1
ITO (Frontale) 85' 3-1

Highlights

Vs Kyoto Sanga (away) 4/10/25 J League match 33

Kyoto Sanga 1 - 1 Kawasaki Frontale

Yay! A meaningless game! But one that some people say was surprisingly entertaining! But I think it was something more like unsurprisingly frustrating. Frustration shouldn’t be a massive surprise as it seems pretty much par for the course recently. There’s no doubt we have some great players. There are increasing doubts that we can consistently play particularly well. Any lingering doubts as to whether we could get anything from this season are absolutely gone and lying in tatters after a really rotten run of games in the league. Like I said before, we only have the ability to mess other people’s seasons up. Anyway, these posts are supposed to be short now, so here we go.

Us - 

It seems like recently we have an uncanny ability to score exactly the same amount of goals as the opposition, however many shots we have. In this game we had more shots than in the 4-4 against Kashima or the 2-1 against Shonan. We pretty much tripled the Kyoto’s shot tally and shots on target tally but only managed to score the same amount of goals as them. We absolutely battered them in the first half and naturally went in 1-1 at half time. Even when we went down to ten we still looked like we were the most likely team to score. Someone at the club has definitely had a black cat cross their path whilst hanging a horseshoe upside down over their arm as they walked under a ladder and knocked over and smashed a whole crate of mirrors. Poor old Hasebe seems to be the opposite of Oniki, who was and still seems to be ridiculously lucky. Of course we weren’t helped by the ref in this match, and of course it was pretty pointless game for us anyway, but we seem to play well more often than not, but seem to always snatch a draw from the jaws of victory. Once again we’ve damaged the title hopes of a team who most people probably would prefer to win the league rather than Kashima. We’ve done that to Machida, Kashiwa and now Kyoto. Sadly we don’t have any mote games left against Kashima. Although to be honest, the way things seem to be going, we’d probably lose that game, knowing our current luck. ‘At least it was an entertaining game’, say people who apparently don’t have the same emotional investment with these games as I do. Drawing a game when you’ve battered the opposition goal isn’t particularly satisfying, especially when you only managed to score once. We didn’t rotate for this game which was a bit of a surprise given that we have Kashiwa at home in the Levain Cup on Wednesday and then away on Sunday. I guess we’ll see changes on Wednesday, But then again there isn’t a great deal that is changeable at the moment really. And in this match, once again Hasebe didn’t use all of his subs. He didn’t make any changes till the 72nd minute. If we’d still been banging like we were in the first half that would have made sense but we’d been a bit shit since the start of the second half I thought, so we might expected something to be changed a bit sooner. There’s probably not much else to say about this match. It followed the recent pattern of us going ahead through Ito and then conceding a goal due to… well, I won’t point fingers but there does seem to be someone not doing particularly great this year and they didn’t do that great again in this match. Oh, one notable thing was perhaps the return of Sung-Ryong in goal. I think Yamaguchi is injured. I feel sorry for SR as he did everything he could and can’t in any way be blamed for the goal we conceded. I hope he gets a clean sheet the next time he plays. Depending on Yamaguchi’s condition maybe he’ll be playing a lot more before the end of the season than we might have expected.

Them - 

I enjoyed the beer in the stadium which was a lot better than the crap Asahi that they sell usually. They had a beer garden in the concourse of the back stand. To be honest it was more like a beer patio… hmmm, that still sounds bigger than it actually was. In any case, there were some nice beers available from Kyoto Brewing. Given that I chucked a bit of money their way on those beers, the least they could have done was give us the three points. On this showing, it’s a bit of a surprise that Kyoto are so high up in the league. When they beat us at Todoroki they were dire as far as I can remember, (naturally, we were worse, but…). In this match I thought they were very lucky to get away with a point. Hara drew my ire for asking the ref to check VAR for something that he believed should have been a penalty, even though it absolutely wasn’t a foul and it was nowhere near inside the box. Guess he must just be a bit simple. It seemed that their fans might be similarly intellectually challenged as they booed the ref off at the end of the game, even though he’d done his absolute best to get them a win. Maybe they wanted a few more red cards for us. The pre-match DJ was quite cringeworthy, but I have to admit that when they turned the lights off and he played House Of Pain, it was quite fun. Playing Oasis at the final whistle wasn’t good for my already elevated irritation levels though. Probably did sum up their stodgy football quite well though. Why not wrap up a disappointing game with some truly turgid music? And perhaps you could also draw some comparisons between the way that their players faked injury constantly and convinced the ref and the way that Oasis have somehow managed to convince the world that they have talent. A lot of deception going on everywhere it seems. Anyway, before the game I wouldn’t have minded letting them have the win if it meant it might mess up Kashima, but after the constant play-acting and whinging to the referee, well, fuck ‘em basically. Gutted we didn’t take all the points and give them the absolute battering that our first half performance suggested might have been coming. I say suggested, because of course, anyone who’s watched us this year will know that even if we do batter someone, we also batter ourselves in the process. 

Ref - 

As the popular chant goes, 'the referee is a wanker'. And what a wanker! Last time we had this guy he was pleasantly anonymous but on this occasion he ruined the last part of the match by being totally taken in by Kyoto’s faking and diving. The two yellow cards for Romanic were outrageous. At least he made contact for the first one but for me it didn’t seem like it was worthy of a yellow. For the second I don’t think there was any contact at all, although the Kyoto player faked some. Kamimura is one of those refs who doesn’t give any cards until an apparently random moment of the match, after which he starts throwing them around like they’re going out of fashion. Tachibanada’s yellow looks a bit dodgy too after watching the replay. Kyoto were totally fine with these kind of cards for phantom fouls being given out. When things went the other way though they were whinging like nobody’s business. Nagasawa elbowing Uremovic in the face isn’t a foul as far as they were concerned. The player who dived into a challenge and blocked a goal bound shot intentionally with his arm. No foul according to them. So I suppose I should at least congratulate the ref on getting those right. Congratulations, not everything you did was a total disaster. You carried out your duties adequately on occasion. Presumably this is enough to get him promoted to new J League golden boy status. I hope we never have him again.

Ah, what a shame it is recently that we can’t even really enjoy scoring an early goal as it’s always inevitable that we won’t hold on to a lead. I’ve lost count of the number of times I’ve said ‘we really need to score again whilst we’re totally on top or we’ll regret it’, before we don’t score again and we do regret it. Anyway, never mind, these games are pointless! Unlike our next two games which are the next stage of  our only chance of getting anything from this season. Don’t get me wrong, I didn’t expect us to storm the league and win the quadruple. It would be nice if we could win something for Hasebe though as I feel he’s done a decent job so far. Not a great job, but a decent job. With five games to go we’ve already exceeded our points total from last year and if we score more than six goals in our remaining five league games we’ll have scored more this year too. And we’d have to concede 13 goals in those last five games to have conceded more this year. I mean, that is obviously not off the table though! So yeah, Kashiwa in the Levain Cup, home and then away. The last league game was chock full of goals. so presumably a 1-0 win on aggregate for someone and utter tedium. It would be fair to say that the two teams we’ve drawn in the Levain this year have not given us the most exciting of fixtures when it comes to away trips. But fingers crossed we can make it through to the final.

 

Team

GK 1. JUNG Sung-Ryong
DF 31. VAN VERMESKERKEN Sai

DF 22. Filip UREMOVIC

DF 5. SASAKI Asahi
DF 13. MIURA Sota
MF 19. KAWAHARA So
MF 8. TACHIBANADA Kento (Yellow card 77') 
MF 14. WAKIZAKA Yasuto 
FW 17. ITO Tatsuya
FW 9. ERISON

FW 23. MARCINHO

Subs

GK 21. ANDO Shunsuke

FW 11. KOBAYASHI Yu 

DF 15. TANABE Shuto
FW 24. MIYAGI Ten (on for ITO 85')
DF 27. KAMIHASHI Ryota
FW 29. MYOGAN Toya
DF 39. TSUCHIYA Kaito
FW 41. IENAGA Akihiro (on for MARCINHO 74')
FW 91. Lazar ROMANIC  (on for ERISON 75') (Yellow card 84', second yellow/red card 88')

Goals

ITO (Frontale) 8' 0-1
SUGAI (Kyoto) 38' 1-1

Highlights

 

Vs Kashiwa Reysol (home) 28/9/25 J League match 32

Kawasaki Frontale 4 - 4 Kashiwa Reysol

With any dreams of a late run in the league being finally eliminated by an absolute shocker of a game against FC Tokyo, when it comes to the league now, all it seems we have left is the ability to mess up other people’s seasons. We started this by beating Shonan, inadvertently helping our hated rivals YFM. We continued this by denying Kashiwa the three points in this game, inadvertently helping our hated…. erm I’m not sure they are particular rivals… hmmm, let me start that sentence again. We continued this by denying Kashiwa the three points in this game, inadvertently helping absolute scumbag team Kashima Antlers. To be honest, as our league campaign is cooked I wouldn’t particularly have minded losing both of those games. Next weekend we have Kyoto away, another possible title rival for Kashima. It’s a weird feeling really. Obviously I like it when we win, but my feelings of disgust for certain other teams seem to be quite strong too. I guess all we can hope for now is that Kashima, YFM and Kobe too, mess things up for themselves. It’s been a weird season with us playing some truly dreadful stuff, occasionally winning and occasionally getting exactly what dreadful play deserves. Then at other times we’ve gone on a goal rampage. Some weeks we shoot all day hardly hitting the target and then follow that up with a match where everything we hit goes in. We’ve long known this is a season of transition so I guess we can at least be pleased that there have been quite a few highs. And even with perhaps less resources available to him, Hasebe has done a lot better this year than Oniki did last year. All of which is a long winded way of introducing this game which had something from most of the various phases of our season all combined in one match. It was pretty entertaining though!

Us -

Yeah, this match had every aspect of 2025 Frontale all rolled into one. Wakizaka’s goal and Romanic’s second were amazing moves. Balance that with some horrible misses too. And then of course that regular 2025 feature of us conceding for fun. Conceding four goals naturally isn’t great so either Kashiwa’s shooting was absolutely perfect and they are an unstoppable attacking force or hmmm, well I don’t particularly want to think too much about what the alternative is. I’m pleased that by scoring four we’ve now gone clear in the only title race that matters, which is obviously being the top goal scorers in the league. I was pleased to see Romanic get a start, get an early goal and then get one that wasn’t from a penalty. It’s quite annoying that we threw away the lead three times in this game. It’s no surprise we did the first time though as it looked a bit like we couldn’t be bothered after we scored the first goal and it took them scoring twice for us to get going again. And in the whole game we only had five shots on target, four of which we scored from. So we were a bit lucky in that respect. The ref did his best to balance out any of that fortune though. More on that later. At the end of the match Yamaguchi was absent from the thank you bow to the fans. I can only imagine two possible explanations for this. One is that he was doing the hero interview which would be surprising in a game where we conceded four or that he’s injured. We’ll see on Saturday I guess. Yamamoto will be banned for that match for the slightly dubious yellow that he got in this match. I don’t know if Ozeki will be back from international duty. If he won’t, we’ll be a bit light in the midfield area. Which are words I couldn’t have imagined ever saying about Frontale. 

Them -

Goddam Kashiwa with their competent shooting! It’s not fair! Thankfully they balanced it out with some cavalier stuff at the back. Them and us too. I think for a few of their goals we cocked up to give them the ball, and this was something they were also doing for us, so fair’s fair. Hopefully the club will apologise to Kashiwa for the fact that it seemed that someone had put electric shock pads on the bench. Numerous times they clicked the button and the whole bench of staff and subs would leap forward out of their seats and look… butt hurt, I believe the phrase is. I don’t have anything else to say about them really. Not so much snarkiness here. Both teams did well to make the game entertaining from both an exciting attacking and terrifying defending point of view. Seeing as we’re going to be playing them two more times in the next couple of weeks, hopefully I’ll find some more things to poke fun about. After the goal fest that this game was, I’d say it’s almost guaranteed that the two Levain games will be 0-0 and a one goal win. I’m not saying which way. Hopefully they will still have league title aspirations so will play the reserves a bit. We don’t have any distractions so hopefully will go full on for everyone’s favourite cracker sponsored cup!

Ref - 

We’d only previously encountered Nagamine once, in the home game against Sagan Tosu last year that basically confirmed their relegation. On that occasion I said he’d been fairly anonymous. In this match he decided to flip the script. Aside from the penalty, I think he gave pretty much everything else to the away team. (Well actually, maybe we were slightly lucky with Wakizaka only getting a yellow for a semi-flying assault of a tackle, but as that doesn’t quite fit the narrative, I’ll only mention it in passing). The slightest indiscretion from our players, (sometimes also non-existent indiscretions) was clamped down on, often with a yellow card, but for example a Kashiwa player kicking out after getting fouled was greeted by a slap on the back for the man in yellow. So unwilling to give a card to Kashiwa was the ref that I thought he was maybe getting confused by their yellow shirts, thinking that if he booked one of them it would be a second yellow, so decided to avoid doing so. One good thing though was our players got really charged up by the one-eyed uselessness of the man in the middle and it definitely helped gee us on to score some goals. I can see how righteous anger could be a good thing for cut and thrust attacking. Perhaps this also explains why we were giving away goals for fun as maybe burning with resentment is not the best recipe for calm defending. The incident that lead to the yellow card for Yamamoto perfectly encapsulates, (although sorry, I really want to say encrapsulates), the ref. Two possible handballs by the Kashiwa player and a load of shirt pulling ignored by the ref who then clearly punishes us for the fact that the Kashiwa player tripped over some particularly dense air and immediately signaled to the ref for a yellow card. The ref naturally obliged, but probably much to the chagrin of the poor wounded handball player, he gave it to a different player. To be fair, that bit was right though as Yamamoto clearly delayed the restart, but that wouldn’t have happened if the ref hadn’t ignored the three previous offences. The yellow for Yamaguchi seemed pretty dodgy too. It seems like it was for objecting to the ref’s decisions but that seems harsh considering how objectionable most things the ref was doing. Anyway, I’m not saying he’s corrupt (although perhaps during the match I might have done a few times), just that he’s another shitty ref. 

But anyway, this was a fun match. It helped that we didn’t have anything much riding on it and although the rollercoaster of emotions didn’t end on a high which is a shame, there was definitely plenty of entertainment. And a draw was definitely a fair result in the end. Next up, as mentioned above, Kyoto away on Saturday. I’m pleased that Kyoto Brewing will have a stall outside the stadium this time round. That’s where I’ll be before the game. After that, two more games against Kashiwa. I’ve been thinking a bit about the future of this blog. I think I always moan about it being a pain in the arse to write (and probably to read too!), and also at times when I read back what I’ve written I don’t feel particularly great. I find reading the ‘expert’ opinions of people who are clearly clueless irritates me quite a lot and I definitely fall into that category. So with that in mind, I’m probably going spend less time writing things about what we’re doing wrong and how bad someone has played and instead try to just write more about my experiences of the games. I’m not sure if this will be better or worse. Certainly doesn’t sound much fun! So maybe in future expect the same moaning about the refs, a bit of poking fun at the opposition and some shorter blog posts. The internet is full of utterly uninformed content already and as this irritates me it seems stupid for me to contribute to the ignorance landfill. If after giving it a try it turns out to be just as bad, well maybe I’ll just post videos of me interpreting the games through modern dance instead. 

Team

GK 98. YAMAGUCHI Louis (Yellow card 49') 
DF 31. VAN VERMESKERKEN Sai

DF 22. Filip UREMOVIC

DF 5. SASAKI Asahi
DF 13. MIURA Sota
MF 19. KAWAHARA So
MF 6. YAMAMOTO Yuki (Yellow card 57') 
MF 14. WAKIZAKA Yasuto (Yellow card 34') 
FW 17. ITO Tatsuya
FW 91. Lazar ROMANIC

FW 23. MARCINHO

Subs

GK 1. JUNG Sung-Ryong

MF 8. TACHIBANADA Kento (on for KAWAHARA 68')

FW 11. KOBAYASHI Yu (on for ROMANIC 80')

DF 15. TANABE Shuto
FW 24. MIYAGI Ten (on for MARCINHO 74')
DF 27. KAMIHASHI Ryota
DF 30. NODA Hiroto
DF 39. TSUCHIYA Kaito
FW 41. IENAGA Akihiro (on for ITO 74')

Goals

ROMANIC (Frontale) 7' PEN 1-0
KAKITA (Kashiwa) 15' 1-1
DIEGO (Kashiwa) 39' 1-2
ITO (Frontale) 45+5' 2-2
WAKIZAKA (Frontale) 52' 3-2
NAKAGAWA (Kashiwa) 66' 3-3
ROMANIC (Frontale) 79' 4-3
MITSUMARU (Kashiwa) 90' 4-4

Highlights