Vs SC Sagamihara (home) 16/7/25 Emperor's Cup 3rd round

Kawasaki Frontale 0 - 0 SC Sagamihara (AET) (1-3 on penalties)

Beat league title favourites Kashima. Have a week off. Lose to Sagamihara on penalties. Wonderful. I would say it’s one step forward and two steps back but the truth is relating anything about this match to any movement other than in pointless little sideways triangles doesn’t make much sense as this was an utter borefest. I should have known we’d lose as we had the enticing prospect of a trip to Tohoku if we’d won. Admittedly, we always play Blaublitz but at least this time we might get to do it away from home. But no, now we’re out of the Emperor’s Cup at a horrendously early yet utterly predictable stage. Seems like not much has changed since Oniki, left, eh? Don’t worry, I’m not going to start getting negative about Hasebe yet. Although the truth is the there may be some logic in doing so. We’ve long heard that it might take some time for Hasebe to be able to put his stamp on our team as we had the ACL to contend with. Well ,that’s very much in the rearview mirror now but we still seem to be doing the same things we did last year. I guess any hopes of a change of formation have probably been squashed by the usual endless centre back problems, (transfers being added to the annual injury problems). Takai has gone and it seems that Haydar will be going too. Jesiel is back fit again, but who knows for how long. We’ve heard about Hasebe’s penchant for three at the back, but unless we make a centre back signing I can’t imagine any switch would be in that direction. Maybe we should give one at the back a go…. Not that we particularly had any problems at the back in this game. This slight positivity should be tempered by the fact that Sagamihara are a J3 team who came very much with the intention of sitting back, defending in numbers and maybe trying to hit us on the counter attack, but with more focus on taking the game to penalties. Up front, Yamada has gone and said goodbye to the fans in an emotionally charged farewell after this match. I think this transfer won’t change much for the club as he’s been awful this year so it represents a good opportunity for him to reset and get his career back on track. We have (potentially) got some money for a player who was doing nothing more than occupying a spot in the starting line up that someone else might do a better job of filling, The difference between the Yamada of last year and this year is unbelievable. I really hope he can turn things around. And I feel really sorry that he had to have his ceremony after such a shit game. Anyway, this is all to say that clearly things aren’t looking that bright for us right now. But the feeling does seem to change slightly from game to game, with the same dull and borderline dodgy performances sometimes resulting in wins and sometimes getting exactly what they deserve. Although we’re out of the Emperor’s Cup early, we really have done better than expected in the league. Well, when it comes to results anyway. I don’t think anyone could really name a game where we played well apart from the season opener. Even though the results have been good, there has been a hell of a lot of dross this year, even in games we’ve won. But, getting slightly back on track, I don’t think we’ve seen dross that is quite this drossy for a very long time.

Us - 

Our third shot on target in this game was when we took the third penalty of the shoot out, which was of course saved and rebounded onto the crossbar. This is pretty astonishing. Well, maybe to some people but it’s become something I do worry about happening. Even the two previous shots on target, (one in the second half and one in the first period of extra time), didn’t exactly trouble their keeper. I wonder if it was an elaborate ruse to make sure that their keeper wouldn’t be warmed up properly when it came to penalties. This seems unlikely, but it really did seem like we were playing for them for long periods of the match. And in any case, this ruse backfired as the first two penalties wouldn’t have gone in even if their keeper had run off the pitch to go to the toilet. But there’s no point getting angry about the penalties as there is always a certain amount of luck involved with a shoot out. (Just as an aside, it’s no wonder we’re shit at penalties this year as we’ve only had one in 23 league matches and that one was taken by Miyagi who wasn’t even on the bench for this game). What we should get angry about is the utter crap that filled the 90 minutes of normal time and 30 minutes of extra time to the brim. And don’t forget this was an almost full strength team playing against a J3 team. I don’t know what the solution is up front if we are going to persevere with this formation. Neither Kobayashi or Kanda ever really had a real chance. Admittedly Sagamihara were playing with most of their team behind the ball and in their own penalty box. This probably contributed to quite how dull this game was. The thing is, we never really looked like we were going to concede, but we also never really looked like we were going to score. We never seem to be able to play against teams who sit back and defend. This is a problem that has endured for years now and teams who play like that aren’t exactly a rare thing so we should have had plenty pf practice by now. Maybe this suggests that we’d prefer to play against teams who want to attack, but this hasn’t worked so well in some games this year. Basically, our ideal opponents are Kashima, a team who think they are good but are actually shit. Well, them or someone like YFC who will score the goals for us as we will inevitably continue to struggle to hit the target. That lovely passing though, eh? Beautiful triangles, mainly in our own half. Who needs goals when you can have completed passes. 

Our players deciding whose turn it is
 to balloon the ball over the bar

The strange thing about this game is that it’s hard to say who didn’t play well. You can’t really say anyone had a nightmare, but you could definitely say that plenty of people seemed to do absolutely nothing at all, positive or negative. It was just a massive splodge of mediocrity. Very dull. People were playing with about as much verve as if it were a training match. The fact that drums weren’t allowed for the supporters in extra time because it was after 9pm and the stadium is in a residential zone somehow added to this feeling of utter pointlessness. It was difficult to get engaged with the match at any stage, as it was just so boring and with apparently so little jeopardy. Don’t forget, basically our first team, fresh after a week and a half break. We’re fucked. And as long as our players continue to believe that one solid object, (for example, the ball, or their own body), can pass through another solid object, (perhaps an opposition player), completely unopposed and unaffected, I think we’re going to struggle. And perhaps we’re going to struggle even more this weekend as Jesiel went off at half time, (perhaps to save him for the league and avoid injuries), Sai looked absolutely destroyed at the end of extra time and had to be changed and then Maruyama went off injured leaving us with ten men for the final few minutes. Not a great time to have two centre backs leave the club with no replacements coming in, eh? Tsuchiya getting a few minutes at the end of this game was nice for him, especially as he might be needed much sooner than anyone might have suspected. But as I said above, the problem isn’t at the back. The problem is that we pass and pass and pass and pass and don’t seem to ever be that interested in shooting. And then inevitably when that gilt edged chance finally miraculously appears we either leather it over the bar or wide of the goal, or softly cushion the ball directly into the arms of the keeper. Forget the defence, we really need some new ideas up front. The most important one of which might be ACTUALLY TRY TO SCORE A GOAL.

Them -

Fair play to Sagamihara, they came to do a job and they did it. I don’t have any moans about their players. I was impressed with their supporters in both the amount of people who came to the match, (probably more than Kobe brought on a Saturday. I know this isn’t true, but it’s not as untrue as you might imagine), and their attitude, I loved the ‘Good Vibes Only’ flag they had. I’m pleased that we had a chance to give them a clap at the end of the game. I think they were a bit shocked. I don’t like their manager, as I remember him being a jumped up little shit when I saw Grulla play YFC, but you can’t deny that he came up with a winning plan and his players carried it out to a tee.

Ref -

It was Iida. He’s crap, but he’s always crap and he wasn’t as crap as we were. He wasn’t the one endlessly passing to build up the necessary head of steam to make a chance to welly the ball anywhere but inside of the goal frame. But hang on, even that’s being a bit optimistic about how we did in this game. Six shots in 120 minutes. One shot every twenty minutes. One shot on target every sixty minutes. It’s really no wonder this game felt so dull. 

Next up Gamba Osaka away on Sunday. I presume we’ll still be stuck up on the third floor, making a game that we always do quite badly in even less enjoyable again. Gamba also lost on penalties in the cup, but they were playing a J2 team, and they managed to actually score some goals. I can’t see us ever scoring again at the moment. Big changes need to happen and I can’t say I’m particularly confident they are going to. I don’t have a problem with us losing. After all that’s what happens in football. I do have a problem with us serving up such turgid shit though. I know that also happens in football, but it would be nice if it didn’t have to happen quite so often, wouldn’t it? How can I finish this on a positive note? I honestly don’t know… We’ve been linked with a Serbian striker, presumably to replace Yamada. That’s obviously not going to happen before Sunday if at all. And it does seem anyway that whoever is up front never really gets a chance because the ball never makes it to the striker. No, I haven’t got a clue how to end this on a positive note…. AH! I found one. We can at least be sure that Sunday’s match won’t go to extra time and penalties, so hopefully we’ll be able to get to the pub a bit earlier than we did on Wednesday. If there is nothing remotely entertaining or enjoyable on the pitch, well you’ve got to find your fun somewhere else, right?

Team

GK 98. YAMAGUCHI Louis
DF 31. VAN WERMESKERKEN Sai
DF 4. JESIEL
DF 35. MARUYAMA Yuichi
DF 13. MIURA Sota
MF 8. TACHIBANADA Kento
MF 6. YAMAMOTO Yuki
MF 14. WAKIZAKA Yasuto
FW 41. IENAGA Akihiro
FW 11. KOBAYASHI Yu
FW 23. MARCINHO

Subs

GK 21. ANDO Shunsuke

DF 5. SASAKI Asahi (on for JESIEL 46')
DF 7. KURUMAYA Shintaro
MF 16. OZEKI Yuto (on for MARCINHO 83')
MF 17. ITO Tatsuya (on for IENAGA 64')
MF 19. KAWAHARA So (on for TACHIBANADA 90+5')

MF 26. YAMAUCHI Hinata
FW 38. KANDA Soma (on for KOBAYASHI 64')

DF 39. TSUCHIYA Kaito (on for VAN WERMESKERKEN 115')

My Frontale Fan Of The Match

Me. I'm the best. And this definitely shouldn't go to any fans who clapped the team at the end of the game as we were fucking terrible. I'm not going to boo them, but I am 100% going to stand there with my arms crossed and a moody expression.

Goals

Nothing, barely even a shot

Penalties

MUTO (Sagamihara) 0-1
KAWAHARA (Frontale) 0-1 (missed)
PYTLIK (Sagamihara) 0-1 (saved)

YAMAMOTO (Frontale) 0-1 (missed)
TAKEUCHI (Sagamihara) 0-2
KANDA (Frontale) 0-2 (saved)
KATO (Sagamihara) 0-2 (missed)

OZEKI (Frontale) 1-2

TAKANO (Sagamihara) 1-3

Highlights

Vs Kashima Antlers (home) 5/7/25 J League match 23

 

Kawasaki Frontale 2 - 1 Kashima Antlers 

Ahhhhh. This was a lot of fun, wasn’t it? I’ve long been saying that Kashima aren’t as good as their league position suggests. When we played them at the National Stadium they were pretty bad, and were fortunate to catch us on a day when we were terrible. And don’t forget that they have had an unbelievable amount of penalties whereas we’ve had just the one in 23 games. Some might say that their luck turned in this match and I’d agree to some extent but I’ll go into that in more detail later. So it’s great to win and it’s also great to enjoy defeating a horrible club. Some Frontale fans might have mixed feelings given that they have our old manager. They seemed again to think that they’d stolen him from us given the way they were chanting his name before the game. I expect they weren’t chanting his name in the same way afterwards. I don’t have any personal enjoyment from beating the new team of our old manager per se, but when that team is a scummy one who have seemed to get the rub of the green more often than not this year, (something which continued to a certain extent in this match), well then, I actually do enjoy it a lot. Perhaps the one big downside was that everyone else won in the top five, so it hasn’t helped us out when it comes to the title race. But I don’t really believe we’re seriously in that anyway. Particularly when you consider that Takai has just left and Ito is now injured. We need reinforcements fast I think. But the rest of the top five winning meant that it was a bigger blow to Kashima so I guess that’s a good thing. Hopefully the other scummy teams who are up there, (looking at you Kobe), can experience similar big blows for the rest of the season. We’ve now got a bit of time off till our next game. Time to recuperate and hopefully get some players back from injury. Although Ito wasn’t at the Fan Event yesterday and was on crutches after the game on Saturday, Erison was there and was dancing, so fingers crossed we’re using that as part of his recovery schedule. 

Us -

It was a bit of a mixed start for us in this game. Whilst we looked a bit brighter and were definitely getting the ball forward more quickly and causing them problems, we were blighted by the usual awful finishing that seems to be a Frontale thing recently. The stats look kind of positive with ten shots but the reality is that only four were on target and I think all of them were about as powerfully and accurately hit away from the keeper as a back pass from a defender would have been. Kashima were even worse in attack but naturally managed to score after they were gifted a goal by some dodgy defending by us. If we ever manage to stop shooting ourselves in the foot we might make some real progress. Thankfully we scored at the end of the first half though, as to have gone in one down after having so many chances would have been a real gut punch. We did our best to mess it up though as Yamada almost got the goal canceled due to him being offside. Yamada still isn’t playing particularly well, and his call up to the national team is absolutely baffling, but maybe there are some green shoots of recovery starting to show. He seems to pass a bit more than previously. Admittedly previously he didn’t pass at all though. I have to admit, I don’t really have that many strong memories of our performance in the rest of the game. Well, apart from the massive let off when Jesiel’s red card which he revived very soon after coming on at half time was canceled. Phew. I don’t think we were mind-blowingly good in this game, but we definitely did enough to win. We ended up with fifty percent more shots and possession than Kashima so I think they’d be clutching at straws to think they deserved to get anything. 

Them - 

Sure they’re going to complain about the ref and I am going to do the same in the section below. I think their big problem is that they didn’t get a penalty in this game. That seems to be what normally happens. They didn’t look that good and hopefully they’ll tumble down the league. I’m not sure they’d have scored if we hadn’t put a goal on a plate for them. Perhaps they might think they’re going through a slump but I suspect that they’ve been massively lucky so far this year and are now getting what their play deserves. In spite of the massive wealth the club has and employing the most successful manger in the league, they still might struggle to crawl out of their usual spot in third or fourth. There is a classic Oniki way of playing, (note the singular here. There really is only one), but for some reason he isn’t using it at Kashima. Some might say if it ain’t broke, don’t fix it, but recent results make it look like it is broken. Whether he has the character or the power to change things, I don’t know. Kashima is one of those teams where it seems that whoever they hire or buy, things rarely change that much. I’d put Urawa and FC Tokyo in that category too. They seem to have some scumbag players and some scumbag fans so I guess that works out quite well. I still remember with great amusement that video clip of a group of furious Antlers fans being held back by a thin plastic fence so low that it could be stepped over by a Dachshund and so poorly supported that it could be toppled by someone turning on the extractor fan in the changing rooms. I guess it was the single old man security guard that repelled them. Somehow though this fearsome reputation of their tough guy fans seemed to convince the ref that things should go their way though. 

Ref and VAR - 

Ahhhh, Araki. Last time we had you there wasn’t much to moan about which was an absolute miracle. Thankfully for the sake of consistency he was back to his awful… best… worst in this match. Maybe it was the rolled up shorts and blonde dye job that terrified Araki so much but Suzuki should absolutely have been sent off for a second yellow card. There was another very dodgy decision from the ref at the end of the game, when someone absolutely clattered (I think) Sasaki off the ball and off the pitch and the ref did nothing. Maybe by that stage he already thought he was in enough trouble with the Kashima fans. He’d really done his best to please them only to have his decisions overturned by VAR. I suppose I have to give him some credit for listening to the VAR though. But he was an absolute bottler when it came to doing things that Kashima might not like. Praise the lord though, we had someone good on VAR. I recently praised Kawamata and he’s done well again. I haven’t really dared look back at the Jesiel red card he canceled as it looked a cert at the time. Thankfully we were saved by offside. And Kawamata also allowed the Ito goal. From the first replay it did seem like it might get canceled due to Yamada looking like he was in the way, but from another angle, he’s not really anywhere near the keeper and to his credit he tries to get out the way of the ball rather than trying to nick the goal for himself and get it ruled out in the process. Even when we praise the VAR guy though, we shouldn’t forget that for one of these decisions he was having to correct an error that the twerps on the field made. I think the thing that made me most angry towards Araki was when two Kashima players tackled each other, ending up in a heap on the floor. Araki apparently thought that counted as a half foul on them and decided to stop the match to let them get treatment, (neither of the players were actually injured), and then gave them the ball from the restart. Truly baffling nonsense from a predictably bad referee. Araki, go and do one. Kawamata, thank you again for your skills and knowledge.

Ahhh, lovely stuff. A win against horrible opposition a good old moan about the ref! Great times! Next up, Sagamihara at home in the Emperor’s Cup the Wednesday after next. I would say that presumably we’ll see some rotation in that match, but I’m not sure we have that many players to rotate right now. Hopefully we can all enjoy the little break and preserve the little bit of form we got back in this match. 

 

Team

GK 98. YAMAGUCHI Louis
DF 31. VAN WERMESKERKEN Sai
DF 2. TAKAI Kota
DF 35. MARUYAMA Yuichi 
DF 13. MIURA Sota
MF 19. KAWAHARA So
MF 6. YAMAMOTO Yuki
MF 14. WAKIZAKA Yasuto
FW 41. IENAGA Akihiro (Yellow card 80')
FW 20. YAMADA Shin
FW 17. ITO Tatsuya 

Subs

GK 21. ANDO Shunsuke
DF 4. JESIEL (on for MARUYAMA 46') (Yellow card 82')
DF 5. SASAKI Asahi (on for MIURA 84')

MF 8. TACHIBANADA Kento (on for YAMAMOTO 78')
FW 11. KOBAYASHI Yu
MF 16. OZEKI Yuto
FW 23. MARCINHO (on for ITO 46')
FW 24. MIYAGI Ten (on for IENAGA 90+3') 

FW 38. KANDA Soma

Goals

LEO CEARA (Kashima) 25' 0-1
ITO (Frontale) 25' 1-1
MARCINHO (Frontale) 58' 2-1

Highlights  

Vs Tokyo Verdy (away) 29/6/25 J League match 22

Tokyo Verdy 1 - 0 Kawasaki Frontale 

It’s been said a few times, but I think most people would agree that this was the worst Hasebe Frontale performance there has ever been. It was so bad, I don’t even know where to start moaning. It was an immensely frustrating game. Of course, anyone thinking we were the greatest team in the league after putting three past Albirex was definitely not right. But it was a shame to go from scoring three and attacking a bit to this match where we did absolutely nothing. Given how bad we were it feels like I should say the better team won the game. I can’t really say that though as Verdy were as crap as we were. There were some similarities between the two sides and one massive difference. Both teams looked like they’d struggle to score even if their first eleven were playing the oppositions under 7s five a side team. Both teams made error after error and couldn’t do any of the basic skills usually required for football. And most of all, apparently shared the same desire to repeatedly do the same thing, over and over, much to the frustration of their fans and to very little effect. We went with the ‘fantastic, silky’ pointless passing. They went with the hoof it forward as soon as possible. That was the one difference. Well, apart from the fact that they managed to score. It would have been a miracle if we had done so. It was an utterly pointless 90 minutes with the same problems rearing their heads again. This game has left me quite irritated.

Us - 

Utter shit. Maybe those two words might be all that is necessary. Our game was perfectly encapsulated in a period of about 90 seconds in the second half when we passed the ball around in our own half without ever leaving it, EVEN THOUGH WE WERE LOSING AND RUNNING OUT OF TIME. Fantastically beautiful possession football with absolutely no end product. We had five shots in a terrible first half, none of which were on target. Surely the only way was up, right? Not really. Apparently we had six shots, five of which were on target in the second but I don’t think we can honestly say that we ever troubled their keeper and instead just passed the ball directly to him instead of trying to shoot. 70% possession in that second half and fuck me it was dull. After I said in the last post that maybe our injury situation is getting better we lost Sung-Ryong in the warm up and Marcinho after 12 minutes. I know I’ve previously said that Marcinho should get a rest as he’s been playing a lot, but blimey after he went off, it was clear why Hasebe hasn’t dared rest him yet. If he’s seriously injured we are utterly fucked. A quick run through some of the performances. Wakizaka had a bad game. Oshima was anonymous. Soma had a couple of decent chances but headed both over. At least he tried to score. The other people who shot seemed not to want to score. Miyagi got a good chance to show what he can do in this match. If he did show what he can do, that’s a bit worrying because it was almost nothing. Even the usually reliable Sasaki and Miura had bad games. The Verdy goal came from a weird pass from Sasaki that Miura and Yamaguchi both seemed to not bother with that lead to the first of a series of corners which we inevitably conceded from. Yamaguchi made one save when the ball was kicked pretty much straight at him. I don’t know what he was doing for the goal. I do know that him diving after the ball had already passed him irritated me again. Tachibanada wasn’t very good. Yamada when he came on did exactly what you’d expect him to do right now, never ever fucking pass. There was one chance that particularly annoyed me when he tried to score through a couple of defenders from an impossible angle instead of fucking passing the ball. It’s really annoying that outside of the final third all we do is fucking pass and pass and then when passing might actually get us a goal, he tries to score from a ridiculous position. He shouldn’t be playing if he’s going to do this kind of thing. I think Hasebe knows it, but in this match it’s not like we really had any other option. After a dogshit first half I pondered what we might be able to do and didn’t really see anything on the bench that might help us. Never mind eh, Kashima lost so at least they didn’t extend their lead over is. It seems that when Kashima lose, we always also do. The thought that we are even in competition with them is ridiculous. And we’re playing them next. Confident? I’m not. We need a major rethink and even if that happens I’m not sure we have the players to pull off a win. Well, we have the players, but sadly most of them have forgotten how to play football. Hopefully we’ll be able to keep Kashima in single digits for goals scored. If we keep up that passing and possession we could hopefully grind out a 3-0 defeat. 

Them - 

Nothing much to say. Their football was as annoying as ours but in a different way. Matheus seems like a right moody git. I reckon a ref who was more keen to make a name for himself could well have sent him off for a second yellow for dissent, after he got his first yellow for… dissent. He was constantly moaning the whole game. Quite an unlikeable fellow. Nice of us to try to cheer him up by giving him a quiet 90 minutes and three gift-wrapped points. Verdy fans before the game were lamenting how terrible they had been recently, all of which in my mind meant that they had a nailed on win coming. And so it proved. The only possible bit of amusement I have is the weird use of quotation marks for the 

‘drinks’ break

Felt a bit like they were casting doubt on whether the players were actually drinking or doing something else. Maybe they were having soup. Even though you eat it, you are kind of drinking it, aren’t you? That must be it!



Ref and VAR -

I won’t go as far to say that this is the post where we lose and I say the ref had a good game as I was giving him some real stick during the match. But on checking the contentious decisions I noted down, I found he didn’t seem to have cocked up. He was a crackpot with the cards though. Nothing for ages and then once the seal was broken he was throwing them around like they were going out of fashion. I really don’t understand how their defender didn’t get one from knocking over Ito as he broke through. But perhaps if he had started giving them so early in the game we would have ended up with multiple sending offs. Maybe he was also worried about breaking the seal in a more conventional way, as I think he forgot the 

‘drinks’ break 

in the first half. I was a bit baffled to see a Verdy fan saying that he’d given us everything as I was very much of the opposite opinion. The truth probably is that with both teams playing so badly, both sets of fans probably wanted someone to vent their anger at. So, it’s not a ‘well done ref’ on this occasion, but he wasn’t a disaster. 

Next up Kashima at home on Saturday, And then the fan event on Sunday. The atmosphere is going to be a bit weird if we get hammered on Saturday. Takai won’t be at the latter as he’ll be traveling to Europe for a medical so presumably Saturday will be the last time we see him. Bit worrying that, isn’t it? Soon we might have an attack that can’t score and a defence that can’t keep goals out. And if the midfield is anything like it was on Sunday, well, you can probably rule them out too. Hopefully a midweek with no game might help us be a bit fresher, but seriously… looks like it’s not going to be much fun. By the way, if you’re wondering where the man of the match section has gone, I’ve run out of ways of saying everyone was shit so I’ve ditched it for now. What a weird season this has been. I can’t remember that many games where I’ve thought we’ve been good, but we’ve got the second best attack in the league according to the table. Absolutely insane. I was trying to think of the best league game this season, and even after looking at the results I can’t think of one where we’ve been anything approaching great. By contrast, there are no shortage of candidates for worst match of the season already. Maybe this season feels weird because we thought it would be a transition season and surprisingly we’ve done a bit better than expected. Bit of a miracle really. I think it’s time for Hasebe to start putting his mark on the team a bit more. Hopefully he can do that to good effect starting from Saturday. 

Team

GK 98. YAMAGUCHI Louis
DF 5. SASAKI Asahi
DF 2. TAKAI Kota
DF 35. MARUYAMA Yuichi 
DF 13. MIURA Sota
MF 8. TACHIBANADA Kento
MF 10. OSHIMA Ryota
MF 14. WAKIZAKA Yasuto
FW 17. ITO Tatsuya (Yellow card 69')
FW 38. KANDA Soma
FW 23. MARCINHO

Subs

GK 21. ANDO Shunsuke
DF 4. JESIEL
MF 6. YAMAMOTO Yuki (on for OSHIMA 46')

FW 10. YAMADA Shin (on for KANDA 46')
MF 16. OZEKI Yuto (on for TACHIBANADA 65') 
MF 19. KAWAHARA So
FW 24. MIYAGI Ten (on for MARCINHO 13') 
DF 31. VAN WERMESKERKEN Sai
FW 41. IENAGA Akihiro (on for ITO 74')

Goals

FUKAZAWA (Verdy) 32' 1-0

Highlights  

Vs Albirex Niigata (home) 25/6/25 J League match 15

Kawasaki Frontale 3 - 1 Albirex Niigata 

Perhaps I was being excessively dramatic after the last match. Certainly I was in an appalling mood after an appalling performance. But judging from the starting line up of this game it seems that Hasebe also thought that we were pretty bad against Vissel Kobe. In that match we basically started like we were on fire, scored and then turned off for most of the rest of the game. Yeah, we had some chances late on, but most of those chances didn’t actually make it to the actually-having-a-shot stage and it never really looked like we were going to get anything from the game. There were a few similarities in this match. Again we started pretty well and scored fairly early. And once again we spent most of the second half not threatening to do anything. But I guess the big difference in this match was that we were two goals up instead of one goal down. And we even managed to stretch the lead late on after Ozeki came on apparently determined to score. Conceding the late consolation goal was a bit of a bummer and it looked absolutely miles offside in the stadium. (On DAZN they only seemed to have one angle that included both the keeper and the recipient and it was a far from ideal angle. If VAR only had the same one, I can understand why they didn’t have the confidence to overturn the decision). The win takes us up to fifth and now we’ve played all of our games in hand. If we hadn’t fucked up so massively against Vissel, we would have been in second, three points behind Kashima. I think I said after our game against them that I thought Kashima weren’t very good, so hopefully that turns out to be true and they plummet to mid table where they deserve to be. A quick aside, delightfully, and allowing me to fully enjoy my post-game beers, YFM got spanked and remain rock bottom. Winning a game is great. Your enemies losing badly is great. Having both happen on the same evening is wonderful. 

Us -

Ito started this game and I thought he was great again, with so much energy and a desire to go forward instead of pass backwards. I don’t think Ienaga is past it, but I am certain he is past starting every game. Perhaps similarly with Maruyama. He’s played well this year, but at his age I would hope he gets a rest from time to time. While he was by no means the worst performer in the last game, he didn’t have a great match and probably needed a bit of a rest. So Jesiel was back and played almost all of the 90 minutes! When he did leave the field it looked initially a bit of a worry as it seemed like he might be injured again. But I think it was mainly cramp, possibly brought on by a shocker of a foul from an Albirex forward. We are clearly going to need Jesiel going forward as it seems that Takai will be leaving soon. I wonder if we might see Sasaki back at centre back alternating with Jesiel and Maruyama. I’d rather have him at full back, but perhaps feel that if we keep injury free we have more cover in those positions than we do in the middle. Another person I slagged off a little in the last post was Yamamoto who had a bit of a dodgy game. But he was back to his best in this match. I think the schedule has been catching up with a lot of people recently. Yamada dropped to the bench, and I don’t think anyone could really argue with that. Kanda made his first start which is something plenty of people have been calling for and he managed to get his first league goal. I feel a bit sorry for Yamada as it would probably have been a goal he would have also scored, but at the same time with the slump he’s been going through, maybe he wouldn’t have been in the right place. I feel like none of our (fit) strikers have shown themselves to be an undroppable definite first choice so that’s clearly an area where we have some questions to answer. I suspect either Kobayashi or more likely Yamada will start on Sunday against Verdy. But anyway, Kanda did what he was supposed to do and that’s something that can't be said about plenty of our players in recent matches, so well done to him. I also criticised Yamaguchi, probably quite unfairly in that last post. This is a tricky one for me, because I started the year a bit suspicious of him, have been won round on a few occasions by great performances, and then have reverted to my original point of view after some horrible performances. Presumably this is why when we concede a soft goal it’s my instinct to blame Yamaguchi, even though others are equally culpable. That’s not really fair of me so I apologise to him and his fans. I guess the problem is that as a goalkeeper, when you make a big mistake it more than likely ends up in a goal, so it’s very visible. In his match he made one very good save and other than that didn’t have a massive amount to do so I’ll just concentrate on praising the good save. It’s always a lot easier to be reasonable when we’ve won!

Miura back in the starting line up made a difference I think. And it was good to see Sai back from injury (probably... I don’t think anything was ever announced). Oshima was absent but I hope this is because Hasebe is just doing a better job of managing the fragile often injured players. If he can keep Oshima and Jesiel available for most of the rest of the season he will have achieved miracles. Maybe… maybe…. the injury situation is clearing up a little. Maybe. Of course we still have Erison injured who is the only striker who has really properly staked a claim for the position this year and that's clearly a blow. But maybe elsewhere, Hasebe finally has some options. Just in time for us getting the rug pulled out from under us by Takai leaving. Yamada is also rumoured to be going (to Celtic), but I’m not sure how likely that is or how much of an effect it would have on us. Hopefully we will sign some replacements and/or reinforcements in the transfer window. The season actually looks like it is delicately balanced right now. So it would be good if we tried to at least slightly push it in a favourable direction.

Them -

Not a great deal to say about Albirex really. They dominated possession in the match and had 50% more shots than us. I think these stats are partly coloured by our dodgy second half though. However, I didn’t ever really feel like we were in much danger. Before the game I would have been happy to wish them well for the rest of the season, but they didn’t give us the ball back after we put it out for an injury and that peed me off a bit. But at the same time, they brought loads of passionate fans, (more fans and more passion than Vissel and that game was on a Saturday not a Wednesday evening!),  and I enjoy the away fixture, so I would quite like them to stay up. They’re in the muck at the moment though, so they’ll need a bit of a change in fortune. 

Ref -

When I saw the ref was Kawamata I was cautiously optimistic. He definitely seems to be one of the better refs and I thought he did well in this match. What a rare thing to say! I thought he let a few things go for the good of the game and I’m all in favour of that. There was one situation where if he’d given a marginal foul against a Niigata defender he probably would have had to send him off for a second yellow card as it would have been one of those promising attack things. I’m fine with him not giving it. A referee employing some common sense is a very welcome thing. Good for him!

So that's about it rather than a quick mention for the one massive disappointment for me about this match which was the fact that the semi-secret toilet that is always much quieter than the others now has someone standing with a sign pointing to it. I’m gutted about the potentially disastrous effect this will have on my half times in the future. I’m sure you feel my pain and totally understand why I’ve mentioned it. Next up Tokyo Verdy away on Sunday early evening. Another team who aren’t in great form and are languishing at the wrong end of the table. Usually this would mean that we’d lose but that didn’t happen in this match so fingers crossed it won’t in the next one either. After that, Kashima at home the following weekend. That's going to be an interesting one…

Team

GK 98. YAMAGUCHI Louis
DF 5. SASAKI Asahi
DF 2. TAKAI Kota
DF 4. JESIEL
DF 13. MIURA Sota
MF 19. KAWAHARA So
MF 6. YAMAMOTO Yuki (Yellow card 90+10')
MF 14. WAKIZAKA Yasuto
FW 17. ITO Tatsuya
FW 38. KANDA Soma
FW 23. MARCINHO

Subs

GK 1. JUNG Sung-Ryong
DF 8. TACHIBANADA Kento (on for KAWAHARA 79')

FW 11. KOBAYASHI Yu (on for KANDA 68')
MF 16. OZEKI Yuto (on for WAKIZAKA 88') 
FW 20. YAMADA Shin
FW 24. MIYAGI Ten (on for MARCINHO 68') 
DF 31. VAN WERMESKERKEN Sai
DF 35. MARUYAMA Yuichi (on for JESIEL 79')
MF 41. IENAGA Akihiro

My Frontale Man Of The Match

I’ve been convinced to award this to this player because on Flashscore he was awarded the second lowest score on our team which I thought was absolutely idiotic. So it goes to…

ITO Tatsuya - genuinely forward looking, energetic and consistently one of our best players when he starts. If Ienaga comes back on Sunday as I suspect he will, hopefully Ito can start on the left and let Marcinho have a rest.

Goals

WAKIZAKA (Frontale) 12' 1-0
KANDA (Frontale) 35' 2-0
OZEKI (Frontale) 90+1' 3-0
OKUMURA (Albirex) 90+5' 3-1

Highlights  

Vs Vissel Kobe (home) 21/6/25 J League match 21

 

Kawasaki Frontale 1 - 2 Vissel Kobe 

When we played Vissel Kobe away, I was lucky enough to have to work so I missed what I have heard was an absolutely awful game. Sadly on this occasion, I’d finished work by lunchtime so was not spared watching what really must be one of the worst games of Hasebe Frontale. But hang on you might be saying, we’ve heard this before. In fact maybe you even heard that in the last blog post on the game against YFC. The crucial difference was that although we were terrible in that game, we somehow won it. In this game we came out blazing for the first five minutes, scored, and then proceeded to not bother to do anything aside from concede goals for at least the next fifty or so minutes. This isn’t going to be a pretty blog post. There is going to be plenty of whinging, and most of it will be directed at us rather than vaguely ‘amusing’ quips about useless referees or the opposition. On this occasion the damage was almost completely self-inflicted and the blame is entirely ours. It was a game so poor that the only two photos I have are of the pre-game warmup and the half time YMCA, (which rather fittingly was also extremely underpowered compared to previous versions, to the extent of feeling almost pointless, therefore being an absolutely perfect filling for the shit footballing performance sandwich). This probably tells you all you need to know about the excitement of the match. I took my phone out to take some photos but every time, in between getting it out, unlocking it and raising it to take a photo we’d lost the ball or played it backwards into dreary defence. I should really try to stop mentioning him, but this was peak shit Oniki Frontale, with Tachibanada playing in defence and at least 70 minutes of pointless passing. We came away from the match with a magnificent 60% possession and almost entirely no threat at all. Let’s get this miserable post out of the way and do our best to forget about this match as soon as possible.

Us - 

After coming back from injury, Miura has disappeared again. Sai is also missing, presumed injured. As good as Sasaki has been on both the left and right this year, it’s probably asking a bit much for him to play in both positions simultaneously, so Tachibanada was back in defence again. In the past I’ve moaned a lot about this kind of thing. It will come as no surprise to hear that I will moan a bit about it again. I thought Tanabe did pretty well when called on recently. Clearly he’s not as good as our injured options, but has the advantage of actually being a defender. But he was still overlooked for Tachibanada. Perhaps this was due to Hasebe worrying that if he played Tanabe, Kobe would target him. Instead they targeted Tachibanada. Almost all of their attacks went down that side. To be fair to him though, he had a decent enough match. So the moaning about him playing in defence will be restricted to the decision this time, rather than extended to his performance. The real problem in this match were the ‘Yamas’. We had players with Yama in their name right through the spine of the team and it’s fair to say that they were all pretty bad in this match. To start off with the ones who were just pretty bad, Maruyama has really dropped off recently, perhaps unsurprisingly given his age. Yamamoto had a bad game, but everyone has an off day now and then and he saved us in the previous match where we were also awful. The real problems were at the front and the back. Yamada is back to being absolutely terrible again, after what we hoped might be a renaissance when he scored two tap-ins against a J3 side. He was anonymous against YFC and in this game did nothing apart from mess up. I really feel for him, but he clearly can’t play the role that is being expected for him right now, so we’ve got to do something else. At the back, Yamaguchi had another stinker, reverting to his fairly regular thing of diving long after the ball has passed him. Of course he can’t be held fully responsible for us conceding as the ball seemed to easily pass through the massive gaps in our defence, but I have almost no confidence in Yamaguchi. As a back up, maybe, but as a first choice keeper, well, I think he seems to have been promoted way beyond his abilities. Don’t get me wrong, he has had some good games, but more often than not he gives the opposition at least one goal. One Vissel cross sailed way over his head with him doing some kind of spiderman pose jump nowhere near either the ball or any players. Thankfully the defence dealt with it, because if it had gone to a Kobe player it would have been an open goal with Yamaguchi on the floor near the penalty spot. You may think all of this is my pro-Sung-Ryong bias and maybe some of it is, but I don’t think he’s the solution either. To be fair to him though, every time he’s played it has been with the (very much) second choice defence in front of him. It would be interesting to see how he does with some more assured players. The thought of Yamaguchi with the second choice defence is not something I want to dwell on for too long. Ienaga doesn’t have ‘Yama’ in his name but can be lumped in with the Yamas in this match. How he is starting ahead of Ito is a mystery. When Hasebe made some changes late on we finally started looking like we might do something. But before then Ienaga had had another pretty bad game I think. So it’s probably no surprise we lost when you consider that I have singled out five of the starting eleven as being bad in this match. 

 

I think however it’s not completely down to them. I don’t really like doing this, but… hmmmm, I guess this is my first Hasebe moan. Those players aren’t playing well but keep starting. That’s down to Hasebe. Even if you say that we don’t have replacements, well, maybe he should change the system and stop playing Yamada in a position that he isn’t suited for. After the subs, which I have to say came very late given how obvious the problems were from very early on, we looked like a different team. You could praise Hasebe for this, but maybe it makes more sense to question why those players didn’t start? We have been mostly pretty dodgy since the ACL but perhaps the fact that we’ve picked up a few lucky wins has convinced him he’s doing the right thing. I think we should probably pay more attention to the draws and defeats though. Sure we’ve been a bit unlucky with injuries, particularly to Erison just as he was starting to get into some form. I wonder if we’ll get any reinforcements in the transfer window. I hope so, as right now the squad looks pretty threadbare. Segawa and Verhon have gone, (Verhon on loan), we can’t score for toffee and still we’re going with the same players, formation and tactics every game. Kanda seems to score every time he plays for the national team, but seems to be way out of contention. The players who are playing almost every match are looking increasingly tired, but there seems to be no desire to either give them a rest, (apart from the occasional game where almost everyone is rested), or any signs of any reinforcements. It’s a miracle that the stats said we had 60% possession in this match as every time we hoofed the ball forward it boinged straight back to us. BOING! It’s a stat I’d like to see added to the usual ones that are compiled. I reckon we must have had at least 30 long ball boings in this match. How on earth could that result in 60% possession? Ah, of course, it’s our old friend backwards passing, playing it around beautifully at the back, just waiting for the right time to lump it forward for the next boing! This game made me quite angry. There was no way we were going to do anything after the first five minutes. What an absolute waste. So poor were we at shooting that if Vissel hadn’t played a keeper for the second half we would only have come away with a draw. Two early shots on target, one of which was a goal and then just the one in the remaining 85 minutes. Absolute dogshit. And all the more annoying given that Kashima lost. Although who am I kidding, there’s no way we’re in the title race. If we had won this match though we would have ended the day in third, only six points behind Kashima with a game in hand. But we fucked it up. I can’t really understand how we’ve scored so many goals and have conceded relatively few when we’ve been playing quite badly recently. Our next two games are against 18th placed Niigata and 15th placed Verdy. These are clearly must win games. After that we have Kashima at home. After Vissel Kobe have done the double over us, it would be a huge disappointment to have another despicable club do the same a couple of weeks later. Hasebe, you’ve got some work to do.

Them -

Nothing much to say. I don’t like their players much, particularly those arseholes Thuler and Erik. Obviously it wasn’t nice to see Miyashiro score twice against us, but I did appreciate that he didn’t celebrate. He clearly did the right thing by leaving us to get away from our shit formation and tactics. I’m not sure if they’re particularly good. They certainly didn’t seem to be that dangerous, yet they totally dominated for most of the match. I’m in a bit of a quandary as obviously I don’t want Kashima to win the league, but at the same time I don’t want Vissel to win it. The standard of the league seems to have really dropped this year. Perhaps it’s because we’ve had to play over half the season in just 4 months. Anyway, this isn’t really Vissel talk so let’s knock this on the head here.

Ref - 

Once again we were subjected to the referee exchange program and had a ref and two linesman from Poland. The fourth official who had trouble working the subs electronic board thing was Japanese though. And so was the VAR guy. Naturally, I moaned about the ref during the game, but can’t really say he did anything wrong. We were just shit.

Next up, well, I mentioned it above. A must win (maybe?) against Niigata at home, a team that Yamaguchi conceded four against when we played them in the Levain Cup last year. I suspect that Hasebe might rotate a bit on Wednesday so maybe we won’t see him and it will be Sung-Ryong conceding four instead. I just pray though that we have something to get at least a little bit excited about. Hopefully Ito will start as with Marcinho getting increasingly knackered he seems to be our only attacking threat at the moment. Please please please let us have a bit of fun as this match was so crushingly dull and we were so utterly impotent. What a lovely positive way to end this. 

 

Team

GK 98. YAMAGUCHI Louis
DF 8. TACHIBANADA Kento
DF 2. TAKAI Kota (Yellow card 75')
DF 35. MARUYAMA Yuichi 
DF 5. SASAKI Asahi
MF 19. KAWAHARA So
MF 6. YAMAMOTO Yuki
MF 14. WAKIZAKA Yasuto
MF 23. MARCINHO
MF 41. IENAGA Akihiro
FW 20. YAMADA Shin

Subs

GK 1. JUNG Sung-Ryong
DF 4. JESIEL
MF 10. OSHIMA Ryota (on for YAMAMOTO 66')

FW 11. KOBAYASHI Yu (on for YAMADA 86')

DF 15. TANABE Shuto 
MF 16. OZEKI Yuto (on for WAKIZAKA 80')
MF 17. ITO Tatsuya (on for IENAGA 66') 
FW 24. MIYAGI Ten (on for MARCINHO 80')
DF 44. CESAR HAYDAR

My Frontale Man Of The Match

YOU MUST BE JOKING, WE WERE ABSOLUTELY SHIT 

Goals

WAKIZAKA (Frontale) 6' 1-0
MIYASHIRO (Kobe) 10' 1-1
MIYASHIRO (Kobe) 52' 1-2

Highlights  

Vs Yokohama FC (away) 14/6/25 J League match 20

 

Yokohama FC 0 - 1 Kawasaki Frontale

Oops. I’ve left it a bit late to write this and given that I went to another game between this one and writing this, everything has got a bit blurry. This is all excellent news when it comes to how long this will be and how long it will take you to read it. It’s fair to say that even if I had scrupulously taken copious notes it would probably be kind of tricky to write much about this match as it wasn’t really a very exciting match and not a great deal happened. Perhaps due to the generally dubious level of the game, even the winning goal felt like a bit of a soft one at the time. Having watched the replay it was clearly a lot better than it seemed at the time. So maybe everything I thought about this match was equally inaccurate. Please feel free to correct me if this is indeed the case. I’ll do the usual headings but the paragraphs are gong to be a lot shorter than usual. Here we go.

Us -

One of my few notes says that we were on top for most of the first half but only had our first shot around the 30 minute mark. In the past maybe this would have meant that we were going to have a storming second half, but to be honest that half went similarly to the first. In fact one of my other notes says that we were even worse in the second but somehow we managed to score. Praise the lord for Yamamoto Yuki! The fact that it was raining for most of the match meant that I couldn’t take my phone out as much as I usually do to write down stuff. The fact is though, that even if I had been able to, there wasn’t really anything to write about. It was a ‘real nothing game’ according to my penultimate note, possibly written on the train on the way home. Oshima started, which was nice. But it didn’t really mean that we played well. But the most important thing is that we won and we’ve done the double over YFC, which I can’t remember us doing recently. At this stage of the season with us playing catch up, getting the three points is the most important thing, so I’m not going to get too upset about boring games if we win them. 

Them - 

Perhaps things would have turned out differently if YFC had managed to get any of their shots on target. The had 50% more shots than us, which sounds like they had a massively attacking game, but in this case 50% more was 9 to our 6. There probably isn’t really anything else to say in this section. Maybe YFC could feel hard done by, but I guess if you don’t hit the target even once, you can’t expect to win. Maybe the lack of excitement in our play was down to YFC having a good game defensively, but I suspect it was more due to two teams who are a bit tired both being off the boil and we were perhaps lucky to edge it because we hit the target. Definitely not a game either set of fans will be watching back much, I suspect.

This flag didn't seem annoying at the time, 
but it takes up most of every photo I took

Ref - 

So poor was this game that I came away from it with no strong feelings about the ref. I have only one note regarding him and that was he was soft on Suzuki who I thought probably should have got a second yellow card. Aside from watching the entire game back, I don’t really know how I can verify this comment and I don’t intend to do so, so once again, feel free to correct me. My feelings about this ref were probably softened by witnessing a truly atrocious homer of a ref in the game I watched on Sunday when Criacao Shinjuku got absolutely everything from the ref. Delightfully, Grulla won the game though. This point is only added to say that perhaps it’s true that the refs in J1 are the cream of the crop if the others in the JFL are as bad as the one on Sunday was. Cream of the crop! Even if that cream is slightly sour. Guess that would work better in a dinner than in a coffee, so perhaps there is somewhere where J1 refs could really look good. But anyway, this all feels like a slightly unfair diversion as Ueda didn’t do much wrong, I reckon.


Next up Vissel Kobe at home on Saturday. I reckon we owe them a beating after the away game. Although to be honest, as far as I could tell from what I heard, we were awful in that game, so perhaps we don’t particularly deserve to get ‘revenge’. Would be nice though, wouldn’t it? And as I’ve heard that wanker Thuler might be leaving them soon, it would be nice if get could get sent off again before he leaves. Fingers crossed for that and three points for us, even if it is dull again. 

 

 

Team

GK 98. YAMAGUCHI Louis
DF 5. SASAKI Asahi
DF 2. TAKAI Kota
DF 35. MARUYAMA Yuichi
DF 13. MIURA Sota
MF 10. OSHIMA Ryota
MF 6. YAMAMOTO Yuki
MF 17. ITO Tatsuya
MF 14. WAKIZAKA Yasuto
MF 23. MARCINHO
FW 20. YAMADA Shin

Subs

GK 1. JUNG Sung-Ryong
DF 7. KURUMAYA Shintaro
MF 8. TACHIBANADA Kento (on for YAMAMOTO 75')

FW 11. KOBAYASHI Yu (on for YAMADA 67')

DF 15. TANABE Shuto 
MF 16. OZEKI Yuto
MF 19. KAWAHARA So (on for OSHIMA 58') 
FW 24. MIYAGI Ten
MF 41. IENAGA Akihiro (on for ITO 67')

My Frontale Man Of The Match

I know I’m copping out of doing these a lot recently, but this game was generally shite, so it’s difficult to work out who I might give this to. If MVP stood for mediocre very player, there would be plenty of candidates. But you know, they did the job, so either give it to everyone or no-one, depending on your preference. 

Goals

YAMAMOTO (Frontale) 58' 0-1


Highlights