Vs Yokohama FC (home) 14/5/25 J League match 14

Kawasaki Frontale 2 - 1 Yokohama FC

Back to winning ways! This wasn’t the greatest game and we really rode our luck at times but getting the three points was really the most important thing. On some occasions this season we could justifiably say that things haven’t really gone our way when to comes to marginal decisions. But maybe in this game we saw just a little bit of fortune come back. This fortune not only took the form of the amazing winning goal which just has to be seen to be believed, but also some major let-offs we had in this match. On the flip side, we did hit the bar three times so probably were due a little bit of luck. YFC haven’t started the season in blistering form, but there does seem to be a general feeling that they are a lot more solid than they have been in the past and that perhaps going forward is where they are lacking in 2025. With this in mind, it was natural that we conceded after three minutes which then gave them something to sit back on for the rest of the game and transformed that five man defence into an eight or nine man defence. But we kept plugging away and eventually got what we (maybe) deserved. Perhaps not everyone will agree that we deserved to win, but I think when you hit the bar three times.... Thankfully that last hit of the bar was immediately followed by an absolute beast of an own goal. Perhaps a little harsh on YFC, but when you consider they’d spent most of the match trying to hold on to their lead and then when we equalised, sitting back and trying to hold on to the 1-1, you might say that it was maybe eventually going to come back and bite them on the backside. It seems that I’ve already said most the things I had to say in this first paragraph so let’s get this over and done with.

Us -

Some rotation as expected and I’m all in favour of that. I thought Haydar did alright, although at times I suspected he was a ghost as the ball sometimes seemed to pass straight through his body. I thought Yamaguchi was moaning at him for the conceded goal but on looking at the replay he was nothing to do with it. Wakizaka was back in the team and didn’t have his best game. Yamada started and pretty much continued in his 2025 rut. He really needs a goal soon. I thought Ito was our most potent attacking threat and did a good job on the left. Somewhat laughably he got the lowest player rating on Flashscore which I guess shows that Flashscore’s opinion is about as well-informed as some certain English language J League online banter ‘experts’. Aside from the major let-offs that we survived and the many, many chances that we failed to hit the target with, I think we’re starting to look a bit better than we were before the ACL break. Somewhat strangely though, it seems that we now have a good first half and then fade in the second, the absolute opposite of our early season games. I guess this is due to fatigue and that’s not going to get any easier with three more games coming in the next ten days. And that stat looks even more dramatic when you take things back a day and say that we have four games in eleven days. So rotation is definitely the key at the moment, particularly considering our injuries which are piling up. Maybe I should trial a new feature and give us an overall score out of ten. Not sure how long I’ll keep this up but well, let’s give it a go. I’d say this was a six out of ten game. Not that impressive, and a bit lucky (whilst at the same time a bit unlucky with all those crossbar hitting shots), but crucially we got the job done. Room for improvement but a vital three points to move us up in the league a bit and even more vital when it comes to getting some confidence and good feeling back.

Them -

YFC had exactly the kind of game plan that we would have expected from them and sadly it’s also exactly the kind of game plan that we usually struggle the most against. Maybe their early goal surprised them as much as it surprised us and definitely influenced the game. I thought Sakuragawa was a bit of a lump and threw himself around without much sanction from the ref. Thankfully he wasn’t as good at scoring as he was as getting physical. They really caused us some scares need the end of the match when Yamaguchi had to make some very good saves, so perhaps a draw would have been a fairer result. At the same time, they seemed quite happy to sit on their lead and then sit on the draw. I don’t really have much else to say about them really. To a certain extent we nicked the points from them, so I hope the fact that YFM lost on the same night is some small consolation to them. Something both sets of fans could enjoy!

Ref and VAR -

Firstly, we had Iida on VAR. Well, maybe we did. There seemed to be no VAR action at all, so maybe Jumpei had fallen asleep at the monitors. You’re not going to hear me moaning about a lack of VAR though, so bravo to him and I hope he had a nice nap. Slightly closer to the actual game, the fourth official was Yamashita, who made another clanger in a recent game so is perhaps being admonished and punished for that by her demotion to the side of the pitch. The most exciting thing about Yamashita’s presence was the reverse strip tease she did as the game progressed. At the start of the match so was in the whole ref kit. Towards half time, she’d put on her ref’s tracksuit top. In the second half she’d put on the tracksuit trousers too. It wasn’t at all cold so perhaps she just had somewhere to go quickly after the game. It really says something that I haven’t mentioned the ref yet. It was Araki in charge and whilst he’s normally a bit shit, I can’t really remember much about him in the game which I suppose is high praise. There was one penalty appeal that I thought could have gone our way, but given that Jumpei was snoozing and couldn't give Araki any help, I guess I can’t really blame him for not giving it. The play went on a ridiculously long time after the incident so it did create a bit of excitement wondering if the play would be taken way back when the ball went out of play. Maybe YFC might even have scored and then their goal would be canceled to give us a penalty. But of course this didn't happen. I guess this shows a basic flaw with VAR though. Imagine going from thinking that you'd scored only to have a legitimate goal ruled out for something that the ref missed in the opposition's previous attack. Blimey! But there’s no point me going on about that here as you all know I hate VAR and we all know that it’s not going to get abandoned, and will probably get more complicated and more irritating. So, no complaints really on this occasion. Maybe there would have been if we hadn't won. That’s the kind of guy I am.

Next up Cerezo at home om Sunday. They have been really inconsistent this year, so hopefully the fact that they won their last game means that they’re going to lose their next one. After that we’ve got Urawa at home the Wednesday after. I suppose in the middle of this fixture pile up we can at least be pleased that we’ve got lots of home fixtures so won’t have the extra fatigue that travel brings. Fingers crossed that this game might be the start of a nice little run of results for us.

Team

GK 98. YAMAGUCHI Louis
DF 31. VAN WERMESKERKEN Sai
DF 2. TAKAI Kota
DF 44. CESAR HAYDAR
DF 5. SASAKI Asahi
MF 8. TACHIBANADA Kento
MF 6. YAMAMOTO Yuki
MF 41. IENAGA Akihiro
MF 14. WAKIZAKA Yasuto
MF 17. ITO Tatsuya
FW 20. YAMADA Shin

Subs

GK 1. JUNG Sung-Ryong
FW 9. ERISON (on for YAMADA 63')
DF 15. TANABE Shuto
MF 16. OZEKI Yuto (on for WAKIZAKA 63')
MF 19. KAWAHARA So (on for TACHIBANADA 79')
MF 23. MARCINHO (on for ITO 63')
FW 18. SEGAWA Yusuke (on for IENAGA 90')
FW 38. KANDA Soma
DF 35. MARUYAMA Yuichi

My Frontale Man Of The Match

This wasn’t a sparkling performance but a few players did a decent job. Yamaguchi’s late saves clearly preserved the win and got him man of the match in the stadium. Yamamoto’s free kick was very sneaky and a lot of fun. There were others too, but for me it has to go to…

ITO Tatsuya - Flashscore may hate him but I thought he was at the heart of everything dangerous we did in this game. Fingers crossed he can keep up his good form.

Goals

LARA (Yokohama FC) 4' 0-1
YAMAMOTO (Frontale) 33' 1-1
NDUKA (Yokohama FC) OWN GOAL 84' 2-1

Highlights

Vs Kashima Antlers (away) 11/5/25 J League match 16

 

Kashima Antlers 2 - 1 Kawasaki Frontale

Back down to Earth with a bang in this game which at times looked like it was going to be marvellous but turned out horribly. People have talked about their being a Kokuritsu curse with teams who move their games there not being able to win. Equally I think we have a Kokuritsu curse, as we never seem to play particularly well there. Judging by this game, our curse is stronger. With another game coming up on Wednesday, let's get this done, under the usual headings.

Us -

Not so many surprises in the line up. I guess Miura’s injury situation isn’t good as he was nowhere to be seen. As was Wakizaka, which was a bit strange as I wasn’t aware of any injury to him. Aside from those two it was business as usual really. One possible downside of that is that the people who played the most minutes in the ACL were once again starting and maybe could have done with a rest. In the ACL our defence looked quite solid, but on this occasion it looked quite tired. In the first half I thought we were pretty good. We were all over Kashima and really should have scored more than once. I said towards the end of the half that if we didn’t take our chances we might come to regret it and sadly we did. There were a lot of good chances missed. In the second half we noticeably tired and even though we could make some changes, I don’t think those changes made much of a difference to either our making or taking of chances. Hopefully this game was just a blip, with us still being tired from our ACL endeavours. Ozeki had a good game which was slightly blighted by him missing a pretty good scoring opportunity. Erison and Marcinho both shot rather than passed when the other was in a better position so I guess that equals out, but sadly equals out at two missed chances rather than two goals. Yamaguchi didn’t have a great game. I guess he must be tired too. Until now I think he’s done pretty well, but on this occasion he wasn't really up to the same standard. I'm not singling him out though, as even having conceded two, we could have won comfortably. But of course you’re never going to win when you mess up your shots and concede soft goals. I suspect that Hasebe knew how much we all wanted to win this game and with that in mind didn’t rotate. But looking back, you’ve got to wonder if maybe we would have done better with a few more changes. The clear drop off from the first to second half suggests that we ran out of steam.  With midweek and weekend games coming consistently for the next few weeks, you’ve got to hope we can get rid of that lingering fatigue a bit. Definitely not panic stations yet, but this was definitely a disappointing outcome after a promising start.

Them -

Recently, when it comes to hatability, Kashima have gone under the radar slightly, with other apparently more dislikable teams over shadowing Kashima’s grottiness. But clearly they had a point to prove when it came to showing us what a bunch of shits they are, and they did in spades. They have a surprising number of unlikeable players. I’m not including Suzuki in this. It seems that plenty of people hate him, but I don't mind him. It seemed that the ref quite liked him too, but more on that later. Their fans are quite irritating and this was demonstrated with the absolute silence in the stadium pre-match, right up until we sang a song, waking them up and starting a chorus of boos, only for them fall back into silence moments later. First class booers apparently. Their lengthy but ultimately dull chanting of Oniki’s name after their team announcement was presumably intended to make us Frontale fans cry, as it seemed they thought we’d be distraught that they had prised Oniki away from us. Not sure that's really what happened. Us giving his name a clap is probably quite at odds with what they’ll do after they inevitably dump him when things start going wrong. Even though he’s a former Kashima player I seem to remember that his name always got a chorus of boos when he was in charge of us. This might sound like sour grapes but I thought they weren’t very good. When Suzuki didn’t have the ball they did nothing. It was classic Oniki pointless possession. After about 30 passes along the defence line someone finally realised that the game plan was ‘give it to Yuma’ and only then did they threaten. This is not entirely accurate as they also had another tactic which was to hoof the ball forward. And those yucky long throws too. It seemed that when Oniki was our manager and had Sai to do long throws, the long throw tactic was beneath him. But now it seems to be the only way they take throws. I guess he feels that he has to win at all costs. I reckon if Suzuki gets injured, Kashima are going to fall apart. I don’t want to wish injury on him, but I do want them to fall apart. I haven’t even mentioned the dark arts which have always been a Kashima thing, (spirit of Zico perhaps), and are still very much on show. Horrendous time wasting from them from the moment they went ahead. Feigning injuries all over the pitch. I would say that I was surprised to see their centre back go down injured, require treatment, the physios signalling to the bench that he couldn’t carry on, the bench realising that they had used all their subs, the player leaving the pitch absolutely destroyed only to make a miraculous Lazarus like recovery, but the fact is it was just another example of their shithousery, so was not surprising at all. They are a thoroughly unlikeable team and hopefully they'll fall to pieces soon. One good thing though was that they moved the game to the National Stadium. Whilst, as I said above, we’re almost always shit there, at least we didn’t have to go to and come back from Kashima on that rotten bus. It was probably extremely convenient for the majority of their fanbase too as I think most of them live much closer to the National Stadium than to Kashima.

Ref -

Still the quest for me to say a ref has had a good game in a defeat for us continues. Perhaps this demonstrates the true level of my prettiness. I guess you can judge this for yourself. Nakamura was back in town and much like the last time I saw one of our games that he was in charge of, he was an absolute joke. I’ve said it before but the transformation in his refereeing skills since he won ref of the year a few years ago is shocking. Of course Kashima are prize shithousers, but we all knew this before the game and I’m sure he did too. But he seemed to fall for all of it. Almost every challenge with Suzuki involved ended up with a free kick for Kashima. Actually, it even seemed like the ref was taking instructions from Suzuki. If he did something bad, just let the game continue. Any time he was tackled, give him a free kick. He gave them a very soft free kick which lead to their second goal. Maybe they’ll pay him an indirect assist bonus for it. Also, if a Kashima player got right in the face of the ref shouting at him, no problem at all. Who needs to give out yellow cards for obvious dissent after all? Plenty of times he’d stop the game because one of their players had cramp. I’m not sure it really counts as something your supposed to stop the game for, but it seemed to be part of the Kashima game plan, and therefore the ref had to follow it. The thing that annoyed me the most was the nonsensical decision, (but not nonsensical when you consider it was given by Nakamura in Kashima’s favour, I guess), when their keeper jumped to catch the ball, fell over and dropped it, Kanda took the loose ball and the ref gave them a free kick. I don’t think there was any contact apart from perhaps a brushing of shirt on shirt. Totally predictable outcome though. I didn’t mention this in the Kashima section, but one of the major pricks in the Kashima team is clearly their meathead of a keeper. Gutted we couldn’t score past him more, and doubly gutted that was due to our poor shooting rather than anything good he did. Anyway, Nakamura has become awful and continued to be awful in this game. If he’d been the ref for legendary spirit of Zico moment, when Zico, upset about the opposition being awarded a penalty, spat on the ball, Nakamura probably would have sent off the penalty taker for being irritated at Zico’s attempt to clean the ball for him. Nakamura is the perfect ref for a Kashima game as they are arseholes and he seems to be trying his best to also be one.

So a massively frustrating game. Kashima aren’t that good, but us fucking up has given them a decent lead at the top. Even if we win all of our games in hand they’ll still be seven points ahead of us. Please some other teams give them a pasting. They are extremely unlikeable and I’d love them to mess up another season. People have said that they’d like to see Oniki do well. and whilst I understand this sentiment, you’ve got to realise that he’s now the manger of Kashima so the only reasonable wish is that his season goes terribly wrong. Sorry Toru, but you are working for Satan now so I’ll give you a little clap before the game, but hope that your despicable team loses every match. Next up, Yokohama FC at home on Wednesday. It’s a must win game, not only because we need to get some form back, but also because our ACL absence has left us quite close to the teams at the bottom of the table. YFC quite often seem to frustrate us. Their goals scored total is the lowest in the league and even the shitbags at YFM have scored more than them having played two fewer games. I suspect we’ll see some rotation, and hopefully a few fresher players might be able to inject a bit of fizz into our play. Fingers crossed we can get a result, climb up the table a bit, and get ourselves back to the level that we know we can play at.
 

Team

GK 98. YAMAGUCHI Louis
DF 31. VAN WERMESKERKEN Sai
DF 2. TAKAI Kota
DF 35. MARUYAMA Yuichi
DF 5. SASAKI Asahi (Yellow card 44')
MF 19. KAWAHARA So
MF 6. YAMAMOTO Yuki
MF 17. ITO Tatsuya
MF 16. OZEKI Yuto
MF 23. MARCINHO
FW 9. ERISON

Subs

GK 1. JUNG Sung-Ryong
MF 8. TACHIBANADA Kento (on for VAN WERMESKERKEN 87')
DF 15. TANABE Shuto
FW 20. YAMADA Shin (on for ERISON 76')
FW 26. YAMAUCHI Hinata (on for OZEKI 58')
FW 18. SEGAWA Yusuke (on for IENAGA 82')
FW 38. KANDA Soma (on for MARCINHO 76')
MF 41. IENAGA Akihiro (on for ITO 76')
DF 44. CESAR HAYDAR

My Frontale Man Of The Match

There were probably contenders for this in this match, but given that the second half was so crap compared to the first and I left the game feeling quite pissed off, I'm going to give it a miss.

Goals

SASAKI (Frontale) 7' 0-1
FUNABASHI (Kashima) 45+1' 1-1
TAGAWA (Kashima) 65' 2-1

Highlights

Vs Al-Ahli SC (away) 3/4/25 ACL 2024/25 final

Al-Ahli 2 - 0 Kawasaki Frontale

 

Ah, what a shame… Three games in seven days in Saudi Arabia was never going to be easy. And particularly if the opponents have a hell of a lot more money than you. And of course that beautiful Saudi Arabian teams’ extra day rest thing that seems to be a new AFL dictate. But I’m only going to spend a small part of this blog post moaning about how unfair the competition was. (Rereading this, it’s clear that I was being a bit optimistic on that count. This post is predominately the same whinge over and over). I will also say that the better team won, particularly when you judge these matters on the amount they paid for their players and the amount they pay their players. As I watched the final in a hotel room in Morioka, 30 minutes after watching my home town team Leyton Orient secure an unlikely play-off spot, there was probably only ever one way my spirits could go and so it turned out to be. We’ve horrendously over performed in this tournament, so it will never be anything other than a massive bonus to get to the final. At the same time, it’s disappointing to have got so close and even to have been so close to somehow matching the opposition’s level, but eventually ending up not getting the job done. I was hoping we could have struck a blow for real football in its perhaps non-existent battle against big money football, but it wasn’t to be. So near, but yet so far. But at the same time, so financially far behind. Therefore, let’s call this a moral victory, eh? And now concentrate on the league in which we will be three games behind in by the time we play next. Oh, and the Emperor’s Cup, and the Levain Cup. I guess the hectic schedule is going to continue for the foreseeable future.

Us -

Well done to all of the players who took part and also to those who were just there making up the numbers. Zero shots on target in the final feels on the surface pretty disappointing, but when you look at the schedule we’ve had to put up with, a schedule that it should be noted was far worse than that of all of our Saudi opponents in this final stage, you’ve just got to say, well done Frontale. I’ve tried to avoid the post match comments and reactions but as far as I understand the players are quite upset, but they really shouldn’t be. The scales were balanced so absolutely in favour of the opposition in almost all of our games that they really shouldn’t be unhappy. It would be easy to say this was a David and Goliath type encounter, but the truth is that we didn’t really look like David for most of this game. Sure, they had more possession, and scored twice whilst we failed to do so, but the truth is that they spent a lot of time in the match time-wasting to hang on to their lead and win the title. Totally fair enough, but given the gulf between the two clubs’ finances it felt very reminiscent of when Man. City took the ball to the corner flag in the 85th minute against my other team Leyton Orient . Basically extremely undignified. Sure we conceded twice, but one was due to a wonder finish by a player valued at 28.7 million Euros on Flashscore after we gave them the ball through a cock up, and the other came when we were briefly down to ten men after Miura had gone off injured, but before Sai could come on. So basically they took their chances. And we really didn’t. But they hadn’t played three days previously. And they could also bring on a sub in the 74th minute who is valued at 22 million euros who Al Ahli bought for 40 million Euros from Celta Vigo. Actually maybe the maths in that previous sentence is quite interesting…. But once again, I’m not whinging… although it might sound like I am. We did great. It’s just probably doesn’t really make sense for teams from other Asian countries to be playing Saudi teams. The financial disparity is so extreme that the best that you can hope for is a miracle result. But damn we were close. Well not exactly close, but maybe 15% away from having a chance. If the tournament had a reasonable break between games and a home and away element, I reckon we might have been able to do them. And how lovely that would have been. But anyway, more on that later, and let’s finish this section by reiterating that everyone related to Frontale did great. Hasebe should already be considered a Frontale legend for making some calls that there is no way Oniki would have made. And right up till the final they all paid off. Don’t worry about what might have been and instead focus on what we achieved. Bravo everyone!

Them -

Probably not that much to say about a team of financial mercenaries playing in a league full of teams packed with financial mercenaries. Well nothing other than the things I’ve said already numerous times. All of the Saudi teams in this final stage are predominately owned by the Public Investment Fund, which is the sovereign bank wealth fund of Saudi Arabia. The other club they own is the one that is currently at the top of the league. I’m not sure how this is allowed. I’m not sure it would be in most countries, but maybe I’m being naive. After our victory against Al Nassr, there were plenty of their fans and also fans of Al Hilal who were supporting us because they hate Al Ahli. I guess this is something a bit like sibling rivalry. When two of the current top four in the league play each other the one thing that is certain to happen if that your parent company is going to get a win (or at least a couple of draws). I don’t really understand how the same company/people/person can own four teams in the same league without it being a conflict of interests, but let’s forget all of this as there’s nothing we can do about it and it’s kind of none of our business anyway. So instead let’s focus on Al Ahli. The most apparent thing to me about them, (aside from the fact that they are loaded), is that their manager looks like the kind of guy you really should avoid at a party. He really seems like the kind of creep who’s going to try his best to get you involved in his crypto pyramid scheme whilst at the same time give you some tips on how he’s writing a book about pick-up techniques and can tell you how to get and control any woman you want. Basically, I guess I’m saying he looks like he’s a little shit. I think his shitty moaning behaviour on the touchline was replicated though his whole team though, who spent a large portion of the game with expressions on their faces that made it look like they had been utterly wronged. I know this was their first time winning the ACL so fair play to them. Their fellow PIF funded teams who were equally stacked with cash didn’t get as far as they did. But when you consider our most valuable player, (according to Flashscore, Erison €2.2m), is worth about a quarter of the average value of one of their back four, which let’s be honest is absolutely the weakest part of their team, we didn’t really stand a chance. The financial disparity was a massive obstacle, but they were also able to play the final in their home stadium with basically a home allocation of tickets. So, we were really up against it. The AFL has skewed this competition so far in favour of ultra rich West Asian clubs that it has become a joke. Particularly by changing the foreign player limit which is presumably only going to make things worse in the future as more and more cash gets splashed. Al Ahli had two Saudi players in their starting line up. They brought a couple more on later once they were sure they’d be winning but it was basically a band of foreigners who maybe like to be big fish in a small pond. Oh, and really like money. So a massively rich team with players who are worth a shitload more than any of our players and still they spent a lot of the game whinging and time-wasting. On paper they absolutely deserved to win. It’s just a shame that they resorted to such shitty tactics even when the odds were so heavily stacked in their favour. Oh and one last thing, their pitch was fucking shit. Maybe they could spend a bit more money on their ground keeping staff rather than buying one extra player. But I suppose the turn around between games was quite quick. Obviously the AFC in their immense wisdom hadn’t thought of that when planning the competition.

Ref -

How wonderfully appropriate that in the games we won I’ve praised the refs and then in this game I’m going to say that this one was shit! I really recognised his face, so I guess I’ve moaned about him previously. I was particularly aggravated when an Al Ahli player, covering his mouth spoke to ref, who did the same whilst replying and then they both had a good old laugh about something. You can understand players doing it, but it’s not really a good look in the name of transparency when the ref does it. And there was a definite possible red card that he wimped out of giving when Demiral handballed to stop the ball going to Marcinho who was basically through on goal. Given that their players were arguing so hard about it, I guess they thought he was going to be sent off. Not sure it would have made much of a difference, but given that they scored their second when we were briefly down to 10, it might have been nice if we’d been given 45 minutes to try to do the same. But I’m not blaming the ref. I’ve said it a thousand times already but the imbalance between the teams was the main culprit. The ref certainly didn’t help though. But at the same time we couldn’t really have expected to win as we didn’t hit the target even once in this game. Might have done if the red had been given though. Whichever way you look at it it’s nice to be back to thinking that almost every ref can do one as far as I’m concerned. So the wait for me to praise a referee in a game we’ve lost continues. Hopefully we won’t lose again till next year’s preseason.

So all in all, a massively positive campaign, with a slightly depressing ending. The ACL has become a joke of a completion and we came kind of close to winning it in spite of the best efforts of the organisers. I guess now we can confidently state that we are the ‘No. 2 club in Asia’. I’ll leave it to Al Ahli and Kobe to decide who is the number one. So back to league duties, and I’m kind of excited to see what will happen. I think Hasebe has absolutely proved himself and now with the ACL done, I’m really interested to see what happens. This competition was absolutely something that has been on everyone’s minds so far this year, so low with some great performances in the bag, I hope that we can really push on and start showing our true potential in the league. We’ll have three games to catch up, but hopefully with the pressure of upcoming ACL games off, we’ll cut loose and start smashing some teams. Who do we have next? Oh, Kashima. Who’s their manager again? Oh… They’re doing well in the league but have had no distractions and in classic Oniki style they relieved themselves of their cup pressure by losing to a significantly weaker team in an early round. Hopefully we can start a nice losing run of results for them on Sunday. And praise the lord, it’s at the National stadium! Some people might extoll the virtues of the Kashima Soccer Stadium but I’d say that they probably aren’t people who’ve had to return from a busy game there by shuttle bus or public transport. I’m delighted that one of the worst away trips of the year will be significantly simplified in 2025. Think this might be the first time I’ve ever been pleased a game of ours has been moved to the National Stadium, so don’t say that this whole post has just been the same old things repeated endlessly. I finally managed to come up with something new! On Sunday, if we could come away with the three points as well as the satisfaction of not having to go by bus to Ibaraki, it would be a wonderful day indeed. 

Team

GK 98. YAMAGUCHI Louis
DF 5. SASAKI Asahi
DF 2. TAKAI Kota
DF 35. MARUYAMA Yuichi
DF 13. MIURA Sota
MF 19. KAWAHARA So
MF 77. YAMAMOTO Yuki
MF 41. IENAGA Akihiro
MF 14. WAKIZAKA Yasuto
MF 23. MARCINHO
FW 9. ERISON

Subs

GK 1. JUNG Sung-Ryong
GK 21. ANDO Shunsuke
MF 8. TACHIBANADA Kento
DF 15. TANABE Shuto
MF 16. OZEKI Yuto (on for YAMAMOTO 65')
FW 20. YAMADA Shin (on for ERISON 46')
FW 26. YAMAUCHI Hinata (on for KAWAHARA 84')
FW 30. SEGAWA Yusuke (on for IENAGA 82')
DF 31. VAN WERMESKERKEN Sai (on for MIURA 42')
FW 32. KANDA Soma
MF 37. ITO Tatsuya (on for IENAGA 65')
DF 44. CESAR HAYDAR

My Frontale Man Of The Match

I usually don’t give this when I haven’t been at the game and I hate giving it in a ridiculously sentimental way but on this occasion I’ll make an exception and give it to …

EVERYONE - to all the players, congratulations, you did us proud. To Hasebe, you’ve really proved your worth and I hope you can show how good a manager you are for the rest of the season and longer. And to the fans who went to Saudi Arabia, good for you too. Everyone, give yourself a pat on the back. Well, everyone apart from me as this post is a bit of a dog’s breakfast.

Goals

GALENO (Al-Ahli) 35' 1-0
KESSIE (Al-Ahli) 42' 2-0

Highlights

Vs Al-Nassr (away) 30/4/25 ACL 2024/25 semi final

 

Al-Nassr 2 - 3 Kawasaki Frontale

On we march to the final! Now we can legitimately say that we are the ‘No. 1 or 2 Club in Asia’. I believe someone else said something similar a while ago without getting as close to making it a reality. With the myriad of things stacked against all the teams who aren’t owned by the Saudi Royal family in this totally unbiased competition, (the ACL would never sell itself out for money, right?), this is a truly amazing achievement. So amazing and unpredictable that I now face the prospect of watching the final in a hotel room in Morioka about 12 hours after finishing a nomihodai beer festival. Could be messy. But in a way perhaps the tiredness brought on by the beer festival might encourage me to have a nap in the early evening and I’ll be able to watch the game completely refreshed sleep-wise, just as the hangover kicks in. Perhaps in previous incarnations of this competition we might have dreamed we could get this far but it really didn’t look like it would happen this year. Surely I wasn’t right when I said that I felt we’d been holding back a bit in the league with this competition in mind? We’ll see I guess. I suppose the only other interpretation could be that the Saudi League, in spite of the massive amount of money spent is actually not that good? I’ll have some more to say about that later. Once again, as I watched online I’m not going to write too much as you probably have watched the game yourself. So let’s get this done and dusted as I’m on a train now and won’t have long to post this tonight before I’m on another train tomorrow morning.

Us -

Absolutely bonkers starting line up from Hasebe which I think shows he really knows what he’s doing. I can’t imagine Oniki rotating this much. Actually I can’t imagine him rotating at all at this stage of the competition. But Hasebe left Erison, Wakizaka, Ienaga and Sasaki out and didn’t even bring in Yamada up front. Instead we had Kanda and Ozeki as our two furthest forward players. And Ozeki scored! (Apparently he’d told both of them before the game that they’d be playing only the first half and would then be changed. This is wild stuff for a Frontale manager to do). And when Hasebe did freshen things up in the second half it was the two subs who combined for what turned out to be the winner. Ito’s goal was absolutely marvelous. As was Erison’s assist for Ienaga’s goal. Clearly with the schedule we’ve had and will continue to have till the final, we’re not going to be able to keep playing the same players. I guess the only worry is that a few players can’t be rotated and have played almost every minute. Hats off to Takai, Maruyama and Miura and to Yamamoto and Marcinho who’ve played a lot too. Hopefully they can recover sufficiently before the final. It was good to Tachibanada back to his best again in this match. Hope his injury isn’t serious. Before the game we were 6-1 outsiders to win. I don’t think the game reflected those odds at all. Certainly Al Nassr had a lot more possession but I think that up until the final stages we’d had better chances than them. We did have to withstand a bit of an onslaught at the end but by that stage the game was a total mess with our players being knackered due to the schedule. We really had to hang on, but we did. Bravo! It was a great team performance and if the playing field had been a bit more level, with perhaps a decent break between games and a home and away leg, I reckon we could have really battered them. Great team work! Unlike…

Them -

Al Nassr have a lot of expensive players on high wages. And plenty of dodgy neck tattoos. Team is definitely not the word when it came to them. More a collection of disappointed rich individuals than a team. Ronaldo’s face was quite hilarious for most of the game, constantly gurning and grimacing as if he was being constantly cheated. Their passing veered from being speedy and dangerous to absolutely useless. Same with their shooting. There definitely seemed to be a sense of entitlement from their players, staff and some of their fans. They definitely thought it was going to be a walk in the park for them. Delighted that it wasn’t. I enjoyed the fact that they made a double sub in the 42nd minute. Just bizarre! And the fact that after a while they reverted to dirty long throw tactics. And very happy that Ronaldo giving the ball away led to our second goal. Enjoyed the close up of his face after that. And don’t forget the fact that some rich guy bought all the Al Nassr seats in the stadium and gave them away for free to try to further tilt things in their favour. And even when they gave away tickets for free there were still swathes of empty seats in the stadium. I’m sure Al Nassr have some fans who love football and I’m sure there are people who are real football fans in Saudi Arabia. But on this showing it looked a lot like people weren’t interested even when they didn’t have to pay for it. But money talks, and as long as players are happy to move to a country with a very strange league just because they’ll get a lot of money, disregarding the fact that they might be able to challenge and better themselves elsewhere, I’m sure the Saudi League will continue to attract big names, and initially a few fans who want to see them play but soon get bored of the experience.

Ref -

Dunno what’s going on recently, maybe I’ve mellowed. But I thought he was pretty good again. And even the guy in the VAR room stood up to some strong pressure against absolutely non-existent penalty calls from Al Nassr towards the end of the game. Presumably this means that we’ll get an awful ref in the final. Knowing the AFC it will probably be someone who’s a member of the Saudi royal family.

So, next up Al Ahli. We’ve done great to get this far so well done to all the players. Two days between games is going to absolutely cripple us so I’m not hugely optimistic for the final. Of course part of me regrets that I am not there but perhaps the beer festival on Saturday will make up for it. Fingers crossed the players can enjoy the next game as much as I will enjoy the festival.  

Team

GK 98. YAMAGUCHI Louis
DF 31. VAN WERMESKERKEN Sai
DF 2. TAKAI Kota
DF 35. MARUYAMA Yuichi
DF 13. MIURA Sota
MF 8. TACHIBANADA Kento
MF 77. YAMAMOTO Yuki
MF 37. ITO Tatsuya
MF 16. OZEKI Yuto
MF 23. MARCINHO
FW 32. KANDA Soma

Subs

GK 1. JUNG Sung-Ryong
GK 21. ANDO Shunsuke
DF 5. SASAKI Asahi (on for VAN WERMESKERKEN 70')
FW 9. ERISON (on for KANDA 46')
MF 14. WAKIZAKA Yasuto (on for OZEKI 46')
DF 15. TANABE Shuto
MF 19. KAWAHARA So (on for TACHIBANADA 60')
FW 20. YAMADA Shin
FW 28. PATRICK VERHON
FW 30. SEGAWA Yusuke (on for IENAGA 82')
MF 41. IENAGA Akihiro (on for MARCINHO 64')
DF 44. CESAR HAYDAR

Goals

ITO (Frontale) 10' 0-1
MANE (Al-Nassr) 28' 1-1
OZEKI (Frontale) 41' 1-2
IENAGA (Frontale) 76' 1-3
YAHYA (Al-Nassr) 87' 2-3

Highlights

Vs Al-Sadd (home, but really away) 28/4/25 ACL 2024/25 quarter final

 

Kawasaki Frontale 3 - 2 Al-Sadd (AET)

We’re through to the semi-final! As I watched this game from my sofa and it was pretty late, I’m not going to be able to provide you with any special insight on this occasion. Some might say that is always the case I guess. I’ve long been saying that I thought we might have been holding back slightly this year with this final stage in mind. And on the evidence of this match, well, perhaps that was right. Considering the numerous things that have been stacked against us, (and most of the other East Asian teams), you’ve got to say that going through to the semi is a great achievement. For periods of this game I thought we were able to show what we could really do. Along with that though, there were also periods of the game where we didn’t cover ourselves in glory but that’s to be expected I guess. Whilst on paper we got the easiest draw when it came to the team we were playing, (they finished fourth in their group, behind the three other teams that made it to this stage), we definitely haven’t got a good draw when it comes to the frequency of games. Many people have spoken about how this whole tournament seems to have been massively skewed in favour of the West Asian teams, and even more so in towards the Saudi teams. Al Hilal and Al Nassr will have had three clear days between games, while Al Ahli and us only get two days. Add to this the fact that we’re the only team who have played 120 minutes, it doesn’t really look that positive for the next round. But let’s not be negative, disregard the dubious scheduling, and the fact that three teams have home advantage and instead be positive about getting this far. And after all who knows what might happen in the next match? It’s going to be another late night, but perhaps could be an equally rewarding one if we can find enough players fit enough to play again so soon.

So a few things I noticed in this match. Don’t expect anything enlightening here… We scored three times, and the first two were lovely goals. It’s kind of fitting that the third came from a cock up by the opposition as we’d gifted them the second equaliser through Miura trying to kick the ball out and off of them to win a throw and it backfiring. It was a bit of a dodgy goal to concede. As was the first one, where Yamaguchi got beaten at his near post and perhaps even helped the ball in a bit. I think it was probably going in anyway, but it did feel like a very soft goal. Particularly as we’d gifted them the ball immediately before they scored by doing one of those stupid goal kick routines that we seem to be wedded to this year. Whilst it was disappointing to go ahead twice and get pegged back twice, it was delightful to go ahead a third time and survive till the final whistle. We did miss quite a few good chances, and not all of them were from Yamada apparently being determined to not pass the ball ever. I went a bit overboard with the moaning about him never passing in the hope that it might prove to be a reverse jinx and I guess it worked as he assisted for the winner. I don’t want to be mean to anyone though as it was a decent performance and one which seemed to show a bit more oomph than the recent lacklustre ones. However, saying it was a decent performance doesn’t include much of extra time where both teams looked utterly punch drunk, incapable for the most part of stringing together more than a couple of passes. Again the scheduling of another game for the victor just three days afterwards seems a bit shitty. But after all, this is the AFC we’re talking about. In previous years I’ve moaned about their impact on the stadium experience and ‘enjoyed’ the piss poor standard of their coverage when watching online. Maybe the directors have got a touch better this year. Now we only miss about 25% of the game due to them showing replays or shots of staff or players or fans whilst the game continues on. One thing I thought was quite amusing this year was when they showed an Al Sadd chance, cut to the player’s reaction and then showed exactly the same chance again from the same angle. It was as if someone had said to them to not restrict replays to just the one clip, but they hadn’t noticed the bit where they said show it from another angle too. Instead we got the same thing twice, which is probably of no interest to most people but I quite enjoyed the absurdity of it. The whole ACL experience seems to be a bit like an attempted copy of the UEFA Champions League done by people who have only seen the Champions League a couple of times and don’t know anything about football. And this is probably close to the truth, so well done to them for demonstrating it so accurately. Perhaps the worst part is that plenty of people think the European Champions League and UEFA have long since jumped the shark with their money chasing and endless tinkering. I guess it’s a bit much to expect that the AFC might have noticed that and avoided it themselves. They probably thought it was a good thing.  

A few words about Al Sadd. I really liked their fans, many of whom seemed to be dressed in the same white t-shirts and were kind of swaying and clapping as if they were at a gospel concert. It felt like they weren’t very loud, but I know how deceptive these things can be so can’t say of that was accurate or not. Their players liked a dive it seemed. But the ref was actually really good in this match. Both of these things are only my biased opinion though. I guess the final thing of interest (perhaps) was that Hasebe made good use of our subs. Not sure if it was intentional or not, but by only using four in normal time, he was able to make two changes in extra time, (one of them at half time), and maybe this made a real difference. At the same time, he has recently quite often only used four subs, so maybe I’m reading too much into this.

Anyway, all in all, an enjoyable watch. Can’t say I’m desperately gutted that I’m not there as clearly there are some issues that might make Saudi Arabia a difficult place for me to visit. I think the final stage format is a bit of a stitch up and think it would have been much better to do things another way. This is a shocking thing for me to say, but I feel sorry for the YFM fans, (and of course of the other defeated teams), who presumably with a bit of optimism in mind booked a stay which stretched until the final and are now twiddling their thumbs or doing some kind of desert tourism. The latter sounds quite appealing to me, but not being able to have a beer undermines the appeal of that quite significantly. Anyway, I’m sure the other East Asian team’s fans will now all be supporting us, right? Right? Probably not considering the defeated YFM fans left lots of ‘Fuck Frontale’ stickers in the stadium. What a class act they are. Guys, you might be out of the ACL, but don’t be sad. You’ll have plenty of new stadiums to sticker next year hopefully. I’ve clearly written too much here considering I watched this game bleary-eyed on my laptop. Expect a similar level of insight when it comes to the next post on our game on Thursday morning Japan time against Chris Ronaldson and his Al Nassr colleagues.

 

Team

GK 98. YAMAGUCHI Louis
DF 5. SASAKI Asahi
DF 2. TAKAI Kota
DF 35. MARUYAMA Yuichi
DF 13. MIURA Sota
MF 19. KAWAHARA So
MF 77. YAMAMOTO Yuki
MF 41. IENAGA Akihiro
MF 14. WAKIZAKA Yasuto
MF 23. MARCINHO
FW 9. ERISON

Subs

GK 1. JUNG Sung-Ryong
GK 21. ANDO Shunsuke
MF 8. TACHIBANADA Kento (on for YAMAMOTO 82')
DF 15. TANABE Shuto
MF 16. OZEKI Yuto (on for WAKIZAKA 100')
FW 20. YAMADA Shin (on for ERISON 56')
FW 28. PATRICK VERHON
FW 30. SEGAWA Yusuke (on for IENAGA 82')
DF 31. VAN WERMESKERKEN Sai (on for SASAKI 106')
FW 32. KANDA Soma
MF 37. ITO Tatsuya (on for MARCINHO 65')
DF 44. CESAR HAYDAR

Goals

ERISON (Frontale) 4' 1-0
PAOLO OTAVIO (Al-Sadd) 9' 1-1
MARCINHO (Frontale) 21' 2-1
CLAUDINHO (Al-Sadd) 71' 1-1
WAKIZAKA (Frontale) 98' 3-2


Highlights

 

Vs Tokyo Verdy (home) 20/4/25 J League match 11

Kawasaki Frontale 0 - 0 Tokyo Verdy

After a brief diversion into the world of defeats, we’re now back in the comfortable warm embrace of draws again. We’ve now had every possible draw up to and including 3-3 in the last five games. First, the slightly crazy anything could happen, (anything including injuries to all of our squad thanks to the useless ref ‘letting the game flow’) 2-2 against Machida, then the throwing away a lead and almost turning a win into a defeat 3-3 against YFM, (where the ref was alright), and after that the 1-1 against Shimizu where another less well known ref did a decent job. To complete the set we have this 0-0 against Verdy. I’d like to make some pithy comment about it, but the fact is, this was just an abomination of a game. Although perhaps using the word abomination is giving it a bit too much credit. Certainly the standard of football on display was diabolical, but the experience of watching the match was much closer to absolute soul-crushing tedium, rather than any kind of thrilling horror show. I’ve been saying for most of the season that I feel that we’ve been holding back a bit with the ACL looming large, but in this game, we held back so much that we came close to slipping into reverse at times. Thankfully now we’ve headed off to the ACL and can stop worrying about picking up (more) injuries before and go for it 100%. However, there is one horrible nagging doubt that is lingering in the back of my mind. I really hope we have been holding back in recent games. If that was us going for it 100%… well, that’s not a very pleasant thought.

Us -

Totally understandable starting line up as far as I was concerned. Given that we hadn’t won in five games it made sense for us to start with the first choice players and get back some of those good feelings with a nice win which would help us start the Saudi part of the ACL in good spirits and good form. Admittedly there would always be the slight risk that someone might get injured and throw a spanner in the works, but given that morale is an important part of football it definitely made sense to go full strength and finally get back to winning ways. The only possible thing that could go wrong could be if the first choice players dithered their way to another disappointing result putting in another rotten performance. Oh dear… Well at least we didn’t seem to pick up any more injuries. In hindsight maybe we could have played some players who might have something to prove, but I think the win was the most important thing, so Hasebe didn’t want to risk it. Obviously we didn’t get the win though. Perhaps we could have seen some more dramatic changes a bit earlier in the game when it looked like things weren’t going our way. We definitely could have done with Kanda coming on a bit earlier. And Ito too. After all, there were no shortage of players who deserved to be changed. Whilst I think Ozeki is getting better and better, I don’t think he’s really the impact sub that some might think he is. I guess the truth is that we didn’t have that many options off the bench. Yamauchi and Verhon seem to have now very much dropped out of favour and Miyagi, who was Hasebe’s preferred reserve is now injured. As long as we are apparently determined to stick with the 4-2-3-1 or 4-3-3 or whatever you want to call it, I am worried we are going to remain as ineffective as we’ve been recently. Against Shimizu we scored when we went with two up front. And then failed to score again after we changed back to the usual formation. It’s a shame we can’t try 4-4-2 from the start of a game. But I think this is mainly due to Wakizaka, who maybe doesn’t want to play on the wing. Hasebe did say that he wouldn’t change much initially this year as we had the ACL to think about, so hopefully he will start making his own mark on the team when we’re back to thinking about the league. Hopefully that won’t be as early as next Monday morning.

Don't be fooled. Although this looks like something
exciting happened, I can assure you it didn't.

Them -

There’s nothing to say in this section. Verdy weren’t very good, but neither were we. We had the ACL in mind, but I don’t know what they were holding back for. They’ve had a dodgy start to the season and having only one shot on target in a game against us in the form that we’re in at the moment doesn’t bode well for the rest of their season. Some might look at us getting a clean sheet in this match as a positive, but I think we probably could have got one even if we’d played Mecaboo (I didn’t know that was how you spell it…) as a lone centre back. I don’t have anything amusing to write here, so dull was this game. Ok, hmmm, let’s introduce a new section to pad this out a bit.

The wind -

Certainly the wind played a significant part in this match. In the first half we were kicking into it and seemed incapable of dealing with it. I was willing the first half to end as the number of times we were skewing clearances out of defence into the wind and somehow conceding a corner was starting to get a bit worrying. So bring on the second half I thought, when we could really feel the benefit. Sadly we struggled with it just as much, any apparent benefits that Verdy had got from it, deserting us when we were playing with it at our backs. I guess you could probably blame the wind for the general shitness on display from both teams.

Ref -

Ikeuchi was back again and as reliably useless as ever. On this occasion his signature move seemed to be him flapping his hand towards himself to encourage someone to take a goal kick or a throw in quickly. The rest of the match he seemed to be wandering around looking as if he were on work experience and was waiting for his mentor to tell him what to do. At one stage I was worried we might get stuck in an infinitely long match when the ball went out of play and clearly neither the ref or linesman had a clue whose throw it should be, and both waited for the other to do something. There were some truly bizarre decisions Ikeuchi made in this match, but to be honest, that’s probably exactly what we’d expect from him. Hopefully we won’t have him again for a while. It really says something that the less well known refs seem to be doing a much better job recently. Normally I’d expect them to be equally useless, but this year it seems that the less familiar names seem to know what they’re doing a bit more. Anyway, Ikeuchi was the perfect ref for this match, as we were awful and Verdy were awful, so it made sense that we had an awful ref too.

So, a terrible game that had no redeeming features as far as I’m concerned. When I checked into the game on Futbology it reminded me that exactly one year before I had been in the same seat watching us play Tokyo Verdy in a terrible game that finished 0-0. I guess some things never change! Both teams in this match seemed to want to try and play football but were incapable of doing so. It was a bit like watching your friend show you how they’re learning to juggle and instead of starting with two balls, they’ve instead jumped straight to the five chainsaws stage. There was no way it was going to end well. At the same time it felt a bit like being told that someone was going to cook you a delicious meal, but that person kept repeatedly dropping both the ingredients and the cooking utensils, the only thing they were able to keep hold of being the thought that they were a good cook. Or maybe (why not make it a trio of not quite right comparisons…) watching a 110m hurdle race between two athletes who plough into every hurdle and fall over repeatedly. It should be easy for their opponent to win, but each one seems to outdo the other when it comes to lack of ability. Funnily enough, the most entertaining and exiting part of this match was the half time relay race which was very close and did end up with someone falling just before the line as it looked like they were about to win, and smashing their face on the track. Why did I bother coming up with all those comparisons when the half time show perfectly reflected the match? Well actually, I guess the half time show did have a winner and some drama and excitement, so maybe the comparison doesn’t work so well.

Next up, our ACL quarter final against Al-Sadd of Qatar. Their recent form is five wins in a row. Our recent form is… well you don’t need reminding about that. I don’t know anything about them or their players, but that clearly is down to me rather than a reflection on them. We can be hopeful that it will be a good game and a good performance from us, but I guess it doesn’t look like that is very likely right now. I have a horrible feeling though that we’ll end up getting knocked out of this competition by our despicable neighbours YFM. Of course that would require a few things to happen before though. When you look back on the last few games, you’ve got to think that the only way is up, so let’s end on some positivity and cling to the hope that we’ve been taking it easy till now in 2025 and are about to start playing to the best of our abilities. Big fingers crossed for that.

Team
 

GK 98. YAMAGUCHI Louis
DF 5. SASAKI Asahi
DF 2. TAKAI Kota
DF 35. MARUYAMA Yuichi
DF 13. MIURA Sota
MF 19. KAWAHARA So
MF 6. YAMAMOTO Yuki
MF 41. IENAGA Akihiro
MF 14. WAKIZAKA Yasuto
MF 23. MARCINHO
FW 20. YAMADA Shin

Subs

GK 1. JUNG Sung-Ryong
FW 9. ERISON (on for YAMADA 68')
FW 11. KOBAYASHI Yu
MF 16. OZEKI Yuto (on for WAKIZAKA 80')
MF 17. ITO Tatsuya (on for IENAGA 80')
FW 26. YAMAUCHI Hinata
DF 31. VAN WERMESKERKEN Sai

FW 38. KANDA Soma (on for MARCINHO 89')
DF 44. CESAR HAYDAR

My Frontale Man Of The Match

 

In the stadium this usually goes to a goal scorer or to someone for some kind of sentimental reason. Perhaps it was with the latter in mind that their man of the match on this occasion was ‘ALL OF THE PLAYERS’. Whilst I understand what they were thinking, I think this is a little inaccurate and it should go to…



NONE OF THE PLAYERS - come on, this was just rubbish, wasn’t it? Not get-really-angry rubbish though, more like what’s-the-point rubbish. Congratulations no-one, you truly deserved the award.

Goals

None

Highlights

Vs Vissel Kobe (away) 16/4/25 J League match 12

 

Vissel Kobe 2 - 1 Kawasaki Frontale

Finally! Finally we’ve broken that run of drawn games. Oh… Whilst it’s never good to miss a game, sometimes, with hindsight it might seem that you did the right thing by going to work instead and not even bothering with the highlights. I realise that this is an utterly ridiculous thing to say. After all, how can I even comment that the game was terrible without even seeing a moment of it? Well, I guess the scoreline helps give you an idea. And then you could look at the stats. We had only six shots and only one on target, which their keeper let in. Might have been worth trying a few from our own half if he was that dodgy. In the second half apparently we only had two shots, both off target. I still think these games don’t really show where we are as a team, the closer we get to leaving for Saudi Arabia, the more cautious we’re becoming perhaps. It’s just a shame that we’ve had so many games crammed in to such a short period already. It’s almost as if the league is willing us to fail. Can you imagine the situation if Oniki was still in charge. The same players would have played every single minute of both the ACL and league games. But anyway, I keep saying we’re playing with the handbrake slightly on and while I still think this is the case, It’s getting as boring for me to say it as it must be for you to read it. Thankfully there’s only one more game before we leave. It’s probably a must win though, as otherwise we’ll be leaving for our biggest recent challenge with no wins in five games. Hasebe played the first team in this match and we lost. I presume he’ll rotate for Verdy. But the truth is we don’t seem to have that many options right now with an already massive and increasing by the week injury list. And if we do manage to win our first match in Saudi Arabia we’ll then be up against a really stupid schedule of games. Will there be anyone left standing by the time it comes to our first league match after returning from the ACL? Anyway, this is way too long considering I saw nothing of the match and I have nothing new or interesting to say. Perhaps there will be more to write after the game against Verdy at home on Sunday. Hopefully it will be a bit more positive. At the same time, I remember how bad the home game against Verdy was last year so I’m not holding out too much hope. Keep your fingers and your toes and your arms and your legs and even your eyes crossed, I guess. Actually maybe skip that last one.

Team
 

GK 98. YAMAGUCHI Louis
DF 5. SASAKI Asahi
DF 2. TAKAI Kota
DF 35. MARUYAMA Yuichi
DF 13. MIURA Sota
MF 19. KAWAHARA So
MF 6. YAMAMOTO Yuki
MF 17. ITO Tatsuya
MF 14. WAKIZAKA Yasuto
MF 23. MARCINHO (Yellow card 12')
FW 9. ERISON (Yellow card 45+2')

Subs

GK 1. JUNG Sung-Ryong
FW 11. KOBAYASHI Yu (on for MARCINHO 78')
MF 16. OZEKI Yuto (on for KAWAHARA 78')
FW 18. SEGAWA Yusuke
FW 20. YAMADA Shin (on for ERISON 61')
FW 26. YAMAUCHI Hinata
DF 31. VAN WERMESKERKEN Sai (on for SASAKI 78')
MF 41. IENAGA Akihiro (on for ITO 61')
DF 44. CESAR HAYDAR

Goals

SASAKI (Kobe) 31' 1-0
THULER (Kobe) 45' 2-0
MARCINHO (Frontale) 45+3' 2-1

Highlights