Vs FC Tokyo (away) 24/12/16 - Emperor's Cup Quarter Final

FC Tokyo 1 - 2 Kawasaki Frontale

This will be a short post for a couple of reasons. Firstly, I'm on holiday and it's Xmas day so I don't have a great deal of time. More significantly, I wasn't able to go to the game as I'm in London so anything I write is based on the inconsistent and grainy youtube stream that I watched. (Thanks to Kaoru for the photo above). As the next round is coming round quickly, I thought I had better get this online fast. Actually, I won't even be able to watch the next round probably, so that post could be even worse than this one!

Firstly, let me admit, that I was completely wrong when I said that Okubo would probably pick up a mystery injury before this potentially awkward game against his new employers. He also seemed to actually be quite up for it in this game, which was a bit of a surprise. The starting line-up was quite different from against Kashima and given our lacklustre performance in that game, it probably needed to be. We were still playing with a back three of Tasaka, Edu and Taniguchi, at least according to the Frontale website. Seemed that Tasaka was getting forward a lot more though. The midfield was the usual Kengo/Neto combination in the middle with Elsinho and Kurumaya on the wings. And up front we had Okubo, a fit-again Kobayashi and Nobori. As I always seem to be saying, our formation seemed quite fluid though. There were a lot of players appearing where you might not expect them to. As he has been doing a bit recently, Okubo was playing deeper than we might have previously expected him to be. And as mentioned above Tasaka was attacking a lot. Neto also seemed to be in more of an attacking mode than he usually is.

Our first goal came from Yoshito. Kengo played a ball out to the right hand side, Tasaka picked it up and put in a lovely cross. Both Yoshito and Kobayashi managed to get in front of the FC Tokyo defenders and Yoshito tried to head the ball in, but I think it came off his knee and flew into the corner of the net. Nice dummy, pretending to head it! Understandably given where he'll be playing next season, he didn't celebrate particularly wildly, but I can't imagine he has scored many knee-ers in his career. We went two up a little later in the first half. A fast counter attack saw Nobori, Neto, Elsinho and Kobayashi break up the pitch. Nobori and Neto exchanged a few passes before the ball was given to Elson, who took a touch and then bent the ball into the corner of the net, past the diving keeper. Two nice goals from us! We had a few shaky moments in the first half, but I thought we were generally good value for the lead. The second half was also a bit nervy. They dropped a looping shot on to the top of the cross bar and Maeda swung and missed when it was surely easier to prod the ball home. But we had chances too. Okubo hit the post, Kobayashi had one well saved. In injury time FC Tokyo pulled one back. After all, we never like to make things too comfortable. A free kick from the left was swung in, everyone seemed to dither, we let it bounce and there was a FC Tokyo head to nod it home. So, a nervier last few minutes than we might have hoped for, but we held on and progress to the next round.

I won't do positives and negatives as I couldn't really tell from the stream I watched, but needless to say, it's a good thing we are in the next round. It was also nice that we were able to pay tribute to Arthur Maia and the Chapecoense team who lost their lives in that horrible plane crash. All our players wore black armbands, the supporters had a few flags in tribute and apparently the goals were dedicated to Arthur Maia. Of course, any plane crash is a tragedy, but the fact that an ex-player was involved brings it closer to home. And it's particularly sad, that after not really getting a chance with us last season, his career seemed to be progressing well. Rest in peace, all of the victims.

So, next we have Omiya Ardija at Yokohama's stadium. Omiya managed to overcome Shonan Bellmare 4-2 AET. You've got to feel sorry for Shonan, as they managed to come back from a goal behind whilst playing with 10 men, and even took the lead early on in extra time, before Omiya managed to overpower them. This could give us a chance to get some revenge on Omiya after they beat us in a game which I think definitely was a major part of our second stage capitulation. Let's just hope that both Okubo and our Kazoku supporters can keep their cool a bit better than they did at the stadium in Kumagaya, which was a definite low point of the season.

Team

GK 1. Sung-Ryong JUNG

DF 6. TASAKA Yusuke (Yellow card 40')

DF 23. EDUARDO

DF 5. TANIGUCHI Shogo

MF 14. NAKAMURA Kengo

MF 21. EDUARDO NETO

MF 18. ELSINHO

MF 20. KURUMAYA Shintaro
FW 11. KOBAYASHI Yu
FW 13. OKUBO Yoshito
FW 2. NOBORIZATO Kyohei 

Subs
GK 30. ARAI Shota
MF 19. MORIYA Kentaro

MF 22. NAKANO Yoshihiro (on for OKUBO 90')

MF 25. KANO Kenta

FW 26. MIYOSHI Koji (on for NOBORIZATO 72')
MF 27. OTSUKA Shohei

DF 28. ITAKURA Ko (on for KOBAYASHI 83')

Goals  
OKUBO (Frontale) 20' 0-1 
ELSINHO (Frontale) 28' 0-2
HIRAYAMA (Tokyo) 90+1' 1-2

Highlights

Vs Kashima Antlers (home) 23/11/16 - Championship semi final

Kawasaki Frontale 0 - 1 Kashima Antlers

So, finally we can say without a doubt, that our league campaign is over. It’s a shame it had to happen like this, as I don’t think we can really say we did a good job in this game, but maybe if we were going to lose at some stage in this Championship stage, it is a bit less painful to fall at the first hurdle. And given that we only needed a draw to progress today and we couldn’t manage that suggests that maybe our race was run already. I imagine that this might be a bit shorter than other posts as there wasn’t actually that many noteworthy incidents in this match and I don’t really want to remember much of it. We did our best this year, but unfortunately, it wasn’t good enough.

We started the game with the same starting line up as against Urawa with a couple of changes on the bench. Harakawa and Kano were replaced with Kengo and Otsuka (bit of a surprise that one!). The starting shape seemed to be the same as well, (although the Frontale website suggests otherwise), Okubo playing deeper and Hasegawa and Miyoshi being the main attackers. One big change off the pitch was the presence of a couple of extra officials to the side of the goals. Not sure if this is a trial and something we might see more of next season or if it is to mark the special occasion. To be honest, they didn’t seem to do much, but to be honest, I’m not exactly sure what they are supposed to do and which calls they can make. The first half was pretty nervy from both teams and quite tight. We had a few early let offs with Kashima missing the target and our passing wasn’t quite in order. We were giving the ball away a fair bit, maybe because of the physical stuff Antlers were hitting us with, as they did at their place a few weeks ago. Once again we had a ref who was very keen to keep his cards in his pocket which some might praise, but I think it gives other teams a license to kick us out of the game. 2016 has been the season of the injury (think these things go in twelve year cycles like the zodiac animals and years thing does). Kashima’s physical play suggested we might be getting a few more, but when the next one came it was eerily reminiscent of the game we played in Kashima. Hasegawa who had once again been looking lively chased a ball heading for their keeper and pulled up with a muscle strain, exactly as Kobayashi had done. Like Kobayashi, he couldn’t continue, so the not-quite-fit Kengo was brought on. Only 20 minutes gone, the game plan out of the window. The rest of the first half seemed to pass quite quickly. Neither side was setting the world alight and chances were few and far between.

The second half started similarly and then they scored. From where we were it looked like the ball had gone off before the Kashima player crossed it, but there were certainly plenty of people closer who didn’t say anything. Kanazaki got in front of Edu and headed into the corner. I think both Edu and Sung-Ryong could have done better unfortunately. We have been conceding goals like this all season and normally we can cancel them out with some goals of our own. But not today. Conceding definitely caused us to up our game but it also caused Kashima to put pretty much the whole team behind the ball for the rest of the match. It’s a miracle we managed to create so many chances, but sadly, it’s all too familiar that we didn’t manage to convert them. We have definitely been lacking goals recently. We couldn’t stop scoring at the start of the season, but I guess at that stage Okubo looked interested and we didn’t have so many players on the treatment table. Now, through a lack of willingness to shoot, or what was more of a problem in this game, a lack of ability to hit the target, the goals have dried up and that has accounted for our league campaign’s sad demise. On 67 minutes Nobori came on for Tasaka and ten minutes later, Morimoto came on for Itakura, Yoshito dropping back into midfield again, but then pushing slowly further forward as we ran out of time. The last ten minutes was mainly taken up by us lumping the ball forward, losing it and then barely managing to avoid conceding as they counter-attacked. There was desire but didn’t seem to be much thought behind it. Our plan A was ruined early on, the normal plan B didn’t work, so we just hit it and hoped. Watching early highlights it seems we made more chances that I remember, but you win games on goals and not on chances. I read that we have twelve shots in the whole game and I guess most of these were in the second half. The telling statistic is that only three of them were on target. Kashima had nine in total, seven of which were on target. I guess this sums up our day. We tried but didn’t do too well.

It seems stupid to talk about positives and negatives but I guess I will. Negatives first. A bad performance at a time when it was important not to have one. Another injury and once again to a player who was starting to play well. Our Championship challenge is over. Terrible finishing. Yoshito’s constant barrage of moaning, particularly to Miyoshi. That’ll do I guess. Positives… erm… none really. I don’t want to pick on Yoshito again, as plenty of people didn’t play well today, but maybe it’s a good thing that he’s going to FC Tokyo and that now we can start the game with 11 players who can be bothered. He’s been an automatic selection and really hasn’t warranted his place for quite a few months. I wouldn’t be surprised if he picked up a mysterious injury that keeps him out of the Emperor’s Cup game against FC Tokyo as that’s all going to be a bit awkward. But to be honest, no positives really. I’m just gutted, particularly because I guess we got what we deserved in the end. We didn’t deserve to be champions given that we finished 2nd in the first stage and season overall and 3rd in the second stage. I’m torn about the final. Urawa deserve to win, I guess, as they got the most points over the course of the season. But, I don’t like them. And it would show up how stupid this whole Championship system is if Kashima won the Championship after getting only 20 points from their last 17 league games and finishing 11th in the second stage. I suspect I might just not watch it. Oh, I remembered a positive! Next year we will be back to the crazy concept of the team who plays the best over the course of the season winning the league.

Next up, not a lot. The next game (Emperor’s Cup vs FC Tokyo), is on December 24th when I’ll be back in the UK for Christmas, so as far as my attendance of games goes, I’m done for this year. 36 games and out. Seems weird that some teams still in the cup will have had such a long time between games, but could work out for us as we really need to get some players back from injury. I’ll write an end of season round up soon with some thoughts on who has done well and who hasn’t and try to think about what our squad is going to look like next year. But for the time being, let’s all not think about football for a little while. It might be easier that way.

Team

GK 1. Sung-Ryong JUNG

DF 6. TASAKA Yusuke

DF 23. EDUARDO (Yellow card 90+4')

DF 5. TANIGUCHI Shogo

MF 28. ITAKURA Ko

MF 21. EDUARDO NETO (Yellow card 44')

MF 18. ELSINHO 
MF 13. OKUBO Yoshito

MF 20. KURUMAYA Shintaro
FW 16. HASEGAWA Tatsuya
FW 26. MIYOSHI Koji

Subs
GK 30. ARAI Shota

DF 2. NOBORIZATO Kyohei (on for TASAKA 67')
MF 7. HASHIMOTO Koji

FW 9. MORIMOTO Takayuki (on for ITAKURA 77')
MF 14. NAKAMURA Kengo (on for HASEGAWA 21')

MF 19. MORIYA Kentaro
MF 27. OTSUKA Shohei

Goals  
KANAZAKI (Kashima) 50' 0-1 

Highlights

Vs Urawa Reds (home) 12/11/16 - Emperor's Cup 4th round

Kawasaki Frontale 3 - 3 Urawa Reds (AET) (4-1 on penalties)

The end of the season this year is a bit of a weird one. This game saw us take on my least favourite team Urawa in the Emperor’s Cup. If we manage to get to the Championship final, we’ll be meeting them again quite soon. In order to do that, we have to beat Kashima, who we played a couple of weeks ago. Things are definitely getting quite familiar. I think we’ll all know each other’s game in quite a lot of detail now, so there are going to be some interesting results. I’d say after we snatched three points from Kashima in the league, they will be quite keen to get some revenge. They pretty much dominated that match and got nothing from it. Urawa might be equally keen for revenge if we end up meeting them in the final. However, I wouldn’t say they dominated us like Kashima did. In fact this game was one of the most open games I’ve seen for a while. Our usual tactics of attacking and hoping we score one more than we concede were in full effect. And Urawa seemed to have come with a similar game plan. It was a very exciting and entertaining match. Not sure I would be so excited and entertained though if we hadn’t won in the end.

There were a couple of big pieces of news coming in to the game. Firstly, Kazama’s heir has been announced and it is very much keeping things in the family, with his assistant Toru Oniki, former Frontale and Kashima midfielder, being handed the reins. I’m cautiously optimistic about this. I think it means we will be playing the same kind of football, which I’m very happy about. Maybe he is not the most experienced candidate, but he certainly will know the club and the squad well which has to be a good thing. The second big piece of news is the departure of Okubo, who will leave us at the end of the season for FC Tokyo. Whilst I am not particularly upset about this, (he’s not been contributing much recently), the timing of the announcement is a bit weird. I have no idea why, even if the deal had been done, the announcement wasn’t saved for after the end of the season. After this victory in the Emperor’s Cup, we will now face FC Tokyo in the next round, which is going to be a bit weird for him and for us and for them. If he doesn’t play well for us, we’ll definitely have something to moan about. If he does, it’s going to be a strange start to his FC Tokyo career. I wonder what kind of reception he’ll get. Just weird timing all round. I don’t get it at all. I wish him the best of luck in the future (apart from when he plays us…). He’s given a lot to Frontale in his time with us, but I think realistically we all know it’s probably time for a change.

Getting round to the game, there were a couple of notable pieces of team news. Sung-Ryong was back in goal after his injury. And as one player comes back from injury, another gets crocked (Kengo). I don’t think it’s very serious, but he wasn’t able to play against Urawa. Itakura started, which is a good thing for us looking towards the future. Hasegawa and Miyoshi featured up front again and Okubo seemed to be playing a much deeper role. He was announced as a midfielder. But then again, Tasaka was announced as a striker and he seemed to be taking his usual position at the back. Itakura and Neto were playing in central midfield and Itakura was getting forward a lot. I didn’t realise that he could play there. I guess it says a lot that I can’t really say the exact formation after watching 120 minutes of the game. Positions seemed pretty fluid, and it was a very strange game. Very, very open with plenty of chances for both teams. Once again we were treated to a wildly inconsistent referee, a new one for my list, Ueda. Some of his decisions were extremely dodgy, but pleasingly the dodgy ref seemed to be handing out bad deals to both teams fairly equally. Some pretty meaty challenges were ignored and some pretty innocuous ones punished. I reckon both teams were denied what were probably penalties. Us when Itakura was knocked down in the box, and them when a ball definitely seemed to hit a Frontale hand. But the most baffling thing was when one of our players was flagged offside and he let Urawa take the free kick from well inside our half. Thankfully it didn’t come to anything. So much happened in this game that it’s difficult to remember everything, but the notes I made on the first half remind me of a truly horrible miss from Yoshito right in front of the goal and a strong first half performance from Neto. Also it would be a shame for me to not mention the rotten Urawa fans. When they really get going the noise they make is very impressive. But this happens so rarely. They spend most of the time fairly silent and only made noise when we have the ball, booing and whistling. Maybe they believe that this is what the English hooligans they model themselves on do. I just don’t get it.

The second half started with some singing from Urawa. Amusingly it was to the tune of ‘Go West’, that football hard man tune recorded by tough guys the Village People and covered by the Pet Shop Boys. I wonder if they are aware of the connotations that come with the song. Given the general bigotry (for example, the famous JAPANESE ONLY!! banner) of some of their fans, I suspect this has gone over their heads. Kind of amusing anyway. By the way, I should have mentioned that our fans singing was in a bit better order this week with the return of the banned ‘Kazoku’ member who leads the singing. Also we seem to have introduced a snare to our drumming arsenal which gave things a jaunty feel. It sounded pretty good to be honest. On the pitch, loads of chances were being made again. Yoshito seemed to be getting involved quite a lot which was nice and his criticism of the other players wasn’t as intense as it has been previously. Neto began to give the ball away a little but was still doing a decent enough job. Just not as perfectly as he was in the first half. There was a heartbreaking moment when Miyoshi managed to dribble into the box but couldn’t quite get the shot away and stumbled instead. Elsinho, (who was playing well, got stretchered off the pitch but thankfully managed to come back on after a bit of treatment), was replaced by Moriya, who played in a kind of right wing back position, not exactly his favoured position. Hasegawa, who had also done a pretty good job and run himself into the ground was taken off and Noborizato brought on. Our formation got a little more confusing, but it seemed that Okubo moved forward a little and Itakura was still all over the pitch doing a great job. This is where my notes start to run out. The game got a bit too intense and as the highlights for the Emperor’s Cup take ages to come online I can’t use them to refresh my memory. I remember the way Urawa took the lead though. A long ball hoof caught us flat-footed and Koroki was able to take the ball round Sung-Ryong and slot home. It’s a shame that we conceded in such a way, but we were still in the game as we were making a lot of chances. We rolled up our socks and kept on pressing and making chances and we were equal on 86 minutes. It looked like we had missed another chance as the shot was saved (if I remember correctly), but the ref pointed to the penalty spot, Moriwaki having handled in the box. Yoshito and Morimoto (who had come on for Kurumaya by this stage), did a weird thing in that they had a conversation at the side of the goal whilst having a drink, presumably well within earshot of the Urawa keeper, I guess discussing how the penalty would be taken. I can’t say if the mind games worked or not, but Yoshito was able to put the penalty away, even though the keeper got a hand on it (see photos below. The first time photo burst has been any use for anything for me). Given that this was on 86 minutes, it looked like we were heading for extra time. And we were, but not before a couple more goals were scored. Urawa once again took the lead through a not so dangerous shot, as far as I can remember, which Sung-Ryong decided to punch instead of catch and straight at a prone Noborizato’s foot and the ball bounced into the net. Pretty ridiculous. This was on 88 minutes, so once again, we had scored and then conceded pretty much straight after. This is when we seem to be most vulnerable recently. So, it looked like we were going out of the cup. But in the five minutes injury time we managed to equalise again. Nobori crossed the ball into the box. Edu who was pretty much playing up front now, swung and totally missed the ball and it dropped for Morimoto who lifted a volley over the keeper into the corner of the net. Extra time!

In extra time, Urawa again took the lead. Things were really stretched at this stage, but you have to blame our defending again. On a quick counter attack, Urawa crossed the ball along the floor and a completely unmarked Aoki was able to sweep it home. Looking at a replay it does look a bit like Edu is tugged back when he tries to get towards him though, but it would have been a tough call to give it. On 117 minutes we were level again. Miyoshi crossed a lovely ball over, Itakura headed the ball back into the centre of the box and Edu was able to head it into the corner. Lovely finish! So on to penalties it was. I can’t remember ever watching one of my teams win on penalties. I’m sure it has happened sometime in the last 25 years, but if it has, the memory has long faded. They are undeniably exciting, but I think I probably could have done without the extra stress at this stage. Although as it turned out, maybe I needn’t have worried so much as we coped with them pretty comfortably. Yoshito put our first one away fairly easily. Their first penalty hit the post but was then retaken and scored as Sung-Ryong was a little off the line the first time (and got booked for being so. Not sure what the ref would have done if he did it again…). Our second was gutsily taken by Miyoshi and bent right into the corner. Perfect! Their second was saved by Sung-Ryong diving to his left. Our third was scored by Edu, again very gutsily chipping the ball down the centre of the goal. He must have some nerve to do a Panenka in this situation! Then Koroki hit the post after doing one of those annoying run ups where he pretty much stops half way. Not sure why he’s allowed to get away with that to be honest. Justice! Our fourth to seal the win was smashed home by Neto, the keeper getting a hand on it, but it probably was a bit too powerful. And then everything went nuts. It was particularly satisfying to win for a few reasons. Firstly, it was against Urawa. We had been behind three times in the game but had really dominated on chances and we had managed to do it with three big players missing through injury. I would say this is a great morale booster going into the Championship, but given how these things tend to work out, we’ll probably just have made Urawa angry and that is if we even get to the final, having to defeat Kashima first, who we also pissed off recently. So, still plenty to do. But it was a thoroughly enjoyable evening. Which is a big contrast to the last time we were at the Todoroki!

Positives and negatives. Let’s start negative this time. Injuries (but not from this game). Hope Kengo and Oshima are back soon. Poor defending for all three goals we conceded. Positives, plenty. Good performances again from Hasegawa and Miyoshi up front with plenty of energy and threat. Long may that continue. Itakura was something of a revelation, doing a great job all over the pitch. Neto was great in the first half. Yoshito seemed to care a bit more. Let’s hope he can continue that and leave us on a high. Crucial goals from Morimoto and Edu. Winning on penalties, with some young players having the nerve to step up and managing to score. And also credit to Sung-Ryong, who did a great job in the shoot out. If you save one you’ve done well and I’ll give him credit for the miss too as the mind games is all part of it. And finally, we’re in the next round, but sadly (for me) it’s on Christmas eve, so I won’t be able to watch it as I’ll be in the UK. An interesting match against FC Tokyo (hello Yoshito!).

Now, we have a week and a half off until the first Championship game on the 23rd against Kashima. This should hopefully give my voice a bit of time to recover. I got a little excited in that last game. Let’s hope we are not swinging from good to bad performances and we can keep things going in a positive way. Kashima didn’t have a very good second stage, but then neither did we really, and like I said above, they’ll probably be looking for revenge but let’s hope we can stay strong and keep the momentum going!

Team

GK 1. Sung-Ryong JUNG (Yellow card 120')

DF 6. TASAKA Yusuke

DF 23. EDUARDO

DF 5. TANIGUCHI Shogo

MF 28. ITAKURA Ko (Yellow card 63')

MF 21. EDUARDO NETO (Yellow card 76')

MF 18. ELSINHO 
MF 13. OKUBO Yoshito

MF 20. KURUMAYA Shintaro
FW 16. HASEGAWA Tatsuya
FW 26. MIYOSHI Koji

Subs
GK 30. ARAI Shota

DF 2. NOBORIZATO Kyohei (on for HASEGAWA 68')
MF 7. HASHIMOTO Koji

FW 9. MORIMOTO Takayuki (on for KURUMAYA 75')
MF 15. HARAKAWA Riki

MF 19. MORIYA Kentaro (on for ELSINHO 53')
MF 25. KANO Kenta

Goals  
KOROKI (Urawa) 71' 0-1 
OKUBO (Frontale) 86'  1-1

NOBORIZATO (Frontale) OWN GOAL 88'  1-2
MORIMOTO (Frontale) 90+1' 2-2

AOKI (Urawa) 97' 2-3
EDU (Frontale) 117'  3-3

Penalties
OKUBO (Frontale) 1-0
ABE (Urawa) 1-1
MIYOSHI (Frontale) 2-1
ZLATAN (Urawa) 2-1 (saved)
EDUARDO (Frontale) 3-1
KOROKI (Urawa) 3-1 (hit post)
EDUARDO NETO (Frontale) 4-1

  

Highlights

Vs Gamba Osaka (home) 3/11/16 - 2nd Stage match 17

Kawasaki Frontale 2 - 3 Gamba Osaka

So, the second stage is finished and as far as I’m concerned, good riddance to it. It’s been a topsy-turvy few months with us veering between half decent performances and displays that are so abject that is was a miracle we managed to finish third in the second stage and second overall. We finished up with the visit of Gamba and it was somehow appropriate that we played a game that perfectly encapsulated our season as a whole. It was a true game of two halves with us playing some of the best stuff I’ve seen us manage for a long time in the first half before shooting ourselves in the foot in the second. Our chances in the Championship don’t look great judging on how we finished the second stage to be honest. Sorry the photos are terrible again, but I guess that's kind of appropriate for this game to be honest.

Once again we had been hit with the injury stick so had to juggle the team. Edu was absent, still no Oshima, Kobayashi out for 6 weeks and therefore missing the rest of the season pretty much. Kazama shuffled things up considerably with a front four of Okubo, Miyoshi, fresh from his Asian U19 triumph, Elsinho and Hasegawa. It was pretty surprising to be honest, especially the fact that it was Hasegawa in the middle and furthest forward. Tasaka played right back and Noborizato left. Kurumaya moved into central defence. Still no sign of Sung-Ryong so Arai continued in goal after his great performance against Kashima. We made an amazing start, wiping away all lingering memories of our last two woeful first halves against Hiroshima and Kashima. We were playing with drive, pace and enthusiasm and they were having real trouble dealing with the running of Miyoshi, Hasegawa and Elsinho. Okubo was sitting back a little in more of a playmaker role, playing pretty well and he seemed to be up for it for a change. Gamba were quite physical (seems everyone is against us recently. Maybe they worked out we don’t deal with that kind of thing very well) and there were loads of little fouls being committed. The ref kept his cards in his pocket though, as they seem to have been doing recently. Instead of being swamped by attacks as we were in the last two games we were winning the ball much further up the pitch and breaking fast. We were totally destroying them down our left hand side, Miyoshi doing a great job. Our first goal was very pleasing. It’s great to see young players scoring, especially when they could be very useful in the near future. On six minutes, Nobori swung a ball across which was nudged on by a sliding Gamba player. Okubo shot from close range, it was blocked by the keeper, but dropped to Hasegawa who smashed it into the roof of the net. His first J League goal. Well done him! Not long later the lead was doubled when Okubo floated a nice ball through for Elsinho who turned and laid it off to Miyoshi who cracked it into the corner. We were playing well and everything was great. A little while after,  Hasegawa played a great ball across for Okubo whose overhead went just wide. We had lots of chances. We really probably should have scored a few more. If only we had.

The second half started fairly well for us with Miyoshi hitting the post and Okubo hitting the bar. Then everything fell apart. Gamba broke and Shota couldn’t quite stop the cross/shot and it dribbled into the net. The defence were caught flat-footed. A minute later they were level. Okubo possibly played the ball a little too far ahead of himself deep in his own half and was flattened by a Gamba player. Gamba grabbed the loose ball, passed it to a rapidly advancing Kurata who ran straight past several defenders and hit a shot at goal. Shota stopped it but basically just laid it off for the Gamba player to pass the ball into the net. Have to say, Shota probably should have done better for both of these goals but don’t want to blame him too much. I would say so, as I am clearly biased towards Frontale, but I’m not sure the challenge on Okubo was anywhere near fair. It was hard and with no intention of winning the ball and I think the ref could easily have given us a free kick. We still should have defended better though. There weren’t any challenges for either of these goals really. Hasegawa was taken off the equaliser for Moriya, who to be honest, didn’t have a great game but didn’t exactly have much to work with. Another substitution followed shortly afterwards with Tasaka being taken off and replaced by Nakano, which could have worked, but didn’t. It gave us a bit more going forward, but we were still shaky at the back. The third goal came ten minutes after the second. Ademilson was given plenty of time on the edge of the box to shoot and he scored. No challenges again. For all three goals, we had plenty of defenders around but there was so much time and space for them to be able to easily shoot and score. Just not good enough. Miyoshi was replaced for Morimoto after we went behind but it was too little too late. The rest of the game was played out with us lumping the ball forward and losing it, repeatedly for about 15 minutes. There was a total lack of ideas and inspiration.

Of course the real punch in the guts came when we found out that Yokohama had done us a favor and held Urawa to a draw. If we had held on to our lead we would have gone straight to the Championship final as overall league winners and had the moral high-ground. As it is, if we are to get anything from this season it will be with a bit of a bad taste in the mouth as it will have to be through the ridiculous Championship play offs. Even if we win this year which judging by recent performances will be extremely unlikely, I’m still glad that next year the whole first and second stage nonsense will be gone. We deserve to finish second and no higher, because we just haven’t been able to do it when it counted. The thing that hurts about this performance is that it was so predictable. We have rarely been able to play two good halves of football in the same game this season, particularly in the second stage. We either get hit early before we get going and then manage to salvage something or start great and end up hanging on desperately. If I have to look for what went wrong in this game, I’d have to say that the substitutions didn’t work, although the score was level by that time anyway. Although if we’re removing Hasegawa, why not put Morimoto on to add a bit of muscle up front? By the time he came on it was a pretty much lost cause. I guess we can complain about injuries this season and it does feel like we get an inordinate amount of them, but most of them are coming from training. How unlucky are we really? Definitely, yesterday’s starting eleven would have been different if everyone was fit, but the fact is we played really well with that eleven for 60 minutes, but just couldn’t shore things up when we needed to. Do any of us really believe that we are going to beat Kashima and then Urawa over two games? It would be great if we did, but I think it’s more likely that we won’t even make it to the final. We were very lucky to beat Kashima last week and I’m sure they are going to want to make a point when they play us in what is now a much more important game.

So positives and negatives. Positives first. A great first half performance (although we should have scored more). Great to see Hasegawa and Miyoshi on the score sheet. Yoshito playing a bit better for periods of the game. Negatives, total capitulation through non-existent defending in the second half. Another two goals conceded in rapid succession, I guess due to total lack of concentration. Having the chance to win the league overall and throwing it away. Confidence and moral taking a beating with another crushingly bad performance, even if we were good for 60 of the 90 minutes. Not taking the chances we had. To be honest, it seems like I’m writing the same things most weeks recently.

So, next we have Urawa at home in the Emperor’s Cup. We beat them last time at their place so they'll be up for revenge and they have just taken advantage of our huge slip-up so I can’t see us having much confidence compared to them. But who knows, if we can play like we did in the first half, we can do them some damage. Gamba and Urawa both looked pretty bad in the Levain cup final and we proved yesterday that we could destroy a team playing like Gamba did. Unfortunately we also proved that we can destroy our own chances with some suicidal play. I have no idea which way it will go, but will be there supporting and hoping for the best as usual.  We really need to sort things out though if the early promise we showed this season and some of the great performances we put in early on are not going to count for nothing. A nice win against Urawa in the cup would certainly help to bring back a bit of sunshine for the team and the supporters into what has recently become a very cloudy sky.

Team

GK 30. ARAI Shota

DF 6. TASAKA Yusuke

DF 5. TANIGUCHI Shogo

DF 20. KURUMAYA Shintaro

DF 2. NOBORIZATO Kyohei

MF 14. NAKAMURA Kengo

MF 21. EDUARDO NETO (Yellow card 77')

MF 18. ELSINHO 
MF 26. MIYOSHI Koji

FW 13. OKUBO Yoshito
FW 16. HASEGAWA Tatsuya

Subs
GK 24. ANDO Shunske

MF 7. HASHIMOTO Koji

FW 9. MORIMOTO Takayuki (on for MIYOSHI 78')
MF 19. MORIYA Kentaro (on for HASEGAWA 67')

MF 22. NAKANO Yoshihiro (Yellow card 79') (on for TASAKA 71')
MF 25. KANO Kenta
DF 28. ITAKURA Ko

Goals  

HASEGAWA (Frontale) 6'  1-0
MIYOSHI (Frontale) 18' 2-0
FUJIHARU (Gamba) 65'  2-1
IDEGUCHI (Gamba) 66'  2-2
ADEMILSON (Gamba) 76'  2-3

Highlights

Vs Kashima Antlers (away) 29/10/16 - 2nd Stage match 16

Kashima Antlers 0 - 1 Kawasaki Frontale

Firstly, apologies it has taken me so long to write this post. Saturday saw us make the relatively short but particularly arduous journey to Kashima. On the map it doesn’t look so far but the transport connections to Kashima and in particular their stadium make the journey a bit of a pain. The game was a 14:00 kick off but the gates opened three hours before so we aimed to get there around that time. On arriving at Tokyo station to get the bus (pretty much the only way to get there unless you drive yourself) we found that there were a huge amount of people doing the same thing. This big crowd was mainly made up of football fans, but there was also a contingent of people traveling to Kashima for other reasons who probably were wishing that they were going on a different day. After queuing for an hour we managed to get on a bus, but there was still a huge amount of people behind us. Maybe this congestion was the reason they open the stadium so early, to give people a chance to arrive late, but still on time, if you know what I mean. One thing that really surprised me was the large number of Kashima fans, who presumably make this horrible journey every home game. The bus arrived promptly in Kashima city after about 1h40m, but then we had to weave round the city stopping at various places before finally arriving at the stadium about two and a half hours after we left. The journey back was worse. We didn’t have to stop anywhere as we were on a direct bus, but due to everyone leaving the stadium at the same time the heavy traffic made the journey take around three and a half hours. Bit of an ordeal all in all, and I think if we had lost and I had to make that journey back I would probably have never watched another football game or ridden on another bus. But anyway, this blog isn’t supposed to be about traffic and transport so I guess I’d better talk about the game a bit. 

This game was kind of a must win, but at the same time, one which we didn’t actually have to win. This post is full of contradictory statements, isn’t it? If we wanted to go into the last game with any hope of being top of the table overall, we had to win it. But given that we need Urawa to slip up and that we are already qualified for the championship, it didn’t actually matter. It was nice again to be in a stadium with no running track and the view was pretty good. It was unfortunate that I had to remove all the caps of my water bottles before entering, meaning that I had to rapidly drink a liter of water as I was worried I was going to spill it otherwise. I’m used to this kind of thing in the UK but I think this is the first time I’ve seen it in Japan. Maybe they thought I looked a bit dodgy. There was one change to the team from the last game, the injured Oshima being replaced by Moriya. Hashimoto was back on the bench. The team lined up in pretty much the same way as Hiroshima. This time Tasaka was announced as a striker instead of a midfielder but took his usual position as one of three centre backs. Glad we are still doing that bluff though. We took a lot of fans, I think around 3000 and we were in good voice and competently waving our big flag. The same can’t be said for Kashima who were having an upper-tier nightmare, wrestling with two huge twisted and backwards flags whilst singing a pre-game song that had about five verses and definitely went on too long. Apparently the Kashima fans' main gripe after the game was this song and flag display and they were very complimentary about our abilities in both respects. Thanks!

Their team though weren’t having the same problems. The first half was very similar to the Hiroshima game with us not being able to do much and losing the ball a lot and spending a lot of time penned into our own half. Kashima were a bit better than Sanfrecce though and they hit the bar a couple times. We were definitely living dangerously. Their front two of Kanazaki and Suzuki were causing us problems. Suzuki was a particularly unpleasant individual, tripping, kicking, shirt pulling and constantly diving. Definitely a new hate figure for me. The referee once again was the hopeless Nishimura, making completely random decisions, letting lots go and punishing non-existent infringements. How he is still allowed to officiate, I don’t know. Arai was having a very good game in goal. He made several very important saves and one of the times they hit the bar was because he had got just enough on it to stop it going in to the net. I’m really pleased he’s playing and that he’s playing well. He kept us in the game. One big bummer about the first half was Kobayashi being stretchered off. He pulled up when racing through on goal in one of our rare chances. I hope it’s not serious and that he can play soon, if not against Gamba on Thursday, then when the Championship games start.

The second half wasn’t so different. We seemed to switch to something more like a 4-4-2 with Tasaka in the midfield, but he was also at the back too so all in all I was a bit confused. The play wasn’t so different though. Nishimura was still hopeless. He seemed to have forgotten his cards as there were some dubious challenges that warranted cards going unpunished. I have a feeling that we will have to deal with him again this season before it’s finished. We were winning the ball from Kashima quite well but then pretty much immediately giving it back to them. Our passing wasn’t working and Okubo was still playing like he has been recently. Plenty of anger towards his teammates and not much else. On 55 minutes Nakano came on for Moriya and his running started to get us out of our own half and start threatening a little. Our goal though came down the other side of the pitch on 65 minutes. Taniguchi played a lovely pass out to Elsinho who drove into the box and shot towards the far corner of the goal. The keeper saved it but could only parry the ball to Morimoto who tapped it home and celebrated like crazy. Really pleased for him! The goal might not have been completely against the run of play but did feel a bit lucky considering how we had been battered in the first half. 25 minutes to hang on… After the goal Kashima started to commit a few more players forward and we had a few chances on the counter attack. Kashima hit the bar again and things were pretty tense. As you can see from the video below, Kashima pretty much dominated the game and we did a bit of a smash and grab on them. There’s not much in the way of Frontale highlights on there, although we did almost manage to double our lead near the end of the game but Morimoto’s shot was saved well. Noborizato made a late appearance replacing Nakano, which can't felt good for him, but was probably intended to give us a bit more defensively. So, we held on and got the three points but sadly Urawa won too so we’re still in second place overall. One last chance on Thursday as we pay Gamba at home and Urawa go to Yokohama. Can our neighbours do us a big favour I wonder? I hope so.

Positives and negatives. Positives first as we can do those a lot quicker. Great game from Arai, and we managed to get three points we really didn’t deserve. A Morimoto goal has got to be a good thing too as we really need a striker who is scoring. Which brings me on to the negatives. Okubo had no shots in the whole game. He clearly seems to be out of form and all out of enthusiasm. Why people will say nothing bad about him but slag off Nakano for misplacing a pass is baffling to me. At least one of those two players is trying. Okubo has been a great player for Frontale, but he should not be playing at the moment. We are effectively starting every game with ten men when he is one of our eleven. There seem to be a few teams interested in him and I’d say it’s almost certain he’ll be leaving in the summer as he apparently can’t be bothered any more. Good luck to him, but I think we’ll do better without him now, and I mean the end of this season as well as next season. Bet he won’t be dropped though. I hope he proves me wrong and scores a load of goals in the championship. Aside from singling him out, our attacking was not up to scratch in this game. Too much sideways and backwards movement, but more crucially, too much giving the ball away. We need to improve fast. The two players who had the most shots were Elsinho and Morimoto (who only played half the game), but both of them only had three, so not exactly setting the world on fire up front. And our defensive performance was another negative. Apart from Shota, we had a bit of a nightmare. That also needs to be sorted fast. And possibly the final big negative, the injury to Kobayashi. Hope it’s not too serious. [Apparently, it is, six weeks...]

So, next we close off the second stage with Gamba at Todoroki. Another one of these potentially must win/potentially meaningless games. What happens at Yokohama will be more significant. It would be classic Frontale I guess if Yokohama did us a favor and we lost to Gamba. But anyway, we’ll know soon and then we can start thinking about the Emperor’s Cup against Urawa and the championship game(s). Miyoshi and Itakura might be back from the U19 Asian championship (which they won! Congratulations!) but I heard Miyoshi has an injury so probably won’t play. It’s a shame, as it would be nice, if Kobayashi is still injured to see a front two of Miyoshi and Morimoto. But I guess it will probably be Okubo and Morimoto. Come on Yoshito, make me look like an idiot (please! please!) and score a load of goals. I’d be happy to eat my words. So, come on Frontale! And come on Yokohama too!

Team

GK 30. ARAI Shota
DF 5. TANIGUCHI Shogo

DF 23. EDUARDO

DF 6. TASAKA Yusuke

MF 14. NAKAMURA Kengo

MF 21. EDUARDO NETO

MF 18. ELSINHO 
MF 19. MORIYA Kentaro

MF 20. KURUMAYA Shintaro

FW 11. KOBAYASHI Yu
FW 13. OKUBO Yoshito

Subs
GK 24. ANDO Shunske

DF 2. NOBORIZATO Kyohei (on for NAKANO 90+1')

MF 7. HASHIMOTO Koji

FW 9. MORIMOTO Takayuki (Yellow card 90+3') (on for KOBAYASHI 37')
MF 16. HASEGAWA Tatsuya

MF 22. NAKANO Yoshihiro (on for MORIYA 55')
MF 25. KANO Kenta

Goals  

MORIMOTO (Frontale) 65'  0-1

  

Highlights

Vs Sanfrecce Hiroshima (home) 22/10/16 - 2nd Stage match 15

Kawasaki Frontale 2 - 0 Sanfrecce Hiroshima

Football’s back! And to be honest, the break was welcome. After a fairly long and expensive journey to Kobe to see us put in a clueless performance and get hammered, I think plenty of us welcomed the few weeks off. But as tends to be the case, I was itching to get back to a game about half way through that break. Our visitors this time were Sanfrecce Hiroshima, who in spite of having a fairly mediocre season are probably a team we should always be wary off. As usual we are pretty much in the dark with regards to injuries as there never seems to be much information released about them. We can presume that Sung-Ryong is still injured, but Shota was back! Seems that Nara has broken a bone again (poor him! What do we do in training? Kick boxing. Sorry, I think I always make that joke). Other absentees were Miyoshi and Itakura who were away with the Japanese under 19s (great goal Miyoshi, by the way!). The starting line-up was pretty similar to the one against Kobe a few weeks ago, the major difference being the change of keeper. Hasegawa, Nakano and Noborizato all appeared on the bench. Good to see them back! And also funny to see that we are still doing that kind of trick, where we announce Tasaka as a striker and then have him play as one of the three centre backs. Surely no-one is being tricked by this, but I quite enjoy it all the same, so long may it continue.

The first half. we started where we had left off against Kobe a few weeks ago with some suicidal passing out of defence, gifting Sanfrecce a few early shots.  Things really weren’t clicking early on and it was thanks to good performances from Taniguchi and Shota that we didn’t concede. The defence looked a lot more solid than at Kobe though, but Oshima and Neto just in front of them were giving them plenty to deal with, misplacing quite a few passes. We kept getting caught dwelling on the ball. I guess it was the Sanfrecce game plan to get in our faces and not give us any time on the ball. They were pretty physical and we didn’t seem to be able to deal with it very well. To be honest, most of the first half was pretty uneventful from a Frontale point of view. I don’t think we really made any real chances, but Hiroshima weren’t much better. They had chances but their finishing was horrible. The game felt a little like a dead rubber. Think it was the season before last where this fixture was the final home game of the season and both teams were just going through the motions with nothing to play for.  And this felt the same, although arguably, we still could clinch the league overall and go straight to the final of the championship. But we need Urawa to slip up again and sadly they haven’t yet. The stats on the Frontale website say we had two shots in the first half, but I’m not sure I’d really have called them shots. So far, so scrappy and so mediocre.

The second half started with no changes in personnel but we seemed like a different team. Hiroshima were still pushing us around a bit but we seemed to be creating a bit more. Oshima seemed to be the midfielder pushing further forward with Kengo sitting back a bit and we had a few early shots! We were still not quite there though. We looked a bit shaky at the back and the ref was letting quite a lot go on the pitch which I don’t think was helping us. Sanfrecce had a great chance to go ahead but Shota just managed to push their shot on to the post. We were making chances but unfortunately they weren’t falling to our strikers. Guess this is the point where I make my usual moan about Okubo. He still seems off the pace and his moaning to younger players about passes going astray can’t help the team. I think his game was summed up when collecting the rebound from a stinging Oshima shot he crossed/shot the ball straight off the pitch. On 72 minutes Oshima was replaced by Moriya who seemed to immediately make an impact. Okubo gave him a mouthful though when he didn’t pass back to him outside the area (even though the original pass from Okubo was horrible and barely made it to Moriya). We were still making more chances. Elsinho, whose hair is getting increasingly epic week by week, smashed one towards goal and the ball bounced agonisingly wide from the keepers save. But things were encouraging. We looked to have regained some of our old style. Nakano came on for Edu (who himself had a few good shots on goal), Kurumaya dropping back into defence. Think they’d both played alright though, so maybe it was just an excuse to get Nakano on and have him run at Hiroshima a bit. On 82 minutes we finally took the lead. A couple of shots were blocked in the box, Kobayashi laid the ball off for Moriya, who took a touch past a defender and sent a lovely dipping shot in from outside the box. It was the dip that did it, as the Hiroshima keeper seemed to be watching it sail over the bar as it dropped over his head into the net. It was a cracking goal. Let’s hope Moriya has a few more of them up his sleeve to score this season. Then a nervy last ten minutes with a surprising five minutes of injury time. Noborizato came on for Okubo, presumably to waste some time. We were defending deep and not getting much of the ball, but we were doing a decent enough job it seemed. With a minute to go, Hiroshima sent their keeper up for a corner. This kind of thing rarely seems to work, but at the same time it rarely seems to go as wrong as it could. But today was the day it did. We broke with the ball sending the Hiroshima keeper scurrying back to his goal. Elsinho had the opportunity to have a shot from his own half but maybe sensibly he squared it as we were advancing in numbers. Noborizato totally scuffed his pass but it fell to Kobayashi who passed it on to Kengo (nice stamina for an old man!). By now the keeper was back, but presumably a bit flustered and Kengo was able to pass it under him into the corner of the net. Possibly a bit harsh on Hiroshima but it felt pretty good at the time.

So, a win. It feels like it has been a while. Positives and negatives. First the positives. Good performances from the defence, particularly Taniguchi and from Shota in goal. Great goal from Moriya and us playing in the way that we were earlier in the season for some of the second half. Kobe losing takes us back to second in the second stage but… Negatives, Urawa won with a 90th minute goal so we remain in second overall. Okubo wasn’t good again. I like him as a player, or at least I did till this year. I don’t think he’s adding anything at the moment and if Gamba are interested in him, I don’t think it would be a great loss to have him leave at the end of the season. Would certainly much rather keep hold of Kobayashi (who Gamba are also sniffing around apparently). Final negative has to be the shaky first half performance, especially in midfield. We can’t afford to play like that when we get to the final stage.

Up next, Kashiwa away. A game in a place that is so unreachable by train that despite being in the next prefecture to Tokyo, apparently takes something like seven hours to get to. Thankfully they have a direct bus to the ground from Tokyo station, but guess we’re going to have an early start next week as that bus still takes two and a half hours. Depending on the Urawa result again, the game could be kind of pointless, but as long as we have a chance, we have to keep winning. Let’s hope that my fellow Brit, Jay at Jubilo Iwata can do a job on Urawa for us. If Urawa do finish top overall, we are likely to be playing Kashima again very soon in the play offs. So this game could be an interesting glimpse at what could happen later. Anyway, all we can do is keep winning, so let’s hope that is exactly what we do. Oh, and finally, apologies for the photos in this post. They are worse than usual, and that's saying something!

Team

GK 30. ARAI Shota
DF 5. TANIGUCHI Shogo

DF 23. EDUARDO

DF 6. TASAKA Yusuke

MF 10. OSHIMA Ryota

MF 21. EDUARDO NETO

MF 18. ELSINHO  (Yellow card 69')
MF 14. NAKAMURA Kengo

MF 20. KURUMAYA Shintaro

FW 11. KOBAYASHI Yu
FW 13. OKUBO Yoshito

Subs
GK 24. ANDO Shunske

DF 2. NOBORIZATO Kyohei (on for OKUBO 90+4')

FW 9. MORIMOTO Takayuki
MF 16. HASEGAWA Tatsuya

MF 19. MORIYA Kentaro (on for OSHIMA 72')
MF 22. NAKANO Yoshihiro (on for EDUARDO 82')
MF 25. KANO Kenta

Goals  

MORIYA (Frontale) 84'  1-0
NAKAMURA (Frontale) 90+5'  2-0

  

Highlights