Vs Omiya Ardija (home) 25/6/16 - 1st stage, match 17

Kawasaki Frontale 2 - 0 Omiya Ardija 

 

So, no great surprise, but it wasn’t to be. Fukuoka couldn’t manage to get anything from their game against Kashima and therefore our result was irrelevant as far as the outcome of the first stage anyway. It’s a shame really, as the win over Omiya was a decent game. Omiya didn’t offer much and we seemed well in control. But maybe it’s notable that we only scored twice. We had a lot of chances but Yoshito stills seems a bit off the boil. I think he needs an easy goal or two to get him back on track and scoring again. Yeah, he’s got goals recently, but they were penalties and something’s not quite clicking for him at the moment.

Otsuka got another goal and it was a nice finish again. He probably could never have imagined less than a year ago when he got released by Giravanz Kitakyushu that he would be scoring a goal that could potentially have taken the first stage in J1. I hope the fact that he is starting games and playing well will increase his confidence even more and that he’ll really start knocking them in. And Kengo’s goal was a cracker blasted in from the corner of the box. Always nice to see him score and who knows what might have happened if we’d had him available last week. Oh well…

Other notable points from the game, well not that many. Igawa did a decent job which is a relief as we are getting down to bare bones in the defence at the moment. Our bench today was mainly midfielders. Sung-Ryong didn’t have too much to do but what he did have to do he did well. No-one else particularly stood out for good or bad reasons. It was just the kind of solid win you’d expect a team challenging for the title to secure. It’s just a shame that we can’t do this kind of thing against teams in the bottom three. Thankfully, our next opponents Sendai have climbed the table a bit now so we might play a bit better against them than we did when they came to Todoroki earlier in the season.
So, a weird evening all in all. It was a full house and the atmosphere was good with lots of singing. But I guess most people had already resigned themselves to the fact that it was going to be second again. I was regularly checking my phone for the Kashima score, but once their second goal went in, I was only able to hope for fairly unlikely scenarios where Kashima get several red cards or the goalie gets injured after they had used all their subs. I continued hoping for one or both of these scenarios until the last few minutes of the game when I too submitted to our fate.

So, onwards to Sendai, another Shinkansen away day and a new city for me to visit. Let’s hope we can start the second stage in the way we played for most of the first stage.

Team

GK 1. Sung-Ryong JUNG
DF 18. ELSINHO
DF 5. TANIGUCHI Shogo
DF 4. IGAWA Yusuke (Yellow card 89')
DF 20. KURUMAYA Shintaro
MF 21. EDUARDO NETO
MF 10. OSHIMA Ryota
MF 14. NAKAMURA Kengo
MF 27. OTSUKA Shohei
FW 11. KOBAYASHI Yu
FW 13. OKUBO Yoshito (Yellow card 60')

Subs
GK 30. ARAI Shota
MF 6. TASAKA Yusuke
MF 15. HARAKAWA Riki (on for OTSUKA 71')
DF 17. TAKEOKA Yuto (on for OKUBO 84')
MF 19. MORIYA Kentaro
MF 22. NAKANO Yoshihiro (on for EDUARDO NETO 79')
MF 26. MIYOSHI Koji

Goals

OTSUKA (Frontale) 22'  1-0
NAKAMURA (Frontale) 56'  2-0

Highlights

Vs Avispa Fukuoka (away) 18/6/16 - 1st stage, match 16

Avispa Fukuoka 2 - 2 Kawasaki Frontale

 

I’d been thinking about starting this blog for a long time but this season seemed to be going a little too well. I was worried that I would jinx us by starting to write about things. But anyway, after an evening in Fukuoka that ended with us getting soaked and intense disappointment, I thought that now was the time for me to start writing with no fear of jinxing anything. After all, we seem to have messed it up for ourselves without having any kind of jinxes affect anything. It’s irritating, as I have been saying for the last month or so that we should worry more about Urawa than Kashima, as they had the potential to overtake us even if we won all of our games. Urawa’s very welcome implosion though has put them a little out of the picture and our own (hopefully short-lived) implosion in Fukuoka has put Kashima back in the driving seat. It’s particularly painful given that we’ve been above them for so long this season and it looks like we might have handed it to them on the second last game of the first stage.

Given the distance, there was an impressive number of Frontale fans present. We filled one end behind the goal and spilled over into the first third of one of the side stands. The ground was a little strange but quite nice. The two ends were not so big and not very steep. Even at the top of the stand we were still quite close to pitch level, so it was a little difficult to see what was going on at the other end of the pitch. A few thoughts about the game. We were in fairly good voice before the game and the mood seemed quite excited. This excitement was soon destroyed as Avispa scored twice directly in front of us. Given our results against teams playing in the bottom three of the table this season it shouldn’t have been so surprising, but somehow it was. When we look back on this season we really have to rue the 4-4 at home against Shonan, the 1-1 at home against Sendai and the 0-0 away to Niigata. And of course this result, the most regrettable of them all, as at the time of the game it mattered more than any of the others. In the 15 games previous to playing us, Avispa had only 10 points and scored nine goals. But we let them have a couple of goals in the first 15 minutes, and after that we were up against it. We always create a lot of chances though and this game was no exception. Unfortunately we only managed to put one of them (and a penalty) away. For the majority of the match it was one way traffic but we couldn’t quite do enough to get the ball in the net.

So, what went wrong? I dunno, but losing Kengo through injury was a big problem. Even when he isn’t playing well he definitely adds something to the team with his leadership. Not sure it was a good idea to give Yoshito the captaincy as it’s difficult for a player like him to lead the team from the front. But it was his hometown and he was the most senior player. Not sure who I would have suggested. Edu’s injury (some kind of strain and now out for five weeks…) is also a big factor. But maybe more so for the next few games rather than at Avispa as when he went off we were already losing and Igawa looked alright when he came on. Think the big problem was that we just weren’t troubling their keeper enough. Too many shots were hit straight at him, were off target or just dribbled through without much danger. The keeper did seem to be a particularly irritating character. His behaviour before the penalty was pretty pathetic and I would have (obviously) loved to have seen him picking the ball out the back of the net in the 94th minute but it wasn’t to be. Maybe we needed to be a bit more willing to shoot from distance as we have people who can hit a good shot but at times it looked like we felt we had to pass the ball into the net.

Any positives…. hmmmm. We got our plane tickets on air miles… erm…. Otsuka did a decent job of replacing Kengo but I wonder if we would have been better with a midfielder in there like Harakawa and then we would have had the option to bring on Otsuka later on. Kurumaya was decent and never really seems to get the praise I think he deserves. Tasaka made a few good chances when he came on. But there just seemed to be a bit of inevitability about this happening. When we were in the position of having to win three games to take the first stage and we were left with Yokohama (local derby), Fukuoka (rock bottom, playing badly) and Omiya (doing pretty well) the game against Fukuoka seemed like the one we’d mess up. But obviously it’s easy to say that in hindsight.

So, we still have a chance if Fukuoka can do us a favour and get something against Kashima on Saturday. Seems unlikely though. And we also still have to beat Omiya. I’m more worried about the amount of injuries we have in important positions. Long term ones for Nara, Morimoto, Komiyama. Kengo maybe still out, Edu out for five weeks. We have tons of midfielders but not much cover at all at the back or up front. I really hope that the next post will be reporting on the miracle of us managing to secure the first stage after all, but I also hope that I will win the lottery and never have to work again and for world peace and an end to all suffering but I’m not sure how likely any of these are to happen. If the inevitable happens and Kashima take the first stage, I really hope we can regroup and bounce back for the second as I think this has definitely been a bit of a blow to the morale of both the players and the fans. The silence that greeted the final whistle was pretty depressing. But let's try to stay positive and hope for a nice surprise on Saturday.

Team

GK 1. Sung-Ryong JUNG
DF 18. ELSINHO
DF 5. TANIGUCHI Shogo
DF 23. EDUARDO
DF 20. KURUMAYA Shintaro
MF 21. EDUARDO NETO
MF 10. OSHIMA Ryota
MF 27. OTSUKA Shohei
MF 2. NOBORIZATO Kyohei
FW 11. KOBAYASHI Yu
FW 13. OKUBO Yoshito

Subs
GK 30. ARAI Shota
MF 15. HARAKAWA Riki
DF 4. IGAWA Yusuke (on for EDUARDO 22')
MF 26. MIYOSHI Koji
MF 22. NAKANO Yoshihiro
DF 17. TAKEOKA Yuto (on for NOBORIZATO 46')
MF 6. TASAKA Yusuke (on for ELSINHO 79')

Goals

KANAMORI (Avispa) 09'     1-0
KANAMORI (Avispa) 15'    2-0
KOBAYASHI (Frontale) 42'     2-1
OKUBO (Frontale) 73' Pen.    2-2

Highlights

An introduction

Thank you for visiting my Kawasaki Frontale blog. Here are a few words of introduction to explain who I am and what the thinking behind this blog is.
Firstly, I’m British and have lived in Japan for 4 years now. I’ve been a Frontale fan for much longer though, maybe almost ten years now, but naturally I’ve only been able to watch games a bit more regularly since I have lived in Japan. Strangely enough, despite living in Tokyo, when I moved here I ended up teaching English in Nakahara-ku in Kawasaki, so it seems like it was meant to be. Over the years I’ve been making it to more and more games and this year have been venturing to away fixtures as well. With one game of the first stage left to go, I’ve realised that I have only missed one game (away at Hiroshima) so far this season.
I have a few reasons for starting this blog. Firstly, when I was not living in Japan it was great to be able to keep up to date with Frontale things through the excellent blog http://frontales-uk.blogspot.jp/ which unfortunately is no longer updated. Because of this, there now seems to be a lack of English language information on Frontale. I’m not sure how many English speaking fans Frontale have, but it seems like there should be something on the internet for them. Secondly, I think it will be nice to have all the highlights and statistics from games in the same place for easy reference. And finally, I suppose I feel like I have to document somehow what has been filling up my weekends.
I hope that I’ll be able to update this with some thoughts about every game and any other interesting points that might happen over the course of the season. I should stress that I am not a football expert. I have been watching football for years now, but I wouldn’t ever consider myself anything more than a fan. So don’t take what I say too seriously and please feel free to correct the mistakes I will inevitably make.