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