Vs Yokohama F Marinos (home) 25/9/16 - 2nd Stage match 13

 Kawasaki Frontale 3 - 2 Yokohama F Marinos

I don’t really know where to start with this game. As it’s taken me a while to put this post up I imagine everyone already knows the score and has seen the video. I’ve certainly watched it a few times since Sunday too and I still feel pretty amazing when I recall what happened. Not sure I will be able to convey this feeling in words, but I’ll give it a go. Sorry for the blurred photos. Everything was a bit too exciting.

So, going in to the game we had no Yoshito and no Neto. It was a bit of a surprise a couple of days before the game when it seemed that Kano Kenta was going to be one of their replacements. He seems to have been out of favour recently, many times not even making the bench but maybe he was injured and not dropped. He did make it to the bench a few times and then disappeared again. But the whole team injury situation this year has been quite confusing I guess. It seems that we’ve had a huge amount of injuries and it also seems that we don’t really get much information about them. Every time we’ve talked about a player having disappeared from the squad, a few games later we’ll hear that he’s coming back from an injury we never even knew he had. I don’t know if this is a tactical lack of information or just the way we do things. In any case it has sometimes created some surprising team selections. Not least Kano back in the starting line up for a game against his old side. Perhaps we were looking for the classic 'score against your old team thing'…

The formation on the night was a little difficult to detect but it seemed that we were playing three at the back (one of whom was Tasaka). This confusion was not helped by the team announcement which seemed to suggest four at the back and Tasaka up front. I wonder if this is a tactical thing too. Although I suppose the confusion it might create won’t last too long till people work it out. Certainly makes it fun to guess though. The ‘kazoku’ were absent again. During the week three people (presumably members of the 'kazoku') received bans from attending Frontale games. One person got a five game ban and two people a one game ban. The one game bans will have been served by now, but maybe they are all waiting till the five game ban is done before they come back. This could be interpreted as them equally sharing responsibility for what happened, or could be seen as them being angry about the five game ban and withdrawing their support during this time. What little communication from them has come out suggests that it is the former. They will be disappointed though to have missed a very exciting Todoroki night. And I have another referee to add to my list of bizarre and useless officials. The announcement of Iemoto as ref caused a few boos around the ground before the game had started and it seems that he is another notorious official (who was actually struck off once and also had a ‘cooling off period’ after a bizarre performance) who I now have a grudge against. This is probably something to be talked about somewhere else at another time, but it does seem that the standard of refereeing in the J League is, generally speaking, pretty bad.

The first half was pretty good for us. We didn’t seem to be struggling too much with the absence of a couple of starting members. Possibly we were losing the ball a bit more often than we usually do, but when we had the ball we were really pushing forward and making chances. Maybe our play recently has got a bit too ponderous with too many passes going sideways or backwards. I like the way we play, keeping possession well and waiting for an opportunity, but against Yokohama we looked very exciting. Right from the off Kano Kenta looked well up for it against his old team and Miyoshi was doing what Miyoshi always does, running at the opposition and causing them problems. There was an amazing amount of shirt-pulling coming from Yokohama, all going unpunished by the useless ref, who instead seemed to want to concentrate on making himself the centre of attention. I’m not sure where he learnt how to officiate, but he seemed to be so confident that he was playing with his own set of football rules which neither team ever really got used to. Oshima seemed for the most part to be playing the Neto role, sitting in front of the defence and he was doing a good job of it. The opening goal came from Kano Kenta (who else) and was a lovely half-diving header from an Kobayashi cross. Kano celebrated like crazy which suggests he doesn’t have so many fond memories of his time at Yokohama. His passion and enthusiasm was a constant feature of his time on the pitch. Him playing like this could be very useful for the rest of our season. We totally dominated the first half with nine shots to Yokohama’s two. I haven’t seen us play like this for a while and given that this a potentially tricky local derby with Yokohama having moved up to fourth place in the second stage it was a very impressive opening 45 minutes. They had a few chances but we were in total control.

My notes for the second half are a little limited as my phone battery was dying and it all got a bit too exciting. One of the most notable moments was the injury to Arai. From a Yokohama corner Shota took an elbow in the face (from Taniguchi!) as he was jumping to punch clear. He spent a considerable time on the ground getting treatment and being booed by a section of the Marinos fans. Lovely lot, aren’t they? It’s funny as before the game I was saying how in general it’s wrong to dislike fans of other teams as often you can’t really help how you ended up supporting the team you do. Obviously I would make an exception for Urawa, as there is always a reason to dislike everything about them! However, the actions of some of the Yokohama fans was pretty low. I don’t understand why they would think we wanted to waste time when we were well on top. After getting an initial lengthy treatment, Shota was able to continue, but shortly afterwards he went down again (cue more booing from the Marinos fans) and was stretchered off with a broken cheek and concussion. Keep it classy Marinos! He was replaced by Shun Takagi, one of the few squad members I haven’t seen play so far this season, who I guess has to be considered our fourth choice keeper. Sung-Ryong and Shunsuke Ando are both injured and so is Shota now. Let’s hope someone can get at least half fit for Saturday otherwise we might be promoting another youth team player. Or maybe Tasaka can fill in there too! I guess Yokohama were aware of Takagi’s lack of match experience as they immediately started firing shots at him from distance and bumping him in challenges. He made a couple of great saves though and I was very impressed with him given the circumstances. Around 80 minutes Kano left the pitch to be replaced by Komiyama, who went in to the back three and Tasaka moved up to play on the left side of our attack. A couple of minutes later he played a beautifully weighted ball through for Miysohi who chipped the ball over the outrushing Yokohama keeper. Lovely pass and lovely finish and great for both Tasaka and Miyoshi who had both played very well. So we were coasting towards three points. What could possibly go wrong?

Reaching 90 minutes, the fourth official signaled nine minutes of injury time, which was about right. Shota was down for a long time with his injury. Somehow the proximity to victory caused us to lose concentration a little. We gave away a free kick (or maybe an offside) around the edge of the Yokohama penalty area. They pushed the ball towards the half way before taking it, stealing quite a lot of ground. The referee seemed to whistle to say take it from the right place but then changed his mind and waved play on and this is where the first Yokohama goal came from. Disappointing that Iemoto, who had been so horribly picky about everything for the whole of the 90 minutes decided to not be picky this time. But can’t really blame the goal on this. We just went to sleep at the back. We gave them plenty of space to put a cross in, the initial header from an unmarked Yokohama player was pushed onto the bar by Takagi and then they managed to bundle the rebound in. The defenders (apart from Komiyama) were static. Obviously now, nerves were shredded. We had been in almost complete control for the whole 90 minutes but the deficit had been halved and things were tense. This first Yokohama goal was on 90+6 minutes, so we only had to hold on for three minutes more. On 90+8 minutes they drew level. There was some confusion in Miyoshi’s pass to Oshima and a Yokohama player stole the ball, rounded the keeper and then passed the ball to a totally unmarked teammate who lifted the ball into the top of the net. Lack of concentration again and totally deflating. I sat with my head in my hands whilst the Yokohama fans went crazy. One thing seeing the replay that really pissed me off is the huge push from Martinus on Miyoshi after he passes the ball. Surely a foul. I know the ball had gone and it didn’t really affect what happened but can you really get away with this in the professional game? Particularly annoying as Martinus was a constant fouling lump the whole game, shoving, hacking and shirt-pulling. Would have liked to see him get a yellow at some stage for at least one of these. So, we had thrown it away, the season was over, there was no way our morale would be able to recover from this, especially given that it was our neighbours who’d done it to us.

Morimoto was thrown on for Miyoshi for the final couple of minutes. I guess a last throw of the dice to put someone big up front. There was a surprisingly great response from the crowd to us conceding. We were singing louder than ever and desperately trying to get one more attack out of the tiring players. And we had one last chance on 90+9 minutes, a corner taken right in front of us. Kengo’s delivery was headed to the other side of the box where it was picked up by Tasaka, who turned and floated a ball in to the back post where it was met by Kobayashi’s head and drifted (unbearably slowly, it seemed at the time) into the corner of the net past the struggling keeper. Everyone went wild. My voice was pretty much ruined through too much screaming. It was absolutely amazing. To go from the despair of conceding the equaliser to the joy of scoring a winner nine minutes into stoppage time was unreal. The players celebrations were great. There is a great video online of the last few minutes of the game in the video below. Keep an eye on Edu around 2:43. I love his reaction.

    

There obviously wasn’t much time left to play after that and the ref blew up shortly after the restart. Most of the Frontale players fell to the ground at the final whistle. Huge celebrations were going on in the stands and the result was totally justified given the whole ninety minutes but it really felt like a massive win against the odds after coming back from conceding the two goals. I don’t think I have ever gone through anything like that at a football game. It’s kind of tough on the Yokohama players and fans to lose in such a way, but over the course of the game, justice had probably been done.

Looking back, the margins between this game signalling the end of our season and being a huge confidence boost are tiny. If we hadn’t managed to get the winner I can’t imagine we would be able to pick ourselves up for the remaining games and would have faded away getting nothing from our 2016 campaign. Getting that winner will give us a lot of confidence and hopefully also has made us realise that we need to concentrate for the whole length of the game. We’ve been giving way some stupid goals recently and we’ll need to stop doing this as we can’t always rely on an insane end to every game. Positives and negatives. Negatives first, sloppy defending and lack of concentration to concede twice in injury time and potentially throw the game away, and of course, the injury to Shota. Positives, mainly the fact that we threw the game away but we managed to grab it back. Our attacking desire persists for the entire length of the match but we need to work on our defensive efforts matching that. Great performances from Tasaka, Miyoshi, Kano and Takagi. Although it seems unfair not to mention all of the team. You have to remember we did this without two big names. Our performance was good (ignoring the first part of injury time) and we were creating plenty of chances. Just a shame that we couldn’t put them away. I’m pretty sure we will bring Yoshito and Neto back into the starting line up on Saturday against Kobe, but there could be a case for leaving the team as it is, as they did a good job and we looked a lot more positive than usual. Although given that Kobe is Yoshito’s old team though it would seem foolish not to put him in and let the 'scoring against your previous team' thing carry on.

On to Kobe, a new ground for me and a team that will probably be pretty tough opponents. They have a free scoring striker Leandro who will be keen to keep ahead of Yoshito and Kobayashi (who are now level) in the goal scoring charts. All of these players though are still behind Hiroshima’s Utaka. Kobe have replaced Yokohama in fourth place so they are a team that are doing well in the second stage and are in some good form. Let’s hope we can come back with three points and that we can get a nice result in the Urawa vs Gamba game taking place five hours before our game starts. Fingers crossed!

[Can't believe I forgot to mention it, but this win has secured our place in the end of season championship. If we can remain top of the league over the course of the whole season we'll go straight to the final, so that has to be our aim. But at least we know we'll be there at some stage now].

Team

GK 30. ARAI Shota
DF 5. TANIGUCHI Shogo

DF 23. EDUARDO

DF 6. TASAKA Yusuke (Yellow card 78')

MF 10. OSHIMA Ryota

MF 14. NAKAMURA Kengo

MF 18. ELSINHO 

MF 25. KANO Kenta

MF 26. MIYOSHI Koji

MF 20. KURUMAYA Shintaro
FW 11. KOBAYASHI Yu

Subs
GK 29. TAKAGI Shun (on for ARAI 69')

DF 3. NARA Tatsuki
DF 8. KOMIYAMA Takanobu (on for KANO 82')

FW 9. MORIMOTO Takayuki (on for MIYOSHI 90+9')
MF 19. MORIYA Kentaro

FW 27. OTSUKA Shohei 
DF 28. ITAKURA Ko

Goals  

KANO (Frontale) 14'  1-0

MIYOSHI (Frontale) 84'  2-0

NAKAMACHI (Yokohama) 90+6'  2-1
ITO (Yokohama) 90+8'  2-2

KOBAYASHI (Frontale) 90+10'  3-1

  

Highlights

Vs JEF United (home) 22/9/16 - Emperor's Cup 3rd round

Kawasaki Frontale 4 - 1 JEF United (AET)

Less than a week on from the Omiya disaster we’re back in action again and back at Todoroki. Given that this was an Emperor’s Cup game we might have expected a few changes, but given that we’re playing again on Sunday (vs. Yokohama, at home again) it was more like a whole new team than just a few changes. Yoshito and Neto both started though as they are banned for Sunday’s game. The wholesale changes were not just restricted to on the pitch though. Because of the pathetic argy-bargy after the Omiya game the ‘kazoku’, the guys who wear the blue t-shirts, lead all the chants, try to get people singing and on occasion surround the opposition team bus after a defeat (the latter only once as far as I know), didn’t turn up. Presumably, this was to show their contrition for what happened last Saturday. I have no idea how many of them were involved and what actually happened, but there were apparently no arrests or charges. Possibly, things have been blown up out of proportion, but at the same time, it takes 20 years to build an image of being nice fans and one evening to ruin it. I’m still pretty peed off at what happened, but imagine things will be back to normal on Sunday with them in attendance. One of my fellow locals in my favourite pub who happens to be an Urawa fan thought the whole thing was negligible anyway. Urawa get up to far worse he said, which is almost certainly true, but why would we want to get associated with that kind of thing at all?

So, back to the matter in hand, a third round Emperor’s Cup tie against JEF United, a team lying almost slap-bang in the middle of J2. On paper a fairly easy tie I guess, but as we know, football isn’t played on paper and things don’t often work out how you might think they would. The game saw the return to Kawasaki of Takayuki Funayama, who left us at the end of last season. Always a 100% effort player, but one who never managed to find the net in the whole time he was with us, he inevitably scored against us… There were other returns too. Komiyama, Nara and Morimoto all started their first games for quite a while and the number of players being rested for Sunday meant that we saw quite a few players starting a game for the first time in a while (Harakawa, Hasegawa and Itakura). So, quite a few changes and it seemed like quite a few people playing in unfamiliar positions. Hashimoto was used as a kind of defensive central midfielder but seemed to be popping up all over the pitch, apart from on the wings where he normally plays best. Consequently, with the changes in personnel and positions, we weren’t exactly firing on all cylinders in the first half. JEF were defending in numbers and doing a decent job of it. We were passing the ball around as usual, but mainly sideways and backwards. It seemed that we didn’t quite have anyone who was starting dangerous moves. It was just lots of possession and not really going anywhere. That is until we gave the ball away, which we did quite a few times, creating problems for ourselves. Neto seems a little out of sorts recently even before the Omiya game. Maybe he needs a bit of a rest, but something’s not quite clicking at the moment and he's losing the ball a bit. The highlight of the first half was naturally Morimoto’s first goal for quite a while (since the home game against Shonan in March!). It was a decent goal, as far as I can remember without seeing the highlights and with it being at the other end of the pitch, it was a shot into the corner from around the edge of the box. [Having now seen the highlights, it was an absolute cracker from quite a way outside the box. Great goal!]. So far so good, but a bit unspectacular on the whole. We didn’t really threaten much.

The second half started with no changes for either team. The ref (Nishimura, complete idiot as far as I’m concerned) was being ultra fussy about everything making himself the centre of attention. Before I encountered Ogiya last week, Nishimura was the ref whose name I most feared seeing before one of our games. Totally obsessed with making himself the centre of attention and demanding free kicks being taken from the exact centimetre of turf where the infringement happened especially if it doesn’t make any difference to either team. There was a certain irony to this later in the half… On 51 minutes, we conceded the inevitable goal to Funayama. A JEF corner was punched clear by Shota but they worked the ball out to the wing again and the cross found Funayama who diverted it into the net. Having seen a replay filmed by someone in the crowd, I’d say there’s a hint of offside about it, but no-one seemed to complain too much. It was probably a fair enough score as neither team had exactly set the game alight. But it was a bit of a wake up call for us. After another ten minutes or so of us flapping around Kazama decided it was time to try and play a bit better and in short succession brought on Miyoshi and Elsinho for Hashimoto and Morimoto. And it kind of worked. Miyoshi and Elsinho were both really running at them and causing some problems. We started creating chances but sadly not putting them away. Yoshito was looking very out of sorts again, kind of sleepwalking his way through the match. On 79 minutes he woke up a bit though. A through pass found him racing clear of the JEF defence at the edge of the box and he was bundled to the ground. He felt it was inside the box and therefore a penalty, but the ref disagreed. Personally, I couldn’t tell. It was very much borderline. Nishimura though felt that it was definitely a metre outside the box which I find hard to believe, but wonder if he was just trying to erase any doubts people might have had if he gave it right on the edge. For a while it looked like we might have a repeat of the Omiya situation where we lose a player to a red card from a free kick we won. Yoshito wouldn’t shut up and kept berating the ref, even after he had been booked for his initial complaints. I’m kind of surprised that he didn’t get another yellow. Nishimura sent him off at the end of last season for a dive I think. But thankfully he calmed down in time. The remaining ten minutes was played out with some action and anxiety as both teams seemed to be looking for the win. Shota made a great save right at the death to keep us in the match. So, on to extra time. 

In the first period of extra time the game was being played at almost walking pace. I know we like a slow and patient build up, but it seemed that the majority of the players were totally knackered! I guess most of them haven’t been regularly playing 90 minutes, so 120 was a bit of a stretch. Possibly because of this or possibly unconnected, Hasegawa pulled up with some kind of muscle strain and had to be stretchered off. Cue Kurumaya, who maybe might have hoped to get the evening off as he’ll almost certainly be playing 90 minutes on Sunday. He helped us step up another gear and actually scored the goal that put us ahead. It was down the other end of the pitch so I can’t remember much but it was a very nicely placed header from a right wing cross. He was really causing JEF some trouble too with his pace and energy. The second half of extra time was where poor JEF, who had done a good job on us got what they definitely didn’t deserve. Yoshito curled one in past the keeper from just inside the box (see the aftermath in the picture below) and then immediately started playing like a man possessed. Wish he’d done that a little earlier and then we would have been spared extra time. He followed this up with a tap in after a goal-bound Miyoshi shot was somehow blocked. I would have liked to see Miyoshi get another goal but maybe considering the remaining games this season, Yoshito needs all the goals and confidence he can get. Although that won’t be much use this Sunday when he’s watching from the stands. Like I said, a final score that was very tough on JEF, but we deserved to go through to the next round. It’s not often that you can call a 4-1 win unconvincing, but this was probably the best way to describe it.

So, positives and negatives. Let’s start negative. A J2 side took us to extra time, almost knocked us out in the last few minutes of the 90 and it was an unconvincing performance from us. Another injury, let’s hope it’s not too serious for Hasegawa. Yoshito would have again been a big negative but his transformation after his first goal changed my mind. He has to keep that going for the remaining games he plays if we want to get anything from this season. Positives, a few. Lots of players back from injury, an important goal from Morimoto who we are going to need playing well on Sunday, Komiyama and Nara playing 120 minutes, the late in the game transformation of Yoshito, a decent performance from both Hasegawa and Itakura. Oh, and we’re through. And finally I should mention the great job done by the guy who lead the singing in the kazoku's absence and the stand-in drummers. The timing between them and us was a bit shaky at times, but I can't imagine any of them really expected to be in that situation, so well done to them!

Now, three days rest and then back to the league on Sunday. The next cup game won’t be for a while as the draw isn’t even made until October 4th. Yokohama will want to try to mess up our season after we did the same to them a few years ago so it definitely won’t be an easy one. As I probably keep saying, it will be a season defining game as we’ll have a couple of notable absences and we are now playing catch up (second stage) or grimly trying to hang on to our dwindling advantage (overall). Let’s hope we can get back to winning ways in the league and give Urawa (at home to Sanfrecce) and Gamba (at home to FC Tokyo) something to think about.

Team

GK 30. ARAI Shota
DF 16. HASEGAWA Tatsuya
DF 3. NARA Tatsuki
DF 28. ITAKURA Ko
DF 8. KOMIYAMA Takanobu

MF 7. HASHIMOTO Koji

MF 21. EDUARDO NETO

MF 19. MORIYA Kentaro

MF 15. HARAKAWA Riki

FW 9. MORIMOTO Takayuki

FW 13. OKUBO Yoshito (Yellow card 79')

Subs
GK 29. TAKAGI Shun

DF 18. ELSINHO (on for MORIMOTO 67')
DF 20. KURUMAYA Shintaro (on for HASEGAWA 96')

MF 25. KANO Kenta
MF 26. MIYOSHI Koji (on for HASHIMOTO 61')

FW 27. OTSUKA Shohei 
MF 32. DUKE Carlos

Goals  

MORIMOTO (Frontale) 20'  1-0

FUNAYAMA (JEF) 51'  1-1

KURUMAYA (Frontale) 105'  2-1
OKUBO (Frontale) 108'  3-1

OKUBO (Frontale) 115'  4-1

  

Highlights

Vs Omiya Ardija (away) 17/9/16 - 2nd stage match 12

 Omiya Ardija 3 - 2 Kawasaki Frontale

How small are the things that a season can turn on? And how fast can a season turn from an amazing ride to the possible painful realisation that we’re probably going to fall at the last hurdle again? This was not a pleasant day for many many reasons and consequently I have been putting off writing this post. If you are only interested in positives, well, Nara was back on the bench. After that it all gets a bit dark.

Although Omiya away sounds like an convenient trip to make, this game was played at their once a year home in Kumagaya. I don’t know if this is a lucky stadium for them, but it will take a lot to make it a place where we have anything but bad memories. The stadium itself was quite nice though, a big bowl with adequate space for the tickets they had sold (unlike the Shonan game) and an unbelievable amount of flagpoles. As mentioned above, it was great to see Nara back on the bench. He’s been pretty unlucky this season and got injured when he was playing pretty well. Guess he’ll get a few games as the season comes to a close. We named a pretty good side (unchanged from last week against Avispa) and for the first half an hour it looked like we weren’t going to have too many problems. Tasaka was named as playing in the midfield but he was back at right back again with Elsinho ahead of him. For the first thirty minutes we were keeping the ball well, winning it back easily and the only thing not quite working was our final ball into the box. We had no reason to worry though as Omiya weren’t offering that much with their very direct play and we were dealing with pretty much everything they hoofed at us.

Then everything changed with a moment of stupidity. Yoshito was hacked down collecting the ball from a Kengo corner. As he sat up he was pushed to the floor by the idiotic Yokotani and then stood up shoulder-first, bumping into the aforementioned idiot who dropped to the floor as if he had received an instantaneous amputation of both legs. Straight red from the ref Ogiya who had a game full of insane and apparently random decisions. We were at the other end of the pitch and my first impression was that Yoshito had shoved him over. Consequently, I was pretty peed off with him for doing such a stupid thing. After seeing the highlights I have a little sympathy for him. Not completely sure it was a red card but I think he’s stupid to even give the ref an opportunity to send him off. Why there was no punishment for Mrdja who shoves the referee I have no idea. So, we were set to play almost 60 minutes with 10 men… Things went from bad to worse just under ten minutes later when Neto was robbed in the centre circle and one long pass meant that their striker was striding through on goal with Taniguchi a fair way behind. Sung-Ryong came out to meet the striker and brought him down. Penalty and thankfully only a yellow card, the ref possibly trying to balance things a little after his previous decision. It looked like a clear penalty at the time and was an easy enough one for the ref to give. Neto was also booked at this time (therefore missing the next game). My second Omiya villain, the immobile lump Mrdja went whining to the assistant referee that Neto had thrown a water bottle into the hoarding. Not sure why he felt the need to grass, or why any of the officials decided that listening to the players for advice is a way to make decisions in a football game, but it was a pretty pathetic action and typical of a few of the Omiya players, (but of course I would say that), and of the weak and inconsistent officials, (but of course I would also say that too). The penalty was duly dispatched. Half time, losing one nil and down to ten men. Bit of a bummer.

The second half started with no changes. Omiya put everyone behind the ball and we looked up against it. We were making a decent go of it though. Elsinho was pushing well forward, giving a 150% performance and everything was going through him. Good on him! We were making a few chances and our first sub almost resulted in an immediate goal. Tasaka went off for Miyoshi, effectively leaving Elsinho to play right back, right wing and also striker which he did admirably for a while. Oshima passed to Elsinho who crossed to an unmarked Miyoshi who with one of his first touches of the game smashed the ball over the bar with the keeper stranded. We did score very soon after though with a nice exchange of passes between Kobayashi and Elsinho setting the ball up for Kengo to hook one in to the top corner from just inside the box. Great stuff! Shortly after, Elsinho was replaced by Moriya, which was fair enough as he had run himself into the ground. A great performance from him. This did leave us a little short at the back though as Moriya is not exactly known for his defending. On 81 minutes we did the unbelievable and took the lead, Miyoshi redeeming himself for his earlier miss and putting a low cross in for Kobayashi to slot home (nice dummy from Moriya too).

Would have been nice if the game finished here, but sadly we had to play another 15 minutes. And this was enough time for everything to crumble into chaos and complete insanity. Only three minutes after our goal Omiya were equal, passing the ball easily round static defenders and beating Sung-Ryong weakly at his near post. Then there was an Omiya ghost goal which the ref gave and then changed his mind about. It was really bizarre actually. The majority of the stadium was going wild and there didn’t seem to be any sign from the linesman but the ref decided to rule it out after giving it. Maybe he was getting advice from our players as well as the Omiya ones. There was a push on Edu, but if he didn’t give the foul at the time, I don’t know how he can take the decision back. Pleased he did though. Although this was in vain as they scored again on 89 minutes. Naturally we were a bit exposed at the back as we were pushing everyone forward, but we had four against four and once again they just passed it round us and put it in at the near post. I thought it must have been deflected as Sung-Ryong looked wrong footed but I can’t see any evidence of this on the replay. Morimoto was then flung on for Moriya in a last ditch effort to take something from the match. And there was still time for a bit more insanity as in the final seconds of the game Omiya broke through again, Neto flattened one of their players and then appeared to tread on him but they couldn’t score a fourth. The ref obviously missed this as otherwise Neto would have been off. This final action caused a big flare up at the final whistle (watch it here if you want or check the blurred photo at the top of this post). The idiot Yokotani went for Neto, Edu got involved and seemed to damage (maybe dislocate) his shoulder again in the melee. Yokotani really seems to be a horrible whingy little scumbag. I wish him the least of luck in his future career.

So, what went wrong? Plenty. A silly reaction from Yoshito when he didn’t even look that upset, giving a card happy referee an easy opportunity to dish out a red. Neto didn’t have his best game, giving the ball away on a few crucial occasions and picking up a yellow (and luckily not a red, although he’ll still be banned for the next game as this was his third yellow). Silly mistakes at crucial moments and somehow clinical finishing from Omiya. It very much wasn’t our day, although if we could have held on when we took the lead it would have been a massive boost for the last few games of the season. I think maybe we were a bit too gung-ho with our attacking late in the game, but I guess without this we wouldn’t have taken the lead. But maybe after we did we should have tried to tighten things up at the back a bit. I know we didn’t have too many options to do this, but our line up at the end seemed very attacking for a team down to ten men. But what do I know? We’ve been lucky so far in the second stage. We haven’t been playing so well but have been getting results. And on the occasions when we have slipped up, our rivals also have. On the bus back to the station I was checking the Urawa score and was astounded to see that they were losing to FC Tokyo. But of course, they came back and we deservedly dropped off the top of the 2nd stage table (and down to 3rd place). Now we are only two points ahead of Urawa overall too. I don’t want to be too negative, but this result has a bit of an ominous feel to it. We will need a hell of a lot of mental toughness to come back from this. Our final five games are against Yokohama, Kobe, Sanfrecce, Kashima and Gamba. Great… It’s not looking too good, is it? And we have to play the first of these games without Yoshito and Neto, and then a couple more without Yoshito I think. (Step forward Morimoto. Your Kawasaki Frontale hero award is ready for you if you can grab it!) There was some call on twitter for the J League to look at Neto’s challenge at the end of the game, saying it deserves a ban. I’m not going to call it a stamp as I want to give him the benefit of the doubt. Surprisingly, the person calling for the ban was an Urawa fan, so maybe they’re still not so confident, but I can’t see why they aren’t really.

Aside from the chaos on the pitch there was also a bit of chaos outside the ground after the game. We were already on our way back to the station when for some reason it seems that some Frontale fans decided to surround the Omiya team bus, perhaps jealous that all the idiocy was taking place on the pitch and wanting to have some idiocy of their own. This caused a fracas with some Omiya fans and apparently some Frontale fans were taken away by the police. So, not only has our season probably been ruined on the pitch, our reputation as a club has also taken a hammering. One of the many good things about supporting Frontale is that we seemed to be free from the pathetic behaviour of some other teams fans (do I even need to mention the main offenders?). Watching football in Japan is much more fun than watching it in the UK because of the fact that people want to enjoy the game rather than vent their anger and aggression through abusing the opposition and trying to cause problems with their fans. Sure, passions run high, especially when we have been beaten in such an important fixture, but what are we doing surrounding the Omiya team bus?! I can only hope that the offenders are dealt with appropriately and that we haven’t caused too much damage to our reputation as a nice group of fans.

So, embarrassment, idiocy and insanity on and off the field and a horrible feeling that we’ve messed it up and this will be another season of being ‘silver collectors’. We’ve got two games coming up very soon this week which I’m pretty sure will give us a pretty clear idea of how this season is going to finish. First, against JEF United in the Emperor’s Cup on Thursday and then against Yokohama in the league on Sunday, both at home. Until then, I am going to try to not think about football as the bad taste this game has left in my mouth has been ruining my weekend and Silver Week so far.

Team

GK 1. Sung-Ryong JUNG (Yellow card 42')
DF 6. TASAKA Yusuke
DF 23. EDUARDO
DF 5. TANIGUCHI Shogo
DF 20. KURUMAYA Shintaro

MF 21. EDUARDO NETO (Yellow card 43')

MF 10. OSHIMA Ryota

MF 14. NAKAMURA Kengo

MF 18. ELSINHO

FW 11. KOBAYASHI Yu

FW 13. OKUBO Yoshito (Red card 36')

Subs
GK 30. ARAI Shota

DF 3. NARA Tatsuki

MF 7. HASHIMOTO Koji
FW 9. MORIMOTO Takayuki (on for MORIYA 90')

MF. 19 MORIYA Kentaro (on for ELSINHO 71')

FW 26. MIYOSHI Koji (on for TASAKA 61')
DF 28. ITAKURA Ko 

Goals  

IENAGA (Omiya) 44' PEN.  1-0
NAKAMURA (Frontale) 63'  1-1
KOBAYSHI (Frontale) 81'  1-2
IENAGA (Omiya) 84' 2-2

ESAKA (Omiya) 89'  3-2

  

Highlights

(Don't do it! You needn't put yourself through the pain of watching these, but if you really want to...)

Vs Avispa Fukuoka (home) 10/9/16 - 2nd stage match 11

Kawasaki Frontale 3 - 1 Avispa Fukuoka

Home at Todoroki again and this time it’s back to our league campaign. Avispa Fukuoka are a bit of a bogey team for us this year after having beaten us at home in the Nabisco and ruined our first stage hopes away at their place. And with the defeat at home against Kashiwa and the first 2/3 of the game against Blaublitz still strong in the memory I approached this game with some trepidation. Their league position suggests that they are not very good, but we do have a habit of tripping up against teams like them.

The first surprise of the day was the strength of the bench. We’ve been able to field decent starting line ups recently but there has definitely been something missing on the bench. But on Saturday we had options. Takeoka made it back from injury in time to be a sub (thankfully it seemed that Blaublitz didn’t manage to completely destroy him) and we also had Itakura for our defensive options. In attack, Moriya, a fit again Hashimoto, Miyoshi (back from playing with Japan’s under 21s) and Morimoto. This all contributed to a strong looking bench. Tasaka was rewarded for a decent sub performance against Blaublitz by a starting position, although it was at right back, so not exactly his favoured position. But all in all there was reason to be positive going into the game.

From the kick off it seemed clear that Avispa were looking for one thing; to come away from the game without losing even if that meant spending pretty much 90 minutes with everyone behind the ball. They nominally had one up front, but he seemed to spend most of his time in his own half. They were definitely trying to defend, snatch the ball and hit us on the counter attack. The middle of the pitch was very congested but for some reason this seemed to be where we were trying to attack through. The one time the ball was given to Tasaka at right back he set off on a cracking run and almost did some damage. But it seemed that through the middle was our main plan. We had loads of possession in the first half but weren’t quite making the most of it. Taniguchi seemed to almost be playing as a defensive midfielder rather than a centre back and Neto was waving everyone forward whilst on the ball. Perhaps understandably, due to the lack of space, our opening goal came from a set piece. After an initial practice attempt which was saved by the keeper, (Kengo takes the corner, Taniguchi heads it), we finally managed to score from a corner again. It was a nice angled header for Taniguchi to score his first goal of the season. Good for him! He’s been doing a good job recently and it’s nice for him to get on the score sheet again. After this goal everything went a little crazy. Avispa’s game plan was ruined and they didn’t seem to know what to do. Consequently neither did we and the last 15 minutes of the first half were quite ragged, but we definitely were the team on top.

So half time came and gave a chance for both team’s managers to work out what to do from here. Strangely, nothing changed with regards to substitutes but we did start to take the ascendency a little probably due to Avispa trying a little more to create something. We began the second half in fine style, creating plenty of chances again and going two up fairly early on. It was a bit of a weird goal though as Kengo had his shot blocked but then the defender dithered and Kengo picked himself up and prodded the ball goalwards through the defender’s leg and it deflected into the net off the keeper. You have to feel a little for the keeper. He looked absolutely gutted. At this stage we were playing pretty well and making lots of chances. Okubo looked a different player from a few weeks ago (or perhaps I was just seeing him in a different light). He seemed hungry for the ball and keen to shoot and his shots were flying just wide instead of miles over or straight at the keeper. He picked up the third goal from a nice move slamming the ball in from just inside the box after a neat passing move. It seemed to be a matter of how many we would score at this stage. However, that was the last of our goals and the only other goal of the game was a pretty good finish from outside the box by one of their players who was in plenty of space with unfortunately no-one anywhere near him. It’s a bit of a shame as it would have been nice to get the clean sheet, but the three points is undeniably the most important thing.

Positives and negatives from the game. Let’s start negative this week. A kind of unnecessary goal to concede, not taking as many of the many chances we had and a bit of scary disorganisation at times. Also, it may have been a win, but maybe we might have struggled a little against better opposition. You can really see why Avispa will almost certainly go down. Which makes our previous games against them this season even more frustrating. Positives, a few more. Tasaka did a great job at right back, a position I suspect he would not have picked for himself. His run forward in the first half was one of our most dangerous looking moments. I wonder if he was trying quite hard to concentrate on covering his defensive duties though as he didn’t get forward very often. Okubo’s performance and goal are big positives. He looks like he’s getting back to form. The finish was a good one and this overall performance looked much more like the Okubo of old. And he’s catching Utaka in the scoring chart (but so is Kobe’s Leandro…). Edu back in the team and Morimoto and Hashimoto back on the bench shows that we are heading in the right direction injury wise. It’s a good time of the season for things to come back together after our little wobble. Let’s hope it can continue. And one final positive, we’re still top.

So the season is coming to an end quite quickly. There are only six games left and I guess we are in the best position possible. Obviously it would be nice to have a bit more breathing space, particularly in the second stage where we are only ahead of Urawa on goal difference, but I think we would have taken this position at this stage coming in to the season. And we are five ahead of them over the season as a whole. Of the six remaining games we’ve got some tough ones. In fact none of them look particularly easy. We’re playing away at Omiya (this weekend), Kobe and Kashima and at home against Yokohama, Sanfrecce and Gamba. But maybe (and there is an element of optimism in this) we play better against better teams. Urawa are playing 4 of the same teams as us but their other two games look like a little bit easier, but we know that if we keep winning our games, we will top the league overall. So it’s in our hands (as it was at the end of the first stage…). Fingers crossed! Onwards to Omiya (or actually to Kumagaya this season).

Team

GK 1. Sung-Ryong JUNG
DF 6. TASAKA Yusuke
DF 23. EDUARDO
DF 5. TANIGUCHI Shogo
DF 20. KURUMAYA Shintaro

MF 21. EDUARDO NETO

MF 10. OSHIMA Ryota

MF 14. NAKAMURA Kengo

MF 18. ELSINHO

FW 11. KOBAYASHI Yu

FW 13. OKUBO Yoshito 

Subs
GK 30. ARAI Shota

MF 7. HASHIMOTO Koji
FW 9. MORIMOTO Takayuki (on for OSHIMA 90+1')

DF 17. TAKEOKA Yuto (on for KOBAYASHI 86')
MF. 19 MORIYA Kentaro (on for TASAKA 82')

FW 26. MIYOSHI Koji
DF 28. ITAKURA Ko 

Goals  

TANIGUCHI (Frontale) 29'  1-0
NAKAMURA (Frontale) 47'  2-0

OKUBO (Frontale) 60' 3-0

HIRAI (Avispa) 85'  3-1

  

Highlights



(Not the usual highlights, as the J League ones seem impossible to find for some reason)

Vs Blaublitz Akita (home) 3/9/16 - Emperor's Cup 2nd round

Kawasaki Frontale 3 - 1 Blaublitz Akita

After last week’s horror show against Kashiwa it was probably a good thing that we could distract ourselves with this year’s first Emperor’s Cup game. Presumably the team selection was made with an intention to give the first team some confidence after last week’s disappointment. It was pretty much a first choice team but with Arai in goal instead of Sung-Ryong (away on international duty securing a good victory for Korea against China and playing 90 minutes!). Normally I would expect Kengo and Yoshito to be rested in games like these, but maybe the absence of Oshima and Kobayashi (also on international duty), along with the confidence smashing defeat last week meant that this game would potentially provide an opportunity for the first team to score a few goals, regain some faith in their own abilities and make everyone happy again. Not sure how well this worked for the first hour or so of the game though…

Possibly ominously, it started raining as soon as the players walked out on to the pitch. I quite enjoyed the rain though. It was like one of those spray mist things that you can use to water plants and consequently was quite refreshing! Slightly butchering the usual football cliche, this was not a game of two halves but a game of three thirds. Or more accurately a game of one section of two thirds and one section on one third. The first hour was full of the same mistakes that littered the game against Kashiwa. Giving the ball away constantly, an inability to make challenges at important times, an uninterested Yoshito, plenty of passing the ball around inside our own half but not actually going anywhere. Not particularly encouraging. The difference from last week was probably the fact that we were playing the excellently named Blaublitz Akita a team currently playing in J3, who were not as capable of punishing our mistakes. Or so we thought until the 28th minute when we let a Blaublitz player waltz through our non-existent midfield and blast one into the corner from quite a way out. It was actually a pretty good finish and I don’t think Shota can be blamed for not reaching it. So far, so bad. The rest of the first half played out in a similar way. Nakano got a bit of stick from the crowd (as much stick as Frontale fans give anyway) which I thought wasn’t really that fair as there were players playing worse than him (hello Yoshito!). At least Nakano was playing with some enthusiasm. He did give the ball away a bit though. He does seem predominately right footed but was being used on the left which gives him a bit of trouble straight away. Probably this contributed to him wanting to roam across the pitch a little. Otsuka, who was back from illness not injury gave his usual high intensity performance. I think we have definitely missed his willingness to chase all over the pitch.

The second half started with Nakano being removed and replaced by Eduardo. Bit harsh on Nakano but there definitely was a need to change something as things weren’t working and we were in danger of turning a bad performance against Kashiwa into a season ending trough of nervousness and poor performances. Takeoka moved from centre back to right back, replaced by Edu and Elsinho pushed up onto the right wing, Moriya moving to the left. Initially, not a great deal changed though. We had two major let-offs early in the second half as Blaublitz had two good chances to extend their lead. Thankfully due to a combination of poor finishing and bad refereeing (something which plagued the match, some of his decisions were literally incomprehensible), we escaped. Just before the hour mark, Tasaka was ready to come on for Otsuka when Takeoka took one of many smacks of various sorts from a Blaublitz forward. He left the pitch on a stretcher with us all fearing the worst, potentially putting us down to about four fit defenders in the whole squad. Thankfully he was able to come back on a couple of minutes later and the planned substitution, which had sensibly been delayed whilst we worked out what was going on, went ahead. Tasaka made a big difference. I’m pleased, as he doesn’t seem to have had many chances recently. He gave us some real drive, probably doing his best to prove a point, and we finally started looking dangerous. We had two wings both providing dangerous attacks. Moriya and Kurumaya were doing great down the left and Elsinho and Tasaka were tearing up the right. Moriya and Tasaka were doing all the things I would have expected Okubo to be doing, pressuring defenders on the ball, chasing stuff down, running at Blaublitz. It was clear that the tide was turning.

Our first goal came from an unexpected route. I was hoping to check the video highlights to refresh my memory a little, but it seems that highlights of emperor’s cup games get deleted quite quickly. I have found one video, with an interesting musical accompaniment added that I’ll post below, but I am guessing that it might not be around for too long. [Edit: there now seems to be a proper video up, so have changed the link to that one]. So, yeah, Eduardo smashed a shot in from the edge of the box. I seem to remember that he was up for a corner which got cleared and then played back towards the Blaublitz goal. It was a nice finish in any case and I’m really pleased for him. He seems to be a player who really cares and he was certainly very happy to score. I guess he might be starting next week.  After this first goal, Blaublitz’s resolve was broken and it wasn't very long before we went ahead. It was a strange goal, or at least the reactions were. Moriya crossed the ball along the ground to Okubo who was just outside the box. He fired a powerful curling shot right into the corner and didn’t really react at all. Given some of his shots in recent games I think the crowd thought he’d drilled another one into the side netting and it really took a while for anyone to realise it had gone in. It was quite a bizarre moment. As cool as Okubo’s reaction was, I think it was a bit of a weight off his mind. After the goal he really upped his game and seemed to really want to get involved. It was great to see. I’ve been moaning a bit about him recently and I felt we have been carrying him, but if he’s coming back into form it might well be just at the right time and his performances will have a very significant effect on how this season finishes for us. Pleased to have you back, Yoshito!

By the time of the third goal Blaublitz were hanging on. I was pleased to see Tasaka get a goal as he hasn’t really had many chances this season for whatever reason. It was normal assist service resumed as Kurumaya, our recent assist king drove a low cross into the box which Tasaka walloped into the roof of the net. Quite a dramatic finish. Perhaps it was a bit tough on Akita, but at least they can go away with the knowledge that they were pretty easily beating the J1 leaders away from home for about an hour. I salute their fans as this was a pretty long away trip and they did a great job of supporting their team. Hope they enjoyed their visit. Can’t exactly say it was the confidence restoration we were hoping for, but maybe we’ll get something from the fact that we definitely finished the game on a high. Let’s hope we can take that into next week against one of this season’s bogey teams, Avispa. I think we owe them a beating.

Positives and negatives. Let’s start with the negatives and end on a high. The first hour was pretty horrible, we were pretty hopeless and very reminiscent of the game against Kashiwa. Other big negative is that in spite of playing 90 minutes, Takeoka limped off the pitch at the end of the game helped by a couple of team staff. Will he be fit for Saturday? Who knows, but I hope so. I hope if he is fit he’ll be playing at right back though and that Edu will be back in the middle. If he’s injured I guess Edu will go in the middle and Elsinho will have to stay at right back the whole game. That will probably leave Itakura as the only other fit defender though. Bit worrying, especially given the rate we are picking up injuries recently. Positives, surprisingly, I can find quite a few. Firstly we’re through and we came back from behind. Perhaps the score flattered us if you take the game as a whole, but it’s a cup game so the win is really all that matters. Secondly, Okubo is back in form (maybe). After his goal he really looked up for it. Let’s hope he can start banging them in again. Sanfrecce’s Utaka is injured so the top scorer position could be back on if he starts scoring regularly. Thirdly, a couple of goals for people who I think will really enjoy having scored. And finally a couple of people are coming back from injury/illness. I mentioned Otsuka above but some guy called Morimoto who some of us might be able to remember was brought on towards the end of the game. Could be a great time for him to be back from injury. It’s been a while and we were wondering what had happened to him. Hope he’s on the bench again at the weekend. At half time I couldn’t have imagined I would have such a positive feeling after this game, but I got there with my optimism. Let’s hope we can do things right at the weekend and fully get back on track!

Team

GK 30. ARAI Shota
DF 18. ELSINHO
DF 23. TAKEOKA Yuto
DF 5. TANIGUCHI Shogo
DF 20. KURUMAYA Shintaro

MF 21. EDUARDO NETO

MF 14. NAKAMURA Kengo

MF 19. MORIYA Kentaro

MF 27. OTSUKA Shohei

MF 22. NAKANO Yoshihiro (Yellow card 42')

FW 13. OKUBO Yoshito 

Subs
GK 29. TAKAGI Shun

MF 6. TASAKA Yusuke (on for OTSUKA 58')
FW 9. MORIMOTO Takayuki (on for OKUBO 90+1')

MF 16. HASEGAWA Tatsuya
DF 23. EDUARDO (on for NAKANO 46')

DF 28. ITAKURA Ko  
MF 32. DUKE Carlos

Goals  

MAEYAMA (Blaublitz) 28'  0-1

EDUARDO (Frontale) 67'  1-1
OKUBO (Frontale) 77'  2-1

TASAKA (Frontale) 82'  3-1

  

Highlights