Vs Shanghai SIPG (home) 13/2/18 - ACL Group Stage Match 1

Kawasaki Frontale 0 - 1 Shanghai SIPL

 

I’ll keep this brief. The ACL game days and kick off times have been very unkind to me this year. Due to work, I couldn’t go to this match and I probably won’t even be able to watch the away game next Tuesday, let alone travel to the match. Looks like I didn’t miss much though as we sank to a second consecutive defeat at the earliest possible stage of our 2018 campaign, (something that didn’t happen at all last year). It hasn’t been the most encouraging of openings and against Shanghai, it seems we again looked out of form and off the pace. We had chances but only two of them were on target which is a little worrying. Certainly this happened at times last year, but we need a good result soon to stop these defeats becoming a habit. There are still some questions regarding what our first choice starting eleven is. Elsinho was back which suggests that this was our favoured line up, but I’m a bit worried if we think that Okubo is our best option on the left. All the talk of us having two complete teams so we could compete on all fronts this year is looking a bit shallow.

From the limited highlights I’ve seen of the match, it looked like Shanghai weren’t as formidable as we might have expected, but we’ve still left ourselves with a mountain to climb by getting off to such a bad start. It’s really not clicking at the moment and whilst this happened in a few games last season, there’s a slight worry that perhaps our tactics have been found out. It’s not a problem if we’re playing well as it’s difficult to stop us when we’re in our groove, whatever tactics you employ. But when we stutter, we look very wooden. So, some work to be done before next Tuesday or we might find ourselves ‘concentrating on the league’ earlier than we hoped.

Next up, Ulsan away in the ACL and then after that a tricky league opener away at Jubilo on Sunday, thankfully not at their usual stadium! GO (sort things out, please) FRONTALE!

Team

GK 1. Sung-Ryong JUNG

DF 18. ELSINHO

DF 3. NARA Tatsuki

DF 5. TANIGUCHI Shogo

DF 2.  NOBORIZATO Kyohei

MF 21. EDUARDO NETO

MF 10. OSHIMA Ryota

MF 41. IENAGA Akihiro

MF 14. NAKAMURA Kengo

FW 4. OKUBO Yoshito

FW 11. KOBAYASHI Yu

Subs 
GK 30. ARAI Shota

MF 8. ABE Hiroyuki (on for NAKAMURA 71')

MF 16. HASEGAWA Tatsuya (on for IENAGA 81')

MF 19. MORIYA Kentaro

FW 20. CHINEN Kei

DF 23. EDUARDO
MF 25. MORITA Hidemasa (on for NETO 86')

Goals
 
ELKESON (Shanghai) 23’ 0-1

 
Highlights

There's a longer unofficial video here if you like to see chance after chance being missed.