Vissel Kobe 1 - 2 Kawasaki Frontale
I seem to keep mentioning the busy schedule but had no idea it would take its toll on me before it did any of the players. Due to injury (well, more illness if I’m being honest), I had to rule myself out of this fixture at the last minute and instead watched it on DAZN whilst convalescing. Typical then, that we won away at Kobe. I don’t think I’ve ever seen us win there and there is usually some kind of calamity involved with the game. Perhaps it’s me who is the unlucky Kobe away charm. If we lose there next year and I attend you can blame me. By the way, thank you Kaoru for the photo above.
I’ll just write a few thoughts about the game, as I still think that in spite of the lack of replays and camera angles, you really get a better picture of the game when you’re in the stadium, rather than watching online. Okubo took Kengo’s place in this game, and I thought he had one of his better games for us this year. He played in the Kengo role and up front at various stages of this game and I thought he looked quite canny and sharp. Our first goal was a great bit of goal poaching from Taniguchi, stabbing home as the defender dallied. Quite satisfying given our recent struggles at this ground. We were shooting a lot in the first half and once again didn’t seem afraid of going a bit more direct. We had a few decent chances from quick breaks but couldn’t extend our lead. Kobe were as usual, a nasty little fouling team, now with a whinging captain. It seems crazy for them to make Podolski their captain given the fact that he seems to swing between the two extremes of not being bothered at all, looking bored and playing like he has a personal vendetta against all of our players.
We were pretty useless for most of the second half but thankfully so were Kobe for the first part of it. They had their first shot on target on 63 minutes. They did improve though and got an equaliser from a lovely finish. This shook us awake a little and we were further helped by them going down to ten men shortly afterwards. It was a second yellow and looked fair enough to me, an off the ball elbow to the neck, but there weren’t many replays from different angles so I can’t be sure. The ref was perfectly positioned though. The late winner we snatched was a beauty, or at least the turn from Kobayashi was. He had a relatively easy finish after the lovely turn and thankfully he put it away. Nice! A fairly average performance from us, but we showed a few flashes of skill to win the game, and given the recent history of this fixture, I think we’ll take any kind of win.
Next up Urawa at home on Wednesday. Let’s hope we can make our three match winning run into a four match winning run. Presumably, Urawa will get it together sooner or later. Hopefully not next Wednesday. Go Frontale!
I’ll just write a few thoughts about the game, as I still think that in spite of the lack of replays and camera angles, you really get a better picture of the game when you’re in the stadium, rather than watching online. Okubo took Kengo’s place in this game, and I thought he had one of his better games for us this year. He played in the Kengo role and up front at various stages of this game and I thought he looked quite canny and sharp. Our first goal was a great bit of goal poaching from Taniguchi, stabbing home as the defender dallied. Quite satisfying given our recent struggles at this ground. We were shooting a lot in the first half and once again didn’t seem afraid of going a bit more direct. We had a few decent chances from quick breaks but couldn’t extend our lead. Kobe were as usual, a nasty little fouling team, now with a whinging captain. It seems crazy for them to make Podolski their captain given the fact that he seems to swing between the two extremes of not being bothered at all, looking bored and playing like he has a personal vendetta against all of our players.
We were pretty useless for most of the second half but thankfully so were Kobe for the first part of it. They had their first shot on target on 63 minutes. They did improve though and got an equaliser from a lovely finish. This shook us awake a little and we were further helped by them going down to ten men shortly afterwards. It was a second yellow and looked fair enough to me, an off the ball elbow to the neck, but there weren’t many replays from different angles so I can’t be sure. The ref was perfectly positioned though. The late winner we snatched was a beauty, or at least the turn from Kobayashi was. He had a relatively easy finish after the lovely turn and thankfully he put it away. Nice! A fairly average performance from us, but we showed a few flashes of skill to win the game, and given the recent history of this fixture, I think we’ll take any kind of win.
Next up Urawa at home on Wednesday. Let’s hope we can make our three match winning run into a four match winning run. Presumably, Urawa will get it together sooner or later. Hopefully not next Wednesday. Go Frontale!
Team
GK 1. Sung-Ryong JUNG
DF 18. ELSINHO
DF 3. NARA Tatsuki
DF 7. KURUMAYA Shintaro
MF 10. OSHIMA Ryota
MF 21. EDUARDO NETO
MF 41. IENAGA Akihiro
MF 4. OKUBO Yoshito
MF 8. ABE Hiroyuki
FW 11. KOBAYASHI Yu
Subs
GK 30. ARAI Shota
DF 6. TASAKA Yusuke (on for ABE 82')
MF 14. NAKAMURA Kengo (on for OKUBO 70')
MF 16. HASEGAWA Tatsuya
(on for IENAGA 68') DF 17. TAKEOKA Yuto
DF 23. EDUARDO
MF 25. MORITA Hidemasa
Goals
TANIGUCHI (Frontale) 7' 0-1
MITA (Kobe) 78' 1-1
KOBAYASHI (Frontale) 88' 1-2
Highlights
The Frontale youtube channel usually has longer highlights provided by DAZN, but given that a previous year's highlights got wiped when the broadcaster got changed, I'm going to stick with the official J League ones. But you can watch the longer highlights here if you want.
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