Vs Consadole Sapporo 26/10/19 - Levain Cup final

Consadole Sapporo 3 - 3 Kawasaki Frontale (AET) (4-5 on penalties)

Well, what can you say about a game like that? This was an exiting but nerve shredding way to pick up our third title in three years. If we were being honest, I think most of us would have picked the Levain as the title we were least interested in winning. Whilst my priority was the league, and that hasn’t exactly gone to plan, I was quite up for a Levain cup win. We have history in this competition and it’s a history that needed to be put to bed, after plenty of losses in the final. But finally we have our hands on the trophy, even if we only had to beat three teams over five games to win it, (and we only actually won two of those five). But this is not time for moaning! Let’s celebrate this trophy, our first proper cup title, as the Super Cup doesn’t really count, does it? I’ll keep talk of the game relatively brief and instead just make a few more general observations on what we might have learned from another trip to the Saitama stadium, but one which ended with plenty of people hanging around rather than scooting for the station as soon as the final whistle blew.

2017 again...almost -

This game looked dangerously like it would turn into a repeat of the 2017 final against Cerezo. Again we conceded an early goal, although this time not quite as early. Again it was a bit disappointing, although the ball bouncing off the post and then off Arai into the net wasn’t as disappointing as poor old Edu losing the ball and basically putting an opposition player through on goal. After the early goal Consadole definitely did what Cerezo did; sat back, waiting to hit us with a long ball fast break and generally wasted time. Thankfully we were able to get back level just before half time which meant that Consadole had to try to be a bit more positive and that we wouldn’t be seeing a carbon copy of 2017. It seems a bit unfair to compare Consadole to Cerezo, who are totally boring and very efficient. But the normally more swashbuckling Consadole were a bit dull for most of the first half. We were well on top apart from when (and shortly after), they scored and we hit the bar and post several times. Leandro Damiao, making a rare start in an important game seemed to be doing his best Kobayashi impression, missing countless chances, although as I said above, he was denied by the woodwork on a few occasions. He seems destined to be a Frontale nearly man. He seems to score a decent amount of goals given the time he spends on the pitch, but aside from the Super Cup, it seems that when he scores, we have a disappointing result. He looked gutted to be taken off, and I wonder if it is a sign that maybe he is reaching the end of his time with us, and he wanted to sign off in style. I certainly wouldn’t blame him as things aren’t really going as anyone might have expected. In this game things weren’t quite falling for us, although we were clearly in the ascendancy. It was a bit of a shock to see us take the lead in a more balanced second half. What came as no shock was the fact that we managed to throw away this lead and effectively finished another game 2-2. I’m getting so sick of that scoreline. Fair play to Kobayashi and Kengo for their contributions from the bench. Shortly before Kobayashi’s first goal I commented that once again the subs had made almost no difference. Well done me for the reverse jinx. I guess in a funny way this game was closer to 2017 than we might have thought. In both games we conceded early and late and had lots of possession and lots of huffing and puffing without causing much danger in between. The crucial difference this time was that we managed to put the ball in the net twice in the 90 minutes, and what a difference that was!

VARse -

Still hate it. Sure, now we get to celebrate our goals twice; firstly with great exuberance which quickly turns into doubt and worry, then secondly with some relief, but with most of the excitement removed. And I can’t say I have any problems with any of the decisions it came up with in the game, but I hate the fact that it seems that players seem to be able to whinge to the referee who has made up his mind previously but then decides to refer to the video. ‘No goal! Offside! Handball! Foul! Any of the above. Check for them all please.’ Clearly it’s early days in the implementation of it, and I dearly hope, but severely doubt, it will be booted out of Japan before it has time to take root. Perhaps the big VAR talking point in this game, and the only occasion where the initial decision was actually reversed was for Taniguchi’s red card. For me, the shocking thing about this decision was that the ref didn’t send him off straight away, as I thought it looked like a sure thing but instead a yellow was given. It was referred we thought for whether it was inside or outside of the box and it came back outside and a red. I don’t know how the ref thought it was outside and not a red. I wonder how much free rein is given to the VAR ref. Are they allowed to suggest things that the ref hasn’t noticed? Possibly I’d know the answer to this if I’d done any research, but since when has it been a good thing to be well informed? Far better to whinge on inaccurately and interminably, eh?

Avante... oh... -

Every time we sing Avante at the end of a game with a slender lead it makes me nervous. Particularly this season, when we are wont to concede weakly at any time and on numerous occasions. On this occasion it was again embarrassing to be singing our victory song and have the opposition equalise and take the game into extra time. To be fair, at that stage Sapporo were throwing everything at us and getting corner after corner as we desperately held on. And Sapporo’s corners were a hell of a lot more dangerous than our corners, which more often than not failed to clear the first defender. Extra time, most of which was played with us down to ten men was unsurprisingly open. There was no question that we were attacking a lot more, probably given that we were trailing and needed a goal. Still Sapporo looked dangerous on the counter attack. But we should take great heart in the fact that we battled so hard and continued to play so well with one player less. All in all, it was a fairly even game, but I’d say that our play with ten men meant that we deserved the victory. Of course, I'd say that...

Penalties -

I don’t think many people like penalty shoot outs, but you cant deny they are exciting. Particularly when you win. This shoot out, like the game itself swung backwards and forwards. I was pretty impressed with the standard of our penalties. Kobayashi has missed quite a few for us and when he stepped up first I was a little anxious. But he did the business in some style. As did Yamamura and Kengo. Poor Kurumaya, who must hate big games at this stadium after his red card against Urawa in the ACL was a bit unlucky managing to hit the bar when if it had gone even one centimetre lower it would have looked like the ballsiest penalty ever. If a player blasts it wide or high it's a bit annoying, but if they hit the woodwork, you’ve got to feel for them. Ienaga stepped up to take what we might have hoped would be the crucial and winning penalty but instead it was to keep us alive. He finished beautifully too. Then enter Arai, although of course he’d already been involved, and had come close to stopping a couple of the Consadole penalties. Cometh the hour, cometh the man. He’s spent a lot of time in the shadows of Sung-Ryong, but recently he's been in the team and although we continued to leak goals incessantly, Oniki has kept faith in him. His two saves made him the hero in this game. (Hasegawa's penalty between these two saves was also excellently taken, I should add). But Arai’s second stop made him the talking point and rightfully so. I will again take some credit, as I called the fact that Shindo would miss the final penalty. He looked very nervous, and the little look back to his teammates before he started his run up suggested to me that he wasn’t that confident. You could say we deserved to win the shoot out as two of their penalties featured that absolute rotter of a stop start run up, which let's be honest, seems to be against the rules of the game, but people seem to get away with. Whether these heroics will lead Arai on to be our number one next season, who knows. I think Sung-Ryong will be leaving us as he probably doesn’t want to be sitting on the bench, and from our point of view, if that’s what we have planned for him, we could probably invest his wages better elsewhere. It will be a shame, as I like him a lot and I think he likes us too. He’s been a great player for us, but I fear that his time in Kawasaki might be coming to an end. Perhaps Oniki is looking towards an entirely Japanese squad next year. He certainly seems to prefer Japanese players. Oh and finally on the matter of penalties, check out Nara in the photo below (which I nicked from twitter, sorry). Perhaps some people actually do enjoy penalty shoot outs after all.

So, deserved champions, at least from my biased point of view. Whichever way you look at it, this was a great game for neutrals. I think fans of both teams would have preferred something a bit less exciting and more comfortable, but we won, so we can enjoy the fact that it was a nerve-jangler. More difficult to enjoy the excitement when combined with a defeat of course. Next up... nothing really. The league is over for us so we’re really just playing out our remaining fixtures for fun. Of course we could try to battle for an ACL spot and I think we have a decent chance of getting one. It would probably help us retain some of our big name players. Although, no one ever really seems to want to leave (apart from the Brazilians! For some reason...). I wouldn’t mind some Levain group games to see some of the fringe players a bit more, so I guess I’ll be satisfied either way. Hiroshima at home next and the potential return of Rhayner. Dunno what will happen. I’ll be there though, cheering as usual. Go three star Frontale! (three title stars I mean, not three stars like a hotel).

Team

GK 21. ARAI Shota

DF 2. NOBORIZATO Kyohei

DF 5. TANIGUCHI Shogo (Red card 96')

DF 34. YAMAMURA Kazuya

DF 7. KURUMAYA Shintaro

MF 25. TANAKA Ao

MF 10. OSHIMA Ryota

MF 41. IENAGA Akihiro (Yellow card 115')

MF 28. WAKIZAKA Yasuto

MF 8. ABE Hiroyuki

FW 9. LEANDRO DAMIAO

Subs

GK 1. Sung-Ryong JUNG

DF 3. NARA Tatsuki

FW 11. KOBAYASHI Yu (on for LEANDRO DAMIAO 73')

MF 14. NAKAMURA Kengo (on for WAKIZAKA 64')

MF 16. HASEGAWA Tatsuya (on for ABE 90+1')

MF 22. SHIMODA Hokuto

DF 26. MAGUINHO (on for OSHIMA 100')

My Frontale Man Of The Match

For 120 minutes this was nailed on for one player. The penalty shoot out makes the decision a bit tougher, so let’s cop out and give it to...

ARAI Shota and IENAGA Akihiro - the former made two crucial saves at the most crucial time in a shoot out. Amazing! The latter had one of his best recent games for us, involved in everything dangerous that we did and energetic till the end. Bravo to both of them!

Goals

SUGA (Consadole) 10' 1-0

ABE (Frontale) 45+3' 1-1

KOBAYASHI (Frontale) 88' 1-2

FUKAI (Consadole) 90+5' 2-2

FUKUMORI (Consadole) 99' 3-2

KOBAYASHI (Frontale) 109' 3-3

Penalties
KOBAYASHI (Frontale) 1-0
LOPES (Consadole) 1-1

YAMAMURA (Frontale) 2-1
SUZUKI (Consadole) 2-2

NAKAMURA (Frontale) 3-2

FUKAI (Consadole) 3-3
KURUMAYA (Frontale) 3-3 (hit bar)
FERNANDES (Consadole) 3-4
IENAGA (Frontale) 4-4
ISHIKAWA (Consadole) 4-4 (saved)
HASEGAWA (Frontale) 5-4
SHINDO (Consadole) 5-4 (saved)

Highlights

Vs Gamba Osaka (away) 19/10/19 - J League match 29

Gamba Osaka 2 - 2 Kawasaki Frontale

Well, the league title chase was over before this week, but as tends to be the case this season, we got another glimpse of a potential opportunity to get back into it, and then we snuffed out our own chances again, without even having to worry about our opponents’ games. Kashima drew, and once again, so did we, and we did it by our favourite score this season, 2-2 (think this was our fifth 2-2 in the league this year). This time we threw away a lead, but did so after coming back from an early calamitous goal. It really seems that we like to make it difficult for ourselves. I’m not going to dwell too much on this game as we were pretty much out of the title chase before it, and are even more out of it now, but still aggravatingly there is a mathematical chance. Mathematical, but supremely unlikely. And the sooner we all admit this the better. Of course we should be trying to win our remaining games, but please put a stop to things like Oniki saying that the players are not thinking about the Levain cup and are focused on getting our third league title. Let’s quit doing that as it’s a bit embarrassing now, but let’s do our best to disrupt anyone who’s challenging for the title. That’s all we have left in the league now, a desire and ability to spoil someone else’s fun. Anything else is pure fantasy now I think. Perhaps even the ACL spots could be out of reach. Here are a few things we might have learned that are different from the usual things we fail to learn from in our numerous defeats and draws this year.

Return of a ref with a reputation to refute -

It’s been a while since I had a ref rant, and as these rants are horribly repetitive and predictable, I’ll leave it at just saying Ikeuchi was absolutely crap in this game. Much like our recent Iemoto experience where he was made aware of the fact that we do well in games he refs and then he evens things up by giving absolutely everything against us, Ikeuchi, a ref who has a reputation for favouring the away team, did his best to dispel these rumours by giving Gamba pretty much everything. Of course, I’m biased, but I think he got plenty of decisions wrong in this match. Hope we don’t have to encounter him again soon (unless it's in a home game, of course).

A bit of excitement... -

In spite of all of this, it was a fairly enjoyable game. Perhaps, because I've already written off our chances in the league so am less bothered by the result, and partly because there was plenty to get irritated, excited and generally worked up about in this match. We had an insane referee! We had no running track between us and the pitch! We had possession! We had shots! We didn’t really have shots on target though, .... that same old problem is back again. If we could shoot better we’d be running away with the league. But equally, if we had the choice of all the players and managers in the world we probably also would be doing well, so it seems a bit stupid to deal with ifs. Football is a game of small margins and we came off on the wrong side of most of these in this game. Our former Gamba players Noborizato and Ienaga had pretty forgettable games, the former pretty much giving away the first goal, and the latter failing to score our winning goal from a couple of very nice chances. I’m not sure if they were overawed by returning to their former stomping ground or whether that’s just the way things seem to go in our games against Gamba. [This point is fantastically undermined by me discovering that Nobori never played for Gamba. Thanks to Gamba Osaka English Blog for questioning this. You should follow him here. Dunno where I got that idea from and have thought so for years. Leaving it in here to make myself look deservedly stupid]. Damiao finished his goal nicely and contributed plenty to the team. 100% not starting next week, eh? I agreed for once with Oniki’s starting line up. In spite of Ao’s recent national team triumphs, Morita didn’t deserve to get dropped. You could probably say the same about Arai. He’s been solid recently, and whilst I think Sung Ryong is the better keeper, Arai deserves to keep his spot, I guess. The fact that we had no right back on the bench meant that apparently Oniki thought Morita could switch there if required. But he maybe forgot this when he subbed Morita at half time for Ao. This decision could have cost us the match, and I can’t really understand why he did it. Morita had a decent first half. There were definitely worse players on the field. But still, it was Morita who was hooked. I realise this goes against what I normally say about Oniki being a terrible man manager oblivious to people’s feeling, but it did feel like he thought Morita deserved to keep his spot, but Ao deserved to play too, after scoring twice against Brazil this week. Whichever way you look at it, it was a pretty pointless sub, and one that came back to haunt us as we lost numerous players to injury. It might seem harsh to blame one substitution for us not winning the game, but it severely limited our options later in the game and felt pretty pointless at the time. The loss of Nobori to injury, (BOOOOOOOOOOO, BOOOOOOOOOO, said the idiots in the Gamba end as he was treated for a head injury...), meant that we had to switch Ao to right back. Chasing the win Oniki brought on a defensive midfielder, Shimoda for Kengo. Yamamura getting a bit crocked meant that he had to be deployed up front as a big lump as he was lacking the necessary mobility to keep things safe at the back. So, Kurumaya to centre back and Shimoda to left back. Another unique Oniki line up, and not the most effective of teams, but one that was necessary after an apparently unnecessary half time change and a complete lack of confidence in the right backs we have at the club. So, yeah, even when we agree on a starting line up and we don’t lose, I can still find a way to pin it all on Oniki. Although I reckon the ref probably contributed to our demise the most. Him, and the awful defending for the goals. Guess, at least we didn’t lose. But our exertions in this game might cost us dearly in the cup due to some potential injuries.

Not much to be optimistic about -

The idea that we might be able to challenge for the title is absolute fantasy, demonstrated mainly by our recent league form. Ten points from a possible thirty, all of which have been gained in games against teams who currently sit in the bottom eight, (apart from today’s opponents, who were probably there before the game, but not after). Moreover, the only two wins came against the teams in last and third last places. It’s clearly not good enough, and the general poor quality of the league is the only thing that is keeping us anything like in touch this year. We’ve thrown way too many games away through poor performances, insane player selections and generally clueless tactics. Not much to give us confidence going into the season's most important game next weekend, the Levain Cup Final. And we’ll be going into that with probably a load of injuries. This game didn’t seem particularly dirty, but we ended up with a lot of crocked players. By the final whistle we’d lost Nobori to injury, after he clashed heads with Kurata whilst he scored their equaliser. Yamamura, Hasegawa and Arai looked a bit dodgy at the end of the game and I wouldn’t bet on them starting next week now. Thanks a lot Patric for leaving a leg in with a challenge on Arai and then having the cheek to consider appealing for a penalty. I know he’s an ex Frontale player and generally seems to be quite a nice guy, but he came out of that pretty badly and I think has probably lost a bit of sympathy from any Frontale fans who do the generous thing of applauding past players. Even though the pitch was awful and Gamba had 11 men behind the ball for most of the game, we still managed to make chances, but again we failed to put them away. We got what we deserved, but in the whole scheme of things, this game was pretty pointless. We’re down to 6th now. Our priorities must be pretty clear now! Oh, and Kurumaya and Ienaga picking up yellow cards apparently means that they'll both be banned for the next league game...

Next up the Levain Cup final, and in a way, I’d say it’s perhaps make or break for Oniki. (Sure it won't be though...). Lose it, and this season is a big steaming turd and he should probably go. Win it, and I’ll have to hope someone comes in and poaches him (Kashima, come on, you know you want to, eh?). Another title, albeit the 100% least desirable of all the titles according to most people, means that we have a layer of Levain crackers covering the pile of poo that this year’s efforts have been. Of course I want to win the Levain, but we stared the season with four options, really messed up the ACL and the Emperors Cup and hung around for a bit in the league before totally imploding over the summer. Let’s also not forget that we came into the Levain Cup at the quarter final stage, have only played two teams over two legs and have only won half of the games we’ve played. It’s not exactly a story that will inspire generations to come. Anyway, after that, some league game that’s pretty pointless now. Actually totally pointless. Would still be nice to give some of the title contenders a right pasting though, wouldn’t it?

Team

GK 21. ARAI Shota

DF 2. NOBORIZATO Kyohei

DF 5. TANIGUCHI Shogo

DF 34. YAMAMURA Kazuya

DF 7. KURUMAYA Shintaro (Yellow card 21')

MF 6. MORITA Hidemasa

MF 10. OSHIMA Ryota

MF 41. IENAGA Akihiro (Yellow card 21')

MF 14. NAKAMURA Kengo

MF 16. HASEGAWA Tatsuya

FW 9. LEANDRO DAMIAO

Subs

GK 1. Sung-Ryong JUNG

FW 11. KOBAYASHI Yu

MF 19. SAITO Manabu

FW 20. CHINEN Kei

MF 22. SHIMODA Hokuto (on for NAKAMURA 78')

MF 25. TANAKA Ao (on for MORITA 46')

MF 28. WAKIZAKA Yasuto (on for NOBORIZATO 69')

My Frontale Man Of The Match

Not many stood out in this game and by the end, everything was so confused that who knows what was going on. As I don’t think he’s had a fair crack of the whip this year but has done well when called on, I’ll give it to....

LEANDRO DAMIAO - scored a goal, hit the post (I think... it was at the other end of the pitch), did lots of important work up front that always seems to go unnoticed, played with passion and tried one overhead kick shot and one overhead kick pass. This guy really loves an overhead! Bravo! Just a shame that whenever he scores we don’t seem to win so he never gets a chance to be the match winning hero.

Goals

WATANABE (Gamba) 5' 1-0

OSHIMA (Frontale) 51' 1-1

LEANDRO DAMIAO (Frontale) 63' 1-2

KURATA (Gamba) 65' 2-2 

Highlights

Vs Kashima Antlers (away) 13/10/19 - Levain Cup, semi final 2nd leg

Kashima Antlers 0 - 0 Kawasaki Frontale (1-3 on aggregate)

So this year hasn’t been a complete write off. We’ve made it to a final and there’s some chance of redemption for our many Levain final failures. As I keep saying, any kind of success does paper over the big old cracks in our season, but at this stage, I’m quite happy it hasn’t all been a disaster. Although we can still lose in the final and everything I said above is off. This group of players does deserve something though. My opinion, and it seems I never tire of restating it, is that we have got talent in abundance but we’re not doing a very good job of getting the most out of it. This game gave us another glimpse of quite how close we could have been to getting our third consecutive league title. Kashima, who are now leading in the league, were pretty useless again, and I know they’ll bring up the fact that they have a lot of injuries, but even with their injuries they’ve been ploughing on and picking up points in the league. We too have had injuries (and still do have), but we’ve failed this year due to having our usual slow start and then compounding things with a rotten run in August and September. I have a horrible feeling that we are going to end up agonizingly close to the top spot. We’ve got games against some of the top teams, so our run in isn’t easy, but at the same time it does allow us to have a big influence on the title race and take points off contenders. Whether we do this or not remains to be seen, but even in this dullest of dull games, we seem to finally be playing with a bit of attacking intent again, and have regained some solidity at the back. Problem is, it’s all a little too late for the league probably. Anyway, the games are coming thick and fast so I’ll stop blathering and try to get on with this post. Here’s what we might have learned from this game.

We were poor, they were poorer -

I think I went over this a fair bit in the last post, but this was another game that could be mistaken for a relegation battle rather than a cup semi-final in terms of the quality that was on display. We totally dominated but at the same time never really looked like we were going to score. An amazing amount of our shots went straight at the keeper, who rarely had to move to stop anything we threw at him. Kashima had one shot on target in the whole game. Considering that they needed to score at least twice to progress, this was pretty woeful. There was an amazing amount of possession conceded from both teams. We were excellent at winning the ball from them in midfield, but almost always gave it back to them with the next pass. It happened over and over again. We did a great job of pressing and stifling them, but when we had the ball, could do nothing with it. The shots stat is really misleading in this game, as plenty of our shots were little more threatening than backpasses. In fact they were less threatening I guess, as the keeper could pick them up. When we weren’t dollying the ball up for their keeper we were failing to score in even worse circumstances. Kengo missed an open goal. We got into great positions but consistently failed to pull the trigger. It was pretty frustrating. But not as frustrating as the next point.

We were sneaky, but they were dirty -

Our time wasting was pretty shocking to be honest. I never like to see this in a game, but I understand that it is an inevitable part of modern football. It’s definitely a thing that you get annoyed about if its the opposition doing it, but you’re fine with your own team doing. At least normally anyway, but I think we took the piss a bit in this game. Admittedly the onus was on Kashima to score, but it would have been nice if we had not slowed down the game to a snail’s pace. The last fifteen minutes was like an avant garde visual art/absurdist comedy piece where time after time we dithered on the ball drawing a foul from Kashima and then dithered over the free kick. It didn’t make for fun viewing, but I guess it was effective in seeing out the game and infuriating the Kashima players and fans. Quite how Kashima kept eleven players on the pitch, I don’t know, as there were some really awful tackles flying in. Jung seemed determined to physically attack each of our team, with a knee in Kengo’s dodgy back and other fouls all over the place. Bueno showed that nominative determinism can sometimes work in reverse, by being an all round bad player, with bad play and a very bad attitude. He charged over and went in swinging at Ienaga and Morita (who seemed to be only watching the aggro rather than getting involved) and didn’t even get a yellow. (Tojo the ref, was pretty poor in this respect in this game I thought, and I’m sure Kashima would probably agree, but for different reasons). Leandro again was a nasty piece of work. I totally understand their frustration as we weren’t exactly playing football, but after the first leg, this was an effective, if far from easy on the eye tactic for us to employ. And employ it we did. Again and again. And again. And again. A month or so ago there was talk about Kashima doing the quadruple, but now they’re down to only two competitions and judging on this game I don’t fancy their chances against Honda FC in the next round of the Emperor’s Cup and I wouldn’t think they’d be able to hang on at the top of the league if it weren’t for the fact that all the other teams around them are suffering their own implosions on a monthly basis. I’m really torn now on how I want the league to finish. As I said above, I think we won’t win it. FC Tokyo seem to be in freefall and I can see them slipping out of the ACL places. Yokohama blow extremely hot and then extremely cold and you’ve got to think they’ve got a cold spell coming soon. And Kashima are just a bit rubbish right now. Obviously, as our big local rivals I couldn’t really ever want FC Tokyo or Yokohama F Marinos to win the league. Which left me with Kashima as potentially being my preferred champion, which went against everything I have always believed in, as I’ve always disliked them. After witnessing their shithousery up close two games in a row, I now can't even be half-heartedly in favour of them winning the league. So where does that leave me? I dunno, but I guess I’m going to be disappointed however it turns out.

(Some) players remembering how to play -

Finally, a few words on various players. Morita seems to be finally regaining some of the form he once had and showing that he will hopefully be able to come good on the promise he’s showed in flashes. Since his goal he seems transformed and this was another great game for him. Defensively all round, this was a decent display so well done to all of those players. It was a marked improvement from the Kurumaya centre back and Morita right back starting line ups Oniki has tried recently. Oshima didn’t quite have the impact in this game that he had in the last game, but even so, it’s still great to see him back on the pitch. I think Oniki might have imagined that Oshima was going to be his saviour, riding back into contention near the end of the season and propelling us to a third league title. Shame that it’s come a bit too late. Kobayashi had another shocker to be honest. Pretty much the only positive things he did were in defence at corners. Up front he was a bit of a waste of space. We all know he’s a confidence player but he’s not been able to build up any confidence. I think he’s a good guy so I reckon he must be aware that Leandro Damiao is probably playing a lot better than him but never really getting the same opportunities. This can only be increasing the pressure on Kobayashi. Kengo was a bit sloppy in this game and Abe was pretty much absent again. I have no idea why Oniki would change the front four so much after the last leg. He can only be tinkering for tinkerings sake. Quit it! One bright spark was the fact that Ienaga did ok again. He’s still not back to the heights of last season, but he’s also considerably higher up than the lows he was in earlier this season. It’s very welcome! Lastly, I don’t think I’ve mentioned Ienaga’s weird warm up routine when he comes out before the game before. He basically uses a member of staff and leans on them at various angles and gets them to push him away from them. Quite weird, but I quite enjoy watching out for it now. In this game he was joined in bizarre behavior by Shimoda who almost immediately after coming on to the pitch did a couple of forward rolls and then a couple of backwards rolls, before getting up and carrying on as normal. I have no idea what they are doing, but fully intend to incorporate these things into my everyday life somehow.

Next up, Gamba away, another one of those fixtures where we always suck, and this year against a team who could realistically be pulled into the relegation places. Not the best game to have at this stage. I guess it will either be a dead rubber for us or depending on other results, a possible start of our charge to a third consecutive title. But we do have to win all our games for that to have any possibility of happening. Also, we still need all these teams who keep slipping up (at times when we've slipped up even more), to keep slipping up. It’s not going to happen, but I guess we can still dream, can’t we? And then a week later, the Levain Cup Final, a trip back to the scene of some of our most notable recent failures, the Saitama Stadium. Fingers crossed for this time, eh?

Team

GK 21. ARAI Shota

DF 2. NOBORIZATO Kyohei

DF 5. TANIGUCHI Shogo

DF 34. YAMAMURA Kazuya

DF 7. KURUMAYA Shintaro

MF 6. MORITA Hidemasa

MF 22. SHIMODA Hokuto

MF 41. IENAGA Akihiro

MF 14. NAKAMURA Kengo

MF 8. ABE Hiroyuki

FW 11. KOBAYASHI Yu

Subs

GK 1. Sung-Ryong JUNG

FW 9. LEANDRO DAMIAO (on for KOBAYASHI 90+1')

MF 10. OSHIMA Ryota (on for SHIMODA 57')

MF 16. HASEGAWA Tatsuya  (on for ABE 52')

FW 20. CHINEN Kei

DF 26. MAGUINHO

MF 28. WAKIZAKA Yasuto

My Frontale Man Of The Match

As mentioned above, it certainly won’t be going to anyone at the top of the formation as we were so bad up front, I feel like scoring no goals flattered us. The defence was solid, but I’m not sure quite how much they had to deal with, and I’m going to generalize and possibly bend the truth for the purpose of this announcement, most of it was stopped by….

MORITA Hidemasa - Give a player a goal and he’ll play better. Give him a song before the next game and he’ll step it up another notch. Stood out in a fairly mediocre if effective team performance and recently seems to be making important tackles and the right decisions when he has the ball. Keep it up!

Goals

None 

Highlights

Vs Kashima Antlers (home) 9/10/19 - Levain Cup, semi final 1st leg

Kawasaki Frontale 3 - 1 Kashima Antlers

Now that was a lot of fun! And what an unexpected treat it was too. There were plenty of doubts in my mind in spite of the demolition of Shonan last weekend. It’s undeniable that Shonan were in a pretty bad place and played pretty terribly. Kashima looked like being a far sterner test. But as it turned out, they were just another team turning up to get a pasting from us. I feel that Kashima are a bit of a bogey team for us. Nowhere near Cerezo level, but bogey enough. Apparently, according to the J League online forum the Kashima fans think that about us too. And judging on this game they are right too. At this stage of the season, results are much more important than the performances. If we’d got a few better results during our rotten patch we’d still be in contention. As it stands, it looks like we could end up missing out by just a few points giving us plenty of what ifs to stew over in the off season. But this wasn’t a league game, so we could approach it with some abandon. I certainly seemed to be enjoying it a lot more than I thought I would. At the end of a pretty dodgy first half I was in a buoyant mood for some reason. Perhaps it was the fact that both teams were playing a bit rubbish. Probably it was more to do with the fact that Nishimura was Nishimura-ing it to the max. I’ve never seen so many bad decisions in one match. Normally it this would infuriate me but for some reason I found it hugely entertaining. I hadn’t even been drinking! Half time saw the introduction of a beer and a couple of goals in the second half contributed to a very fine night indeed. Here’s we might have learned from this game.

Well, I dunno anymore... -

Still don’t get what Oniki’s thinking with the line up but I’m just going to go with it for the rest of the season in order to stop myself losing my mind. I don’t know if he knows what he’s doing either, but from now on I’m going to treat every unique and confusing selection as a puzzle to put some thought into. This was a real hodgepodge of a first team reserve mix, but recently, I guess that whole concept of first team has got a bit confused so who really knows? Arai continued in goal, we again went with the centre back pairing of Kurumaya and Taniguchi, but decided to play a right back at right back! Leandro Damiao got his usual random cup run out and Kengo got his usual cup game rest. Probably the big news was the Return of Oshima to the bench. Hasegawa and Wakizaka got to start the game instead of being subbed on. The early withdrawal due to injury of Mawatari meant that Kurumaya was able to switch to left back, Nobori going to the right and Yamamura going back into the middle. Although Oniki did initially attempt to play Yamamura at right back, ever desiring of one more tinker. This change seemed to make things a lot more positive for us. Who’d have thought that Kurumaya would play better at left back, eh? Oshima replacing Shimoda also had quite an effect. Hokuto has been great recently I think, but Oshima gave us all a real lift. We seemed to actually be attacking with some intent. If only we’d had him for the whole of the season. I used to say that the sign of Oshima having a good game was the fact that you don’t notice him. I’m not sure this is true now though, as the boost he gave the fans and players was very obvious in this game. Long may that continue!

Kashima, champions elect? -

It seems to be a widely held belief that Kashima are going to power on for the title now FC Tokyo have relinquished their lead. From this games showing, I’d say that if that were the case, it shows the weakness of the other teams rather than anything great about Kashima. Aside from their early goal, which our defence could probably claim an assist for, such was their contribution through giving away time and space, they were pretty ordinary. After they scored they were time wasting, which was pretty ridiculous ten minutes into the game. They were on top for a decent part of the first half but seem to have taken a page out of our book when it comes to possession not being turned into chances. Their goal was their only shot on target according to the stats. It’s a mark of Nishimura’s insanity that we picked up two yellows and they only got one. Leandro probably should have been sent off for a dodgy tackle after he’d already picked up a yellow. (I would say this though as I still hold grudge against him for not returning the ball to us after we put it out for an injury in a game one or two years ago. The fact that we nicked it back of them and went and scored was lovely justice, but won’t stop me from thinking Leandro is a bit of an idiot). I’m pretty sure we should have had a penalty but the lack of a DAZN replay of the game means that I can’t check. They looked a real mess towards the end of the game and we could quite easily have got more. Sogohata looked dodgy in the extreme. Uchida was getting rinsed by Hasegawa and later Kurumaya, over and over again. It was lovely to watch. Kashima fans lamented that we don’t have any injuries, and whilst it’s true they have plenty, we are one bad tackle on Taniguchi away from having zero centre backs. The thing is, neither team particularly shone, at least not for 90 minutes. Our middle three were woeful for the first 25 minutes or so. There was a lot of squandered possession from both teams, lots of misplaced passes, but unusually for once, we seemed to be fairly clinical with our finishing. It’s lovely to score three against Kashima. Fun fun fun fun…

FUN!!!!!!!!!! -

Morita finally scored! He has a song! It’s quite catchy but has some potentially tricky lyrics for me. He looked like a changed man after it went in. Leandro Damiao seemed determined to score with an overhead kick. Never have I seen a player attempt to set himself up for one so many times in one game. One was pretty powerful and on target but sadly Sogohata didn’t fumble that one. Damiao had a great game I think. If he’d managed to score that would have made things ridiculously fun! I hope that Oniki was watching closely, as it’s not all about goals. He definitely deserves to start the next game, which presumably means that he won’t. If he ever got a run in the team, who knows what could happen. Even the referee’s ineptitude was fun. I don’t know if they ever drug test officials, but I think Nishimura would test positive for some kind of hallucinogen. I really needed this game (as well as the Shonan victory). It reminded me that football can really bring joy and that it doesn’t always have to cause teeth-gnashing frustration. Lovely! Whether I still feel this way on Sunday evening, who knows. I guess the highs can evapourate as quick as they appear. Fingers crossed.


Quite enjoying these shorter blog posts and I suspect most readers are too. Next up, the return leg. Who knows what the team will be? Who knows if the game will go ahead due to the typhoon? (Bet it will, to a tiny crowd, as the fan’s experience and travel possibilities seem to always be the last things taken into consideration). Who knows if we’ll be able to hang on and get to the final. Let’s not forget that we threw away a bigger lead against Urawa in the ACL a few years ago. Hopefully we can pick up another win and then who knows what might happen for the rest of the season. Wins breed confidence, and that’s something we desperately need and are in danger of getting. Let’s hope it will be as much fun as this game was. It was a blast!

Team

GK 21. ARAI Shota

DF 17. MAWATARI Kazuaki (Yellow card 30')

DF 5. TANIGUCHI Shogo

DF 7. KURUMAYA Shintaro

DF 2. NOBORIZATO Kyohei

MF 6. MORITA Hidemasa

MF 22. SHIMODA Hokuto

MF 41. IENAGA Akihiro

MF 28. WAKIZAKA Yasuto

MF 16. HASEGAWA Tatsuya (Yellow card 30')

FW 9. LEANDRO DAMIAO

Subs

GK 1. Sung-Ryong JUNG

MF 8. ABE Hiroyuki (on for HASEGAWA 76')

MF 10. OSHIMA Ryota (on for SHIMODA 79')

FW 11. KOBAYASHI Yu

MF 14. NAKAMURA Kengo

FW 20. CHINEN Kei

MF 34. YAMAMURA Kazuya  (on for MAWATARI 37')

Goals

 

SHIRASAKI (Kashima) 10' 0-1
MORITA (Frontale) 27' 1-1
WAKIZAKA (Frontale) 82' 2-1
ABE (Frontale) 85' 3-1


Highlights

(Three lots of highlights again, probably pretty much all the same again)

Vs Shonan Bellmare (away) 6/10/19 - J League match 28

Shonan Bellmare 0 - 5 Kawasaki Frontale

I give up! Where did that come from? After an absolutely rotten performance against Vissel Kobe, Oniki picked the same team (for only the 4th time this season) and we hammered Shonan. I think there’s nothing I can really say now, so muddled is everything that I thought I knew. This was a much needed tonic for Frontale fans and I’m not going to write loads picking holes and finding things to moan about. I might write a little about it, but not loads. For now I’m just going to enjoy the result and enjoy the fact that we won away at Shonan, a game which we always seem to contrive to turn into a frustrating draw. Miracles do happen it seems! Here’s what we might have learned from this match.

Turn back the clock and party like it’s 2018 -

At least with the front four anyway. Kengo and Ienaga looked rejuvenated, Kobayashi put away his first chance confidently, we looked exciting going forward. At least in the first half anyway, which admittedly was at the other end of the pitch so perhaps my view wasn’t the best. But yeah! Goals!!! And a clean sheet!!! One slight downside was that Ienaga looked pretty pissed off when he was changed, and to be honest, who can blame him? He was playing much better than he had previously this year. He was involved! Perhaps though he should take being subbed as a compliment, as it normally seems to be the players who are playing well that Oniki changes (see, I knew I could get a moan in). After he potentially expressed some criticism, or at least commented on Oniki last week in his post match thoughts, I was surprised to see him start. I will also be surprised if he is still with us next year. Along with a few other players. This will be a shame as judging on this performance he seems to have worked his way through his dodgy spell now. I wonder if something has been said behind the scenes and some air has been cleared as there seemed to be an all round better mood in the team. Clearly this was a performance with a very different feel to recent games and given that it was the same eleven as against Kobe, you’ve got to wonder where such a change came from.

The cloud of the silver lining -

This is another victory which is very welcome, but has to be taken with a pinch of salt given the opposition. Shonan looked awful in the first half, focusing so hard on kicking lumps out of us that they forgot to try to play football. Akimoto had a bit of a nightmare fumbling most things he had to deal with. We have to remember that they lost 6-0 to Shimizu last week. They are very much not a good team right now. So are they awful and Shimizu and us are average? Or are Kobe and Urawa (who beat Shimizu this weekend), totally amazing, Shimizu and us good and Shonan merely not very good? It is the J League just being the J League? There have been some really weird results this season and maybe they are continuing. We still need to remember that our only two league wins in our last nine games have been against Jubilo who are rock bottom and Shonan who must be rock bottom of the form table and are flirting very forcefully with the drop zone.

Any other grumble business -

I’m going to round up my other grumbles into a quick little paragraph to get them out of the way. I realise it’s churlish to complain after winning 5-0. In spite of the result, I’m still not sure this was the correct team to pick. I really don’t know why Arai is getting picked over Sung-Ryong as until this game they’d both been conceding at least two a match. Although to give Arai some credit he did pull off a great save in this game. Morita at right back and Kurumaya at centre back still doesn’t work, with both of them naturally seeming to drift towards where they are comfortable and used to playing. We didn’t concede, but I think this again is more to do with the opposition. And again, the subs seemed nuts. The Ienaga change was mentioned above. Kengo off for Hasegawa means again moving Abe to the left (after which, he unsurprisingly lost his spark). And Mawatari on for Nobori means that we have a right back playing at left back and a midfielder playing at right back. I don’t think we’ll get away with that against Kashima. Oh and, I don’t know why they’ve put those seats in behind the goal, but it seems that it has severely reduced the capacity. As usual, there seemed to be a lot of people with a less than ideal view. If I hadn’t got to the stadium six hours before kick off I’m not sure we would have been able to find a space, and there were only two of us. And apparently our end hadn’t even sold out!

But yeah, forget my moaning. It seems I know nothing and I’m quite happy to look stupid if it means we win every week. I imagine with this result Oniki would have been flicking me a middle finger if he was aware of my constant criticism. But yeah, I’ll take the abuse. If only we could have started being not poor a bit earlier we might still be in with a shout as FC Tokyo seem to be stinking things up as some predicted. We now look like we could have a shot at an ACL place but one swallow doesn’t make a summer, and we have a tricky run in, so let’s not get too confident yet. Also, I was kind of looking forward to those Levain group stage games. But yeah, forget all this, and watch those highlights a few times. We scored some nice goals, so let’s enjoy them and make the most of some positivity while we can. Next up Kashima at home on Wednesday in the Levain cup...

Team

GK 21. ARAI Shota

MF 6. MORITA Hidemasa

DF 7. KURUMAYA Shintaro

DF 5. TANIGUCHI Shogo

DF 2. NOBORIZATO Kyohei

MF 25. TANAKA Ao

MF 22. SHIMODA Hokuto

MF 41. IENAGA Akihiro 

MF 14 NAKAMURA Kengo

MF 8. ABE Hiroyuki

FW 11. KOBAYASHI Yu

Subs

GK 1. Sung-Ryong JUNG

FW 9. LEANDRO DAMIAO

MF 16. HASEGAWA Tatsuya (on for NAKAMURA 70')

DF 17. MAWATARI Kazuaki (on for NOBORIZATO 81')

FW 20. CHINEN Kei

MF 28. WAKIZAKA Yasuto (on for IENAGA 64')

MF 34. YAMAMURA Kazuya 

My Frontale Man Of The Match

Oniki has left me with a tricky decision in this game as he removed both of the players who I thought were in for a shout for the man of the match. In spite of the scoreline, this didn’t seem like a game in which we played magnificently, so I’ll go on what happened before the subs started and give it to...

IENAGA Akihiro and NAKAMURA Kengo - dunno what they’ve been eating or drinking or thinking, but they both seemed really up for this game and we’re both a real menace going forward. I don’t know if they were being rested with Wednesday in mind, but it was a shame they couldn’t have continued as I think we would have scored some more goals and recovered some more confidence.

Goals

 

OWN GOAL (Frontale) 15' 0-1
NAKAMURA (Frontale) 21' 0-2
ABE (Frontale) 26' 0-3
KOBAYASHI (Frontale) 35' 0-4
HASEGAWA (Frontale) 81' 0-5


Highlights