Vs Kashima Antlers (away) 9/11/19 - J League match 31

Kashima Antlers 0 - 2 Kawasaki Frontale

Hehehe. Well, that was fun. I think I said in a previous post that all we have to look forward to for the rest of this season is ruining other teams’ title challenges. Today we’ve probably done that for Kashima, and let’s be honest, it couldn’t have happened to a nastier team. I’ll keep this all brief as it’s not long since I did a post moaning about Kashima and this time I’d probably only be saying the same things. If you’re not interested in me repeating myself feel free to stop reading after the next sentence which I feel will sum up the rest of what I’m going to say. It was a lot of fun to beat a horrible Kashima team at their own place, particularly when they desperately needed to win. Here are a few brief bullet points and then we can all have a drink or two to celebrate this probably inconsequential win. At least as far as we’re concerned anyway. There will probably be quite a few consequences for Kashima!

Dirty, dirty Kashima -

Have said it numerous times but I’ll say it again. Kashima are a horrible team full of hackers and divers and their fans aren’t much better. Their centre back pairing of Jung and Bueno must be the most irritating of all possible J League duos; two players who individually are pretty damn irritating, but together take it to another level. It’s a sign of how much of an arsehole that Bueno is that for most of this match Jung looked fairly respectable in comparison. Bueno is a total rotter but took it to new levels getting Ienaga booked by falling down clutching his face after no contact whatsoever. To be honest, not sure what the ref was doing with that decision. Serginho seems much less arseholeish, but at the same time seems to just be a massive elbow made into a football player. The amount of extremely dubious physical challenges he put in was unbelievable. No cards of course. Sometimes not even a free kick. Fair play to him though, he did apologise after each attempted shattering of bone. And those fans... ‘Amazing atmosphere...’ if you’re really into booing of any opposition possession. I don’t know why they and Urawa bother to be honest. Can’t imagine that an away team passing the ball around would be so affected by the boos that they’d have a crisis of confidence and give the ball away. Add to this some big booing for Kashima old boy Yamamura before the game and you have quite an unlikeable set of fans. It was lovely that Yamamura scored. It was pretty good of him to not celebrate the goal. Can’t imagine I would have been able to do the same after being booed before the game. Karma, eh?

High on excitement, low on quality, but I'll take that! -

In some ways this was a bit of a smash and grab from us. In the first half we had plenty of possession and pretty much no shots whilst Kashima had little possession and plenty of shots, and missed some pretty good chances. Though, to be honest, most of those chances were gifted to them by us. The second half was a bit more even but there was still not much high quality play going on in front of goal. Kashima fluffed some more, and the one time they didn’t fluff, Kurumaya was on hand to clear off the line. We didn’t look great up front but were getting a bit closer the more Kashima tried to score. It’s weird for us to score with a header from a set piece recently so that was nice. This really forced Kashima to commit men forward and consequently gave us lots of space. We probably should have scored more. Ienaga put a first time shot pretty much out of the stadium it was so high over the bar. Chinen had a chance to hoof the ball into an empty net from near the centre circle at the end of the game but almost put it out for a throw. The game is probably best summed up by our second goal; Kobayashi has a great chance, doesn’t take it (although this time he at least managed to shoot, even if it did hit the post and Hasegawa bundled the ball into the net at the second time of asking with some help from a defender. It definitely wasn’t beautiful, and it was definitely comical and sloppy. But they all count, and when it’s your team scoring these kind of goals, sometimes they are even more fun than fantastic pieces of skill. 

Title race trundles on -

Still got no idea what’s going to happen. Still mathematically have a chance ourselves, but you’ve got to think that chance will be extinguished when the other teams catch up the extra game we’ve played. But if they happen to lose all those games...


That’ll do, I won’t mention dodgy performances from some players, I won’t mention a ref with some interesting thoughts on both yellow card offences and playing the advantage. I will mention again that this was fun!! Next up Yokohama at home. Perhaps we’ll spoil their party too. We’ll see, I guess. It’s nice to be able to enjoy the end of what has been a bit of a frustrating season. Let’s keep it going for the last couple of games. Go Frontale!

Team

GK 21. ARAI Shota

MF 6. MORITA Hidemasa (Yellow card 42')

DF 5. TANIGUCHI Shogo (Yellow card 69')

DF 34. YAMAMURA Kazuya

DF 7. KURUMAYA Shintaro

MF 25. TANAKA Ao

MF 10. OSHIMA Ryota

MF 41. IENAGA Akihiro (Yellow card 77')

MF 28. WAKIZAKA Yasuto

MF 8. ABE Hiroyuki

FW 11. KOBAYASHI Yu

Subs

GK 1. Sung-Ryong JUNG

DF 2. NOBORIZATO Kyoehi (on for ABE 90+3')　
DF 3. NARA Tatsuki

FW 9. LEANDRO DAMIAO

MF 16. HASEGAWA Tatsuya (on for WAKIZAKA 56')　

FW 20. CHINEN Kei (on for KOBAYASHI 81')　
MF 22. SHIMODA Hokuto

My Frontale Man Of The Match

I dunno, wasn't exactly the greatest match, but a few players looked good. Tanaka was great again, Arai made some important saves, Hasegawa and Kurumaya made fools of plenty of Kashima players later on in the game. But given that he hasn't really had a chance to play where he probably wants to, I'll give it to….

YAMAMURA Kazuya - scored a goal, kept a clean sheet, got the best possible revenge for his prematch booing and then trumped it by not even celebrating. Classy!

Goals

YAMAMURA (Frontale) 62' 0-1

HASEGAWA (Frontale) 71' 0-2

 

Highlights