Vs Blaublitz Akita (home) 27/12/20 - Emperor's Cup semi final

 

Kawasaki Frontale 2 - 0 Blaublitz Akita

As we slide towards the final game of a long but actually short season, (eloquent as ever, eh?), these blog posts have been getting increasingly random and useless. Fatigue is setting in for everyone I guess and whilst it seems a bit ridiculous to complain about having to write blog posts when the players have been having to play so often, it does at times feel like a bit of a thankless and pointless task. So basically, apologies for the declining standard of insight in these posts. Today we will probably sink to new depths, given that as far as I can remember, this was a pretty dull game and there are not yet any highlights up online to refresh my memory on anything exciting that might have happened. Also contributing is the fact that now we can’t sing we are clapping pretty much constantly through the game, leaving no free hands to make notes. And leave those hands involved in the clapping pretty dry and cracked. I never knew the pain of the Japanese housewives (and it is always housewives not house husbands) in the TV adverts where even the slightest movement or interaction with anything sends pain shooting through their hands. Add to this the fact that Coronavirus has significantly increased the occasions where alcohol needs to be applied to hands, and therefore into open hand wounds, and this all adds up to an ultimately uncomfortable experience. Basically I’m going to pad out this post by writing about my hands and skip the actual game. Kind of.

 

It was great to welcome Akita back to Todoroki. I checked the lineup and score from last time we played them in 2016 and we only have four players left at the club who were in the match day squad that day. It is obvious to say that both Akita and us have had pretty good 2020s on the pitch. I suspect that both clubs were left slightly frustrated that their dream seasons were allowed to shine brighter by having another club at a different level almost match their achievements. Full credit to Akita. They did a great job of winning J3 and I wish them luck in J2 next year. Perhaps because of their great year this looked like it could be a bit more of a banana skin that a tie against a J3 team normally might be. But we do have a bit of a reputation for toiling a little against lower league opposition in this competition. Generally though, we do seem to get the job done and we did so on this occasion. I fact I’d say that this game was quite a bit easier than previous Emperor's Cup ties. Perhaps this is down us to us having a pretty good squad at the moment. Or perhaps Akita were still on a league winning high and didn’t really fancy their chances so weren’t going for it so much. As both them and us found out after sealing our titles, the pressure release from the getting over the line can result in some subsequent pretty ordinary results. Which is totally fair enough! Oniki seemed to be taking this game seriously though with perhaps his best available eleven selected to start. Although perhaps the exact best eleven still isn’t completely clear. Akita might have been put slightly on the back foot by the fact that the side they were facing contained eight of the 2020 J1 best 11. And when you consider that the other three on the pitch were Oshima, Damiao and Hatate who all have more than decent reputations you might have imagined that this would be something of a procession. It didn’t really turn out that way though, (here comes the actual match chat...). There wasn’t a great deal of excitement in this game. We never looked particularly threatened at the back and according to the stats I saw they didn’t have any shots. At the same time, we weren’t exactly free-flowing going forward. Our two goals came from a nice move and finish by Mitoma and a lovely free kick from Ao. Maybe that weird wall thing we do has finally paid off. Or maybe it was just a coincidence. If anyone can explain the point of it I’d love to know. We dominated possession but only had eleven shots, just over half of which were on target. Akita were hassling us when we were on the ball and doing a good job of on the whole disrupting us when we got near their box. However, perhaps because we were making a few chances, we didn’t need to get out of first gear so didn’t bother doing so. Or perhaps it was a game that most people imagined was a foregone conclusion. I have to say, I found my mind wandering on more than a few occasions during the match, so the ‘analysis’ ends here...

 

What else is there to mention? Perhaps the weird match day experience that comes from the JFA organising every part of the experience rather than the club. We didn’t get our usual intro videos or Kawasaki city song, the ticket sales were dealt with in a different way and the sections moved around a bit. The most notable part was the equal parts amusing and horrendous vaguely alternative driving rock soundtrack that went on and on and on for about 30 minutes before kick off. I can't say for sure if it was one looping song or several very similar looping songs. This was replaced at half time by something more ‘soulful and urban’. Both soundtracks felt like they’d been endlessly discussed by men in suits trying to select something fresh, funky, edgy and exciting to show their youth and dynamism. It definitely put a smile on my face though and maybe that was their intention! I should be less of a snob I guess. Oh and one other thing. This was Kengo’s last ever Todoroki match appearance. He came on briefly at the end of the match to tick that particular box. It’s a shame it wasn’t more exciting, but I guess they’d made a lot of it in his last home league appearance and at the lengthy ceremony, so they’d possibly run out of exciting ways to celebrate his great achievements. 

 

Whether he can finish on a super high with us winning the cup on New Year’s Day, who knows? Hopefully, that won’t put any extra pressure on us. Gamba will certainly be up for some revenge after we swatted them aside to seal the title. I would also imagine that plenty of fans of other teams might find themselves becoming Gamba fans for the day. If we flop and can’t win it will put a bit of a downer on what has been a great year, but I can’t say I’m that confident we'll do the job. Fairytale endings are great, but the whole concept of a fairytale ending suggests that it’s not something that happens the majority of the time. Fingers crossed though. I don’t expect we’ll roll out the goals and win at a canter. I’d definitely take a 90th minute own goal winner for us and a celebration muted by a bit of embarrassment about how rubbish we were. Alcohol will be consumed whatever the result I guess. One more game and then we can all have a lovely rest! Go Frontale!

 

 

Team 

GK 1. Sung-Ryong JUNG 

DF 13. YAMANE Miki

DF 4. JESIEL
DF 5. TANIGUCHI Shogo

DF 30. HATATE Reo

MF 6. MORITA Hidemasa
MF 25. TANAKA Ao

MF 10. OSHIMA Ryota

FW 41. IENAGA Akihiro

FW 9. LEANDRO DAMIAO

FW 18. MITOMA Kaoru

Subs

GK 27. TANNO Kenta 

DF 7. KURUMAYA Shintaro (on for HATATE 67')

MF 8. WAKIZAKA Yasuto

FW 11. KOBAYASHI Yu (on for LEANDRO DAMIAO 67')

MF 14. NAKAMURA Kengo (on for OSHIMA 86')

FW 16. HASEGAWA Tatsuya (on for MITOMA 81')

DF 34. YAMAMURA Kazuya

 

My Frontale Man Of The Match

 

In a blog post where I spent more time writing about music and my hands rather than the actual game it will come as no surprise that I’m going to cop out on the man of the match thing again. Pretty uneventful for the most part, but I’ll give it to....

MORITA Hidemasa & TANAKA Ao - Morita seemed very keen to score again in the first half and was as neat and tidy in breaking up opposition attacks as we’ve come to expect. Ao scored a lovely free kick and constantly delights me with the way that after a rare mistake he nearly always puts in 100% to win the ball back and start something great. Says a lot that out of our midfield three I’m mentioning them and not Oshima. Congratulations to them both.

 

 

Goals

MITOMA (Frontale) 39' 1-0

TANAKA (Frontale) 83' 2-0

Highlights

 

Vs Kashiwa Reysol (away) 19/12/20 - J League match 34

Kashiwa Reysol 2 - 3 Kawasaki Frontale

This could have been a bit of an anticlimactic finish to the league campaign. Neither side had anything to play for and both teams probably had one eye on their respective cup games coming up soon. So we were probably expecting a bit of a dull affair. But this was actually quite an exiting game. Albeit one that the majority of Frontale fans had to watch on TV as the ever away fan unfriendly Kashiwa supplied us with only 190 tickets for this game. Nevertheless, our support definitely outshone theirs. I say outshone, but I guess what I really mean is out-clapped. Although that suggests that their fans clapped, and judging by the TV coverage’s soundtrack, they didn’t bother. This was to be Kengo’s last J League game, except it wasn’t actually, with him not even making the match day squad. Makes sense I suppose to finish on a high at home rather than in front of a lot of mute people in yellow tabards (no crappy trumpets = no life, or something along those lines....). His non-appearance made a mockery of my pre-match predictions. Neither him nor Mitoma started. Oniki didn’t ring the changes but maybe he nudged the changes. A starting wide forward pairing of Hasegawa and Saito was a surprise. As was Hatate back in the team but in midfield. And Yamamura replacing Taniguchi at the back. But in general, it’s still the same names really so we won’t see any of the other youngsters this year, I guess. Given that I wasn’t at this game I’m going to keep this brief. Here we go.

Mitoma -

He didn’t manage to score and claim the first season scoring record for himself, but he did manage a couple of assists. I was really impressed with the fact that he wasn’t going all out for himself. For our sake, I hope we’ll see more of him next year. For his sake, I guess I should hope that he gets a decent European move, rather than a stupid one. I’d say it makes a lot more sense for him to be playing in J1 than it does to play in the second division of Belgium, Spain or Switzerland. But I would say that wouldn’t I?

Some game stuff -

Olunga did an Olunga and scored. He seems pretty good at using his physicality to barge players out of the way but at the same time goes down quite easily if anyone tries to do the same to him. Gets the job done though, doesn’t he? I'm pleased that Sung-Ryong managed to not get a hand on the ball when he raced out of the box in the first half. Olunga really made the most of the contact though. Maybe that made him so angry that he just felt he had to smash Yamane out of the way for his goal. We looked rubbish at the back again. Their second was an absolute disaster for us defensively. Aside from the two goals though I didn’t think we came too close to conceding. They only had four shots on target apparently. We had a magnificent seven on target, so I guess we’ve put our shooting boots on. There were a few moments though when massive hoofed long balls looked like they might be about to catch us out. Thankfully they didn’t. Thanks to Kashiwa’s keeper for his generosity with the second goal. Really helped to turn the game in our favour. Two lovely finishes by Ienaga, a bit of sitter for Damiao and two nice assists for Mitoma. Job done!

Ref -

Another day, another joke of a ref. I was kind of onside with him for a bit when he was actually booking players. Hasegawa probably deserved his yellow by the letter of the law as he kicked the ball away. Wish Iida had seen one or two of the five or six Kashiwa handballs in and around their area though. One player did it twice in one move. Sadly though, Iida was concentrating more on looking out for people kicking the ball away after the whistle. He did miss it when Olunga did it later though, but maybe he was distracted by wondering how he could give some more decisions Kashiwa’s way. Oh, and he apparently missed Cristiano screaming directly into the linesman’s face about a decision that he clearly got right, Never a good look that, and particularly so in Corona times. Must have been looking the other way for that one. But at least he saw Hasegawa kick the ball away! To be honest though, I’m merely going through the moaning about the ref motions here. They’re all as bad as one another, so by the usual standards of J League refereeing, I guess he had a good game. If by good, we mean utterly useless, but predictably useless.

Other bits -
 

It was funny when the cameraman or director mistook our Portuguese translator for Oniki and had a good old focus from two different camera angles of him shouting some instructions onto the pitch. I wonder if they were impressed with what they thought was Oniki’s command of Portuguese. Have to say, would be a bit of a surprise if Oniki started studying that particular subject. Nobori going off clutching his shoulder looked a bit dodgy. Thankfully it was for only the last action of the match, but with our next game coming up next weekend, we could be back to the no left back situation again, unless Kurumaya recovers quickly or Nobori’s injury isn’t so bad. Fingers crossed... Oh, and 88 goals scored in 34 games. That's pretty good! Full season round up blog posts coming soon-ish.

 

Next up, someone at home in the Emperor's Cup next weekend. It will let likely be Blaublitz Akita, who have recently won J3 at a canter. Sure, there’s a gap between the two leagues, but it still looks like a potential banana skin. I imagine the J League is secretly cheering us and Gamba on in the semi finals, as I’m not sure they want a team outside of the top flight entering the ACL next year. That would be a bit weird for everyone I guess. Fingers crossed we can do it then. Do it for Kengo! Go Frontale!

Team 

GK 1. Sung-Ryong JUNG 

DF 13. YAMANE Miki

DF 4. JESIEL
DF 34. YAMAMURA Kazuya (Yellow card 41')

DF 2. NOBORIZATO Kyohei

MF 6. MORITA Hidemasa (Yellow card 90+7)
MF 25. TANAKA Ao

MF 30. HATATE Reo

FW 19. SAITO Manabu

FW 9. LEANDRO DAMIAO

FW 16. HASEGAWA Tatsuya (Yellow card 21')

Subs

GK 27. TANNO Kenta 

DF 5. TANIGUCHI Shogo( on for NOBORIZATO 90+7')

MF 8. WAKIZAKA Yasuto (on for HATATE 78')

FW 11. KOBAYASHI Yu (on for LEANDRO DAMIAO 78')

FW 18. MITOMA Kaoru (on for HASEGAWA 46')

FW 20. MIYASHIRO Taisei

FW 41. IENAGA Akihiro (on for SAITO 46')

My Frontale Man Of The Match

 
I only watched it on TV so my choice would be even more cliched than usual so I’ll decline this time. 

Goals

OLUNGA (Kashiwa) 14' 1-0

SEGAWA (Kashiwa) 46' 2-0

IENAGA (Frontale) 48' 2-1 

LEANDRO DAMIAO (Frontale) 55' 2-2
IENAGA (Frontale) 81' 2-3

Highlights

 

Vs Urawa Reds (home) 16/12/20 - J League match 33

 

Kawasaki Frontale 3 - 1 Urawa Reds

So our home league campaign for 2020 is finished and we’ve only got a trip to Kashiwa left before we can sit back and enjoy what we’ve achieved in the league this year. Of course there is still the small matter of an Emperor’s Cup semi-final to play at Todoroki, so this ‘last Kengo home game’ will actually probably be the second from last Kengo home game. But that doesn’t sound as exciting does it? And of course the real ceremonial aspects will be more apparent on Monday when the club are holding Kengo’s farewell do, which will also act as our end of season ceremony, with all the players apparently in attendance. For some of them this will probably be exciting, as it will be the second time they’ve been at the ground in a week. I’m talking about the youngsters who we thought might get a look in after the title was wrapped up, but of whom there has still been no sign of. Even players who’ve previously had match time have disappeared recently. I’m thinking mainly of Miyashiro, who for some reason can’t get a look in even when Kobayashi and Damiao are really struggling for goals. Hopefully his time will come though. Once again this game was Oniki sticking with what he knows rather than trying to shake some life into what has recently become a pretty plodding team. And maybe it worked, but you wouldn’t know from the first half. And let’s go into that more in this first bullet point…

 

Game of two halves -

It’s a total cliche, but it was absolutely the case in this game. Although not in the way that we might usually expect. Urawa were crap in both halves so for them it was more like a game of one half of them managing to defend whilst offering almost nothing up front with one half of them managing to defend except for 10 minutes and offering nothing up front.  I guess that plenty of Urawa fans will be quite pleased to see a new manager in charge next year. Perhaps not so good for opposition fans as they might be able to get themselves together a bit. From a Frontale point of view, we were pretty much carrying on from the last few games in the first half. Attacking, but being pretty useless when it came to shooting. In the first half, according to the stats, we had 14 shots on goal with only 2 of them on target. Urawa had just the one shot, which was on target and was a goal. (I presume they include the penalty in these stats. If they don’t, make that 2 and 2). To be honest, I don’t remember us having much to do at the back in the whole game. Which is a bit of a relief as the one time we did have something to do we gave away a penalty from a move which started from another dodgy Taniguchi pass. Give the man a rest!! In the stadium with no replay I thought it was an absolute disgrace of a decision. Having seen the replay, there’s not much to complain about so I’ll give the ref a rare but well deserved pat on the back and give myself and equally deserved kick in the nuts. This penalty meant that Urawa, who weren’t exactly trying to do much attacking before, decided to sit back and hang on to their lead. To be fair, Urawa’s players were probably already on the beach having nothing to play for. Little did we know though, the beach seemed to be in their own box, where they’d set up at least eight players and sun loungers at all times. In the first half this didn’t seem to bother us, as we were playing like we were winning 4-0. Nicely passing the ball along the back line, occasionally breaking into the opposition’s half before passing backwards and carrying on with that lovely sideways stuff. This is my main memory of the first half really. Ponderous, leaden play with the occasional shot. I was somewhat surprised to see we had 14 shots to be honest as it felt like a right drudge. The second half felt much more exciting but bizarrely, we had less shots (nine apparently), so it just goes to show what a nice ten minute blast of accuracy does to your interpretation of the events on the pitch.

Shooting -

I guess I’ve kind of gone into this in the above paragraph, but maybe there’s a bit more to read into the shot count from this game. Well, ours at least. There’s probably not much to say about Urawa’s 3 shots in 90 minutes. Apart from the fact that means it was exactly one every thirty minutes. Big excitement for their fans! Our second half shots on target ratio was 2 in 3 so the accuracy was greatly improved from the first half. Aside from the rampant ten minutes where we scored three times (and may I say they were three pretty nice goals!), and grabbed the game back off of Urawa, this was another 80 minutes of mediocrity. Players are tired though, so I’m not going to moan too much. But (and you knew there’d be a 'but', didn’t you?), even our game stats of 23 shots and 8 on target flatter us a little. Aside from the three goals, I can’t really remember Nishikawa having to make too many saves to be honest. Plenty of these shots on target were powder puff efforts which dribbled towards goal, or beautifully targeted balls direct to his waiting gloves. But yeah, I’m an idiot. We’ve scored 85 goals this year and I’m moaning about our shooting. I should shut up really. Morita smacking in a goal, and a beautiful one at that, means that if you are talking about players who’ve played a few games this year, only Nobori is yet to score. This was widely mentioned on twitter and on DAZN during this game, but I can’t work out who exactly they are including, as clearly Diogo and Shimoda haven’t scored either. They have played a lot less football than Nobori though. So maybe if we’re being more accurate we should say that they only players who have taken part in the league this year who haven’t scored are Nobori, Shimoda, Diogo and Sung-Ryong. Pretty impressive whichever way you look at it though. I guess this means we’ll be trying to set up those players in the next game. I did think we probably could have had more goals in this game if we really went for it. I wish we had done to be honest. Mitoma could do with another…

 

History -

Mitoma scored and equaled the highest goals scored by a player in their first season. This perhaps might stop us trying so hard to set him up for goals now. Although I’m sure everyone would be happy to see him get another and claim the record for himself rather than having to share it. One more game to go. Come on Kaoru! Aside from trying to set up Mitoma at every opportunity, we also seemed to be trying to get one for Kengo and he seemed pretty keen himself. He seemed happy enough with his assist for Kobayashi though. Along with Mitoma equaling the record, the other milestones we were looking at in this game (or at least I was looking at), were the most goals scored in a single stage season, most goals scored in the league this year (that one was probably wrapped up a while ago), most points in a 34 games season (that’s done already), and least goals conceded in 2020. The penalty didn’t help us at all with the last one and now Nagoya sit one goal better off than us. They play Sanfrecce at the weekend, so we can only hope that the purple ones give them a right pasting if we’re after that stat too. Probably looks tricky though as I’d imagine that Kashiwa will probably be attacking quite a lot and they do have a certain player who has scored quite a few goals this season. Honestly Kashiwa, we don’t mind if you play the kids to avoid messing things up for the Levain Cup final. I’m guessing that with these records in mind, we will probably see 90 minutes from Kengo and Mitoma with everyone trying to set them up again on Saturday. Could be quite fun. I don’t know if the fact that we have now set a points record and goals scored record means that perhaps Oniki will make some changes with our Emperor’s cup game in mind. Hahahahahaha, who am I kidding, it will be the same guys again, won’t it?

 

A fun night! Or at least some good moments wiping out the early frustration and leading to a fun finish. I’m pleased that we finally have managed to win a game after sewing up the title. It was starting to seem that everyone was out to put in their season best performance against the runaway champions and it was getting a bit annoying. Whether Kashiwa will do this remains to be seen. They have nothing to gain and only things to lose. Olunga has the golden boot sewn up and Kashiwa aren’t going to finish in an ACL spot so maybe they’ll play it safe with the Levain final in mind. Whether we do the same with the Emperor's Cup semi in mind, who knows? I will have another quick moan about Kashiwa being rubbish to away teams here. 190 tickets in the corner, with the away end closed. It’s never a particular great experience there anyway, so watching on DAZN will be fine for me, but it’s a shame that Kengo will play his last J League game in front of a tiny handful of his fans. Hopefully we can get a couple more games out of him in the Emperor’s Cup. Potentially three more games to go for us this year. Fingers crossed! Go Frontale!

Team 

GK 1. Sung-Ryong JUNG 

DF 13. YAMANE Miki

DF 4. JESIEL

DF 5. TANIGUCHI Shogo

DF 2. NOBORIZATO Kyohei

MF 6. MORITA Hidemasa
MF 8. WAKIZAKA Yasuto

MF 14. NAKAMURA Kengo

FW 41. IENAGA Akihiro

FW 11. KOBAYASHI Yu

FW 18. MITOMA Kaoru

Subs

GK 27. TANNO Kenta 

FW 9. LEANDRO DAMIAO (on for KOBAYASHI 80')

MF 16. HASEGAWA Tatsuya (on for MITOMA 90+2')

FW 19. SAITO Manabu

MF 25. TANAKA Ao (on for IENAGA 88')

DF 30. HATATE Reo (on for WAKIZAKA 80')

DF 34. YAMAMURA Kazuya

My Frontale Man Of The Match

Not sure who to give this to to be honest. Even though we kind of dominated, I think that was probably more due to the opposition than anyone on our side. Given that the assists for two of the goals were better than the finishes and with a certain amount of sentimentality in mind, I’m going to cop out again and give it to….

NAKAMURA Kengo, YAMANE Miki and MORITA Hidemasa - two great assists, one superb finish, one ultra lame triple man of the match award decision.

 

Goals

KOROKI (Urawa) 11' PEN 0-1

MORITA (Frontale) 53' 1-1

MITOMA (Frontale) 59' 2-1

KOBAYASHI (Frontale) 61' 3-1

 

Highlights

 

Vs Sagan Tosu (away) 12/12/20 - J League match 32

Sagan Tosu 1 - 1 Kawasaki Frontale

Perhaps it’s because we’ve won the league already or perhaps it’s because our last two performances have been far from stellar and at the same time equally far from horrible, but it’s becoming increasingly difficult to be bothered to write these blog posts. At least were getting to go to some nice places. If the last two limp draws had been at home rather than away, they would have been even more disappointing.  I do understand that this might be coming off as someone moaning about how the games are boring because his team has won the league so easily and consequently would be a bit irritating. I guess there might be an element of this, particularly the second part. But if my blog posts don’t irritate at least someone, well what’s the point of writing them, eh? Presumably fans or a certain three teams might now be in the mood to get angry about Frontale related things after their season’s hopes were wiped out in the Middle East. Particularly if they were a local rival. But let’s be honest, maybe for some Frontale fans, the only football related thing to cheer about in the last 10 days has been other teams’ failures. Of course, I wouldn’t stoop that low, at least publicly so let’s get on with some extremely deep and detailed analysis of a frustrating ninety minutes in Kyushu.

Stick or twist? -

In the previous post I wondered whether we would stick or twist after a disappointing result in Shimizu with the regular players playing. We stuck, and the disappointment and the fact that the result was a draw also stuck. Once again we played what apart from our left back and Oshima would probably have been a strongest eleven. Nobori and Kurumaya being injured at the same time is another indictment of our lack of cover at the back but at the same time could be considered a little unfortunate. Hatate actually did a decent job in this game though, I thought. Not many others did through. Oniki clearly intended to get as many points and as many goals as possible and set a very difficult to beat new J League record. I really hope he rethinks things a bit after this game as our first choice players were pretty mediocre. With one eye on the Emperor’s Cup, I wonder if it might make sense for us to rest some players whilst hopefully at the same time preventing them from sliding into further mediocrity and give some others a chance to either prove a point, make a statement or at least remember what they are actually employed for. Our last two games have been limp draws against two of the bottom five. We can be thankful the title is wrapped up as I wouldn’t like to be slipping into this kind of form if we still needed to pick up a few points. I’m not going to bang on about too much, but the main problems were a complete inability to play the ball out of defence, a midfield that was good at tackling but not good at keeping the ball for more than a couple of passes and a toothless attack. We were out-possessed by Sagan Tosu and only managed five shots on target in ninety minutes. Admittedly there are a total bogey team for us at our place, but we usually manage to at least do something in Saga. We didn’t really in this game unfortunately. Well apart from a really nice move for the goal. But that was cancelled out by another clanger of a goal conceded. 

 

Ref (naturally...) -

Again another gutless ref who seemed to be on a no cards given bonus. I don’t know if this is a directive from the top in a season where the games are coming thick and fast, but I really hope we see a few more bookings next season. Tosu clattered and pounded our midfielders for most of the game. Also, we were again robbed of extra time minutes. Iemoto made a big show of pointing at his watch and gesturing towards both our fans and players that he would be adding the time that a Tosu player spent rolling around on the floor after apparently taking a powerfully blasted ball to his... how can I put it? ... crackers? Seems that Iemoto had forgotten this when it came to actually adding time though as four minutes were deemed enough (four breaks for substitutions, the usual water break, two goals and the aforementioned cracker attack). Although to be honest, they probably would only have resulted in us conceding and losing so maybe it was a blessing in disguise. Next year VAR is back. And given how much of a disaster it has been elsewhere, why wouldn’t the J League look to introduce it? I’m sure I’ve made it clear in the past that I hate VAR and would love to see it completely abandoned and blasted off into space never to be seen again. Probably it will more likely result in people getting utterly fed up with football and me absolutely doing my nut as I have to start keeping track of which idiot is making the bad decisions on the field and which idiot is making the other bad decisions off the field. The numerous delays will also cut into after game boozing time. So yeah, I moan about refs being crap, and also moan about a possible solution to them being crap, which would seem hypocritical, but let’s be honest, VAR is more likely to massively increase the crappiness rather than cut down on it. 

 

Usual nonsense final paragraph -

Here comes the real super analysis. Both keepers headed the ball in this game. Unusual! Alongside Covid there is another hugely contagious disease spreading round the league and that is Yokohama F Marinos keeper insanity. It seems that YFM train them up and then dispatch them round Japan. Sadly in this game there were no ‘Iikura chances’ but we came close on a few occasions. Typically, with YFM brand keepers, they also seem to be quite good at saving so it felt kind of inevitable when Park saved one of our shots with his face that we probably weren’t going to get past him on many occasions. As proved to be the case. Oh well. Mitoma seems to be feeling the pressure in his search for a historic first season goal total. And the rest of the team seem to be trying to give him shots as often as possible. Perhaps this was why he was withdrawn in the second half. Previously we thought he’d be unsubbable till he reached a new milestone but we’re running out of games now, and you’ve got to say that if Oniki did take him off to stop everyone on the pitch trying to give him a goal it was a pretty good decision! Let’s hope he can score a couple in the next match and the the pressure will be off and he can get a double hat trick away at Kashiwa. One of our front three hasn’t scored in a game away from home since mid October which is a bit worrying really.

Pretty low on detail, wasn’t it? Sorry! Next up is Urawa at home on Wednesday. Personally, I think Kengo and Mitoma should start and we should really shake up the rest of the team. I’d like to see Diogo, Miyashiro, maybe even Harada. I mean, what is the point of us having these players if they can’t even get on the pitch when the league is won and the first choice players are stinking the place up. Would be nice for Oniki to have something to think about before the Emperor’s Cup game. Urawa have had another rubbish year, therefore they will probably beat us easily and we’ll be even more confused by our deterioration. Still at least it seems we waited till after we won the league before we fell apart! After that, it’s the final league game of the season at Kashiwa. They have allocated us a generous 190 tickets which unsurprisingly sold out immediately so I won’t be going to that. But if I have to miss one away game, I don’t mind it being this one. Kashiwa praisers have probably never been in the away end as they seem to give absolutely zero shits about the away fans. Unfortunately though, that means most fans will miss Kengo’s last league game. Hopefully he can finish on a high. Ok, that’s it. GO (have a think and a bit of self reflection) FRONTALE! 

 

Team 

GK 1. Sung-Ryong JUNG 

DF 13. YAMANE Miki

DF 4. JESIEL

DF 5. TANIGUCHI Shogo

DF 30. HATATE Reo

MF 6. MORITA Hidemasa
MF 8. WAKIZAKA Yasuto

MF 25. TANAKA Ao

FW 41. IENAGA Akihiro

FW 11. KOBAYASHI Yu

FW 18. MITOMA Kaoru

Subs

GK 27. TANNO Kenta 

FW 9. LEANDRO DAMIAO (on for KOBAYASHI 67')

MF 14. NAKAMURA Kengo (on for IENAGA 77')

MF 16. HASEGAWA Tatsuya (on for MITOMA 67')

FW 19. SAITO Manabu (on for WAKIZAKA 77')

MF 22. SHIMODA Hokuto

DF 34. YAMAMURA Kazuya (on for TANAKA 90+1')

My Frontale Man Of The Match

 

In a sea of sub-mediocrity with some small areas of mediocrity it was always going to be  tricky to chose someone for this, but I think it probably should go to...

MORITA Hidemasa - another decent game from a defensive point of view and can’t be blamed for our recent in front of goal dithering impotence.

 

Goals

TANIGUCHI (Frontale) 57' 0-1

LOPEZ (Tosu) 86' 1-1

Highlights

 

Vs Shimizu S Pulse (away) 5/12/20 - J League match 31

 

Shimizu S Pulse 2 - 2 Kawasaki Frontale

Away at Shimizu is always a fun trip and this year was no exception. Away trips this year have been quite different though and again this proved to be the case in Shizuoka. At least at Shimizu, unlike Oita, we were allowed some drums this time. A Shimizu game without drumming would be a very strange thing. But drumming with no singing is still a bit strange and particularly for us on this occasion as we were unable to get tickets in the usual away area. Instead we were downstairs below the regular away area in a mixed seating zone. At times we had a bit of a clap, but even though Frontale fans were very much in the majority in this area, the fact that it was mixed meant it felt a bit cheeky to get too involved with any clapping. There were quite a lot of announcements on the tannoy reminding us that this was a remote cheering game, so we were not to get too excited by the recordings of Shimizu chants that were being played and keep ourselves under control. Which was more difficult than I would have expected, given that this was a total dead rubber, with neither team having anything in particular to play for. Of course, we are probably still looking at setting an unbeatable season points total (even though we already have beaten the current record with our current haul). Also, we have an opportunity to beat the one (34 game) season goal scoring record. I believe we need 85 to tie this but a quick google can’t confirm this. So we have three games after this one to score five more goals so that’s something to aim for. Also, Mitoma is one goal off of being the joint highest rookie season top goal scorer. Apparently, any penalties will be handed to him for the rest of the season and I guess he’ll be spending as much time as possible on the pitch. Perhaps with breaking these records in mind, Oniki named what looked to be a pretty strong side. Strangely though, there was no place for local lads Oshima and Hasegawa. In any case, it looked like we were going for it. Didn’t completely turn out as we might have expected though! Winning the league so early has been magnificent and lovely. Unfortunately our dominance and the lack of relegation this season seems to have emboldened teams and we now clearly have a target on our back, with teams determined to beat the runaway champions. This certainly seemed to be Shimizu’s aim and they came pretty close to doing it. It was lovely to see them give us a guard of honour as we entered the pitch. Apparently it was a J League first so well done to them. In exchange, we handed them a pretty soft opening goal so I guess it was all fair in the end.

 

We actually started pretty well I thought, with loads of possession, but maybe the signs of what was to come were there to see from early on as we couldn't get much further up the pitch than just inside their half. If I could easily think of the name of a Brazilian beer I would insert that name in the middle of the following sentence. ‘Taniguchi and Jesiel looked like they had overindulged in the Premium Malts’ and the ------ in the break in between winning the title and this match.’ Their passing out of defence was shocking and it was a misplaced Jesiel pass that lead to Shimizu’s first goal. In fairness though, both of them also made crucial goal line clearances to prevent us getting absolutely destroyed by the team that is currently sitting second bottom of the J League. Shimizu’s leaky defence appears to have been repaired to the extent that only a super powered attack can penetrate it which is a bit annoying for us really but definitely made for an exciting game. We did manage to break through with a lovely goal from Ao after a nice Damiao back heel assist. Aside from this though it was a case of us having loads of possession and not being able to really get anywhere near seriously challenging their keeper, who I seem to have taken a bit of a dislike to, perhaps given his previous club or perhaps due to the fact that he looks more like an Essex wide boy builder rather than a professional athlete. Fair play to him and his defence though, as they did a pretty good job of stopping us for most of this game. Whilst we dominated possession, Shimizu dominated the squeaky bum chance count. Sorry, that’s a not particularly pleasant metaphor to use, but we were definitely living dangerously due to some very out of sorts defending. Shimizu’s second goal shouldn’t have stood as far as I am concerned. But, I have to admit that recently I have no idea about the handball rule and the red card rule and possibly plenty of other rules. Far better to moan about the refs than study the rules though, eh? I do know that apparently if your arms are not welded to your body when you’re defending in the box and the ball hits your arm it’s now a penalty. At least I think I know that. So, I reckon by that rule I’d say that if a striker controls the ball with his hand in the box the goal shouldn’t stand, regardless of any intent. But you can’t really complain about us losing at half time to be honest so I’m not going to whinge. The fact that we have already won the league helps me to be a bit more philosophical about everything. And the fact that Shimizu is a team that I quite like. But, this is another occasion we’ve conceded two goals to a team who is struggling, so that’s a bit weird.

 

Certainly our defence was not helped by the fact that Nobori had to leave the pitch due to what looked like a back problem to me. In a challenge with a Shimizu player he seemed to twang something and kicked the ball off the pitch whilst being unable to stand up straight. Bizarrely, considering how many times we’ve had a left back on the bench that we haven’t needed to use this season, the one game where we needed one was the one where we had pretty much no cover in that position. So we ended up bringing on Hatate and playing him there. He did his best, but clearly he’s not a defender. I’m not sure what I would have done in Oniki’s position to be honest. Someone suggested putting Morita there, but I don’t really like it when he’s at right back so playing him even more out of position might not have worked any better I think. Perhaps Ao could have gone there. It seems like he can play anywhere recently. Thankfully it seemed that Nobori was back upright by the end of the match, but I wonder if we might see Kurumaya there for the rest of the season. Shimizu did a great job of pressing and hurrying our out of sorts and out of position defence and we were really wobbling. At the other end of the pitch, of course Elsinho had a good game. It’s not exactly a wildly controversial statement to say that I think we should have kept him. But I don’t want to take anything away from Yamane who’s had a great first season with us (and scored the equaliser! Thankfully someone had a decent shot!). Elsinho, our old number 18 was up against our new number 18, which works well for bloggers looking for cheap comparisons from a numerical point of view, but doesn’t work quite so well given that the two players play different positions. I’d say at the end of the game it was honours even between Mitoma and Elsinho to be honest. On the whole, I guess this was a game that was high on excitement and chances but quite low on actual quality if you want to be harsh. I think our equalizer was fully deserved as we absolutely battered Shimizu for the last twenty minutes or so and had a lot of decent chances. Two goals scored keeps our biggest goal scoring season hopes alive and allowed us to have a nice evening out in Shizuoka afterwards. Losing might have meant an earlier than expected train home I think. Shimizu moaned quite a lot about corners and throw ins not going their way, apparently not wanting to argue about the lack of a handball decision for their second goal. If you watch the replay it does look like one of their players sticks his arm up to appeal for it before realizing what he is doing, which is a bit weird. They also spent quite a lot of time time-wasting when they were ahead (as they had every right to do). The ref Fukushima didn’t seem to notice though and had also apparently forgotten his cards in this game, as he wasn’t interested at all in Valdo attempting to smash the ball out of the stadium to kill a bit of time. Don’t take all this the wrong way though. I have no problem with Shimizu and the game finished with the right result. I’m just writing the usual things I write on here. I would say we need to buck up our ideas in the next game. But of course the truth is we actually don’t need to do so as the title is won already. I wondered if we would go full on to try and complete the season with as many points and goals as we could or relax a bit and give some of the unused and less used players some pitch time. It seems like we went for the former but the result of that decision was more what would be expected from doing the latter. So, next game, do we stick or twist? I wouldn’t mind a bit of a shuffle. I want to see Harada and Kamiya. And more Miyashiro. I also want to see loads more goals and three more victories. So maybe I’m being a bit greedy, but if you don’t ask or hope, maybe you don’t get. One final stupid observation, and let’s be honest, a blog post on here wouldn’t be complete without one. I enjoyed the fact that the young lad carrying the ‘watch out for flying balls’ sign during warm up got hit by a flying ball. He had a giggle about it which is why I felt like I could enjoy the moment too. Well done young man!

 

So next up is another away trip next weekend. We’re off to Sagan Tosu, the only remaining team in the league that we haven’t beaten this year so there’s another little bit of pressure on us to try to tick off another arbitrary task on our season to-do list. Would be nice if we could win and score quite a few goals. That’s what this blog has descended to now. Stating the completely obvious. I always enjoy Sagan Tosu away and hopefully this year will be no exception. Sadly, given the current lack of a Spanish influence there, I guess they won’t have the Patatas Bravas anymore. Damn… Go Frontale!

 

(As a late addition, I’ve now heard that both Oshima and Kurumaya are injured for a few weeks, so that explains some of the selection questions I guess. But makes quite a lot of the points made in this post kind of stupid but I’m too lazy to rewrite it. It also throws up a bit of a headache for Oniki as unless Nobori makes a fast recovery we will be heading in to the next few games with no left backs. It seems that Kamiya has played left back before, but I wonder if Oniki is willing to risk him making his debut slightly out of position. Other than him, I guess it’s going to be one of the left sided attackers or perhaps one of the defensive midfielders. Something to ponder. But then again, maybe Nobori will be fine.)

Team 

GK 1. Sung-Ryong JUNG 

DF 13. YAMANE Miki

DF 4. JESIEL

DF 5. TANIGUCHI Shogo

DF 2. NOBORIZATO Kyohei

MF 6. MORITA Hidemasa
MF 8. WAKIZAKA Yasuto

MF 25. TANAKA Ao

FW 41. IENAGA Akihiro

FW 9. LEANDRO DAMIAO

FW 18. MITOMA Kaoru

Subs

GK 27. TANNO Kenta 

FW 11. KOBAYASHI Yu (on for LEANDRO DAMIAO 58')

MF 14. NAKAMURA Kengo (on for WAKIZAKA 58')

FW 19. SAITO Manabu (on for IENAGA 77')

MF 22. SHIMODA Hokuto

MF 30. HATATE Reo (on for NOBORIZATO 18')

DF 34. YAMAMURA Kazuya (on for JESIEL 77')

My Frontale Man Of The Match

No one really stood out to be honest. Well, stood out in a positive way I mean. As these man of the match awards are getting increasingly random, lets give it to…

MOUNT FUJI - first time I’ve been to Shimizu away and actually been able to see it.

Goals

CARLINHOS (Shimizu) 11' 1-0

TANAKA (Frontale) 21' 1-1

RENATO (Shimizu) 40' 2-1

YAMANE (Frontale) 89' 2-2

Highlights