Vs Urawa Reds (away) 21/3/21 - J League match 6

 Urawa Reds 0 - 5 Kawasaki Frontale

This was the classic game of two halves. Quite how a classic game of two halves could end up as a 5-0 win, I’m not sure. I guess our good half went a bit better than their good half. To be fair, their good half did finish with us one goal up, but this was kind of against the run of play. Normally the game of two halves cliche is used to describe the situation I was referred to above, where one team rules the first half and the other rules the second. You could say that this was a game of two halves for another reason too though. The first half was largely made up of pointless possession without making too many real chances, and mistakes from both teams whereas the second saw us have eight chances, five of which were on target and four of which were goals. So one half of ineffectiveness and one half of ruthlessness. Although this does ignore too good volleys which resulted in good saves from both keepers, but as this doesn't fit my description let's just gloss over them. Aside from them it was all a bit scrappy. To be honest, we were due some excitement after Wednesday’s pretty rubbish and boring display so it was nice to see some shots on target and some goals again in the second half. Plenty of drinks were consumed during the game, so it is all a bit blurry. It was another game watched on TV and although I have plenty of time to write this post before the next game, a TV game always inspires me to knock something out as quick as possible. I still find them quite difficult to get involved with, particularly when we are playing like we were in the first half. No bullet points today, just a few paragraphs and then let’s have a rest.

Given that we have a couple of weeks off after this game I guess I should have known that we would probably go with most of the usual starting eleven, particularly as we don’t seem to have any cover in most of the positions that we haven’t been rotating. I say no cover, but I guess what I mean is no cover than Oniki trusts as we have players who can play left or right back and three other goalkeepers, but still Yamane, Hatate and Sung-Ryong keep going. To be honest, out of the three of them, I think Yamane is looking the tiredest. Aside from a nice volleyed attempt at goal in the first half, he looked a bit off the pace, and with none of the turbo boost that you might normally expect from him. A goal glut in the second half (along with a few beers), distracted me from observing any defensive work in this game. Can't complain too much though if we come away with a clean sheet. Up front, we spun the rotation wheel a little leaving Damiao in place but bringing in Kobayashi on the right and Hasegawa on the left. Finally, after being seemingly unwilling to play Kobayashi on the right for what must be years, Oniki did it, and it went pleasingly well! I wonder if in the past it was more down to Kobayashi being unwilling to play there and now he has been convinced that maybe it’s better to play on the right rather than sit on the bench. I feel we really should have done it more in the past. It's a system that seems to play to both Kobayashi and Damiao’s strengths. Not sure where it would leave Ienaga, but he always seems quite flexible. Who knows really, but it’s nice to have some more options. Now if we could sort out the same thing at the back we’d really be talking!

I’ve maybe made if sound like this was a close game, but that was only in the first half. Urawa did nothing in the second half and still really look like a work in progress. It didn’t seem very fair of us to batter Rodriquez’s team so near to the start of his tenure, but hopefully for his sake they will have some patience with him. Probably has quite a bit of work to do though. You could say they did us some favours with some dodgy defending but our finishes were pretty nice, so let’s look at it from that direction instead. After scoring from distance again Kobe, Damiao had a go at it again from his own half before he remembered his true love is overhead kicks. For once though, he got it on target and it was a lovely goal! I’m slightly worried that his celebration had some pointing skywards going on so I hope he hasn’t suffered any loss that we don’t know about. Three of the other goals were also lovely finishes too. Quite how Kobayashi has been credited with the fourth I don’t know, as to me it clearly looked like he just chested it to the defender for him to bury into the top of he net. Lovely finish from him. I’ll credit it to Kobayashi below as that’s what the official verdict is. All of these scored against the keeper of the Japanese national team in the upcoming games they have in the next couple of weeks!

Which links nicely to the fact that I thought our players were getting a nice rest but some of them will be taking part in international games (perhaps). Mitoma, Hatate and Ao were selected for the U24 squad but sadly an injury in this game seems to have ruled Ao out of contention which is a real shame for him. Yamane has been selected for the main squad. It is slightly unfortunate that the two players who needed a rest the most aren’t going to get it. Although the manager of the national team does seem to dislike our players a bit and never really seems to want to select them, so maybe they won’t actually be playing, but won’t be resting on an international bench. We’ll see how much they are involved and hopefully they’ll all come back in one piece.

When they do come back, our next opponents will be Oita, who haven’t had a great start to the season, but who have foiled us on a few occasions in recent seasons. So who knows how that game will go. The next match is so far away that it seems kind of stupid for me to make any predictions about line-ups but it will be interesting to see if Oniki continues with Kobayashi and Damiao playing together. After all, it did click pretty nicely in the second half of this game! This was certainly the right way to bounce back from the Kobe game. Just took us a little while to get going. Oh, I didn’t mention VAR. Don’t think it was used, but I still hate it. Good luck to our internationals, play well and come back safely. Go Frontale!

 

Team

GK 1. Sung-Ryong JUNG
DF 13. YAMANE Miki
DF 4. JESIEL
DF 5. TANIGUCHI Shogo
DF 47. HATATE Reo
MF 6. JOAO SCHMIDT
MF 25. TANAKA Ao
MF 8. WAKIZAKA Yasuto
FW 11. KOBAYASHI Yu
FW 9. LEANDRO DAMIAO

FW 16. HASEGAWA Tatsuya

Subs
GK 27. TANNO Kenta
MF 3. TSUKAGAWA Koki (on for TANAKA 73')
DF 7. KURUMAYA Shintaro (on for JESIEL 73')
FW 18. MITOMA Kaoru (on for HASEGAWA 81')

FW 20. CHINEN Kei (on for LEANDRO DAMIAO 81')
MF 22. TACHIBANADA Kento (on for WAKIZAKA 90')
FW 41. IENAGA Akihiro

Goals

KOBAYASHI (Frontale) 42' 0-1
LEANDRO DAMIAO (Frontale) 49' 0-1
HATATE (Frontale) 51' 0-1

KOBAYASHI (Frontale) 53' 0-1

WAKIZAKA (Frontale) 67' 0-1

Highlights

Vs Vissel Kobe (away) 17/3/21 - J League match 5

 

Vissel Kobe 1 - 1 Kawasaki Frontale

A winning run has once again been cracked away at Kobe. This time it wasn’t quite as much of a disaster as last time but it never feels nice to concede in the 100th minute of a game. Usually these blog posts after a bad result are full of sour grapes. There is some sourness here, but I think there is also an awareness that in my opinion this was just a pretty bad day at the office for us. There has been some soul-searching going on on Twitter regarding what we need to change to get back on track. I'd say it's a bit early to be calling for massive changes. We've had a few mediocre performances recently but had got away with it till now. There's stuff to be done I think, but I'm not going to go off on one at this stage. Here we go with some bullet points.

The pitch -

As usual we seemed to be unable to stay on our feet. This happens every year at Kobe away but we never seem to be able to prepare for it. From the way we were constantly slipping in the first half you would have through that we hadn’t spent 30 minutes warming up on the same turf before the game. Or was there a massive cloudburst in between the warm up and the kick off? Thankfully the chances Kobe got were mainly due to us being awful with the ball rather than slipping over, but as inevitable it is that I moan about refs, it seems I am doomed to repeat the same ‘their pitch is shit’ mantra year after year. Unfortunately it’s not a calming mantra.

The gamesmanship -

Douglas likes to roll around on the floor doesn’t he? Particularly when he’s been tackled by someone who’s on a yellow card. And Kobe do like to protest every single tackle. After our low yellow card count start to the season it was something of a surprise to pick up two in one game. More of a surprise that Kobe’s silver haired defender didn’t get one for booting Damiao out of the way in mid air as he jumped for a header. I also think that when Jesiel was injured we went to hoof the ball up the pitch and out of play to allow him to get treatment. I didn’t see this on DAZN because DAZN is DAZN and doesn’t actually show you what you want to see most of the time. I’m pretty sure Kobe stopped the ball from going into touch, waited for the ref to blow and then didn’t return possession from the drop ball. Given the stage of the game, I’m not surprised. And given that I am only guessing this, I'm not going to moan too much about it. But my intense dislike for FC Tokyo’s SBO stems from him not giving us the ball back when we put it out for an injury against Kashima a few years ago. There was some immediate payback in that game when we won it back and went up the other end and scored. Just saying, if I ever see a replay and I’m right, there might be a new three initial name for a Kobe player. Although that seems a bit harsh for a 'first offence'. SBO had done plenty before to justify the dislike! After last season though, we clearly have a target on our back so shouldn't be surprised if teams use whatever tactics they can to try to disrupt us and score against us.

The ref and VAR -

As I hinted at above, I felt the ref gave us nothing in this game. But then again I would, wouldn't I? Actually, for long periods of the second half he was giving no-one anything and the game seemed to be degenerating into a kicking contest. VAR is still shit. The two decisions both seemed pretty obvious to me from the briefest DAZN replay (of course that’s singular, as once they realized something might be up they stopped showing any replays). Quite how the linesman didn’t spot the first one I don’t know. He didn’t raise his flag at the time or at the end of the move so as far as I know that means he thought it was clearly onside. It was clearly offside for me. Think he got the second one wrong too, didn't he? Maybe that's why we have VAR to stop these inaccuracies but that's a clear case and a very easy sum for the argument that things even themselves out. Both decisions seemed to take an eternity. Both were right, but I blame the extended VAR break for us conceding late in the game. Yes, I know that he wouldn’t have added the extra time if there hadn’t been stoppages. But in the same way that I’m against VAR coming to the right conclusion after interminable delays, I am happy for myself to jump to an illogical conclusion about conceding in added time immediately. Once again we could 'enjoy' the thrill of a delayed VAR goal celebration! Screw VAR and its right decisions, life is full of mistakes. 

The dodgy performances -

We were definitely average in this game. You could have been forgiven for thinking that we had the reserve defenders out as both Taniguchi and Jesiel had some very dodgy moments. Taniguchi lost his man for the goal as well as almost giving Vissel an equaliser a few minutes earlier. All over the pitch we looked tired and out of form. We’ve managed to get 16 points out of 18 but I don’t think anyone would say we’ve been playing exciting stuff in the last few matches. Kobe did a decent job of dealing with our attacks and we once again did a decent job of making glaring errors when it came to shooting. Today’s open goal misser was Damiao who headed wide under not much pressure. It looked like the defender had got to it, but no, he just headed well wide. Damiao’s two 'goal' finishes were nice. I don’t know how the stats work, but if the disallowed goal counts as a shot on target he had both of our shots on target. Two on target out of 13! Oniki seemed to make some kind of tactical change with Hatate in the second half, as he spent a lot of it wandering all over the pitch. I couldn’t work out if we'd gone to three at the back or if he was just wandering. Yamane looks very tired. The other ever present Sung-Ryong had a pretty good game I thought. Can’t really be blamed for the goal and saved us on a few occasions. There definitely seems to be a bit of malaise about us though. Need to sort that out quickly.

Still, it’s been a much better start to the season points wise than we usually get. I hope Oniki shakes things up a little at the weekend against Urawa as we’ve been going through the motions a little recently. Credit to Kobe for doing a job on us. As irritated as I am about us conceding late and the ref not giving certain decisions, I know that I am not impartial and I know that if we hadn’t been so off target for the majority of the game a 100th minute goal conceded wouldn’t have mattered. After the Urawa game on Sunday we have a couple of weeks off which will be nice. But this kind of begs the question of why we have been playing so many games so regularly so far this year. Perhaps they are trying to get games played to prevent future Corona or ACL fixture congestion. But never mind, eh? Pick ourselves up and hopefully we can get three points on Sunday. Go Frontale!

Team

GK 1. Sung-Ryong JUNG
DF 13. YAMANE Miki
DF 4. JESIEL (Yellow card 35')
DF 5. TANIGUCHI Shogo
DF 47. HATATE Reo
MF 6. JOAO SCHMIDT
MF 25. TANAKA Ao (Yellow card 51')
MF 8. WAKIZAKA Yasuto
FW 41. IENAGA Akihiro
FW 9. LEANDRO DAMIAO
FW 18. MITOMA Kaoru

Subs
GK 27. TANNO Kenta
MF 3. TSUKAGAWA Koki (on for JOAO SCHMIDT 77')
DF 7. KURUMAYA Shintaro (on for HATATE 90')
FW 11. KOBAYASHI Yu (on for LEANDRO DAMIAO 90')
MF 16. HASEGAWA Tatsuya
FW 19. TONO Daiya (on for IENAGA 64')
MF 22. TACHIBANADA Kento (on for WAKIZAKA 77')


Goals

LEANDRO DAMIAO (Frontale) 72' 0-1
KIKUCHI (Kobe) 90+10' 1-1


Highlights 

Vs Kashiwa Reysol (home) 13/3/21 - J League match 4

Kawasaki Frontale 1 - 0 Kashiwa Reysol 

So, five wins out of five so far! Lovely! What was not lovely was this game. But I guess sooner or later we were going to have a crappy 90 minutes. Actually, maybe that was Wednesday, so this one makes it two in a row. The encouraging thing is that we came away from two pretty poor performances with six points. Can’t get any better than that points wise. We could get a lot better entertainment wise though. But lets not be too picky. Given that I have four days till the next match this could be a detailed and interesting blog post. But there wasn’t really much to work with. So, for consecutive wins with poor performances I present consecutive slapdash poor blog posts. どうぞ, as I heard the ref say on numerous occasions in this game. I’ve never heard that before. Perhaps it was the fact that we were back in the main stand again so perhaps nearer the pitch. Or perhaps it was the fact that there was absolutely nothing exciting to distract me from the joy of listening to the ref. Did I mention this was an awful game? Perhaps I did. Probably will again. Here we go with some bullet points, which will pretty much be the same as the last post’s bullet points, with perhaps the same things said too. But maybe this time a bit more negative.

Line up -

Bit of a surprise with Oniki’s selection this time. Although let's not get too carried away, as it was the same 19 players in the squad as it has been for all but one of our 2021 fixtures. (Yamamura coming in when we switch the centre backs and Chinen coming in briefly when Tsukagawa was injured).DF Previously it seemed like we had an A team and a B team with the former doing most of the heavy lifting and the latter giving the former a rest occasionally. Well kind of, as some players were in both the A and B teams, but you get my drift. In this game Oniki mixed things up creating a C team. Actually, I shouldn't make it sound like a third choice team though, so maybe it would be more accurate to call it an AB team. The A midfield remained intact, the B centre backs came in and the front three was an AB mix. I thought this was kind of exciting before the game, but after watching the match and writing these words it has become clear that it wasn’t actually that much of an exciting experiment. Perhaps more just a snub to Tono. Left back and right back are still the problem positions from the point of view of rotation. Both Yamane and Hatate have started every game and played most of the minutes. When Nobori comes back from injury I guess we have an option at left back but we still are no closer to knowing what might happen at right back in the event of an emergency (or rotation. Emergency probably more likely). And Oniki no longer has Morita to play there either. I would have thought that it would have made sense to start with Damiao in this game, given that the Kashiwa keeper has a reputation for going wandering and making clangers. Super presser Damiao would probably have given him plenty to think about. Also, I would have thought that it might have made more sense to rotate a bit more on Wednesday against newly promoted Tokushima and save the preferred players for Kashiwa. But we didn’t. But we won both games. I’ve got to moan about something though, right?

 

Opposition and game -

Not much to say about Kashiwa in this game. They still seem to like a long ball in spite of the fact that they don’t have Olunga anymore. They had no shots on target, as with Tokushima on Wednesday. Kind of takes the shine off two consecutive clean sheets a bit but they are very welcome all the same. It’s not that surprising seeing as most the game was made up of both teams bringing the ball forward and then losing it. We had our first shot around the 30 minute mark I think. The crowd tried their best to inject a bit of excitement into things by doing that building an attack clapping thing, but more often than not it started as we were due to move out of defence and then we just played the ball along the back line and that was about it. Delightful stuff for those who love pass completion, but not so exciting for those who prefer actual football matches rather than training exercises. It came to my attention that I had been missing the contributions of Wakizaka recently so I made a special effort to watch the game with a focus in him. Wakizaka fans will probably not be so pleased that I chose this game to do so, as it definitely wasn’t his best. I can say that with some confidence even though in previous games I haven’t really noticed him. Definitely not his day. Similarly, Joao Schmidt had game to forget. I’d love to blame the conditions, as we’d had a hell of a lot of rain in they afternoon leading up to the game, but I can’t say it particularly affected things. At least not as far as I was aware. We were just not at the races. The front three were pretty ineffectual too. And Yamane had a below par game too. Perhaps people are getting tired. Which is a bit worrying as we’ve only played 6 games so far this year. The schedule has been relentless though, as it was last year. The weird thing is that we have started the season on time without any major corona virus delays yet. Guess the packed schedule will ease off at some stage, and I fully realise that every team has the same issue, so I'm not trying to moan about it. But we probably need to give some players a bit of a rest. To be honest, both teams in this match were so ‘below average’ that I feel the league should introduce a new scoring system. Three points for a win, one point for a draw, no points for a loss or a draw where both teams are shit. No points for anyone would have been a fair outcome probably. But we did at least score. Thank you to Mitoma for the impact from the bench and the lovely run and to Ienaga for putting the ball in the net. Plenty of payers (including Ienaga himself) have missed easier chances already this year, so it was a relief when this one went in.

Ref and VAR watch -

No VAR again in this game as far as I could tell. And no late flagging from linesmen! I guess it’s no surprise that there was no VAR as VAR is only used for notable incidents and there was nothing notable in this game. I thought the ref was rubbish again though. No bookings in this game for Kashiwa (although of course we got one... Our first of the season surprisingly), and there were definitely some fouls that deserved it. It’s a real shock when not even Kashiwa’s one man card machine Richardson doesn’t get one. The Kashiwa manager was losing his rag over Hatate's throw ins. They did look a bit weird, but they were right in front of the linesman and after Nelsinho had moaned once about them you would have thought the officials would have paid a bit more attention to them so I can only presume they were ok. Perhaps the ref’s performance is best summed by the occasion when the corner flag got knocked out, a player from both teams united to put it back in and then the ref decided to go and check it himself to kill a few seconds and get the camera on him. Maybe Matsuo is looking to take over from Nishimura as the number one attention seeking ref when he retires. I guess his flag checking might have been the reason he added six minutes injury time in a game where nothing had happened. Nice work ref!

Other bits -

No brace in this game. But we still got the dodgy half. Although much like against Tokushima, it was once again two dodgy halves. Great work from the stadium staff to get the pitch sorted as it seemed like the game might be called off after so much rain in the hours before kick off. Jeez, that’s all I’ve got. The game was so dull that there wasn’t even anything for me to make a stupid joke about. Blimey. Oh! There was a rainbow.

Next up, Vissel Kobe away on Wednesday. They messed up a good run for us last year when we played them away in the league. Hope they don’t do that again. After that, Urawa away next weekend. So two away games after a home game heavy start to the season. Perhaps the change of scenery will shake us up a bit. Hope so! Go Frontale!
 

Team

 

GK 1. Sung-Ryong JUNG 

DF 13. YAMANE Miki

DF 28. YAMAMURA Kazuya
DF 7. KURUMAYA Shintaro

DF 47. HATATE Reo

MF 6. JOAO SCHMIDT
MF 25. TANAKA Ao

MF 8. WAKIZAKA Yasuto (Yellow card 37')

FW 41. IENAGA Akihiro

FW 11. KOBAYASHI Yu

FW 16. HASEGAWA Tatsuya

Subs

GK 27. TANNO Kenta 

MF 3. TSUKAGAWA Koki (on for JOAO SCHMIDT 46')

DF 4. JESIEL

FW 9. LEANDRO DAMIAO (on for KOBAYASHI 64')

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

FW 19. TONO Daiya

MF 22. TACHIBANADA Kento (on for WAKIZAKA 46')

 

My Frontale Man Of The Match

There’s only one person I can think of to give this to and that’s…

HATATE Reo - the only starting player who did anything with the ball when he played it forward. Actually, maybe he was the only player who actually played it forward. Also, felt like he was targeted a bit by Kashiwa but for the most part stood firm.

Goals

IENAGA (Frontale) 80' 1-0

Highlights

 

Vs Tokushima Vortis (home) 10/3/21 - J League match 3

Kawasaki Frontale 2 - 0 Tokushima Vortis

I normally say something about knocking these blog posts out due to lack of time and keeping things brief. Hopefully, I’ll manage to succeed in doing so this time. Two busy days between games means that I don’t have a lot of time to get this done. So here we go with some briefer than usual bullet points and without imaginative names this time. This is all totally half-arsed.

Line up -

Perhaps Oniki doesn’t like Shikoku and wanted to punish Tokushima but it was something of a shock when you consider that he put out his preferred eleven against Tokushima given the facts that the B team was out against Sendai and scored five and that we have Kashiwa Reysol at home on Saturday. Considering our lacklustre performance in this game, perhaps we should have stuck with the reserves. I’m still worried that we seem to oscillate between mass changes or no changes to the line-up without any apparent middle ground. I'm also concerned what might happen if Yamane were to get injured. Or Sung-Ryong. Players who would be stepping in would have pretty much no experience of playing for us. I could also moan about our subs being quite predictable ,(exactly the same in this game as the Cerezo game, albeit at different times), but I guess it’s not doing us any harm right now. However we have only scored one goal after making changes so it seems that regardless of whoever starts and whoever comes on, we are getting a similar drop in attacking threat after making subs. With the ACL being postponed till June/July, but still with very few details known about what might actually be happening with it, I’d say we have time to prepare a bit more for any misfortune we might encounter later on in the season. Not sure we will do so though.

Oppostion and game -

I was delighted to see Tokushima back in J1 as I’ve never been to their stadium. I was also delighted to see the away fixture is a bit later in the season so hopefully we’ll be able to travel by then. Please don’t let it get re-arranged to a horrible time.  They had drawn their first two games and looked like being a classic kind of banana skin team that we usually struggle against at home. I’m still nor sure if they are or not to be honest. We totally dominated most of the game but only managed six shots on target (one third of our total shots). The fact that they had none of target seems to suggest that we could have got away with not playing Sung-Ryong in this game and giving him a rest. There was an element of good fortune for us or generosity from Tokushima for both of our goals. But that’s not taking anything away from Damiao’s brilliant pressing and nice finishes for both goals and Mitoma’s quick thinking pass for the first. Is it just me, or is Damiao looking a lot more dangerous in a conventional striker kind of way this season? He’s seems quite on it at the moment, and long may that continue. Tokushima definitely seemed to be coming to try and snuff us out with a back four and what seemed like a back three directly in front of them. Clearly this didn’t help them going forward. I’m not sure it particularly worked in stopping us either. It was more just that we weren’t quite on it in this game I felt. I'd like to think that if we were up against it a bit more we might have gone up a gear, but to be honest, it's not like we weren't trying too hard. More like we just weren't really clicking aside from some occasional nice passages of play which more often than not led to nothing. Perhaps I should avoid provoking the irritation of opposition fans too much by moaning about performances when we’ve won four out of four, scoring twelve goals and conceding three. Or perhaps I should do the opposite and stoke that opposition fan ire whilst it is possible as I’m sure they’ll delight in it when we lose our first game.

VAR and ref -

Actually, I don’t think I have anything to write about VAR this week as I don’t think it was used. No complaints about the ref either. I will moan about that stupid late flagging thing again though. One linesman seemed to be doing it and the other wasn’t. It was pleasantly refreshing when the one who wasn’t raised his flag to stop an offside Tokushima attack. It was crushingly inevitable when we finally managed to get a second half shot on target that we’d get a late flag and it would be ruled out. Haven’t seen this decision replayed so no idea if it was right or not but will still get irritated that even when VAR isn’t involved directly we can still have the disappointment of a delayed deflating decision ruining a celebration.

Other bits -

Joao Schmidt is everywhere, and always available for a pass. I think he’s growing into his new role game by game. Very happy! Hatate seems to be getting better and better too. I’d still rather see him up front but can understand how exciting it is to have him and Mitoma on the same side attacking together. And he’s a total legend for being up for playing there. Ao seemed to volley a drop ball in the second half. (DAZN is playing up so I can’t check and see for sure).That was a bit weird. You don’t often see them having to be retaken. There were a lot of backheels in this game. If only our shooting had been as good as our backheeling. Oh, and finally, the run continues of someone getting a brace in every game. And perhaps the other run also continues of us having one dodgy half in every game. But maybe this time it wasn’t quite so dodgy, and also perhaps it was actually two halves that were a bit dodgy rather than one that was more dodgy.

As mentioned above, we have Kashiwa Reysol at home on Saturday at the slightly irritating time of 17:00. From a boozing point of view it really couldn’t be worse timed. Will it be team A or B that appears for us? (A, I reckon). Who will get the two goals? (Dunno, but I really hope it’s one of our players and they are in
the right net). How rubbish will we for one half of the game? (Hopefully not very rubbish and will be amazing for the other half). Go Frontale!


Team

GK 1. Sung-Ryong JUNG 

DF 13. YAMANE Miki

DF 4. JESIEL
DF 5. TANIGUCHI Shogo

DF 47. HATATE Reo

MF 6. JOAO SCHMIDT
MF 25. TANAKA Ao

MF 8. WAKIZAKA Yasuto

FW 41. IENAGA Akihiro

FW 9. LEANDRO DAMIAO

FW 18. MITOMA Kaoru

Subs

GK 27. TANNO Kenta 

MF 3. TSUKAGAWA Koki (on for JOAO SCHMIDT 64')

DF 7. KURUMAYA Shintaro

FW 11. KOBAYASHI Yu (on for LEANDRO DAMIAO 64')

MF 16. HASEGAWA Tatsuya (on for MITOMA 80')

FW 19. TONO Daiya (on for IENAGA 80')

MF 22. TACHIBANADA Kento (on for WAKIZAKA 64')

 

My Frontale Man Of The Match

 

Once again, I agree with the official verdict. It's got to go to...

LEANDRO DAMIAO - superb pressing creating both goals for himself with just a little help from a great Mitoma pass. Oh, and he tried another overhead kick,

 

Goals

LEANDRO DAMIAO (Frontale) 12' 1-0
LEANDRO DAMIAO (Frontale) 26' 2-0


Highlights

 

Vs Vegalta Sendai (away) 6/3/21 - J League match 2

Vegalta Sendai 1 - 5 Kawasaki Frontale

Sendai away is probably my favourite away fixture but sadly this was another game that we had to watch at home. Given that this was the 10th anniversary of the Tohoku earthquake there was added significance to this fixture. We were Sendai’s first visitors after that tragedy and since then the two clubs and their fans seem to have a great relationship. Apparently they had made a video for our fans to mark the occasion. I hope we get the chance to see it sometime. They also displayed our big Frontale flag in front of their supporter section which was nice of them. It seems a little mean of us to hand them a tonking in return for this kind gesture but that’s what we did. As usual with games I watch on TV or DAZN, I find it a bit hard to get too excited. But the goal rush definitely helped in this game. I’m not going to mess around writing too much though as there are not really any unique insights I can provide from my sofa that anyone else couldn’t uncover on their own. I’ll do some bullet points but they’re doing to be short today. Hallelujah!

2/3 a new team

Oniki rotated quite a bit for this game. I wondered if he would, as it’s still early in the season and if there were ever a manager who likes to keep things as they are, it’s Oniki. But he completely changed the centre backs and the front three and tinkered a little with the midfield. Amusingly this meant that Hatate was still at left back which is the one change I have been suggesting. I thought Yamamura and Kurumaya looked pretty solid at the back. The front three were pretty good too I think. I’m delighted Tono got his first goal for us, and that Hatate scored, and that Kobayashi also got one (or two depending on who you ask). I was not delighted to see Oniki give Taniguchi ten minutes in the anchor role. Stop converting! Taniguchi started as a midfielder and converted to a centre back as it seems he’s much better there. Judging on this performance (and to be honest also every time he’s been tried there before), he really shouldn’t be playing in midfield. I don’t think his passing is good enough to play such an important position. Just my opinion. Tachibanada got a lot more minutes under his belt. I haven’t really noticed him much yet. Whether this is because he goes under my radar in the way that Oshima and Wakizaka sometimes do, I’m not sure. It’s great though that some of the new players are getting a look in. Hopefully some others will soon.

One brace and one bad half

The tradition continues. Whether this game’s brace was by Kobayashi or the Sendai captain and defender Hachisuka is up to the individual I guess. I’d lean towards the contentious goal being an own goal, but as the ball was going in anyway, why not give it to Kobayashi? I think both players would prefer it that way. Along with the usual two goals to one player thing we also had another go at playing one good half and having one slightly dodgy one. Although to be fair, the second half wasn’t a disaster, we just seemed to have taken our foot off the gas a bit. Can’t complain about their goal and they had maybe double the chances we had in the second half. But we stood semi-firm. I’m not sure if the dodginess was due to Oniki changing things at half time or more just down to us leading 4-0 and easing off. I will lean towards the latter as I am becoming a bit of a Tsukagawa fan already and I’m not going to say it was down to him. Perhaps there is some work to be done with working on some midfield combinations though as I don’t think we really have a plan B there yet and no-one is really staking a firm claim to change our starting line-up as far as I can see at the moment.

VAR

I’m going to keep saying I hate VAR in every post. I hate VAR. Nothing disastrous in this game though I thought. Definitely there was an unnecessarily long delay late in the match when the Sendai forward kicked the pitch and his teammates went crazy claiming for a penalty. Also the first/only own goal also had a long delay where they seemed to be deciding whether the ball had crossed the line or not. Maybe we should replace VAR with goal line technology? I thought they wouldn’t give it as the Sendai players were complaining about what they thought was a foul causing the own goal finish and given that it wasn't 100% clear if the ball had crossed the line. But it was. Still, let's bin VAR, eh? Hehe.

Any other rubbish, ... SNIFF

Kobayashi’s post match interview was pretty funny. In these days of heightened awareness of people sniffing or coughing it was amusing to see someone sniffing quite so much whilst being broadcast. Apparently it’s an allergy though, so hopefully no need to worry. It dominated the interview though. Much in the same way that if you notice someone’s verbal tick (‘you know’, ‘like’) it rapidly transforms into a meaning blocking monolith which is impossible to ignore. I probably have a writing tick that I constantly repeat in these posts, but I don’t know what it is. Let me know and I’ll try to iron it out.
And one other thing, was it just me, or were there some of our fans there? There shouldn’t have beenav given the state of emergency but when we had a shot I really thought I could hear a crowd noise that suggested brief excitement followed by disappointment which doesn’t seem to fit with home fans reacting to an opposition chance. Also, when Hatate scored I think he gestured to the area of the stadium where we would normally be. I wonder if there were some fans allowed on the condition that they weren’t shown on TV and kept relatively quiet. I wouldn’t be too happy if this were the case. I would have loved to have gone but stuck to the rules. If they were secretly allowed to go, for example to deliver a massive flag, that would be a bit dodgy.


Next up we have Tokushima Vortis at home on Wednesday. They’ve got two draws from their first two games. Miyashiro won’t be able to play for them against us. After that it’s Kashiwa Reysol at home on Saturday. Quite a lot of home games to start the season with. But given that we’re not allowed to go to away games right now, that’s not such a bad thing. Whether Oniki will persevere will this kind of line-up or revert to the previous one who knows. Maybe he’ll even try a mix of both. Or maybe not. Amazing analysis as usual. Go Frontale!

 

Team 

GK 1. Sung-Ryong JUNG 

DF 13. YAMANE Miki

DF 28. YAMAMURA Kazuya

DF 7. KURUMAYA Shintaro

DF 47. HATATE Reo

MF 6. JOAO SCHMIDT
MF 25. TANAKA Ao

MF 22. TACHIBANADA Kento

FW 19. TONO Daiya

FW 11. KOBAYASHI Yu

FW 16. HASEGAWA Tatsuya

Subs
GK 27. TANNO Kenta
MF 3. TSUKAGAWA Koki (on for JOAO SCHMIDT 45')

DF 5. TANIGUCHI Shogo (on for TACHIBANDA 83')

MF 8. WAKIZAKA Yasuto (on for TANAKA 90')

FW 9. LEANDRO DAMIAO

FW 18. MITOMA Kaoru(on for HASEGAWA 72')

FW 41. IENAGA Akihiro (on for TONO 72')

Goals

KOBAYASHI (Frontale) 12' 0-1
TONO (Frontale) 26' 0-2
HACHISUKA (Sendai) OWN GOAL 33' 0-3
KOBAYASHI (Frontale) 39' 0-4
UEHARA (Sendai) 58' 1-4
HATATE (Frontale) 83' 1-5


Highlights

Vs Cerezo Osaka (home) 3/3/21 - J League match 11

Kawasaki Frontale 3 - 2 Cerezo Osaka

It’s only five days since the season started and already we are on our eleventh league game. Well, round eleven anyway as this was a fixture between two ACL teams that was brought forward to give us something to do on a Levain Cup group stage night. We welcomed one of our old bogey teams Cerezo Osaka back to Todoroki. Cerezo unceremoniously dumped their most successful recent manager shortly before the end of last season. They lost a few of their most important players and replaced them with a 38 year old Yoshito Okubo who didn’t manage to trouble the scorers last year when he was with Tokyo Verdy. So we went into the game as favourites and consequently, from a jinx point of view would probably lose this match. After playing two games in both of which we had a good first half with a player getting a brace and then farted around for the second half not doing much, a  match against our former bogey team would be a good way to see where we really are. Naturally we conceded a goal in the fifth minute scored by our former star striker and then after getting back on level terms, contrived to go behind again. Add to this the electric atmosphere of corona football and you have quite a first 45 minutes of high quality entertainment! Anyway, another game coming soon so let’s knock this post out quickly. Here we go.

Corona update -

The state of emergency in Tokyo and its surrounding prefectures has been extended for another couple of weeks. Those hoping that this would be our last game with a crowd of under 5000 will be disappointed. Those who enjoy atmosphere will also be disappointed. Although to be fair this game seemed a lot better than the last one from the point of view of noise from the crowd. I say noise, but I really mean clapping. For some reason our call leaders and drummers have decided that they will not be leading or drumming whilst the state of emergency is on. Which seems a bit weird to be honest as when we can’t sing, if they get involved everything is a bit more exciting and possibly motivating. Perhaps they are hoping some kind of demand from fans for them to come back and lead us to the promised land like they seemed to be doing when we messed up away at Oita and didn’t win the league. So here it is from me. Hopefully they’ll be back soon. We were able to warm up for the clapathon with that version of the Shishamo song that they used to play before every game last season. Which made me realise that on the whole Japanese people are pretty good at clapping in time. I don’t know what happened to it last game but there does seem to be a few problems with getting things played on the PA and the big screen this year. Perhaps this geed everyone up a bit as things were a bit more fun. That is until…

Return of Okubo -

Of course he scored against us. He always does. He didn’t have to do it twice though! Very unsporting of him! Okubo rolled back the years and smacked a pretty nice one in from distance (can’t imagine anyone expected him to shoot and perhaps this is why Sung-Ryong looked like he’d been caught out), and then tucked one in at the back post from a cross that Sung-Ryong flapped at. It’s fair to say that our keeper didn’t have his best half. At least from the point of view of the two goals we conceded. I know there is always a bit of a debate about whether returning players should celebrate scoring against their old team. I think I lean towards ‘maybe not’ but can understand when they do. I don’t see why Okubo always has to do it with some much enthusiasm though! I was delighted to see him score last weekend. Not so much in this game. Not sure our fans should really be clapping him scoring either. I guess it was a nice goal, but as far as I’m concerned, give him a clap when his name’s read out before the game, give him a clap at the end of the game but don’t clap him when he scores against your team. Especially not for the second goal which was essentially a tap in! We did manage to pull one goal back in the first half (more on that later... a little more...), but I thought we looked pretty ordinary, particularly down the right. We were putting in a classic 2021 second half performance but in the first half. The only redeeming thing that happened before the second half (apart from the goal), was the fact that I avoided a fairly long queue for the toilet by using this ‘new’, ’secret’ toilet that I’m pretty sure never used to be in use but perhaps is getting some use due to people being encouraged to social distance.

 

Half time rollocking and line ups -

Cometh the hour, cometh the rollicking! Oniki must have got out the hairdryer at half time as we were a lot better in the second half. In the past he’s been a fan of the freebie half time substitution but seems to have gone off this idea in 2021. Whatever he said seemed to work though and we were level quite quickly. From then on it seemed like it was only a matter of time before we took the lead as Cerezo didn’t offer much. It was nice to see Tsukagawa get some more time on the pitch again after his brief cameo in the Super Cup. There didn’t seem to be anyone who he needed to crack heads with in this game though. Tachibananda got some more minutes too. He’s clearly a favourite of Oniki’s. Our final and triple substitution saw a complete change of the front three who to be fair all looked knackered. No-one who came on really had time to make much of an impact, but Kobayashi did manage to put a decent chance straight at the Cerezo keeper. The game felt like it had been won by then anyway, barring any calamitous errors. Given that he's named the same starting line-up three times, it now seems clear that this is Oniki’s first choice eleven from the players we have fit at the moment. I can only imagine it would be Oshima and Noborizato who would make it into the team if everyone in the squad were fit. Maybe… I still don’t want Hatate playing at left back, but for some unknown reason Oniki isn’t aware of my opinion and doesn’t care what I think. I think that Oniki rotating in 2020 became a bit of a common misconception. We only used 22 different players last year and if it were in any way possible to name his favoured eleven that is exactly what Oniki would do. AND LOOK HOW LAST YEAR TURNED OUT!!! Oh…. It will be interesting to see when he breaks from this eleven and if that is an enforced change or not. I guess we can say though that Damiao is now favoured over Kobayashi which is a bit surprising for Oniki. Also that Kurumaya will not be played at left back unless it is absolutely necessary. I guess it makes sense to try to get as strong a start in the league as possible considering there could be some bumps in the road coming up later in the season so maybe this is why we are going full on right now. Hopefully Oniki has got an idea of what we can do to give some players a rest when they need it though. Will we see a change at the weekend and next week against 'weaker' opposition? I doubt it. But must things I predict don't happen, so maybe we will.

The usual VAR stuff -

We had a goal ruled out for offside by VAR. As would be expected there was not a lot of clarity in the stadium as to what was going on. We had the goal song playing but something didn’t seem right. The linesman’s flag had gone up but Sato seemed to be giving it until we got the feared hand on the ear and palm outstretched thing. I think the decision was right… I think. I had no idea at the time and checking on DAZN hasn’t made it much clearer as instead of the crucial moment being replayed they considered a few shots of some guys looking at TV screens proof enough of the validity of the decision. You can just about see something at the edge of the screen if you rewind the footage on DAZN but nothing crucial was replayed. The replays they showed were off a different passage of play to the one that the offside came in. I wonder if the people who control the TV pictures are under instructions to not show anything potentially contentious or just don’t really know what’s going on. I think this linesman flagging at the end of the passage of play thing though isn’t helping anyone understand what’s happening. I’d also say that we seem to be getting a lot less yellow cards in games this year. I think I said that last year too. Maybe that’s another rule change. Thankfully we haven’t had a nightmare VAR experience yet like they did at the Shonan / Tosu game yet. Or the one at the Cerezo / Kashima game. Guess the latter decision shows that even if you have some guys in a room watching loads of replays you can still get controversy and confusion. Maybe better to not bother with it at all, eh? And preserve some of the excitement of watching a game.

Sorry, this post wasn’t very entertaining. Seems that I can’t keep them funny and I can’t keep them short either. I’m doomed to provide my inaccurate and just plain wrong analysis. Or maybe it was just that nothing funny happened. It’s another win which is great, particularly as we seem to have had some wobbly moments already this year. One nineteenth of the season is done and we are unbeaten! And we’ve had a player score twice in every game. Long may both of those things continue! Next up we have Sendai away. It’s a real shame we can’t go there. For many reasons, but particularly given the fact that it’s the 10th anniversary of the Tohoku earthquake and the game we played against them which seemed to create this nice relationship between the two sets of fans. Instead we’ll have to watch from our sofas. After that we’re at home again next Wednesday, this time against Tokushima Vortis. Hopefully we can continue in our first half against Gamba and YFM and second half against Cerezo vein. Or perhaps we might even get a whole 90 minutes of good stuff! Fingers crossed! Go Frontale!

Team 

GK 1. Sung-Ryong JUNG 

DF 13. YAMANE Miki

DF 4. JESIEL
DF 5. TANIGUCHI Shogo

DF 47. HATATE Reo

MF 6. JOAO SCHMIDT
MF 25. TANAKA Ao

MF 8. WAKIZAKA Yasuto

FW 41. IENAGA Akihiro

FW 9. LEANDRO DAMIAO

FW 18. MITOMA Kaoru

Subs

GK 27. TANNO Kenta 

MF 3. TSUKAGAWA Koki (on for JOAO SCHMIDT 64')

DF 7. KURUMAYA Shintaro

FW 11. KOBAYASHI Yu (on for LEANDRO DAMIAO 90')

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

FW 19. TONO Daiya (on for IENAGA 90')

MF 22. TACHIBANADA Kento (on for WAKIZAKA 79')

 

My Frontale Man Of The Match

 

Although Mitoma got to do the hero interview at the end of the game, the official man of the match and my choice were in accord for once. We’ve both given it to…

LEANDRO DAMIAO - two goals, (including one lovely volley!), and one backheeled assist is pretty good, but his whole performance was great I thought. The deputy captaincy seems to have lifted him to a new level of goalkeeper hassling and I have to say I’m really enjoying it!

Goals

OKUBO (CEREZO) 5' 0-1

LEANDRO DAMIAO (Frontale) 7' 1-1

OKUBO (CEREZO) 22' 1-2

LEANDRO DAMIAO (Frontale) 47' 2-2

MITOMA (Frontale) 62' 3-2

Highlights