Vs Nagoya Grampus (away) 29/4/21 - J League match 22

Nagoya Grampus 0 - 4 Kawasaki Frontale

It was pretty weird decision by the J League to put our two league games against Nagoya back to back and perhaps now it looks even weirder. I guess there were reasons behind it though, and perhaps we’ll be avoiding some congestion late in the season because of it, but after this result some people are saying the title race is over already. I think that is horrendously premature to be honest. Another win in the home game against Nagoya would send quite a message though. This win has left us six points clear of Nagoya which is a great way to celebrate the start of Golden Week. Given the current state of emergency though, this Golden Week is going to be far from golden with people staying at home and brooding about what might have been for what is some people’s favourite time of the year. We had a great pub crawl in Nagoya lined up around this game which obviously got canceled by the travel restrictions. Perhaps next year instead. Although the current rate of progress in the fight against Corona in Japan might suggest that we’ll probably still be oscillating between soft lockdown and release in a year’s time. What’s certain though is that these two crucial games have been and will be played in front of small and silent crowds. Quite an underwhelming season highlight. Oh well! As is my usual style when I watch a game on DAZN, I’m not going to write too much about this and instead just make a few brief observations lumped together into one paragraph. Here we go.

We made a great start and to be honest the game was kind of over by the water break in the first half. The ‘best keeper in the J League’ (according to some), made more saves in the first 11 minutes than he had in the previous two games. Admittedly this was only one save, but he had also conceded twice by then. It was great to see Hatate start further forward again, and to get a goal too was lovely. Damiao had another great game. Well, damn good but almost great. Two goals and an assist is great. As was the striking dirty work he was having to do, winning headers and setting up others. But he could have scored at least four though if it weren’t for a couple of misses when it looked easier to score. But who cares about that? He did a great job again! Nagoya’s stingy defence got ripped to shreds by our attack. It was lovely to see. Admittedly the great start did lead to a pretty dull middle of the game as Nagoya changed to a formation with apparently three defensive midfielders and bizarrely became more of a threat going forward. They had some good moments, but two shots on target in the whole match means that even if Sung-Ryong hadn’t been there we would still have won. (This is partially a joke before anyone responds to this). I can’t blame us taking our foot off the gas as we have another important game coming up on Tuesday, when another win would really send a message. Hopefully we can get it. Oh and I should probably add that another Tono goal was a very nice sight too. It’s great to see we have players who are willing to shoot as in previous seasons we’ve suffered from being ponderous to the point of frustration. Perhaps we’ll have to be a bit more ponderous on Tuesday though. I don’t know how Nagoya will approach the game. It’s not really in their DNA to come out blazing but they do need to win. I suspect we will go with pretty much the same lineup.  It was nice that we could have a rest before this game and it certainly showed in our fast start. Yamane was again quite subdued in this game, so perhaps he wasn’t tired before, but was being encouraged to be a bit less cavalier with his attacking and focus more on his defensive duties. I guess Ienaga won’t be tracking back to cover him if he's playing on the right as he usually is just doing his own thing, so perhaps it’s just when he has Kobayashi in front of him that Yamane wanders about a bit more.

 

So, as stated numerous times already, next up is Nagoya at home on Tuesday. Ficcandenti was absent from this match due to a ‘sore throat’. I really hope that does not turn out to be anything more serious as by Tuesday night we’ll have spent plenty of time with the Nagoya players. It will be another DAZN watching experience for me, so expect another short blog post then too. After that, Gamba away the following weekend. Another great away trip scuppered by COVID. Fingers crossed these pretty weak government measures have some effect on bringing the numbers down a bit. Go Frontale!

Team

GK 1. Sung-Ryong JUNG
DF 13. YAMANE Miki
DF 5. TANIGUCHI Shogo

DF 4. JESIEL

DF 2. NOBORIZATO Kyohei

MF 6. JOAO SCHMIDT

MF 25. TANAKA Ao

MF 47. HATATE Reo (Yellow card 51')

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 89')

DF 7. KURUMAYA Shintaro

MF 8. WAKIZAKA Yasuto (on for MITOMA 72')

MF 17. KOZUKA Kazuki (on for TANAKA 89')

FW 19. TONO Daiya (on for HATATE 77')

FW 20. CHINEN Kei (on for LEANDRO DAMIAO 77')

 

Goals

HATATE (Frontale) 3' 0-1

LEANDRO DAMIAO (Frontale) 11' 0-2

LEANDRO DAMIAO (Frontale) 23'0-3

TONO (Frontale) 84' 0-4

Highlights

 

Vs Sanfrecce Hiroshima (home) 18/4/21 - J League match 10

 

Kawasaki Frontale 1 - 1 Sanfrecce Hiroshima

This was the last game before we have a little break and I think we need it. It was another flat performance but this time we didn’t get that little spark of inspiration or excitement that could help turn the game our way. We certainly weren’t helped by the opposition or the referee. But undoubtedly the main culprit was ourselves. We weren’t quite at the races on the pitch or in the dugout. Here we go with the usual bullet points, knocked out quickly in order to allow me to fully enjoy almost a week and a half with no blogging.

Them -

For this game it seems like we should probably start with the opposition. Sanfrecce are a notoriously boring and dull team (according to some 😉), so it came as no surprise to see them turn up with the noble intention of sucking all the life out of the game, the sport, the crowd and of life itself in pursuit of a glorious 0-0 draw. Before the game Jofuku said ‘We want to defend and attack Frontale in our way, but there will be times when we need to defend in every way.  But only by defending we won’t prevent their strong attack.’ Which is a pretty enigmatic way of saying, we’re going to defend and don’t care much about doing anything else. Even if the shape of the game wasn’t obvious enough from past experiences beforehand, this statement clarified their safety first (second, third, fourth...) approach. The first half saw them fail to have any kind of shot. I don’t think their full backs made it out of their own half till after the break. I don’t think I have ever seen a team timewaste as much as they did. On many occasions they were assisted in this by another useless referee. Whenever the ball left the pitch a Sanfrecce player would fall to the floor clutching some part of their anatomy with the sole intention of delaying the restart. They played the first 60 minutes of the match with a back 9 who, when they didn’t have the ball, all seemed intent on kicking lumps out of our players and when they did have the ball, did their best to lose it in order to justify a roll on the floor. I cannot believe they only got one yellow in the whole match. Junior Santos should definitely have been booked for a nasty revenge foul after he had the ball taken off him. But in the last 20 minutes of the game they could easily have won. Our solidity evaporated and they had chance after chance with Jesiel in particular having a torrid time. It seems weird to say this considering they only had three shots on target out of a total of six in the whole game, but we were really wobbling at the end and probably were relieved to come away with a draw in the end. Perhaps this sounds like me praising Sanfrecce but don’t worry, I’ll spin that around in the next section. They were horrible for the whole of the first half, presumably worked out in the half time team talk that they probably shouldn’t play to preserve a one goal deficit, came out slightly blazing, were spurred on by our disallowed second goal to score one, retreated back to 9 in defence but then worked out we were looking dodgy and almost stole it at the end. Glad I don’t have to watch a Jofuku team play every week. 

 

Us -

With an upcoming break Oniki chose to name what was probably his preferred eleven. Now this seems to include Tono in midfield and Joao Schmidt nowhere to be seen just as people were starting to praise him. Although there are some rumours that he might not be completely fit but might be back for the Nagoya games. As usual, there’s not much clarity when it comes to injuries. Sung-Ryong was back from injury so retook his place between the sticks. We started quite well and I thought that Ao was looking good in the first half. Sadly the problem was turning chances into goals. Admittedly it’s tough to score when you can’t get a shot on target and that was the real problem for us in the first half. With 60% possession and 14 shots in the first half you’d probably hope to be leading by more than a single goal and even that we might have got more than six of those shots on target. Much better than the second half though where we failed to hit the target at all. (The only good thing about this fact is that I now know that disallowed goals don’t count as a shot on target on Flashscore!). The two halves definitely felt very different, but the fact is in terms of effectiveness they were pretty similar. Our record in our first 12 league games is now WWWWWD and repeat. I’d be more than happy for us to continue in this vein for the rest of the year but it probably shows that from time to time we run out of puff and need a kick up the backside/rest to get us back on track. Hopefully this game will result in former as we now have the latter.
The other thing that has struck me is that quite often our use of subs has been a bit crappy this year. Oniki seemed to be on a hot streak with positive game changing subs last season. This year they change the game but usually for the worse. Certainly after the changes in this game our sharpness was dulled. And to be honest it wasn’t that sharp beforehand. I’m not blaming the players but we lost any kind of cohesiveness. Guess this could happen when you change 2/3 of the midfield at the same time and then 2/3 of the attack at the same time ten minutes later. Perhaps a bit more variety could work a bit better. I think if you look at a line up before a game this year it’s pretty easy to work out, barring injuries, who the unused sub will be and who will be replaced by who. I was very happy to see Kozuka and Tsukagawa get a chance in this game, but not sure why both came on at the same time. Likewise Chinen and Kobayashi coming on at the same time. It was a bit surprising to see that Kobayashi seems to now be nailed on for the right attacking position sub rather than getting a go in the middle. Not sure how long that will last but if Oniki had changed one midfielder and one striker at the same time instead he could have given Kobayashi a go in the middle and if that didn’t work move him to the right. We have a lot of talented and versatile players in our squad but it now seems that the front three positions will be a choice of one or another player in each position rather than any innovation. Tono moving back to midfield seems to have further solidified this. As usual, I probably haven’t got a clue what I’m talking about, but it seems clear that our subs aren’t changing the game for the better, more that they are just to give some players a bit of a rest. If we’re winning when we make them, perhaps that makes sense, but if we’re not, it seems like we’re going to have a much harder time of getting a positive boost from them.

 

Ref and VAR -

Another goal chalked off for us in this game due to VAR. This was the first time we’ve had a ref run to the pitch-side monitor though (see terrible photo below). The weird thing is, the VAR refs seemed to be having a lot of trouble making a decision as this was another interminable delay. When Kasahara jogged to the monitor he seemed to have no doubt and no delay in reversing his own decision. Damiao was clearly offside (clearly in a VAR era way anyway) so the issue was more whether he was interfering with play. This seems a lot more subjective and I wonder if it might be a lot easier for everyone if this wasn’t an issue in offside decisions. I’ve heard that we might be going back to the old ‘fresh air’ gap between players for offside decisions. I wonder if this change will also be joined with the removal of ‘not interfering with play’ ruling. Would certainly make decisions more straightforward. And would also mean that we’d basically gone back to the old rules. Oh, how I wish we could go back to the old no VAR days. If we did I’m sure there would be no shortage of volunteers to smash up the VAR equipment with a baseball bat. They could even do it as a fund-raising competition. When we score now I am of a mind to just presume it will be canceled in order to avoid the poisonous disappointment of an overturned goal creep into my life. Perhaps we could just watch the game in silence and have the results of all the VAR decisions revealed at the end of the game. That way we can enjoy our celebrations or groans without having to worry about having the rug pulled out from under us. As I usually say, the decisions might be right this way, but it doesn’t make up for the experience being ruined. As I always say, I HATE VAR.

 

 

On to Kasahara, who now must be going down as one of the shittiest refs for us to have in a game. Perhaps stung by previous comments that he always sends off Taniguchi when he refs our games, Kasahara seemed determined to not bring out any cards at all in this game. Hiroshima got away with some very dodgy stuff in the first half and Kasahara wasn’t interested. There was one sole booking which made him ignoring some of the other fouls even more bizarre. My big beef with him though was the total ignoring of the Sanfrecce time wasting. Admittedly it’s a kind of difficult thing to deal with as once you book a keeper for interminably dithering with his towel, and then water bottle, and then changing the side, and then running up and aborting a goal kick it would take a brave ref to give a second yellow for time wasting. I would have thought old red card Kasahara would have been the man to do it though. (Actually, surely attention seeking Nishimura is the man to do it. If he worked out he could really become the focus by doing so he’d definitely be up for it). Its all very well adding 7 minutes at the end of the game, but when you consider 5 is pretty much a prerequisite these days and we had a goal, a long VAR decision and a water break to go with the Sanfrecce farting around and faking injury, seven minutes is a joke. Also, it’s equally about the breaking up of rhythm that if causes rather than the actual time wasted. The thing that pushed me over the edge in this game was Kasahara stopping the game for a Sanfrecce ‘injury’, doing a secret drop ball that apparently only three people in the stadium knew about (the ref, the keeper and me), and then letting all the other 21 players stand waiting for a phantom free kick whilst the keeper just stood over the ball running down the clock doing nothing. Clearly we should have been more aware of what was going on. I don’t know if the ref has a responsibility to communicate his decisions to the players but he definitely didn’t in this case. And I can quite understand that our players probably imagined that Kasahara probably had given Sanfrecce a free kick for something completely random. His decisions in the rest of the match would certainly have led the players to believe that anything, (apart from a reasonable decision), was possible. This game was a perfect storm of VAR irritation and complete frustration at another useless ref. At least that’s how I saw it!


So, horrible game, horrible opposition, horrible ref, horrible VAR. But I’m not blaming all of these things for the result. We messed this up ourselves. Now, a break which is well needed as let’s be honest, Yamane has been playing ninety minutes every few days for the last few months and it seems unlikely that he will ever be even substituted, let alone rested. Now, a week and half off before the ridiculously planned Nagoya double header. It didn’t seem like it was a great decision to play these games back to back and when you consider that government policy has now reduced the capacity of these games and prohibited away fans it’s going to be even more of a flat potentially season defining two games. It was very welcome to see Nagoya lose to Sagan Tosu, (cheers Edu!), messing up their unbeaten record and seeing their strong defence breached twice for the first time this year. Unfortunately it means that they too will be looking to bounce back. So it will be a battle of the bounce backs, with our misfiring attack coming up against their wobbling but bouncing back defence. Possibly a recipe for mediocrity and disappointment. But still, let’s not think about that till next week. Have a nice rest players and come back firing. Go Frontale!

 

Team

GK 1. Sung-Ryong JUNG
DF 13. YAMANE Miki
DF 5. TANIGUCHI Shogo

DF 4. JESIEL

DF 2. NOBORIZATO Kyohei

MF 25. TANAKA Ao

MF 19. TONO Daiya
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 WAKIZAKA 71')

DF 7. KURUMAYA Shintaro

FW 11. KOBAYASHI Yu (on for IENAGA 79')

FW 16. HASEGAWA Tatsuya (on for MITOMA 85')

MF 17. KOZUKA Kazuki (on for TONO 71')

FW 20. CHINEN Kei (on for LEANDRO DAMIAO 79')

My Frontale Man Of The Match

 

I dunno, maybe...

IENAGA Akihiro - managed to hit the target!

 

Goals

IENAGA (Frontale) 38' 1-0

MORISHIMA (Hiroshima) 65' 1-1

Highlights

Vs Avispa Fukuoka (home) 14/4/21 - J League match 19

Kawasaki Frontale 3 - 1 Avispa Fukuoka

The relentless schedule of Wednesday-weekend-Wednesday-weekend games continues. Somehow it feels busier this year than it did last year when a whole season was squeezed into what felt like one period of extra time. Hopefully this will mean that we have a manageable schedule when the ACL finally starts (whenever that might happen. Judging by recent events, it will probably happen over the course of a couple of days in November somewhere in a remote desert after several previous attempts have been scuppered by the fact that a highly contagious disease hasn’t been eradicated in the entirety of an absolutely massive continent). At the rate we’re going at the moment we’ll probably have our league campaign finished by then. I guess it does make sense to get as many games done as possible whilst we still can. The spectre of a COVID cluster looms as always. Kashiwa have another cluster, so that shows that even if you are unlucky enough to get a first batch, it still might be difficult to avoid getting another one. Or maybe that they are really not doing things the right way. Fingers crossed it’s not us next. And as long as we keep winning, I guess it’s good that we keep playing. We could all do with a break though. Newer additions to the injury list Hatate and Sung-Ryong seem to be still be out. I say ‘seem to’ as I don’t think we’ve had particularly concrete confirmation of Hatate’s situation. Nobori seems to be back but not up to 90 minutes yet. Yamamura in now out for 3 months (I think). And of course Oshima is still injured. We’re still pushing on with Yamane at right back though. I would have we probably should have tried someone else there by now as Yamane is definitely running out of steam a little. (He scored in this game with a lovely run in injury time after playing 90 minutes, perfectly making the previous sentence look absolutely ridiculous). After this weekends home game against Sanfrecce Hiroshima we have an 11 day break before a Nagoya double header which could really change the situation at the top of the table. Or could equally not change anything if we draw or exchange victories. Presumably we’ll try to put out the best side we have in both of the Nagoya games so maybe we’ll see some changes at the weekend. Or more likely given the upcoming break we will go with our best 11 again on Sunday and then give them all a rest. Fingers crossed it doesn’t come back to bite us. Anyway, this is a long introduction to what should be a brief post. I’m thinking that going forward, at least for the time being, I’ll probably go with the same paragraph titles as I have done recently. So here we go.

Us -

I did quite a lot of the ‘us’ talk in the intro so maybe this will be brief (or maybe not...). Interesting points from this line up were the return of Tsukagawa to the bench and a first appearance on the bench of Kozuka. The latter didn’t make it on to the pitch though, but maybe he will next time. Oniki does seem to like to introduce players slowly. I’m not sure who he would replace though as I imagine he’d play either in the middle or perhaps on the right up front. Just guessing though. Tono was once again in the midfield instead of further forward. I said in the last post that I hadn’t noticed him much in the FC Tokyo game but I paid a lot more attention to him in this match. At the start of the game I was a bit worried that he might not be suited to the defensive work he might have to do in midfield but it looked like he didn’t have any problems in this game. Also, I really like him bringing the ball forward bursting out of midfield so perhaps this really is a good position for him. I thought Wakizaka looked really good in this game too. He always goes under my radar so either he was playing much better than usual or in a slightly different way to usual. Or more likely, I was paying a bit more attention. I feel a little for Kobayashi on the right. I think it’s a position that suits him but he probably wants to be in the middle. I don’t think he helped his cause in that respect in this game as he missed a few good chances. But he was still a great asset on the right. It was telling that for Chinen’s goal both him and Kobayashi were in exactly the same spot so maybe Kobayashi is yearning for his old position. It is a credit to our number 11 that he is usually quite positionally disciplined when he plays on the right. Ienaga tends to wander all over the pitch. Perhaps Yu should cut loose a bit more, or perhaps him staying there is now part of an agreement that Yamane won’t spent quite so much time ahead of him as he has done recently. I dunno. Chinen up front worked out ok I thought. But both him and Kobayashi have the problem that Damiao is on fire recently. In his brief cameo in this game he managed another assist which I’m going to put down as a back heeled one, as I’m not sure what the proper term for that crossed leg sideways thing he did. His reaction to the goal was pretty good too. Very cool, but quite happy too. Just doing his job! Let’s not be all positive though! Taniguchi was a bit dodgy again. Perhaps he’ll be rested at the weekend with Jesiel and Kurumaya at the back. His tackle for the free kick that led to the Avispa goal looked ok from my seat but apparently from the replay was a pretty bad tackle and definitely a foul. Once again his passing was a bit off kilter. Hopefully he can have a rest and get back to his best. Tanno had another relatively quiet night. I don’t think he can be blamed for their goal. It was a lovely free kick. And he only had one other shot to save according to the stats I saw. Oh and poor Hasegawa just doesn’t seem to be getting any luck recently. He slipped at crucial moments on a couple of occasions. I hope he can get a goal soon and get back to his best. Overall, I think we didn’t quite hit the heights in this game. We had a lot of shots but couldn’t really trouble their keeper much. But to score three times with an average performance is pretty good by me! And it will please Oniki too given his stated aim of scoring three in every game. We’re currently four goals behind that schedule so we’d better get shooting (accurately).

Them -

Full credit to Avispa, they contained us pretty well for long parts of the game. As you’d expect from a team that has such a good defender as Nara playing for them. Nudge nudge. They didn’t threaten us that much going forward but if they had got a few more of their shots on target this could have been a much closer game. We shouldn’t forget that our third goal only came very late in the game and until then there was always a chance that a slip up (probably from Taniguchi…) would gift them a goal.  Much like against FC Tokyo, Yamane didn’t wander forward so much. Against the Chofu guys some people said this was due to them stopping him from doing so. If that is true then perhaps Avispa did the same thing and almost succeeded in doing so. Their free kick was a beauty and if you have set piece delivery and shooting like that there’s always a chance that you can score if the opposition give you the opportunity. Both Avispa and Tokushima seem to be doing a decent job of playing in J1 at the moment. It seems a bit tough on them that they got promoted in a season where four teams will go down. I’m not sure if they will be in the four. Certainly the relegation battle is going to be interesting this year and I’d say there’s every chance that a ‘big name’ could get sucked in (hopefully YFM or Kashima, hehe). But it’s still early days. In summary, I’d say we probably deserved to win, but Avispa didn’t deserve to lose by two goals. Looking forward to the away fixture so hopefully it won’t get Corona’d. 

Ref and VAR - 

Can’t remember any major VAR incidents again. I seem to be saying this quite frequently which is probably undermining my ‘I hate VAR’ sentiments. At the same time though, there are still plenty of VAR howlers going on in other matches so maybe we’re just getting lucky. I was astonished to see a new ref’s name on Flashscore for this match. M. Toma. Looked a bit suspicious given that our number 18 wasn’t starting. Thought that perhaps he was having a go at something different or maybe that Oniki had decided to do some conversion again and had reimagined Mitoma as a referee. Sadly the truth was much less exciting. It was Iemoto again but had been credited under his birth name. Wonder what's going on there.  I still say that he’s been extra bad for us since we clapped him away at FC Tokyo a few years ago. I thought in this game he gave us nothing. Well, he did give us a couple of yellow cards, but you know what I mean. Anyway this section is so repetitive recently that I’d encourage you to always just skip it if you’re not in the same anti-VAR and pro-moaning-about-refs camp as I am. There will probably never be much of interest for you here. One thing he did get very right was the rain and lightning delayed start of the second half. But I guess they just used a weather radar so maybe I’m doling out unnecessary praise here. I don’t think the lightning came particularly close and I remember us having to play in equally bad conditions (Kashiwa away that time), but to be honest, it really wouldn’t have suited us, so I’m not going to have anything to say against the decision to delay.


Next up, Sanfrecce Hiroshima at home on Sunday. They are in sixth but on a run of two straight defeats. Hopefully we can make it three. There’s plenty to dislike about them but somehow they never quite reach the heights of ire that other teams do. I wonder if we’ll get Tojo back to see if he fancies repeating his horrendous blunder in the same fixture a few years ago. A chance for redemption for him perhaps. And he has VAR to help him determine what is offside and what is never in a million years offside. After that, a break before the Nagoya double header. I’m just repeating myself now so let’s call it a day here. Go Frontale!

 

Team

GK 27. TANNO Kenta
DF 13. YAMANE Miki
DF 5. TANIGUCHI Shogo (Yellow card 45+2')
DF 7. KURUMAYA Shintaro (Yellow card 78')

DF 2. NOBORIZATO Kyohei

MF 25. TANAKA Ao

MF 19. TONO Daiya
MF 8. WAKIZAKA Yasuto

FW 11. KOBAYASHI Yu
FW 20. CHINEN Kei

FW 16. HASEGAWA Tatsuya

Subs
GK 21. ANDO Shunsuke

MF 3. TSUKAGAWA Koki (on for TONO 79')
DF 4. JESIEL (on for NOBORIZATO 79')

FW 9. LEANDRO DAMIAO (on for CHINEN 82')

MF 17. KOZUKA Kazuki

FW 18. MITOMA Kaoru (on for HASEGAWA 75')

FW 41. IENAGA Akihiro (on for KOBAYASHI 75')

My Frontale Man Of The Match

 

This wasn’t a sparkling performance but it was a decent one. Not sure who to pick out particularly, so I’ll do a different kind of cop out this time and give it to…

WAKIZAKA Yasuto & TONO Daiya - I noticed Wakizaka doing great things on numerous occasions and I never usually do. Was I drunk at this game? Am I normally drunk but was less so at this game? Was he better? Who knows, but it only seems right to give him a share of the MOTM. Also Tono deserves a mention for putting in one of those ‘up against my old team performances’ with a goal and an assist. I said I wasn’t sure about him in midfield but if he keeps scoring and assisting I guess it shows that I don’t know much. As you probably already knew.

 

Goals

TONO (Frontale) 19' 1-0

SALMONSSON (Avispa) 45+3' 1-1

CHINEN (Frontale) 55' 2-1

YAMANE (Frontale) 90+5' 3-1

Highlights

Vs FC Tokyo (away) 11/4/21 - J League match 9

FC Tokyo 2 - 4 Kawasaki Frontale

Another very late blog post. This time it’s a bit more of a surprise though as this game was quite an enjoyable experience! So there you go, proof that I’m not sulking when we have a disappointing game. More that I’m disorganised whatever the performance and result are like. Given that we’re sailing close to the wind with another game coming up in about 24 hours I’m going to go with the same ‘us’, ‘them’ and ‘ref and var’ sections again and then we can get on with preparing for the visit of Avispa Fukuoka on Wednesday. This time round, let’s start with…

Them -

Every time I write a blog post about either FC Tokyo of YFM I end up  making the same old bad jokes and subtle digs at our rivals. On this occasion it feels slightly unfair to do so as FC Tokyo seem to be in a bit of a mess behind the scenes and it’s not nice to kick someone when they’re down. Naturally I was delighted that the SBO Leandro was nowhere to be seen. His absence is something of a mystery with various theories going round. My personal one is that he’s just a total dirt bag and a terrible person to have in the locker room. There must have been a reason that Kashima were prepared to let him go for nothing a couple of years ago. I think he’s just bad news. Certainly he does do some good things on the pitch but they are more they outweighed by his total arseholery. But anyway, he didn’t play so I don’t know why I’m bothering to write about him. It does seem though that his influence is rubbing off on Diego Oliveira a bit. I always had thought he was a decent enough guy but recently he seems to have turned into a nasty fouling whinger, with his three options being roll around on the floor after the slightest contact, gesture and shout at the ref if something doesn’t go his way, or put in a horror tackle made up of 95% vindictiveness and violence with a 5% sprinkling of bad football. Perhaps he’s frustrated at being expected to do everything. Nagai basically runs fast and then falls over, nothing much happens in the middle and the two full backs crumple under the slightest pressure. Lovely for us though! Tokyo were pretty average in this game and I guess I should say that we should feel very disappointed to have conceded twice to give some fuel for Tokyo fans wanting to find something in this post to get angry about. To further stoke the fire of annoyance I’ll add that the atmosphere from the Tokyo parts of the stadium consisted of long periods of silence occasionally punctured by the briefest period of applause when they scored. Probably the biggest reaction in the game from their fans or players was when Tanno collected the ball close to the edge of his box, but more on that later… This was preceded by a gag-inducing rendition of ‘You’ll Never Walk Alone’, which I know already doesn’t sit particulalry well with some Tokyo fans, but hearing the version they play accompanied by a silent stadium laid bare quite how horrible it was. Presumably the Gerry & The Pacemakers version is too expensive to use so they made their own version with a Casio preset and a couple of guys who can speak English… but not sing. On Twitter I joked that it was probably some local Eikaiwa staff but hearing the stadium announcer (who, as an aside, I’m pretty sure got one of their players’ name wrong) a bit more clearly due to the silence in the stadium I wonder if his mid-Atlantic drive time radio tones were employed instead. I dunno, this all feels a bit cheap to be honest. The FC Tokyo fans I know are nice guys so it’s not completely fun to be mean about their team. I think they would be disappointed if I didn’t bitch a bit though so hopefully they enjoyed this. I know how they feel though as we’ve had some similarly awful days at the office when nothing works on the pitch and no-one seems to even be able to kick a ball. Thankfully not yet this year, but surely we will have one sooner of later. I’ll just finish up by saying that on this flat performance from them the ‘sexy football’ flag behind the goal (which I was taking a photo of purely to make this joke when Ienaga scored a beauty which I consequently only half saw... Did mean that I have a photo of him scoring which is immediately below this paragaraph), is even more amusing than it normally is. Add in your own joke here about erectile disfunction. Or picture Boris Johnson attempting to mount his latest mistress. SEXY! All quite unpleasant.

Us -

Oniki rang some changes in this game, but still Yamane powers on. He had another quiet game but given that he wasn’t getting forward quite as much perhaps he was quiet because he’d been told to defend a bit more, was a bit knackered or was up against a good opponent on his side. Kurumaya came in for Nobori at left back and I thought he had a really good game. Given our wealth of midfielders it might seem strange that Oniki is back on the conversion train again, but Tono started the game in midfield instead of playing further forward. I guess he played there for some of the last game and he scored. I didn’t notice him so much in this game though. Our front three had the ball in the net five times in the game so they are clearly all on fire. I wonder who will start against Fukuoka. I suspect Oniki will mix it up a bit. By which I mean completely change the front three. We scored some nice goals in this game but were gifted at least a couple of them. You’ve still got to put the ball in the back of the net though and we did a great job of doing so. Tanno continued in goal and did ok I thought. He had a bit more to deal with in this game than against Oita (no shots on target). Much like against Tosu, according to the stats he stopped one shot on target. Unfortunately this time he let two in as well, but obviously there’s more to be being a goal keeper than just saving shots on target (although I’m not downplaying the importance of doing that!). I felt like this was a bit like the game Tanno played last year against Kashima. Similarly he did pretty well but then was a little unlucky to concede two goals and obliterate his clean sheet. Thankfully though he did get a couple of clean sheets in the two previous games. And he did really irritate the FC Tokyo fans and get himself mentioned on Twitter quite a lot when he collected the ball inside but close to the edge of  his area. We were behind the other goal, so a long way away but at a good angle, and at the time it looked close but not that close. FC Tokyo fans and players alike protested (apart from Nagai, who was the only one close to the incident which possibly says something), and we went up the other end and scored. I’m pretty sure it would have been looked at by VAR to check the goal. I don’t know if it was. But the J League judge replay swatted the complaints away quite quickly using the incident only as a bridge to talk about other similar incidents and to clarify the rule. They were in no doubt that the ball was in the box. But let’s not let facts get in the way of a hot take gained from one side-on replay. I guess we’re quite annoying for lots of other teams’ fans now so they will use any opportunity to have a go at us and try to suggest that we’re getting preferential treatment or the rub of the green. I do get it. If the shoe was on the other foot, I’d probably be doing the same thing. I also think I understand how social media works though. It’s very easy to retweet or like something after a quick glance. And it’s very pointless to argue on the internet so I’m very pleased with myself for managing not to bite. Couple of final things. I think one of Damiao’s assists was an attempted overhead so I’m pleased that is coming back into his game. Perhaps his new thing will be overhead kick assists. He looked delighted with his goal and it’s a total joy to have him playing for us. What a nice guy! And hats off to us supporters. I’m not sure if the upper and lower tier alternate clapping to the ‘Let’s go’ rhythm was preplanned. It seemed to come about organically. It was a lot of fun and when we can combine it with the new arm waving AM10 ‘song’ when we have the drums it’s going to make COVID supporting a hell of a lot more enjoyable. (Excellent timing as we lurch into another half-arsed lot of restrictions which do next to nothing). We’ll see what it’s like at home against Avispa.

Ref and VAR -

VAR first. I hate it. Have I said that before? Hehe. No wrong decisions in this game I think, but the delay for the disallowed goal was ridiculous given that people watching the game online said that it was clearly offside. I haven’t watched it back but I’ll trust them. A few minutes delay for an obvious decision is pretty crazy. If it was obviously onside but they had to check for other infringements, fair enough. But if the offside is clear, we don’t need to check if anyone pulled a funny face behind the ref’s back in the build-up a few minutes previously. About the ref, I have a few more things to say! Looking back on my old posts it seems I didn’t previously have much of a problem with Fukushima but he was a nightmare in this game. When both sets of fans think he had a stinker you can probably be sure that he did. I don’t think he was biased either way, but some of his decisions were completely bizarre. I’m pretty sure after a Tokyo corner was taken and our player was knocked to the floor he blew his whistle and asked them to take it again. I thought he had definitely forgotten his cards as this game was a little feisty as you’d expect from a derby but Diego got nothing for a nasty revenge foul. Also, nothing for a player blatantly taking out Hasegawa or Mitoma or Kurumaya as they raced clear on the left. Basically I can remember where the incident was but not who was involved… somewhat undermining my complaint. He did finally book one Tokyo player but to be honest, I can’t remember that incident so let’s just say he probably got that wrong too. I think all of this was compounded by the long delay in restarting after half time as Fukushima seemed to be having radio problems. The old ‘hand on the ear’ is becoming something that sends simultaneous waves of anxiety and frustration through the body as we anticipate another tedious VAR delay. But to have it at the start of the half with both teams ready to go and standing in position is a bit bizarre. I wonder if in fact it hadn’t been working for the whole of the first half and it was just blasting white noise into his ear. That might explain some of his work I guess. But you know me, I love a moan about a ref, so I’m sure you would have been disappointed if I didn’t have something to say about him.

As I said above a few times, next up, Avispa Fukuoka at home in about 24 hours. Nara has recently started playing for them so I expect he’ll line up against us and have the game of his life. I still don’t blame him for leaving us, and I still blame Oniki for making him leave. (All conjecture of course, but you’d expect nothing less from me!). It’s fair to say that they’ve had a mixed start to the season. It’s also fair to say that we always have bad games against teams that some people
expect us to beat easily. I suspect a bit of Oniki rotation and that this could be an interesting match. Definitely the kind of team we could slip up against. Fingers crossed. After that I have a race against time to get a blog post out before Sunday when we take on Hiroshima at home. So many home games! Some might say that this means we have an advantage, but I’m not so sure that it goes like that for us. It does mean though that we have a lot of nice away trips coming up later in the season which will presumably be ruined by COVID restrictions. Damn… Anyway, Go Frontale!

Team

GK 27. TANNO Kenta
DF 13. YAMANE Miki
DF 4. JESIEL
DF 5. TANIGUCHI Shogo
DF 7. KURUMAYA Shintaro
MF 6. JOAO SCHMIDT

MF 19. TONO Daiya
MF 25. TANAKA Ao

FW 41. IENAGA Akihiro
FW 9. LEANDRO DAMIAO

FW 18. MITOMA Kaoru

Subs
GK 21. ANDO Shunsuke
DF 2. NOBORIZATO Kyohei

MF 8. WAKIZAKA Yasuto (on for TONO 75')

FW 11. KOBAYASHI Yu (on for LEANDRO DAMIAO 84')

FW 16. HASEGAWA Tatsuya (on for MITOMA 84')

FW 20. CHINEN Kei (on for IENAGA 84')

MF 22. TACHIBANADA Kento (on for TANAKA 90+1')

My Frontale Man Of The Match

 

Hmmmmm. I should probably have thought about this a bit more at the time as now I can’t really remember. I think I thought Joao had another good game. Ao too. Damiao got a goal and two assists. Mitoma finished nicely on a couple of occasions. Ienaga scored twice. Kurumaya did well. I’m basically naming almost the whole team, so let’s leave it again.
 

 

Goals

IENAGA (Frontale) 8' 0-1
IENAGA (Frontale) 17' 0-2

ADAILTON (Tokyo) 59' 1-2

MITOMA (Frontale) 61' 1-3

LEANDRO DAMIAO (Frontale) 75' 1-4

UCHIDA (Tokyo) 84' 2-4

Highlights

 

Vs Sagan Tosu (home) 7/4/21 - J League match 8

Kawasaki Frontale 1 - 0 Sagan Tosu

This was a very welcome result in a game we usually struggle in. Hopefully this post will be a bit more informative than the last one, but it will also be less decorative as we were back in our usual seats. This might have contributed to me enjoying the game a little more to be honest but doesn’t work so well for good photos. Another game is fast approaching and I’m still busy so let’s get on with this with three brutally to the point bullet point titles.

Us-

A few changes in the team again. My towel curse continues to afflict Tsukagawa. Also, I guess someone heard that I’ve ordered a Hatate short as he too was dropped from the squad. To be fair, he probably deserved a rest, but with it coinciding with both my purchase and his apparent frustration at being subbed in the last match I hope it’s nothing more than a rest. If only Oniki could work out how to give Yamane a rest. He really needs it. I really like him as a player and he’s done some great stuff for us but I really don’t think he should be playing every game. You could say we have a lack of options there, but in reality we have options but just a manager unwilling to try them. Kamiya, Issaka and Tanabe could all potentially play there, but instead it seems we’re going to run Yamane into the ground before making any kind to change. And that change will probably be to play a midfielder there. I think the time has come though. It’s unfortunate that the next game is the away fixture against FC Chofu as we need to do it sooner rather than later. Yamane’s passing was pretty dodgy in this game. Also, I’m not that happy to see him all over the pitch and Kobayashi having to cover his defensive duties. Apparently Oniki gives him full backs licence to roam and do what they want, (in apparent contrast to the strict things he demands from his centre backs), but I can now fully understand why Kobayashi might not want to play on the right if he’s going to spend a lot of the game covering for Yamane and defending. Let’s be honest though, if he hadn’t been having a dodgy game I probably wouldn’t be complaining about him being our furthest player forward on numerous occasions, so let’s just give him a rest and get him back to his best and then we can enjoy his crazy attacking and forget about the fact that he forgets he’s a defender.
A few comments about other players to finish this section. Damiao is still ruling with his pressing of opposition keepers. He also is definitely now obsessed with long range shots. And he got another backheeled assist in this game. How many obsessions can one player have?! No bicycle kicks in this game though. It was good to see Ao back and I think he firmed things up. Once again, I still only seem to notice Wakizaka when he does something wrong. Jesiel was rock solid at the back and it was a nice finish from Tono for the goal. I like the combination of Kobayashi on the right and Damiao in the middle but it didn’t quite work as well in this game as it has previously.

Them-

It would be easy to just dismiss this as another unspectacular win. Certainly some people seemed to think that this game was less exciting than the 2-0 against Oita last weekend. Perhaps due to the lower amount of alcohol consumed before the match, I actually enjoyed this game a bit more. Sure, we weren’t exactly scintillatingly free flowing and expansive but this was a win against Sagan Tosu, the only team we failed to beat last year, and this is the fixture that recently has pretty much always been a frustrating 0-0. Admittedly we only scored once and a 1-0 is the closest possible score to 0-0 you can get, but I think this was an important monkey to get off our back. Perhaps we were helped by the fact that Sagan Tosu are doing much better this year. I’m not sure it particularly changed their game plan from previous seasons as they were still pretty resolute at the back. But in previous years this defensive stinginess seemed to be enhanced when they played us. This was only the second goal they have conceded in eight games, so we should take some satisfaction from breaking down a tough defence. The absence of one of their best defenders due to suspension possibly helped. As did the red card which reduced them to ten men for most of the second half. But whereas in the past losing a man would make their defending more resolute and our attacking somehow blunter, on this occasion we managed to get a goal and take the win. Finally on Tosu, it was nice to see that Edu is doing well there and also nice to see Nakano again. I feel that maybe both haven’t quite ever shown their full potential and while I’m pleased they didn’t do so in this match, I wish them both good luck for the rest of the season apart from our away fixture against them. Oh, and once a YFM keeper, always a YFM keeper. I was disappointed we couldn’t take advantage more of some of Park’s ‘Iikura chances’ but to be honest this was because most of his distribution consisted of him booting the ball off the side of the pitch. I should have some more sympathy for him really as he seemed to get shafted a bit by our maritime neighbours, but you know, just because he’s our enemy’s enemy doesn’t necessarily mean he should be our friend.

Ref and VAR-

I thought this might have been a new ref in this game but on checking my records it seems we’ve had a few games with Yamamoto over the years. Slightly concerningly for Taniguchi, the VAR ref was Kasahara, who loves to send him off. Once again, there were thankfully not may VAR decisions. There were claims for a Tosu handball blocking a shot in the first half but looking at the incident on DAZN afterwards it would have been very harsh to give it as he was side-on with his arms by his side when the ball hit him. Tosu were quite a physical side and I think the ref should probably have got his cards out earlier. But he had no hesitation in getting the red out for the DOGSO. Sure it was a long way out, but it was 100% a foul and as the last man he had to go. At least that’s how I understand the rule. It seemed a bit crazy that Ao got booked considering what Tosu had got away with in the first half but I’m not going to moan too much as aside from being a bit lenient in the first half, I thought the ref had a reasonable game. Oh, and forgot to say, I still hate VAR.

Just about squeaking this post out before the next game which is FC Tokyo away tomorrow (Sunday). Always a big game for the fans, I hope we can keep going with the good results and hopefully the rivalry between the two clubs will create some excitement. At the Ajinomoto stadium, (where the home team atmosphere is usually mainly played over the speakers…) with Corona restrictions in place this looks like it could be a weird experience. It would be lovely if we could score a few goals and silence the already silent opposition fans. After that we’re at home again on Wednesday against Avispa Fukuoka. Could do with a break soon as the schedule is pretty full right now. Go Frontale!

 

Team

GK 27. TANNO Kenta
DF 13. YAMANE Miki
DF 4. JESIEL
DF 5. TANIGUCHI Shogo
DF 2. NOBORIZATO Kyohei
MF 6. JOAO SCHMIDT
MF 8. WAKIZAKA Yasuto
MF 25. TANAKA Ao (Yellow card 68')

FW 11. KOBAYASHI Yu
FW 9. LEANDRO DAMIAO

FW 16. HASEGAWA Tatsuya

Subs
GK 21. ANDO Shunsuke
DF 7. KURUMAYA Shintaro (on for NOBORIZATO 90+1')

FW 18. MITOMA Kaoru (on for HASEGAWA 62')

FW 19. TONO Daiya (on for WAKIZAKA 62')
FW 20. CHINEN Kei (on for LEANDRO DAMIAO 80')

MF 22. TACHIBANADA Kento

FW 41. IENAGA Akihiro (on for KOBAYASHI 80')

My Frontale Man Of The Match

Should have written this sooner. I've slightly forgotten, but I remember being impressed by...

JESIEL - Solid and efficient. A big contributor to us not conceding many goals this year.

 

Goals

TONO (Frontale) 65' 1-0

Highlights

Vs Oita Trinita (home) 2/4/21 - J League match 7

Kawasaki Frontale 2 - 0 Oita Trinita

Another win, and some nice results in other games means that this was another good weekend for us. Let’s not be too optimistic though! It was again quite an underwhelming performance but as long as the results are turning out positive I guess I’m not going to complain too much about less than sparkling performances. With a few players returning from international duty it was no surprise that there was a bit of shuffling of the pack when it came to the starting line up. Bizarrely though, I think this was mainly down to injuries, (and people recovering from injuries) rather than any national team tiredness. I was lucky enough to get a VIP ticket for this game. You will therefore get some better photos this time round. VIP tickets come with free beer though, so don’t expect me to really remember anything about the match. Aside from the photos I think this post might be plumbing new depths for this blog. I think your best bet for this post is instead of reading this, just watch the highlights, draw the obvious conclusions, invert one of these conclusions apparently completely randomly and moan a little bit whilst trying to make a few jokes. Bingo! You have your own Frontale Rabbit blog post! I’m pretty busy right now, so maybe we should adopt this strategy for the next few posts too. So, apologies in advance. This is going to be pretty vague.

 

 

Nobori is back from injury so we can rest Hatate. Actually let’s play him in midfield instead. Sung-Ryong seems to be injured as he hasn’t been training. Neither has Yamamura, so we tread one terrifying step closer to possibly having the defensive crisis that we’ve probably been long overdue. We’ve been quite lucky with injuries and suspensions at the back so far considering how light we are in those positions. Hopefully that luck can continue. Hatate on the left of the midfield didn’t seem to create the same chemistry with Mitoma as it does when he plays at left back. It also should be noted that Hatate looked a bit miffed when he was subbed. I guess he was finally getting a chance to play a bit closer to his preferred position and ended up getting changed. Tono coming on for him saw Mitoma move to the left of midfield and it didn’t really seem to work. Not sure why Oniki didn’t drop Ienaga back into midfield as he’s done before. Perhaps he was trying out some new combinations. Or perhaps he was just doing that weird two stage subs thing that he seems to have inherited from Kazama and likes to do from time to time. I’m not sure if it has ever really worked. To explain slightly, to me it looks like our first change(s) disrupt things positionally and then the second change(s) move people back into a more comfortable positions. In this game it ended up being Hatate off, Mitoma moving backwards and Tono to the Mitoma position whilst Ao replaces Wakizaka like for like. Then eight minutes later, Mitoma comes off for Hasegawa who moves forward, pushing Tono over to Ienaga’s spot who is replaced with Tachibanada who fills the gap that Mitoma was playing in after the first set of changes. Bit like one of those puzzles where you have to rearrange the tiles to make a picture with only one empty space to allow you to manoeuvre things. At least that’s how it seemed to me anyway. Perhaps the reason I never see the benefit of these kind of two stage changes is because if the first part of the change ever works it negates the need for the second. Perhaps… But let’s be honest, we pretty much do the same subs every game so I think it’s unlikely that a potential two stage change ever goes under the radar. All a bit confusing that, and not sure why I spent so long writing about it to be honest. Just something I think I have noticed anyway. A couple of brief observations on players' performances. Tanno is surprisingly vocal! It was quite interesting to hear him barking out instructions. Perhaps the instructions and organisation was part of the reason that he didn’t have to make a save in this game. Damiao was on fire from the point of view of nice little lay offs in the first half I thought. And Joao seemed to be everywhere again, involved in everything, tidying up nicely and always available. Kobayashi went straight down the tunnel at the end of the game so I suspect that he might have picked up some kind of injury. Hope it isn’t anything serious. It doesn’t seem to have affected his messaging on line though as I’ve had a couple of updates from him, so perhaps everything is ok.

 

I feel I should write something about my general feelings on our team performances this year. Certainly we have quite an act to follow up on from last year. I think I’ve said before (if not on here, then certainly on the J Talk podcast), that I wonder if the pressure of repeating last year is weighing on us slightly. We’ve had quite a few ordinary performances so far this year but seem to have got away with them for the most part. I wonder too if its more that the excitement of last season is weighing on the fans a bit too. Or perhaps me anyway. I’m already feeling a bit burnt out with the onslaught of games. Maybe not burnt out, maybe more slightly tired of them. Whilst the experience of going to games looks to be getting better again (the drums were back at this game and there were opposition fans too), aside from the goals, long periods of our games are not exactly exciting to watch. This could be a kind of arrogant thing to say though, I suspect. In the past we would gladly hoover up any wins no matter how dire the performance,  but after we set the bar quite high last year a 2-0 win seems more like a 0-0 draw. I don’t know if it is just me feeling this way. Perhaps it is, and I should examine the rest of my life a bit more than projecting it onto Frontale, but there is a bit of a spark missing, even when one of our most exciting players scores twice in a match. In some ways, it feels a bit like ten pin bowling, darts or baseball in the way that once you get to a certain level of play your games are decided by you under-performing rather than over-performing. Mistakes change results rather than moments of brilliance. So perhaps we now expect greatness and notice more when we underwhelm. Clearly this is all going to irritate lots of people. Particularly coming on the back of a 5-0 win away at Urawa, but that was very much out of character this season, (perhaps because it was an away game… hmmmm, we have played at home a lot so far this year…). And lord knows I much prefer this kind of season to the year before last where we found new ways to disappoint every few weeks. And there’s no way I want some defeats to break up the monotony and give us something to bounce back from. But things are quite predictable recently and I’d like a bit of a spark now and again on the pitch or in the team selection perhaps. The next two games could provide some of the former I guess but perhaps in a negative way. Of course I’d rather we don’t have a breath of fresh air in the form of a couple of defeats though.

 

Finally, the usual ref and VAR part. Tanimoto was a new ref for me I think. Can’t remember ever hearing the name before. Didn’t make any notes about him which suggests he had a good game or I wasn’t paying attention. Or both. Think there was only one little VAR delay too, bizarrely when there seemed to be nothing to check. Even though it has again not interfered with the game much I still hate it.

Next up, Sagan Tosu at home on Wednesday. More often than not this is a nailed on 0-0 bore draw, but this year they are doing really well and perhaps we’d be pleased to come away with a dull as ditchwater goalless draw if they hit their heights. They did just get pegged back a little by Cerezo. After that we travel along the Tama river to Chofu city in Yamanashi… is it? Hang on, maybe it’s Fukui. I dunno, certainly not in Tokyo anyway. This ‘classic banter’ along with my thoughts on us being a bit lacklustre all adds up to a couple of defeats and then you can and probably should blame me for jinxing things. Sorry in advance. And in an attempt to counter my jinxing, GO FRONTALE!

 

 

Team

GK 27. TANNO Kenta
DF 13. YAMANE Miki
DF 4. JESIEL
DF 5. TANIGUCHI Shogo
DF 2. NOBORIZATO Kyohei
MF 6. JOAO SCHMIDT
MF 8. WAKIZAKA Yasuto
DF 47. HATATE Reo 

FW 41. IENAGA Akihiro
FW 9. LEANDRO DAMIAO

FW 18. MITOMA Kaoru

Subs
GK 21. ANDO Shunsuke
DF 7. KURUMAYA Shintaro
FW 11. KOBAYASHI Yu (on for LEANDRO DAMIAO 80')

FW 16. HASEGAWA Tatsuya (on for MITOMA 89')

FW 19. TONO Daiya (on for HATATE 72')
MF 22. TACHIBANADA Kento (on for IENAGA 80')
MF 25. TANAKA Ao (on for WAKIZAKA 72')

 

My Frontale Man Of The Match

Honestly I can’t remember that much so I’ll give it to…

JOAO SCHMIDT - I made a note about him being tidy and that was about one eight of all of my notes on the game so that suggests he did well in my opinion.
 

 

Goals

MITOMA (Frontale) 39' 1-0
MITOMA (Frontale) 66' 2-0

Highlights