Vs Vi$$el Kobe (home) 29/9/21 J League match 28

Kawasaki Frontale 3 - 1 Vissel Kobe

Another come from behind win has sent us 12 points clear at the top of the table. Admittedly, we’ve now played one more game than YFM, but they always say it’s better to have the points on the board rather than games in hand. I guess this goes without saying when you already have a gap at the top. This come from behind win was a little different to previous ones though. It certainly felt a bit more comfortable than the Kashima and Shonan games. Although we shouldn’t gloss over the fact that Kobe were pretty effective in the first half of this game. Thankfully we weren’t awful in the first half and we really came out firing in the second. Our detractors will moan that we’re being handed the title by being given two penalties and an own goal but I can’t see anything to moan about either of the penalties from a rules point of view. And I’m sure Vermaelen couldn’t repeat his spectacular finish at either end if he tried. All in all this was a fun night to be a Frontale fan and you can’t say there have been a whole lot of good feeling inducing performances recently. Of course Kobe have been a team that everyone loves to beat since they began their apparently endless spending spree with their apparently bottomless pit of cash. So I’ll enjoy that aspect and the fact that we now need four more wins and a draw from the remaining seven games to seal the title whatever YFM do. Would be nice to take those figures down to three and one on Saturday. And even better if Shonan beat YFM on Friday night, maybe even 2 and 1. I’m going back to the ‘us’ and ‘them’ paragraphs for this post. Here we go.

Us -

We put out our full strength team. Kind of. No idea what has happened to the still absent Hagseawa (apparently he changed his agent last week, perhaps he will be moving on soon…) and Joao Schmidt who was also out of the squad. Perhaps this was with a view to our final game of this little slog of matches on Saturday or perhaps we can speculate that under Oniki, if you miss a penalty you get dropped. Well maybe we can’t as It didn’t happen to Ienaga. He had a funny match. Recently he’s really been off the pace but he was back to some good stuff in this game. It’s slightly ironic to say this about a game in which he missed another penalty. But he did make up for that by scoring afterwards. It is also amusing to note that he got man of the match in the stadium. It probably doesn’t happen very often that the recipient has missed a penalty in the game. However it normally goes to whoever scores the crucial goal and as much as we love a bit of opposition baiting, I don’t think the club would officially give the award to Thomas Vermaelen. In any case, good to see Ienaga having an impact. It was also good to see Damiao score again as it’s been a while. Even if it was from the penalty spot. Hopefully his goal and Ienaga’s good performance will mark the start of both of them playing at their best for the rest of the season. Elsewhere on the pitch, I thought Tachibanada did great. He goes from strength to strength with every game. And Marcinho seems to be really starting to fit in now. His pace made Kobe defenders look pretty stupid on a few occasions and won us the penalty that we graciously missed (in order to undermine the arguments of the moaners who said he dived). Our defence looked ok but a bit wobbly against the Kobe tactic. Note the singular here. I’ll come on to that in the next section. And shockingly when Oniki once again moved Taniguchi to midfield and put Yamamura alongside him in a holding two we also looked ok. I guess this was due to us not having to create anything and instead have to just mop up some Kobe attacks. Please don’t get any ideas about starting him there in another game though. Hatate had a good game which is what he normally does when he’s not at left back. And Sung-Ryong made some important saves as he does… all the time. Can’t blame him for the goal either. Can probably blame a few others though. So I’ve mentioned most of the team really. It’s weird that from the start of the season we had been trailing in games for something like only 30 minutes in 25 games. As you can see I haven’t looked up exactly what the statistic is, but maybe pretend I have and I’ve told you and it’s something like that. Now we trail in every game! Certainly fatigue is a problem. The players were still living out of a hotel in semi quarantine on this match day, only being able to go home today. Must be a lot of nights spent in hotels this year for them. This may also have contributed to our pressing being pretty slack in the first half. Thankfully we sorted it out in the second and although I have no idea where we got the energy from, it was very welcome. We still seem to be doing a bit too much shooting straight at the opposition keeper at extremely low power levels. I’ll blame that on fatigue too. I think we also gave the Vissel players a bit too much respect in this game. Yes, they have some big names but it would have been nice if we didn’t hero worship them during the game and instead put them on their arse once or twice. There was one lovely occasion where Tachibanada did just that to Iniesta and did it with a turn instead of a tackle. Very enjoyable and perhaps as significant as when Ao totally bossed him in a game a couple of seasons ago when he was announcing himself on the scene. Long may this all continue!

 

Them -

Vissel Kobe arrived flexing their transfer muscles by starting lots of their big names and having a few more on the bench. They also arrived with maybe the worst assortment of haircuts in the J League with a couple of very weak ponytails from Sakai and Osaki and the wannabe-Makino-but-not-quite-with-the-confidence-to-follow-it-to-the-very-gelled-and-flattened-conclusion Muto. To be honest, it was the two ponytails that pushed me over the edge though and I’m just using Muto to make up the numbers. It’s a shame that Yamaguchi was injured as we could have had another dodgy ponytail on show. Perhaps Mikitani has a sub company that makes Alice bands and scrunchies. There’s definitely something going on there as surely they can’t all have come to the conclusion that it’s a good look. The manager also shouldn’t get away with his all black suit and shirt and a big old pair of bright white trainers. I can’t think of a perfect comparison for either the haircuts or the manager fashion but I believe they all can be summed up as the ‘wanker look’. It seems slightly churlish to mention the big money thing so often, but while they continue to splash the cash to not exactly huge success, I think every opposition fan is going to find it impossible to ignore. Once again I should say that I have some sympathy for the real fans who’ve been following Kobe for years. At the same time I’m sure they don’t need or probably want my sympathy as they have a big old pot of money which eases the pain somewhat. It’s another cliche to talk about how Mikitani is just trying to recreate Barcelona from old Barcelona parts reassembled in Kansai. It’s a cliche and it’s also inaccurate now as I believe the introduction of Osako and Muto and switch in tactics has made it clear that the real aim is to make a Kansai Wimbledon, Stoke City (Sorry Jon Steele…) or 1990’s mid table first division team. It’s surely only a matter of time before they sign Rory Delap and can add the long throws to the long balls which were relentlessly hoofed down the middle to Osako all night in this game. This got them their goal though and caused the broken bodies of our defenders a few problems so much like the Wimbledon hoof ball, it is a brutally effective way of playing at times. They looked quite dangerous on occasion in the first half but then in the second totally run out of steam/fell to pieces as the game became a bit more one sided. Perhaps the absence of Yamaguchi was something to do with this, but given that the golden god Iniesta is in the team I would have thought they might have played a bit more interesting football. Not that it bothered many of the Frontale fans who oohed and ’スゲー’d’ most things Iniesta did. His hoof forward for the first goal was perhaps received a bit better than a similar one from an unknown player at a lowly team might have been. Of course this is all poking fun anyway so don’t take anything too seriously. Apart from the part about the haircuts and the trainers. That was deadly serious. No Kobe game blog post would be complete without a mention of what used to be a guaranteed goal for us every game, Iikura in between the sticks and his endless hijinks. Sadly, he seems to have more or less stopped doing this. Any ‘Iikura chances’ came more from the defenders repeatedly giving us the ball, rather than any attempted Iikura dribble ending with him on his backside just about to leave his own half. The Kobe defence looked very shaky I thought. Very shaky, but for the first half at least, never shaking quite enough to spill anything.

 

Any other vaguely amusing business -

Seems I don’t have much left for this section perhaps after putting all the haircut talk elsewhere. So I’ll just say that you should check out the highlights around 10:20 in the first half for an exchange of two of the worst throw in routines I’ve ever seen. Even though they were on the other side of the pitch to me, I could see they were first class stinkers and it was lovely that both teams had a go and showed off their chops.

So a win and a fun game to watch too. We are being blessed! Hopefully this isn’t setting us up for a miserable game on Saturday. FC Tokyo are pretty average this year, but we have spent plenty of time being below average so hopefully these two things don’t combine on Saturday. Clearly both teams will be up for it but maybe neither team will be up to it. And there will be an increased capacity as the State of Emergency has finally been lifted (for a week or so probably). More tickets will be on sale on Friday morning and I hope we can get some as we missed out the first time. I feel a bit sorry for anyone who’s paid a fortune for a resold ticket from a tout and now finds out that the capacity has been doubled. At the same time, I don’t feel that sorry, as if there wasn’t a market for resold at hugely inflated prices tickets it would be a lot easier for actual fans to buy tickets in the first place. Would obviously love another win, but that goes without saying really. Fingers crossed. After this game we can all have a nice little (not little) three week break! Go Frontale!

Team 

 
GK 1. Sung-Ryong JUNG
DF 13. YAMANE Miki

DF 4. JESIEL

DF 5. TANIGUCHI Shogo

DF 2. NOBORIZATO Kyohei

MF 22. TACHIBANADA Kento

MF 47. HATATE Reo

MF 8. WAKIZAKA Yasuto

FW 41. IENAGA Akihiro

FW 9. LEANDRO DAMIAO

FW 23. MARCINHO

Subs

GK 27. TANNO Kenta 

DF 7. KURUMAYA Shintaro (on for YAMANE 78')

FW 11. KOBAYASHI Yu (on for HATATE 90+2')

MF 17. KOZUKA Kazuki

FW 20. CHINEN Kei (on for LEANDRO DAMIAO 76')
FW 24. MIYAGI Ten (on for MARCINHO 76')

DF 28. YAMAMURA Kazuya (on for WAKIZAKA 78')

 

 

My Frontale Man Of The Match

A vastly improved performance from recent games for many players, in particular Ienaga. But I think I’m going to give it to the very important player who is…

TACHIBANADA Kento - so versatile and does a good job anywhere in the midfield or even at right back when called on. Improving in leaps and bounds every game. Oh, and yeah, he diddled Iniesta.

Goals

 

MUTO (Kobe) 13' 0-1

LEANDRO DAMIAO (Frontale) 55' 1-1 PEN

VERMAELEN (Kobe) 72' 2-1 OWN GOAL

IENAGA (Frontale) 85' 3-1

 

Highlights

 

Vs Shonan Bellmare (home) 26/9/21 J League match 30

 

Kawasaki Frontale 2 - 1 Shonan Bellmare

Hell of a week! For the second time in five days we’ve gone behind and come back to win in the 94th minute. This was highly satisfying against the always unlikeable Kashima Antlers. Against our Kanagawa neighbours Shonan, the thrill was equally as exciting, but the feeling was a bit different. Of course the games are coming thick and fast at the moment (next game on Wednesday, so only two days between games), and there is a need to do some kind of rotation before we have a long three week break with no matches at all. However,   Oniki seemed to show that he still hasn’t worked out how to rotate. Or perhaps demonstrated that he has so little confidence in players outside the regular 15 or 16. (I appreciate that I have written the same thing in about 50% of this year’s blog posts. Sorry). I was worried when I saw the starting line up and the first half was a perfect manifestation of these worries. I think it was the worst half of football I have seen us play in a few years. But Oniki did change things at half time and there was a feeling that we might be able to get back into the game and capitalise on YFM once again soiling themselves on Saturday (long may that continue!). As we don’t have much time to write blog posts between games right now, I’m going to try to keep this brief (also helpful given how terrible the first half was. There are only so many synonyms for bad before you start getting on to the really offensive ones). Here we go!

I’ve moaned above about how terrible Oniki’s rotation is and this just about took the cake. This lineup was a bit like work experience day, where everyone tries something new. One forward in midfield (Tono) and one at left back (Hatate), a midfielder in defence (but I’m sure both us and Yamamura are expecting that now) and a defender in midfield (Taniguchi).  I would also moan about a left back being played at centre back, but to be honest, Kurumaya like Yamamura, must be more than used to this now. The two major problems I thought were the two full backs and the defensive midfielder. Hatate is just never as good at left back as he is further forward. Sure, when we had no other option it made sense, but once again in this match, it didn’t work. On the other side, Yamane had another dodgy game. Give the guy a rest! Moriyasu probably feels the same way, kindly taking Yamane on a mini Asian tour with the national team to give him some time when he wouldn’t be playing any games and could just have a nice sit down on international flights and stadium benches. The guy has been going at full pelt all year and has only not featured at right back for us when he has been with the national team. I don’t know if Shonan were targeting these two areas or maybe it just looked like that, as they were the areas we were repeatedly getting in trouble in. Once again, I can’t help but mention Taniguchi in midfield. Please stop it Oniki! We are now approaching triple digits for the times that this experiment has been tried and has failed. At least he didn’t get injured this time. He didn’t do too bad going forward surprisingly, but the defensive side of what was expected from him was totally absent. He was further forward than Wakizaka and Chinen on numerous occasions and I just don’t think this is a good idea. The announcement of ‘5番, Midfielder, Taniguchi Shogo’ will always send a chill down the spine. Oniki noticed how bad things were and made mass changes at half time. I doubt that this will prevent him from attempting the same experiment again some time in the future. One other formational item of interest was that Chinen played on the right in the first half with Kobayashi in the middle. In the second half, this was switched round. I think both of them had trouble breaking though the massed defensive rows of Shonan. After we gifted them their goal they unsurprisingly went a bit more defensive. And considering that they started pretty defensive, this was quite defensive indeed. Fair play to them though. They made our attack look pretty blunt. Unfortunately the same could be said about pretty much everyone we’ve played in the last couple of months.

 

 

A few words on Shonan. In the first half they looked like they were Brazil, comfortably playing the ball around and generally running rings round us. You wouldn’t believe they were so low down in the table. Well, maybe you would, as it does seem to be against teams nearer the bottom that we struggle the most. They looked good though. I think their goal came mainly thanks to some generous play from us and afterwards they really seemed to shut up shop and wait to hit us on the break. It came as no surprise to see a fair bit of time-wasting from them, with as usual, no consequences, unless you count the referee pulling a stern face and pointing at his watch. It was a fun turn around to see us doing the same with a throw in after we’d taken the lead to kill the last minute or so of the game. They seemed a bit annoyed when the boot was on the other foot! Ever since Tani whinged and cried to the ref in the away game this year and got a perfectly fine (in my totally un-biased opinion) Damiao goal ruled out I’ve had something of a vendetta against him. Even so, I had to feel for him when the second goal went in and the final whistle was blown. He looked pretty dejected lying on the floor. Good on Hatate for going to console him. Both Tani and Sung-Ryong apparently had the same amount of saves to make. Only three each in the whole game. One of Sung-Ryong’s was a beauty so hats off to him for that and to Shonan for making the chance. Given that we had twice as many shots as Shonan this again suggests that we are still being pretty wasteful in front of goal. But as long as we keep winning I don’t think anyone is going to moan too much. Well, maybe I’ll moan a little bit…

Talking of shots, it was weird to see Hatate score with a header. And it was also weird to see Chinen play 90 minutes and end up being the crucial match winner. Perhaps we need to once again give thanks for the fact that Oniki is a lucky manager. Apparently he was about to change Chinen for Damiao when Yamamura had a muscle problem and he had to use Jesiel as the final sub instead. Muscle problems and cramp are all over the place at the moment. Fatigue is a huge issue due to the crazy schedule. Even players who aren’t playing every match (like Yamamura and Chinen) are having issues. I think we could do with a few players getting a proper rest instead of being put on the bench and then being asked to come on and change a game. It’s worth saying that being played out of your normal position doesn’t count as being rested in case there was any confusion. We have players in the squad, yet they are apparently not trusted by Oniki unless it is really necessary to use them. Our next two games are Vissel Kobe and FC Tokyo, so probably more challenging than Shonan. You could tell that this was something of a second team, but we still needed the usual suspects to come on and rescue us. The players who are getting nowhere near the squad aren’t going to improve if they never get a chance. And they’re definitely not going to be given a chance when we are playing opposition who are higher up the table. What might have possibly been the best goal celebration of his career for Chinen became one of the strangest, as after heading in the goal he writhed on the pitch with cramp and Wakizaka had to stretch his leg for him whilst giggling, only to then fall onto the pitch with cramp himself. Something is definitely going on. Normally we’d blame the pitch but probably won’t on this occasion. As I said, it must just be fatigue. Bring on this three week break. But there’s a bit to be done before then…

That ‘bit’ is, as mentioned above, Vissel Kobe and FC Tokyo at home on Wednesday and Saturday respectively. We have tickets for Wednesday but the Tamagawa Classico was just impossible to get tickers for due to a huge number of people buying tickets and immediately trying to resell them (and probably succeeding in doing so). Hopefully the anticipated change in State Of Emergency restrictions coming on Thursday might lessen the impact touts can have. How are they so damn good at getting tickets anyway? When we scored the winner in this game there was a very enjoyable but very un-Corona times roar from the crowd. How fun it will be when we can get back in bigger numbers and even support a bit more enthusiastically. Even if our supporter group bring the drums back it would be at least a bit more fun and it might actually inspire the team a bit. We have a majority of home games left and it would be nice if we could take advantage of that somehow. Oh well, this is all a nice dream. Fingers crossed for both Wednesday and Saturday as well as Thursday’s announcement. Go Frontale!

Team 

 
GK 1. Sung-Ryong JUNG
DF 13. YAMANE Miki

DF 7. KURUMAYA Shintaro

DF 28. YAMAMURA Kazuya

DF 47. HATATE Reo

MF 5. TANIGUCHI Shogo

MF 8. WAKIZAKA Yasuto

MF 19. TONO Daiya

FW 20. CHINEN Kei

FW 11. KOBAYASHI Yu
FW 24. MIYAGI Ten

Subs

GK 27. TANNO Kenta 

DF 2. NOBORIZATO Kyohei (on for TONO 46')

DF 4. JESIEL (on for YAMAMURA 74')

FW 9. LEANDRO DAMIAO

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

FW 23. MARCINHO (on for MIYAGI 46')

FW 41. IENAGA Akihiro (on for KOBAYASHI 65')

 

 

My Frontale Man Of The Match

I wasn’t sure about giving this as the first half was SO TERRIBLE and it would have been much easier to pick out people for the opposite award. Not particularly doing this in the true meaning of man of the match and instead going for the ‘Who scored? Give it to them’ way of doing things favored by stadiums and team of the week graphics in newspapers and online, I’ll give it to…

CHINEN Kei - was there at the crucial time to put the ball in the back of the net and then suffer on the floor with cramp. Perhaps his luck is changing finally as he’s actually scoring recently and they’re important goals too!

 

Goals

TANAKA (Shonan) 15' 0-1

HATATE (Frontale) 66' 1-1

CHINEN (Frontale) 90+4' 2-1

 

 

Highlights

Vs Kashima Antlers (away) 22/9/21 J League match 32

Kashima Antlers 1 - 2 Kawasaki Frontale

Blimey! I was all set to knock out a quick blog post about another terrible performance and then forget about this game and then we had quite a finish to the match and everything seems wonderful in the world. Even though this was another away game that we weren’t able to attend, for once it wasn’t such a bad thing. Normally blog posts on the Kashima away game mostly contain my unoriginal thoughts on the bus ride there and (in particular) back. However, if we had been able to go to this game and things had continued as they had been going for the first 82 minutes, perhaps the bus ride would have been the most exciting and enjoyable part of the day. I want to gloss over the first 82 minutes of the game, and in a way it will be quite easy to do so, as we didn’t really do anything at all so there’s not much glossing required. Our shot count at around 75 minutes stood at two, with one on target. Kashima hadn’t been much better but had at least made a few more chances. Their goal, which on Twitter is apparently being blamed ridiculously unfairly on Sung-Ryong, was a scuffed header into the ground which looped horribly over our keeper who was probably expecting a professional footballer to do a bit of a better job of heading a ball than the Kashima forward did. But it went in, which is clearly more important than how it went in. We’ve had our fair share of fortunate goals so I’m not going to say they didn’t deserve it, but I will say that it was a goal that summed up the standard of most of this game. For long periods one team would launch a quick attack going about three quarters of the way up the field before giving the ball to the opposition who did exactly the same. Once again, definitely not an advert for the J League. Again we were blessed with another horrible pitch, which perhaps had been ruined by the Olympics. Kashima had tried to cover it up by relaying a massive rectangle from one end to just over the halfway line and it ended up looking like one of those graphics that shows the area of the pitch where a central defender who loves to dribble out of defence plays. The whole effect was more like a pair of jeans that had been destroyed by explosive diarrhoea, with the massive hole left by the explosion being patched up using a new pair of jeans without anyone bothering to wash the exploded jeans before the repair job. It would be too easy to make a joke about Kashima locals using the pitch to practice driving their tractors, so instead of making that joke here, I’ll merely leave this reference and that way I can say I didn’t make the joke, whilst claiming credit if anyone thought it was funny. In a similar way, I won’t make a joke about the weird horn noises that seemed to be plaguing this match. It sounded like the dreaded Vuvuzela was back, but you would have thought that it probably wouldn’t be a good idea when we aren’t allowed to sing at games to allow people to instead project their spit and possible germs over great distances with precision aim. So maybe instead it was just a regular night time activity for the local youngsters to drive around on those empty roads (probably only utterly blocked before and after games and on all other occasions completely empty), leaning on their car horns to have some fun. I know in the UK it’s a common thing for the youth in their cars to do laps round medium sized town centres blasting their tunes on a weekend evening in act intended to attract a potential mate, so perhaps the same thing happens in Ibaraki too.

Considering I’ve written a lot here about two snarky jokes THAT I HAVEN’T MADE (honestly…) I should probably talk a bit more about the game. But I’ve kind of covered that already. It was awful! And a continuation of us rarely being able to mount an even half successful attack recently. Ienaga was again anonymous apart from some little tricky flicks which didn’t ever come off (please let that hair grow back soon… we need the power of the hair), we did a great job of passing the ball along our back line and through midfield only to lose it, again and again and again. Marcinho showed flashes of brightness but still understandably doesn’t seem to be integrated into the team yet. But I can understand Oniki’s thinking as Hasegawa and Miyagi haven’t offered anything in the recent chances they’ve had (can you believe I’ve written that, having watched the end of the game?). Hasegawa was again absent from the squad which suggests that maybe he is still upset about the penalty miss. Or maybe that he has dropped down the pecking order. Hatate did ok up until he was moved to left back as Nobori seemed to be a bit injured and then we repeatedly had problems in that area. But I still don’t want to start blaming as everyone seems to be pretty dazed and maybe just totally knackered and really keen to finish another quarantine session and get home. Apparently they team had been staying in Chiba before this game. Maybe they can go home now. Although I suppose it’s still only a week so maybe not. Obviously the physical demands of the schedule are playing a part but it’s definitely a bit mental too I think. Hopefully the end of this game, where we actually looked pretty good for the first time in quite a few weeks, in tandem with our result and YFM’s result from the last match day might give us that little boost we need. We looked like we’d never score again in this game and we somehow ended up coming from behind to win. Please let this be the start of something a bit more positive!

After a lot of talk about nothing I feel like I’m going to wrap this up quite quickly with some more of the usual stupid jokes and observations and then get out of here. Oniki doesn’t know what to do and has run out of options. Oniki is a tactical genius and his changes won us the game. Don’t ask me where anyone was playing at the end but you can’t deny that sub Wakizaka’s free kick was headed home with his first touch by sub Yamamura and then sub Miyagi smacked home an absolute beauty just as I was formulating the thought that I like the fact that he shoots but he never looks likely to score. Perhaps it’s time to sub me with insights like that. And we really were a changed team after our first goal. We played like we were doing earlier in the season saving 2/3 of our shots in the game and 100% of our excitement for the last ten minutes. Long may that continue. The positivity I mean, not the nothing for 80 minutes part. Kashima’s Diego Pituca, who I would guess is not a fan of Joao Schmidt judging by their interactions in this game, looks like a man in disguise. I felt like his beard and moustache would normally be paired with one of those pairs of glasses with a fake nose and eyebrows attached to them. Not a comment on his style, just that he looked like he was trying not to be recognised, but strangely doing so by making himself very distinctive. As he came out for the second half I thought that maybe he looked a bit like CJ from Eggheads (you thought the references last time were niche…) and perhaps that might explain the disguise as he was still probably on the run from the Dutch police after claiming that he had maybe murdered someone by pushing him in an Amsterdam canal years ago. I’m not sure if it’s worth googling to fully understand this reference. On reflection, I’m pretty sure that it isn’t worth it. I always like a moan about a ref and on this occasion that would certainly not be out of order, but I thought the linesmen were utterly useless in this game so let’s focus on their uselessness instead. I guess I shouldn’t be that surprised about it though. Oh, and one final little dig at a thoroughly dislikable club who didn’t deserve to lose this game but did, (happy cat emoji here), is that their Spirit of Zico flags seem to be reproducing. As far as I’m aware he’s still alive so once again mentions of his spirit hanging around seem premature. I wonder if he is the one buying all the flags and that is the extent of his work at the club. Or perhaps it’s more a case of the Kashima fans buying themselves a new one every time they are a bit sad, much like the way I buy myself fake Pringles, ice cream, or oblique noise music records and cassettes. In these Corona times we have to take care of ourselves and our mental health guys. Go on, treat yourself to an oblique noise music cassette.

Ah, what an utterly joyful end to an evening that was. I now wish I hadn’t slightly over-indulged on alcohol last night as I feel like cracking open a few beers. I’ll abstain though as I need to keep my whinging and joke cracking in peak condition for the upcoming slew of games, Shonan at home on Sunday, Kobe at home on Wednesday and then FC Tokyo at home next Saturday, all in the league. Then no games for three weeks… Although maybe an Emperor’s cup game might get chucked in there I guess. Last year I was counting down and crossing off the games to our title with a mini blackboard. I have to say, I’m feeling nowhere near as optimistic this year, but the games are kind of running out so we should be pretty happy with the fact that we’re seven points clear. If this unlikely win knocks us out of our fug, maybe we’ll all be feeling a bit more optimistic soon! Go Frontale

Team
GK 1. Sung-Ryong JUNG
DF 13. YAMANE Miki

DF 4. JESIEL

DF 5. TANIGUCHI Shogo

DF 2. NOBORIZATO Kyohei

MF 6. JOAO SCHMIDT

MF 22. TACHIBANADA Kento

MF 47. HATATE Reo

FW 41. IENAGA Akihiro

FW 9. LEANDRO DAMIAO
FW 23. MARCINHO

Subs

GK 27. TANNO Kenta 

MF 3. TSUKAGAWA Koki

MF 8. WAKIZAKA Yasuto (on for JOAO SCHMIDT 67')

FW 11. KOBAYASHI Yu (on for NOBORIZATO 67')

FW 20. CHINEN Kei (on for LEANDRO DAMIAO 78')

FW 24. MIYAGI Ten (on for MARCINHO 67')

MF 28. YAMAMURA Kazuya (on for TACHIBANADA 82')

 

Goals

JUAN (Kashima) 38' 1-0

YAMAMURA (Frontale) 83' 1-1

MIYAGI (Frontale) 90+4' 1-2

 

 

Highlights

Vs Tokushima Vortis (away) 19/9/21 J League match 29

Tokushima Vortis 1 - 3 Kawasaki Frontale

After the cumulative disappointment of the last couple of games this result was a beautiful release! As I grumbled on Twitter, this was the game I was most looking forward to attending this year as I think it would have been a great trip. As it was, the never-ending-always-giving state of emergency rolled on and rolled over any kind of hopes I had of being able to attend. Perhaps with my disappointment at not going in mind, I also ended up agreeing to work and missed the first half. So this will be another low detail thrown together blog post. I was worried that if we did well in the first half and badly in the second my only remaining hope to get some kind of form back for us would be to stop watching or attending games. Perhaps I was the thing that was causing so many horrible performances. Whether that is true for me actually attending games, I’m not sure yet. Will tell you the next time I’m able to do so. But I think I can breathe a sigh of relief that me watching on DAZN doesn’t seem to have any bearing on the performance or the result. This seemed like a game where we got the result that we needed and a comfortable margin of victory all topped off with a defeat for our maritime chums up the road. The performance wasn’t exactly sparkling though, but I’m not going to moan too much because at this stage we need to get some kind of confidence back and this should go some way to doing that. We definitely were skating on thin ice in the second half though, as Tokushima had some very good chances to make this game a hell of a lot closer. But they didn’t! Our makeshift defence (which could become a bit sturdier soon as apparently Taniguchi and Kurumaya are both back in some sort of training) held reasonably firm, but luck was quite an important element of that. You could say though that we were unlucky with their goal, which was a great hit, but was set up perfectly by the ball bouncing up of Jesiel’s standing leg. It was pointed out to me on Twitter that our ‘anyone who is available and can maybe tackle’ defence has held pretty firm recently (Urawa game excepted). This is definitely true, but I suspect that it hasn’t helped us much in the midfield. Perhaps the midfielders have been covering the defence a bit more and therefore when we get the ball forward there hasn’t been anyone there and our attacks have petered out. But this is maybe glossing over the fact that we actually have had plenty of chances but haven’t been managing to take advantage of them. But let’s leave all this whinging behind and crack open another beer to celebrate three points and YFM getting no points!

Perhaps the most exciting thing about this game was a first start for Marcinho. Can he pick up where Mitoma left off? I’m sure we all certainly hope so as Hasegawa and Miyagi haven’t quite got there just yet. Talking of Hasegawa, he and Joao Schmidt were both absent from the match day squad. Perhaps it’s a coincidence that it was them, (well them and Ienaga), who missed the penalties against Ulsan or perhaps not. If they were feeling down about having missed, getting dropped might not exactly help matters. But as usual I am only speculating and have no idea what is going on behind the scenes. I missed most of Marcinho’s exciting moments as they seemed to mostly happen in the first half but from what I’ve heard he might be the one to bring back a bit of a spark for us. So it was with grim inevitability that he left the pitch on a stretcher. He seemed ok afterwards though so maybe it was precautionary or perhaps even a prearranged substitution which coincided with him ending up on the floor. Hatate was finally back from injury and for a while it seemed like he too would leave the field on a stretcher but he managed to hobble off by himself. I don’t know if it was to do with the pitch conditions but quite a lot of players on both teams seemed to be getting some muscle strains or cramps. Hopefully this match will have been that rarest of things, a game where we didn’t get any big injuries. Yamamura was OK for this game after looking like he might have got a nasty injury on Tuesday. I guess fatigue is catching up with us and it can’t help that they players can’t go home after the ACL (I think… They went to Osaka from Korea and I can’t imagine this was just for fun and sightseeing). We have a bit of a relentless schedule coming up so we are going to need as many players fit and raring to go as possible. Whether we can find enough players that meet even one of those criteria is another matter. But perhaps there has been some kind of focussing of the mind and slight easing of pressure due to our Levain and ACL exits. 

So let’s finish up with some random bits. First, I just wanted to use the phrase goal-maChine(n) somewhere in here. Particularly as it only works when written. He has now managed to score two penalties in a row and got another from a header from a corner in this game. It wasn’t the cleanest of finishes… but I don’t care. I hope it gives him some confidence and he can finally push on as we need some goals. Second, Tokushima seemed to have a bell ringer in their crowd and I thought that it sounded pretty good. Had that kind of athletics last lap excitement or maybe a cowbell clanging in a mountain stage of a cycling race. We should do it. But presumably even if we decided to our supporter group might think that bell ringing is something that should not be attempted during a state of emergency and we’d end up clanger-less. Third, no-one seems to get booked for diving anymore. No context to this, but it just seems that way to me. I can’t remember the last time I saw it happen. Actually maybe it was Ienaga and was quite a few years ago. Oh, and finally, quite how DAZN managed to come back late for the second half is beyond me. We cut from a commercial to Nobori taking a free kick almost a minute into the second half. It’s weird as plenty of times we’ve been in the situation where everyone is ready to go and we have to wait for the ref’s watch to tick round to the right time. I always presumed this was for TV purposes, but it seems that if it is, whoever arranged the time for the second half to start didn’t bother communicating it to the director. During the ACL we were always moaning about long lingering close ups of players’ reactions whilst the action continued out of shot. DAZN took it a step further, choosing to focus on the mascot popularity contest and other important stuff while at the same time some people were actually doing what the DAZN subscribers have paid to watch. Quite how the YFM mascot got second last year is totally beyond me. (I also don’t remember it happening. Is this some kind fo rogue alternative poll?). And I’m not just saying that because they are our rivals. Not just for the reason, but maybe a little for that reason… At the same time, it’s incomprehensible how the Nagoya Grampus mascot seems to win every year. But at least it prepared YFM for losing to Nagoya so they didn’t have any nasty surprises in this match day!

Next up, Kashiwa away on Wednesday. They are flip-flopping between good results and utterly shite results. Hopefully their win in this round of matches will set them up nicely for ‘laying an egg’ in the next game. I had never heard of that phrase till fairly recently but I really, really like it. Go Frontale! 

Team
GK 1. Sung-Ryong JUNG
DF 13. YAMANE Miki

DF 4. JESIEL

DF 28. YAMAMURA Kazuya

DF 2. NOBORIZATO Kyohei

MF 22. TACHIBANADA Kento

MF 47. HATATE Reo

MF 8. WAKIZAKA Yasuto

FW 19. TONO Daiya

FW 20. CHINEN Kei
FW 23. MARCINHO

Subs

GK 27. TANNO Kenta 

MF 3. TSUKAGAWA Koki (on for WAKIZAKA 68')

FW 9. LEANDRO DAMIAO

FW 11. KOBAYASHI Yu (on for HATATE 82')

MF 17. KOZUKA Kazuki

FW 24. MIYAGI Ten (on for MARCINHO 62')

FW 41. IENAGA Akihiro (on for TONO 68')

 

Goals

CHINEN (Frontale) 34' 0-1 PEN

ICHIMI (Tokushima) 38' 1-1

WAKIZAKA (Frontale) 42' 1-2

CHINEN (Frontale) 52' 1-3

 

 

Highlights

 

Vs Ulsan Hyundai (away) 14/9/21, ACL Round of 16

 

Ulsan Hyundai 0 - 0 Kawasaki Frontale (AET) (3-2 on penalties)

Down to two competitions! Out of both the Levain and the ACL within 10 days, (don’t forget that the ACL is our main target for this year…). What a time to be alive! To be honest though, we can probably be fairly pleased with how we did in both competitions due to this massive injury crisis that just keeps on giving. The world may be under the impression that the most highly contagious disease that is going round right now is Corona virus, but I think we have a case for saying it is Frontale centre back injury disease instead. Out of the four ‘centre backs’ we use all four have now been injured in the last month. Jesiel managed to come back after only missing one game but I’m sure 120 minutes won’t have done him much good. We’ve had the fun experience of another midfielder getting a go at centre back in this game, so add Tsukagawa to the list of players who is now susceptible to the defender injury pandemic. I really don’t know what I can write about this game as it was pretty dire. People always talk about games being a real advert for the competition. This was more like a public information film warning against the dangers of following or watching football. Any kids watching will now have surely been mentally scarred by 120 minutes of tedium followed by a competition where 5 members of both teams basically attempted not to fall down a hole whilst kicking a ball.

Before the game I was wondering if we were being a bit sneaky with our social media posts and who was pictured in them, hoping that we might have a pleasant surprise when the starting line up was announced. But no, everyone is still injured and pretty much everyone who was pictured and was eligible to play was on the bench. We even had two spare goalkeepers. Can never be too careful I guess. I guess the only thing of interest in the line up (aside from the centre backs, which wasn’t that interesting as it was the only two vaguely fit ones that played) was a front three of Ienaga on the right, Damiao in the middle and Kobayashi on the left. Apparently this was with the intention that we could switch to a 4-4-2 if we needed to. Whether we did or not, I don’t know, because all we basically did was give away the ball in midfield or hoof the ball up the pitch (giving it away). Ienaga always seems to go where he wants so it’s difficult to work out what the actual shape was. I have to say, halfway through the game I began to doubt even the limited tactical knowledge I have on football. I couldn’t decide whether it was an awesome tactical battle with both teams’ constant thrilling innovations being parried by the opposition or whether it was just one of the worst games of football in the world ever. Judging by Twitter, the prevailing opinion seems to be the latter. Four shots on target in total. Two each. For us that accounted for 16% of all our shots. For them it was 12%. So at least we won in that respect. We can take the moral high ground and claim that our beautiful high quality attacking play deserved more. Or maybe not. I think it was pretty significant that we made no subs for 86 minutes and then only made one change. For the last 25 minutes of the 90 we had plenty of players who could barely walk, let alone run and play football. But Oniki didn’t change anything, I guess because he didn’t think he could make any improvements. Or he didn’t know what to do. Or he didn’t trust the players he had on the bench (which is something of a problem as I can’t see many of the starting eleven being good for a game on Saturday away in Tokushima. Not sure if they will have to quarantine again). Or probably it was a bit of all three options. Or a lot of all three options. This is all skirting around the issue which is that basically, WE’RE FUCKED! (pardon my language). On Twitter it was said that this was a bad result for YFM as we’d now be able to concentrate on the league. This is kind of true, but you’ve got to think that going to extra time with a squad that is already close to breaking isn’t going to help us in these upcoming games that we have. From Saturday we have four games in 12 days. I would guess that we’ll see some unfamiliar faces on Saturday, but I would also guess that Oniki won’t change much as he never really does and he can’t really change much at the moment. It’s useful that I have covered all bases with those predictions. So, the injury and tiredness situation isn’t good. How about the morale situation? Hmmmm, maybe not great either… That’s only 2 wins in the last 8 games. So yeah… we’re fucked.

A few words about our opponents and an attempt at a few jokes. When looking at the massive empty stand with UH FC on it, I cam to understand the ‘uh’ quite quickly, it being the sound that came out of my mouth most often in this game. I’ll leave it to your imagination what the FC might stand for. This is all just a joke though as I don’t have any malice for Ulsan. Certainly they are much better at the dark arts that I think we are. There were quite a few tasty challenges and a fair bit of rolling around on the floor. The two things that really hurt about this defeat were: 1 - we lost in a penalty shoot out to a keeper who looks like he’s been down the Ulsan equivalent of Camden and got himself a few mini dreads and a bit of a perm and dye where his bowl cut used to be. I feel that it gave him an unfair advantage when it came to saving penalties. 2 - It also hurt that we weren’t able to go and at least get some travel enjoyment out of another horrible ACL exit. Instead we were sitting at home watching another rotten game on DAZN and they even amped up the rottenness by piping some ‘mild excitement’ crowd noise in to the stadium to really build the ambience. The fact that you could hear the managers shouting over it suggests that maybe it wasn’t actually that loud, and was perhaps even more pointless than we might have first thought. One weird thing was the fact the for the first time (I think) I saw someone get in the way of the main camera in the stand at the side of the pitch. You expect this on a high energy morning magazine type TV show perhaps but I don’t think I’ve ever seen it at a football game. This was particularly bizarre when you consider that there was hardly anyone in the stadium. I do feel some empathy though for the guy who had the whole stadium to stand in and ended up standing in front of the camera. Bit embarrassing. I guess contractually, I should also be a little angry about something, so let’s moan about the horrific penalty spot. Clearly Hasegawa’s Gareth Southgate-esque penalty (still rising as we speak. Pizza Hut advert on the way perhaps. All a bit niche those references…) was affected by the pitch giving way beneath him as he went to kick it. Not sure we can say the same about the other misses. And it affects both teams the same anyway. I was a bit miffed by the linesman saying Sung-Ryong was off the line for a save, the penalty having to be re-taken, only for it to be saved again, and then apparently not bothering to apply the same rule for the very next penalty by us, (which admittedly we put way over the bar, but it would have been nice to have had another go). Perhaps he felt his job was done. But yeah, I’m clutching at straws. There’s no way you could really say we deserved to go through and I can’t help but feel it would have been better if we just had to forfeit the game. We wouldn’t have had to bother with all the extra effort, travel, possible covid exposure, disappointment, general shitness and without all of these we would have probably been in a better place for the rest of the season. But I kind of expected this. The seeds were sown when Mitoma and Tanaka left and weren’t replaced, were watered by a massive amount of games and nurtured by a ridiculous run of injuries. We can lament the injury situation, moan about winning the group with a perfect record and still getting drawn away to the one other team with a perfect record, the horrible penalty spot and probably plenty of other things but you know, two shots on target in 120 minutes probably tells the story and surprisingly it wasn’t to do with any defensive frailties. If we manage to come out of this year with any title it will be a blessing as right now we look pretty out of sorts and like we’re about to collapse. Uh…. FC.

That’ll do. I wrote more than I thought I would given how terrible the game was. Next up, another horrible watch on DAZN. Tokushima away was the game I was most looking forward to this year but we’ve been denied it. Like we have been denied most of the good away trips (please, please, please let us be able to go to Tosu…). Corona football is a pretty disheartening thing. Of course Corona itself is much, much worse! But to be honest, I’m starting to think I will enjoy the games I can’t attend much more if I don’t actually watch them on DAZN and instead listen to the sound of the electro magnetic waves the computer is making instead. But this probably says more about my music taste than anything useful so let’s leave it here. Go (get some rest and at least a little bit of mojo back please) Frontale. 

Team

GK 1. Sung-Ryong JUNG

DF 13. YAMANE Miki

DF 28. YAMAMURA Kazuya

DF 4. JESIEL

DF 2. NOBORIZATO Kyohei

MF 6. JOAO SCHMIDT (Yellow card 117')

MF 22. TACHIBANADA Kento

MF 8. WAKIZAKA Yasuto

FW 41. IENAGA Akihiro

FW 9. LEANDRO DAMIAO

FW 11. KOBAYASHI Yu

Subs

GK 21. ANDO Shunsuke

GK 27. TANNO Kenta

MF 3. TSUKAGAWA Koki (on for YAMAMURA 111')

DF 15. ISSAKA Zain

MF 16. HASEGAWA Tatsuya (on for KOBAYASHI 110')

MF 17. KOZUKA Kazuki

FW 19. TONO Daiya (on for LEANDRO DAMIAO 110')

FW 20. CHINEN Kei (on for WAKIZAKA 86')

FW 24. MIYAGI Ten

DF 30. TANABE Shuto

 

Goals

No way!

 

Penalties
 

CHINEN (Frontale) 0-1

LEE C-Y (Ulsan) 1-1
HASEGAWA (Frontale) 1-1 (missed)
WON D-J (Ulsan) 1-1 (missed)

TONO (Frontale) 1-2 

LEE D-J (Ulsan) 1-2 (saved)
JOAO SCHMIDT (Frontale) 1-2 (missed)
YUN I (Ulsan) 2-2

IENAGA (Frontale) 2-2 (saved)

YOON B-G (Ulsan) 3-2

 

 

Highlights

Vs Urawa Reds (home) 5/9/21 Levain Cup Quarter Final second leg

Kawasaki Frontale 3 - 3 Urawa Reds (4 - 4 on aggregate)

Oh well, that’s that for our involvement in everyone’s least favourite cup competition (unless you’re doing well in it). It always seems a bit unfair with the ACL teams coming in at the quarter final stage and in that respect, perhaps some justice has been done with us and Gamba getting knocked out. Although that’s maybe a bit unfair on us and them, as we didn’t design the format of the competition so can only play the games that are in front of us. And we can only play the players who are able to move without the aid of crutches or wheelchairs. This somewhat scuppered us in the first leg and totally ruined us in the second. Because of the tiny pool of players we had to choose from and our general pretty average form, I’m not going to moan too much about us getting knocked out. Obviously it stings a bit given that we were leading by two goals with 7 minutes to go. But away goals are the rule and after only managing to score one from a dubious penalty in the first leg, it always felt like they could come back to bite us, particularly when we were starting the match with one of our usual back four and one of our second choice back four (and two others, one of whom had hardly played at all for us, and the other being a midfielder). Bizarrely though, I’d say the problem was more going forward than at the back. Anyway, we’ll do a few paragraphs but the headings will be a bit different this time.

Defence -

Going into this game the main question on everyone’s mind was who would start at the back. With Taniguchi injured and Jesiel and Kurumaya both leaving the pitch on stretchers in the first leg we were left with Yamamura (the midfielder) as the only fit ‘centre back’ in the squad. Well, we also have Kamiya and Tanabe but after preferring Nobori to Tanabe at CB in the first leg, Oniki was never going to play either of them was he? Actually he was! I thought Tanabe had a reasonable first half for what was his first start. Certainly their goal couldn’t be blamed on him as far as I can remember as it was on the other side. Oniki perhaps disagreed as he was replaced by Jesiel at half time. I hope this was decided beforehand and Tanabe expected it as otherwise you’ve got to think that he might feel a bit deflated. Perhaps like Issaka in the last match who got moved out of his position after 35 minutes, subbed at half time and then dropped from the squad. I do have my doubts about Oniki as a compassionate human being sometimes and can’t help but feel like he has some pyschopathic tendencies. But I know neither what goes on behind the scenes nor anything much about football (and nothing about management), so probably shouldn’t comment. Also I think most of the fans would prefer us to win, than to have all the players treated as kindly as possible so maybe they aren’t bothered about young players getting subbed at half time. It seemed though that Jesiel was fit enough to play 45 minutes. Tachibanada at right back was less surprising. He seems to be this season’s Morita. He also seems to be a bit better at right back than Morita was though. Probably could still have done with a right back playing there though as with Tachibanada there we don’t have him in the middle. I feel like we did a decent job of defending for most of the game. We just got undone with a couple of late set pieces. The highlights probably won’t be up for a while which spares me having to watch them, but as far as I can remember their second goal looked like a bit like an own goal calamity (but apparently it bounced off Junker and not the defender but perhaps the description is still kind of apt), and the last one was just inevitable after we struggled to defend a few corners as they cranked up the pressure. Perhaps I’m wrong on both and could check if I waited till the highlights are up, but to be honest, I’d rather get this post out of the way and forget about this game. Even though I’m saying we defended ok for most of the game, it would be pretty disappointing and somewhat calamitous if we didn’t have something a little more like our regular defence back for the ACL. I guess that’s quite an optimistic hope though. But still, fingers crossed.

Attack! -

As I mentioned above, I think maybe the problems were just as significant up front, if not more so. Once again we were pretty toothless and didn’t create a great deal aside from the first goal. It was great to score twice from corners, particularly given how usually, many of our corners hit the first defender. To be honest, those two goals have made our stats look a lot better than they actually were. Without those two goals from corners, we only had nine shots in the whole game. Partly this was due to us giving them an early away goal and therefore something to hang on to, after which they seemed to be playing with a back seven with five centre backs. But this happens pretty often to us yet we still struggle to break down a multi-layered defence. The front three of Kobayashi on the right, Miyagi on the left and Damiao in the middle didn’t quite have the effect we might have hoped, and instead sadly had the effect we might have expected. Oniki seemed to switch to a front two of Kobayashi and Damiao but we were still pretty toothless for most of the match. And if nothing is happening for you up front the ball keeps coming back at your defence more often. It was exciting to see Marcinho on the bench. But that is where he stayed, along with Kozuka and Tanno. I wonder if the fact that he was even there suggests we were really short of numbers as he’s only been training for a short while. So another game where we didn’t make all our subs. But I get it, we may have players on there but that doesn’t mean we have a possible plan where we can fit all of them in. I really hope we are saving some players for the ACL. Or we are so focused on the ACL that we took our eyes off the ball a bit in the league and in this game. Because the fact is, we’ve only won twice in the last seven and both of them were slightly dubious performances. We have become Sanfrecce style draw specialists and that’s not going to do the business in a one legged ACL game away against Ulsan.

Considering our injuries Urawa probably went into this game as favourites. We gave it a good go but couldn’t quite get over the line in the end. Still, it stings a bit to lose a two goal lead in the last seven minutes. But as every team who gets knocked out of a cup before the final says ‘this will give us a chance to concentrate on the league / ACL / Emperor’s Cup’. A few less games will be a blessing but it’s obviously a shame. And we could do with a bit of a confidence boost. But that’s not going to happen before the ACL so instead let’s hope for a kick up the backside instead. But that hasn’t really materialised from the last few results so whether it will now is difficult to say. It’s undeniable though that the injury crisis had a major effect on this game. As I’ve said already… Repeatedly… Ad nauseam… So maybe let’s knock it on the head here. I did just want to mention again though that I don’t understand the moral judgement of our supporter group for not drumming if Kanagawa is in a state of emergency. It doesn’t really make sense to me, as if it is safe enough for fans to attend and they are able to clap, what’s the issue with them clapping in time and actually creating some kind of atmosphere? Perhaps this is still self-flagellation for them getting busted having a big old drinking party when they shouldn’t have been, but if it’s ok for them to hang around in the usual area collecting money for something (not sure what it was), it’s probably ok to bang the drum and therefore not cede our home advantage so willingly. Anyway… Well done to both our players who almost managed to pull off a win against the odds, and to Urawa who put us out of our misery and hopefully gave us a kickstart to raise our game a bit. Hopefully… With the tricky ACL game in eight days in mind, let’s stay slightly optimistic and finish with the usual GO FRONTALE. 

Team

GK 1. Sung-Ryong JUNG

DF 22. TACHIBANADA Kento

DF 28. YAMAMURA Kazuya

DF 30. TANABE Shuto

DF 2. NOBORIZATO Kyohei

MF 6. JOAO SCHMIDT

MF 8. WAKIZAKA Yasuto

MF 41. IENAGA Akihiro

FW 11. KOBAYASHI Yu

FW 9. LEANDRO DAMIAO

FW 24. MIYAGI Ten

Subs

GK 27. TANNO Kenta

DF 4. JESIEL (on for TANABE 46') (Yellow card 62')

MF 16. HASEGAWA Tatsuya (on for MIYAGI 58')

MF 17. KOZUKA Kazuki

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

FW 20. CHINEN Kei (on for LEANDRO DAMIAO 84')

FW 23. MARCINHO

 

Goals

ESAKA (Urawa) 8' 1-0
LEANDRO DAMIAO (Frontale) 40' 1-1
YAMAMURA (Frontale) 77' 2-1
JOAO SCHMIDT (Frontale) 83' 3-1
JUNKER (Urawa) 87' 3-2
MAKINO (Urawa) 90+4' 3-3

 

 

Highlights