Vs Gamba Osaka (home) 27/11/21 J League match 37

Kawasaki Frontale 4 - 1 Gamba Osaka

I’ve left this way too late to start writing but it was a bit of a busy weekend. I normally have trouble recalling our matches only a few hours after so I’m going to be really reaching this time given that it’d been a few days. But I’ll give it a go anyway. With the end of the season fast approaching and the title safely in the bag a few weeks ago you could think that there wasn’t much to play for in this game. In a way this is true as our position won’t change and Gamba’s isn’t going to change in any meaningful way either. But given that our neighbours and rivals are our closest challengers and we face them next week in our final game, we probably want to attempt to squash any positivity that they might be able to wring out from this year. So, we dearly want to win next weekend, we dearly want to score the most goals in the league and we dearly want our striker to finish with the Golden Boot. Naturally, if the first one of these things happens it will significantly help us with the second one. Right now YFM are one goal ahead of us with us having conceded seven less than them. The points difference seems quite surprising when you consider how close the goal differences are. Admittedly YFM’s was helped quite a lot by FC Tokyo giving them eight a few weeks ago. Hopefully we won’t be as generous next weekend. The golden boot race is perfectly poised with one game to go with Damiao and Daizen Maeda both on 22 goals. Damiao does have six more assists though and has played one game fewer I believe. So in spite of there not being anything to play for or much at stake, there actually is a lot to play for and lots (of bragging rights) at stake. But anyway this isn’t supposed to be a match preview so let’s briefly talk a bit about what I can remember about the game.

 

 

Every time we play an Osaka team the same thing happens. Well, maybe. Our 4-1 win against Cerezo last weekend was followed up with this 4-1 win against Gamba. The scoreline wasn’t the only similarity. The score flattered us a bit in both games. We were surprisingly efficient at taking our chances in both games, and the opposition weren’t but did seem quite threatening for periods of the game. In both games we made a quick start to the scoring with Damiao getting off the mark early, and consequently catching up in the golden boot race. This time it was with his second favourite kind of finish. There has been a distinct lack of overheads recently but the crossed leg back heel finishes keep coming! In this game we kept the scoring going though, doubling the lead two minutes later with a Hatate header that undoubtedly would have been easier to hit with any part of his body rather than his head. Perhaps he gets a bonus for headed goals. It was a bit weird, as we hadn’t had the best of starts but then found ourselves two up in nine minutes. I felt like this irritated Gamba into some quite physical play and we got kicked around quite a lot with the usual inaction from another useless ref. More on him later. If this was their tactic it worked as they pulled a goal back which was apparently a pretty good one, but which I missed as I was distracted, probably by a passing bird or cloud, or someone else’s food or drink. I’m still thinking about what the lady in front of me was eating so it probably was the latter. After the Gamba goal the game was pretty open, and pretty scrappy. Our players seemed very aware of Damiao’s golden boot challenge and were looking to set him up quite a lot I felt. Which was good as Maeda had scored for YFM, taking the golden boot top spot for himself again. This kind of slightly-lacking-in-quality stalemate continued for most of the match to be honest. It’s telling that we didn’t get our first corner until the 94th minute. Our attacking clearly wasn’t the sharpest it’s been this year. At times it felt like Gamba were time wasting. Which is a bit weird as they were losing but maybe this was another manifestation of the whole end of the year feeling, the last day of school when you don’t actually want to get much done. Gamba had quite a few good opportunities in the second half and could have easily drawn level before we finally sprung into life again and got a couple more goals late on. It was nowhere near a dominant performance as the stats might suggest. I don’t even remember feeling that we had that much possession, although the stats say we had 61%. Thankfully Damiao got another goal to go back to joint first and set up a lovely final day strikers battle. It was similar to his first (weirdly his two goals against Cerezo were quite similar to each other too), and once again Yamane was the provider. And then fan favourite Kurumaya headed home with the final kick of the… erm…header of the match, the final kick of the match being our first corner. All quite fun! And once again drinks were consumed. 

 

Suppose I should mention some other points of possible interest. This was the first game we’ve been able to fill the entirety of our main stand. Everyone in that stand (which included us on this occasion), was required to show proof of vaccination before the game or a negative COVID test and then got a pink wristband in return. Basically this meant that the entrance process was slightly prolonged being split into two stage but it was of negligible discomfort. It probably also had the benefit of making people come to the ground slightly earlier to get that part out of the way and then have more time to spend money on eating, drinking, and purchasing in FronPark. It was great to see some pre-match atmosphere outside the ground again and although it will almost certainly prove to be a false dawn, it did feel like one more step back to normality and the sunshine helped with the positive thinking. The other main pre-game excitement was the unveiling of the 2022 kit. As seems to usually be the case with these announcements, I found the new design slightly underwhelming. Personally speaking, I don’t really like the neck, and am not sure about the tile motif (a visual pun on or allusion to the fact that we are called FUROntale (furo meaning bath in Japanese) with an added sprinkle of it being our 26th year as a team (2 = Fu, 6 = Ro), which all equals a football shirt designed to look like bathroom tiles. Maybe it will grow on me. I have to say that I am quite a fan of this year’s shirt though, and I do tend to go with a LIKE/DON’T LIKE MUCH pattern with these things. As the match was the annual Rikuzentakata game we were visited by the greatest mascot in football Kizuru from Iwate Grulla Morioka. After visiting Rikuzentakata earlier this year, the significance of the connection between Frontale and the town was slightly emotionally heightened for me. I forgot to bring my Grulla Kizuru towel though, which doubles down on how great their mascot is by using such an oblique design that the towel becomes truly a piece of modern art. Fantastic stuff. Being in the main stand we got to see Fronta’s player mimes, which he does as the team is announced and could appreciate his one for Chinen for the first time. It too is a work of art, with Fronta miming scoring a goal and then falling to the floor and raising a cramp riddled leg in apparent agony. Very well observed and made me LOL. On a Gamba note, it seems mean to laugh at an opposition player when we’ve been lucky in the game, but I did enjoy the Gamba left winger at one point doing close to double figures stepovers left and right and then tripping over the ball and losing it. Oh and of course we should mention the ref Okabe. A few years ago he made a horrific blunder and was relegated to the lower leagues as punishment. He’s been back a little while now but seems like he’s determinedly meandering his way towards his next major cock up and relegation. I can’t remember anything significantly bad but it did seem like he had consumed some hallucinogens before the match and was marveling at the fast moving trippy shapes around him whilst occasionally blowing his whistle in time with the trance music pumping in his head and waving his arms in a random direction. Loving it. Well he was anyway. I found his officiating quite annoying, but as we won 4-1, I’m not going to dwell on it. 

 

Next up, the league campaign closer against our old enemies YFM, who used to laugh and look down on us, but recently have found a whole new reason to dislike us. Congratulations to them on sealing their second place in the league at the weekend with a magnificent game of 43% possession and four shots on target. Now that’s entertainment! And that’s possibly a jinx on us at the weekend…I’m pretty sure we all know what the team will be as Oniki is not even blinking with his selections recently. After that, the league will be done but we still have a home Emperor’s Cup semi-final against Oita. Plenty to still play for in both of those games. Go Frontale!

 

Team 

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

DF 5. TANIGUCHI Shogo

DF 7. KURUMAYA Shintaro

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

FW 11. KOBAYASHI Yu (on for IENAGA 78')

MF 10. OSHIMA Ryota (on for MARCINHO 62')

FW 20. CHINEN Kei
FW 19. TONO Daiya (on for WAKIZAKA 78')

FW 24. MIYAGI Ten (on for HATATE 78')

DF 28. YAMAMURA Kazuya (on for TACHIBANADA 83')

 

My Frontale Man Of The Match

 

Honestly, I had a bit of trouble thinking of a good candidate for this on the day and failed to come up with an answer so there’s no way I can do it with the game so far in the past now. Take this as a freebie and give it to…

WHOEVER YOU FANCY - had a great game… playing football… well done.

 

Goals

 

LEANDRO DAMIAO (Frontale) 7' 1-0

HATATE (Frontale) 9' 2-0

USAMI (Gamba) 17' 2-1

LEANDRO DAMIAO (Frontale) 85' 3-1

KURUMAYA (Frontale) 90+4' 4-1

Highlights

 

Vs Cerezo Osaka (away) 20/11/21 J League match 36

Cerezo Osaka 1 - 4 Kawasaki Frontale 

This year’s visit to Cerezo was a bit of a dead rubber but it did provide us with the opportunity to visit their new stadium, literally in the shadow of their old stadium. It’s quite a bit smaller, but at the same time quite a bit better. No running track! Hooray! They do seem to have stiffed the away fans a little though as we were put in a pretty flat stand (can’t find a better antonym for steep, so that will have to do) so the action at the other end of the pitch, whilst closer than usual, was pretty difficult to discern. You’ll be pleased to know that it didn’t stop me questioning offside decisions from my perfect 90 degree angle viewpoint. And they stuck a load of advertising hoardings diagonally between us and the pitch, so sadly we weren’t quite as near to the action as we could have been. But it was definitely more fun than being in another athletics stadium. They also now have a beer truck outside and two craft beers made especially for Cerezo available, which made a nice change from the usual stadium fare. I say this but after sampling the Tokyo Verdy beer (containing kale for colour and DEFINITELY not taste), at their game against Ryukyu yesterday I have now been reminded that just because something is different and new, that doesn’t necessarily mean it is better. A heavy day on Friday enjoying our first Kansai away trip for two years contributed even more than usual to the game passing me by in something of a daze. The loud pumping bass of the PA system felt like a bit of an assault to my broken body, but you know, these things make us realise that we’re still alive, and made me power through the Cerezo beers to get the hair of the dog power going. A few more words on the deadness of the rubber of this match. Of course neither team really had anything to achieve in the league that they hadn’t already, what with Cerezo comfortably mired in mid table and us having won the league already. But there were some things to still play for. Okubo announced his upcoming retirement at the end of the season before the match so we were allowed to share in the experience of him playing against us for the last time. Certainly it felt a lot more positive than when he was turning out for FC Tokyo against us. We put up a banner encouraging him to get to 200 J League goals (presumably after this game). However, he’s got a lot to do in the next two games (probably from the bench) to reach that target, but we can now wholeheartedly cheer him on. And it was nice that we got a chance to say goodbye to him at the end of the game with a good old clap along with Cerezo’s Okubo song and then with our Okubo song which they generously played! Very nice of them. I will double down on this compliment by saying that they gave a nice reception for both Yamamura and Tanno and even clapped us for taking the title. Can’t wait for YFM to do that in the last game of the season… But yeah, thank you Cerezo and good luck for 9 goals in the next two games Yoshito. I guess Cerezo are quite keen to finish above Gamba. If you can’t win the league or qualify for the poisoned chalice that is the ACL, your next aim has to be putting one over on your neighbours I guess. I’m sure Gamba will be equally motivated in their next game against us to do the same. And for us, we have the ongoing aims to get as many points and as many goals as physically possible that Oniki seems to be pursuing. I’m sure it’s not just me who really wants to score the most goals in the league and I suspect Oniki has his eye on it. We need to get four more than YFM in the next two games which sounds like a tough ask, but we are playing them in the final game which affects the odds slightly perhaps. Also Damiao is now one goal behind Daizen Maeda in the golden boot race. I really want him to win that and I think he’d really deserve it if he did. So basically it was once again the strongest possible team put out by Oniki. I really feel for the players who’d been on international duty who’d put in some serious air miles in the last ten days. Oh, and Yamane even had to play some football in two glorious 1-0 wins against the Asian football powerhouses of Vietnam and Oman. Praise the lord that there is a competent manager in charge of the Japan national team who can get those kind of dazzling performances and results against all the odds. Given how much I’ve written already about things that are only tangentially about the match, it’s probably a good thing that my memory of the game is hazy, otherwise this blog post will go on forever. With that in mind, let’s do a little bit about the match.

 

Hmmmm, what happened again? I have limited notes but will do my best with them. If I recall correctly this wasn’t an amazing game for us but amazingly we took our chances! With us recently apparently playing more of our matches having neglected to take the handbrake off and really grinding out results, it was something of a surprise to see us scoring freely. And long may that continue! Damiao’s two goals were from quite similar positions and were both nicely taken. The first came with the obligatory VAR delay, but knowing that it was Nishimura reffing, I felt quite confident that his ‘respect my authority’ attitude would see us get the goal. He does always like to grab a bit of attention though with a surprise or two though, so there were some doubts. After the goal it was nice to see the players celebrate with Jesiel’s shirt. He was the only player missing in what we can now be pretty sure is Oniki’s preferred 11, having flown back to Brazil to get his serious Kengo-like injury treated. Looks like we won’t be seeing him for quite some time… Damiao’s second came from the diminutive Tachibanada smashing his way through the Cerezo midfield with the ball apparently glued to his boot. Great work again from him. It was nice to see Marcinho get a goal, especially after he was through and got taken out just as he was about to shoot. Ridiculously bad decision from Nishimura I confidently said from my seat, later slightly amending my opinion to ridiculously good save. It might be tough being a ref, but trust me, nowhere near as tough as it is being an ignorant bore in the stands. And the final one came from Miyagi after a great bit of work from Tono. Perhaps Damiao wasn’t so happy that he didn’t get the ball, but it was a lovely cross and a lovely finish. This might all make it sound like it was quite one-sided, but it wasn’t really. Cerezo had a lot of good chances and were let down by terrible finishing on a few occasions and stopped by great goalkeeping on a few other occasions. in the end, the stats were fairly even and whilst I am delighted it was 4-1, it didn’t really feel like a 4-1, which in turn makes the fact that it was 4-1 even more delightful perhaps. Equally delightful was Miyagi’s chicken dance goal celebration. Don’t know if it’s going to be a regular thing, but I liked the surprise of it and it would go nicely with Wakizaka’s finger thing as another goal or celebration pose. One last thing, it seems like we’re allowed to twirl towels again now, which is nice and one step closer to being able to sing once more, I guess. I think these things are decided on a stadium by stadium basis though, so maybe we won’t be able to do that on Saturday at home against Gamba. 

 

Next up… oh, I just mentioned that. Our last home league game of a season which is fast coming to an end. Hopefully we can keep the goals coming as Damiao and us as a team need plenty to keep a few hopes alive. Go Frontale!

 

Team 

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

DF 5. TANIGUCHI Shogo

DF 7. KURUMAYA Shintaro

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

FW 11. KOBAYASHI Yu (on for IENAGA 83')

MF 10. OSHIMA Ryota (on for NOBORIZATO 73')

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

FW 24. MIYAGI Ten (on for MARCINHO 73')

DF 28. YAMAMURA Kazuya (on for HATATE 83')

 

My Frontale Man Of The Match

 

Tachibanada’s dribble was amazing, Damiao’s finishes lovely, but the reason this was 4-1 and not 4-3 or 4-4 was down to…

 

Sung-Ryong JUNG - Some saves which looked great at the time but only improved when I saw them on the highlights. And no way he could have done anything about the goal. Bravo!

 

Goals

 

LEANDRO DAMIAO (Frontale) 5' 0-1

LEANDRO DAMIAO (Frontale) 40' 0-2

MARCINHO (Frontale) 49' 0-3

OKUNO (Cerezo) 80' 1-3

MIYAGI (Frontale) 85' 1-4

Highlights

 

Vs Sagan Tosu (away) 7/11/21 J League match 35

Sagan Tosu 3 - 1 Kawasaki Frontale

After the elation of somewhat surprisingly winning the league last Wednesday we gamely trooped off to Kyushu to enjoy what is usually my favourite away game of the season. Given that we got a hammering in this game, I probably wouldn’t say it was my favourite this year, but to be honest it was still quite a lot of fun considering. Undoubtedly, this is down to the wonderful assortment of alcohol available in the stadium. Last year I was aiming for the Nihonshu, but finding none available switched instead to the Shochu. This year I imagined the situation was the same and started on the Shochu. My second Shochu was actually a Nihonshu but in order not to disappoint the person serving I gamely persevered with it and explained that I know nothing about these kind of things. Perhaps I looked a bit stupid, but you know, if the cap fits… I know there’s a rhyme about which order you should drink wine and beer in order to avoid any kind of problems. I don’t know if there is the same thing for Shochu and Nihonshu. If there is, it would probably be pretty difficult to remember anyway as the two words rhyme. I’m not sure if the order I drank them in was the correct one or a big mistake, but whichever way you look at it, I had a surprisingly good time considering how much we stank up the place in the first half. Our rotten first half also gave me an opportunity to get to the bar a bit early and avoid the queue. Seems like perhaps both the team and I are already proverbially on the beach. I guess you’ll be able to decide for yourself about me when you’ve read this post but I’d say it hasn’t started particularly promisingly so far. Of course, we always have a dodgy game after sealing the title… or not really actually. I thought this probably was the case but on seeing a tweet with the ‘evidence’, realised that it really isn’t the case. Including this year, in the three times in the last five years that we’ve had a game after winning the title our record is won one, drawn one, lost one, this year being the loss. Perhaps though the fact that we won the title only four days before this game meant that there was an extra level or metaphorical and perhaps literal hangover involved. Certainly I feel like I could do with a relatively quiet week when it comes to alcohol consumption. No Frontale game should help somewhat with that. Although Taniguchi, Hatate and Yamane won’t get that luxury as they will be with the national team. Perhaps they still will have a week without a game though, as knowing Moriyasu they will probably just be sitting on the bench.

 

Or perhaps Hatate will play at left back… With Celtic fan football experts chiming in on Twitter regarding Hatate being a good option to solve their left back problem, Oniki played a masterstroke to quieten down any interest and started him at left back. He had a bit of a nightmare. I don’t want to point fingers but I have moaned all year about him not being a good option there in my opinion and it’s telling that the first two goals both came from action in that area. Before this match we had a great record of not conceding very often. We undid this quite a lot in this game, conceding three for the first time this year in the league. As the goals continued to be gifted I was slightly worried we might be en route to an FC Tokyo-ing. Our Tamagawa rivals got a bit of pasting at the hands of our other derby rivals the day before. It’s a bit difficult to know what to hope for in a game between the teams who are perhaps your two biggest rivals. It’s fair to say that a 8-0 victory is not one of the top options. Although it would have been quite funny if that was the scoreline the other way round though… Congratulations to YFM who are now one point away from securing their second second place finish in the league in the last 10 years. Not sure what happened in 2019 as I can’t find a league table from that season. In a way, it might actually be fun to lose all of our remaining games to give YFM a bit of the Jim Bowen Bullseye, ‘let’s have a look at what you could’ve won’. That would mean losing to them in the final game though, and I’m very much not in favour of that. It would be nice if we could get some kind of form back for our remaining fixtures, especially as we still have the Emperor’s Cup to play for. If we play like we did in this game though we might as well pack up now though.

 

The first half was horrifically one sided in Sagan Tosu’s favour. Full credit to them, and no credit to us. We were a mess at the back and more often than not couldn’t even get out of our own half. But, like I’ve said already, our season’s work is already done in the league so I can’t blame the players for having an off day. Oniki did his big rotation thing again with Kurumaya and Yamamura at centre back, Hatate at left back, Oshima getting a start in midfield and Kobayashi and Tono up front. Somewhat surprisingly, Marcinho continued on the left up front with Miyagi on the bench, which makes the future of Hasegawa look even more of a foregone conclusion. Still no sign of Joao Schmidt…. Given how much of a run around Hatate was being given, I was a bit surprised to see Wakizaka taken off at half time and Hatate moved into midfield. Well, surprised that Hatate stayed on, but then again perhaps it was a good idea to try and rebuild some of his destroyed confidence. Surprise surprise, he did much better in midfield, and the second half was quite different. But we were still a bit rubbish and I think only got our first shot on target in the 85th minute. We did really turn up the pressure after this and I think that over half of our shots and all of our shots on target came from the 85th minute onwards. But it was a case of too little too late by this stage. There was a lot of injury time after Jesiel came on for Oshima, causing another shuffle of the formation, and then went off injured not long afterwards after landing hard right on his knee. It looked like a bad injury to be honest and I’d be surprised if we see him again this season. But then again, we have had some amazing comebacks from what looked like bad injuries already this year, so who knows? His replacement was Miyagi causing another tactical switch. So plenty of shifting around of players, (Kurumaya for example went from centre back to left wing and then back to centre back, not once even having a go at left back), perhaps creating quite a bit of confusion and ended up with nothing really coming off. We did score in the 91st minute but it was from a massive scramble and I think most people didn’t even realize it had gone in. I certainly didn’t until I saw them getting ready for the restart. I’m pleased that Damiao got another goal, but it looks like he’s not now going to be able to catch Daizen Maeda in the golden boot race this year. 

 

Even though I can’t honestly say I’m that upset about losing this game, I was quite upset by the ref Imamura, who looking back on previous posts, seems to usually be not so bad. On this occasion he gave them a pretty soft penalty (Iemoto on VAR wasn’t much help to us unsurprisingly) and waved away a few for us that I thought we could have had a shout for, (all were right in front of us, so for once I think I probably had a semi-decent view). I’m also not very happy about him calling and ending the drinks break whilst all of our players were crowded round a seriously injured team mate. It’s good to have something to moan about, and maybe we could have got back into the game if he hadn’t given their penalty, but to be honest the damage was done at 2-0 with us looking hopeless anyway, and all we could probably have hoped for was a massive shift in fortunes and us pulling off an unlikely draw given how lacklustre we were till then. Also, it’s always nice to moan a bit about an ex YFM player, so even though Tosu were winning 3-0 an we looked awful, the Tosu keeper still felt the need to dither about which ball boy to get the ball from and then stop and feel his hamstring a little before pondering and procrastinating over every goal kick. It was very nice of them to give us a guard of honor before the match though. Very classy and I’m happy for them to have the three points in return. I’m not sure if it was connected to the match, but they also seemed to be occasionally running a steam train up and down the tracks near the ‘eki’, which is ‘mae’ the Ekimae Stadium. I saw it once and heard it numerous other times. Perhaps it was meant to symbolise YFM. Noisy and attention grabbing but ultimately going absolutely nowhere this year. We still have the Emperor’s Cup to think about, but they now can only look forward to trying to beat us on the final day of their season. Naturally, I hope they fail miserably in this. But unfortunately, they do look like they’re going to score the most goals in the league this year. Thanks a lot FC Tokyo!

So, after refuting the evidence of the existence of ‘the game after the title curse’, I would instead like to suggest a new curse. We now have the ‘never win in Kyushu’ curse. This one is also slightly undermined by us winning in Oita this year, but we did fail to take the title there last year when they beat us, Sagan Tosu were the only team we didn’t beat at all last year, and both Avispa and Tosu have beaten us this year. It’s hard to get angry about this curse though as Kyushu away games are a lot of fun normally and this year COVID spared us from being able to attend our other defeat of 2021 so far, which from watching on DAZN seemed to be a lot more irritating game than this one was. It looks like J1 might be losing Oita next year so we’ll just be left with the two Kyushu teams who’ve beaten us…. Oh well. Next up, ten days or so off until we’re away to Cerezo Osaka the weekend after next. They do like to beat us too but haven’t done recently. Here’s hoping we’re a bit less out of character and back to playing how we know we can. Go Frontale!

Team 

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

DF 28. YAMAMURA Kazuya

DF 7. KURUMAYA Shintaro

DF 47. HATATE Reo

MF 22. TACHIBANADA Kento

MF 10. OSHIMA Ryota

MF 8. WAKIZAKA Yasuto

FW 19. TONO Daiya

FW 11. KOBAYASHI Yu

FW 23. MARCINHO

Subs

GK 27. TANNO Kenta

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

DF 4. JESIEL (on for OSHIMA 63')

DF 5. TANIGUCHI Shogo

FW 9. LEANDRO DAMIAO (on for MARCINHO 55')

FW 24. MIYAGI Ten (on for JESIEL 71')

FW 41. IENAGA Akihiro (on for TONO 55')

 

 

My Frontale Man Of The Match

Second loss of the season and a truly dreadful first half performance backed up with a second half that promised a little but couldn’t deliver anything more than a very little means it has to go in a three way joint decision to….

THE STEAM TRAIN, THE SHOCHU and THE NIHONSHU - if the team plays badly and loses but you still kind of have a nice time you’ve got to thank the parts of the day that distracted from what was happening on the pitch. TOOT TOOT! SUP SUP!

 

Goals

 

IWASAKI (Tosu) 3' 1-0 

SAKAI (Tosu) 20' 2-0

KOYAMATSU (Tosu) 32' 3-0 PEN

LEANDRO DAMIAO (Frontale) 90+1' 3-1

Highlights

 

Vs Urawa Reds (home) 3/11/21 J League match 34

Kawasaki Frontale 1 - 1 Urawa Reds 

Well that happened a bit quicker than we might have been expecting. I was hoping that we would be able to celebrate winning a fourth title in five years this weekend away at Sagan Tosu, but YFM and Gamba had other ideas. Definitely it’s better for lots of people to win the title at a home game, but ever the elitist, I was hoping we’d do it at my favourite away game. Not saying I’d rather we waited till then though. Even though we have a massive points lead over YFM and are going at a similar pace to last season as far as points per game goes, things certainly haven’t been feeling massively comfortable, particularly when we had a mid season meltdown. If YFM had beaten Gamba the gap would have still been pretty big, given that we conceded another late goal against Urawa, but perhaps some doubts would have started setting in. So definitely better to get it done at the first time of asking instead of having an away at Oita kind of disappointment as we did in 2020. And now we can all just enjoy the various types of alcohol on offer at the Ekimae stadium and not have to worry about the game too much. Perhaps in a somewhat similar way to our first league title, I spent most of the second half checking the score in a different game rather than actually paying attention to what was going on in front of me. So the details in this post will be vague and the actual information lacking once again. I’m sure you’d expect nothing less from me. We’ll do this with a brief paragraph about what I can remember about the game, one on the title, a big dump of photos and then move on to Saga.
 

Like I said above, I can’t remember much about the match. Not saying it was a boring match, what with there being 30 shots shared pretty equally between the two teams. Only seven of them were on target though so perhaps that tells a different story. And both goals were pretty scrappy affairs. This certainly felt more like one of our late season ‘get the job done’ performances. In recent weeks we’ve managed to generally get in to a nice habit of winning without having to dazzle. It certainly feels quite different from how we started the season, but maybe my mind is playing tricks on me. We had a bit more possession than Urawa but once again for the most part this was pretty useless possession. The only decent chances I can really remember were a couple at the end of the match, one for Kobayashi and one for Oshima, where it seemed like the players thought we needed a win and were really going for it. A draw was probably a fair result though and it probably suited both teams in the end as it still keeps Urawa’s ACL hopes alive. The highlight for me in this game was probably Marcinho, who now seems to be adding a lot of goalkeeper and defender hassling pressing to his game. Him and Damiao were really giving the Urawa backline some headaches and we won the ball back a lot from wayward hoofs (hooves?…) out of defence. But we didn’t turn them into decent chances. Urawa look like they might be a team to reckon with next year but are not quite there yet. Plenty of times a player, and it was often Koizumi, would do a lovely turn and get away from us only to immediately lose the ball with a wayward pass. I know they really want to get into the ACL, as evidenced by the big ASIA display from their fans before the game (I guess this is what it meant, rather than being the third to last one of a series of tifos that spell out their stadiums address. The next two will be THE EARTH and THE UNIVERSE). One of their other tifos (is this the right word? It seems like I’m going with it anyway), was slightly ruined by another flag that was getting in the way and rendered their club name UBAWA to those whose eyesight is not the sharpest and were at the right angle.

 

 

Apparently they picked up their rubbish on the way out of the stadium too. I would say that this is slightly undermined by the fact that Frontale fans take their own rubbish with them rather than just relying on the nicer element of their fanbase to come and pick up what the meatheads have thrown on the floor and left. Of course you knew I wasn’t going to be able to resist a bit of Urawa baiting after wafting some faint praise their way. Oh and of course, like Kashima, they were honour bound to break their silence when it came to us playing our intro song on the PA. They started up just as the Kawasaki City song started and stopped pretty much afterwards. Once again, quite childish and I’m not sure what purpose it is supposed to achieve other than vaguely irritating the opposition fans. I’m sure the players don’t care. Likewise, the out of time random drumming with potentially the intention of putting us off as we attack was quite amusing. It would be funny to imagine that a professional footballer running towards goal would find themselves distracted by the arrthymic nature of the opposition fans percussion. ‘I was going to score, but can’t possibly concentrate with that out of time banging going on! Damn!’

So we did it. Four titles in five years which to be honest now makes the total disaster of a season a couple of years ago feel even more like a totally wasted opportunity. Many people thought that we have had it sewn up for a long time but it didn’t feel completely comfortable. Whether the departure of Postecoglou made any difference we’ll never know. Certainly Marinos fans would say so, judging by the recent increasing popularity of the #muscatout hashtag. I think that the former manager’s lovers do seem to forget that even with him at the wheel (the ship’s wheel... does that metaphor still work? Maybe..), they did go through some dodgy spells. It seems that it is almost blasphemy to say that he is anything other than the saviour of all football in the world ever so I’m sure plenty of people will disagree. Nice 0-0 draw with Livingstone for Celtic in their last match. I would have thought being at a club with massive spending power compared to all but one of the other teams in the league (who happen to be ahead of them in the league table, so basically they are bottom of a two team league), would have suited his style of buying a new player every time something doesn’t go his way. This is fast turning into a YFM bashing section rather than a Frontale title celebration section. I’m guessing that YFM fans probably won’t read this in much the same way that I didn’t search out blog posts written about them winning the league in 2019. If they are though, they might well interpret all this as an expression of relief after worrying about them catching up with us. They are free to do so if they want. But, I dunno, I don’t really buy the fact that Muscat has whistled the living daylights out of their wonderful team that was built by ‘the boss’ (not Bruce Springsteen on this occasion), but I might start using the #muscatin hashtag just in case. Hatate seemed quite emotional on winning the title which some have interpreted as a sign of his impending departure. It wouldn’t be a massive surprise I guess. Equally, I wonder if Tachibanada and Wakizaka have been attracting some attention. They haven’t been playing for the national team much though so perhaps that keeps them under the radar. Hopefully though we have some more players coming through to replace anyone who leaves. And to be honest there are plenty who have been completely absent recently anyway who’d probably like to have a go. Whether we will see Hasegawa again in a Frontale shirt, I’m not sure. It seems that Oniki doesn’t rate him anymore and it’s sad but probably fair enough as he has never quite been able to recapture the form he was in at the start of last season before he got injured. Of course, it’s difficult to think about what might happen next season without knowing who will be going and who will be staying. I think we’d all love to win the league again, do the three-peat and move one league title ahead of YFM. We also have unfinished business in the ACL. Well, actually that’s not true. It was once again finished business much quicker than we might have hoped. But more about that in a season round up post coming after we’re all done. We still have four games left and a possible points total of 97 to chase. And it would be nice to score the most and concede the least too if we’re being greedy. Oniki certainly likes to go for these kind of targets so I wouldn’t be surprised if we still don’t see much rotation for the rest of the season. Oh, and of course, there’s the Emperor’s Cup semi-final against Oita too. I imagine quite a few clubs in the race for the ACL would quite like to see us win the Emperor’s Cup now to give an extra spot to the league. At least that’s how I think it works. Anyway, let’s wrap this up.

Next up, as I said above, Sagan Tosu away on Sunday. Then a couple of weeks off for us, (but not for Taniguchi, Hatate and Yamane who’ve been picked for the national team), before we make the trip away to Cerezo in the league. It’s a new stadium to tick off and also the first time we’ve been allowed to go to an away game in Kansai for a long time! Looking forward to it. Well done to all the players and (keep) Go(ing) 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 NOBORIZATO 75')

FW 11. KOBAYASHI Yu (on for LEANDRO DAMIAO 75')

MF 10. OSHIMA Ryota (on for MARCINHO 75')

FW 20. CHINEN Kei (on for TACHIBANADA 90+1')
FW 19. TONO Daiya

DF 28. YAMAMURA Kazuya (on for WAKIZAKA 86')

 

 

My Frontale Man Of The Match

I really want to go maximum troll and give this to Kevin Muscat for his overall contributions this season but deep down I don’t think he deserves it by himself so maybe it could go to the whole YFM team for shitting the bed at enjoyably regular intervals. Some would also say that maybe we should give it to Gamba Osaka for wrapping the league up for us. Both would be fun to do but instead I’ll do the usual end of season cop out that was also done in the stadium and give it to…

THE WHOLE SQUAD - nice work fellers! Six more wins and loads more goals scored and few conceded would be a lovely way to finish of 2021, wouldn’t it?

 

Goals

 

JESIEL (Frontale) 33' 1-0 

SAKAI (Urawa) 89' 1-1

Highlights