Tuesday 31 May 2022

Vs Kyoto Sanga (away) 29/5/22 J League match 16


Kyoto Sanga 1 - 0 Kawasaki Frontale

After a shocking result against Shonan, we held clear the air talks and decided to freshen things up. I’m not sure exactly what purpose these talks achieved as although we seemed to start this game a little brighter we quite soon resorted to the absolute same old shit. Oniki’s reaction to our worst recent performance was to drop Marcinho, the one player who always seems to offer something and replace him with Miyagi, who has really struggled this season. I mean, I haven’t given a man of the match recently because basically no one has deserved it, but if I’d had to, it would have been solid Marcinho for the last however many games. It’s becoming something of a cliche for me to say that the best thing about recent matches is everything apart from the match but once again it’s painfully true. We’ve lost consecutive games for the first time in ages and I can’t say we didn’t deserve to. Once again we were shite. One shot on target in 90 minutes. Add this to the one goal in four games stat and you can see where things are going wrong. Sadly Oniki apparently can’t. When one or two players have a bad day, well, that’s what happens sometimes. When almost to a man the whole team has a bad day repetitively for month after month (yet we still somehow squeak out some results) well, you’ve probably got to look elsewhere. Readers of this blog might think I’m anti Oniki and perhaps they’re right, but I don’t think I’ve been quite as publicly and directly against Oniki as I am now. Please let him resign. If it takes a defeat to a university team in the Emperors Cup on Wednesday to do that, well, that’s fine by me. Of course I don’t ever want us to lose, but surely his time is up. Obviously it would be better for the team and even for my own morale if he could just turn things round, but I can’t see any way that his stubborn conservatism could ever achieve that this year. I don’t dislike him, but we seem to be preparing for a terminal dive down the table with him at the helm. Once again we’ve been helped by a rival, with FC Tokyo beating Kashima. But once again we’ve messed up at the same time. And now YFM have sneaked past both of us into top spot. Some managers take a ragtag bunch of rough and ready players and turn them into a winning team. Some inherit a good squad and system and slowly turn them into an utter bore. Oniki has looked at the flowering young talents in our Frontale garden and has decided to mow them down and replace them with a tarmac drive because that’s more steady and reliable. Sure, we’ve had some good times together, but hey, don’t mention 2019, and don’t mention our ACL campaigns, or our performances in knockout competitions. We’ve now lost four times in the league this year and our current third place spot is hugely flattering. I can’t envisage us scoring again, let along winning. When things are going your way, draws become wins and every ricochet bounces into the path of your striker who slots it home. When things aren’t, the goal posts become impossibly wide and an invisible fence is erected on the edge of the opposition penalty box. We hit the post a few times in this game. But don’t forget Kyoto had more than enough decent chances to win the game comfortably.  I’m getting fed up of singling out players for criticism. But the fact is that people are playing way too much and seem to be without any kind of decent instruction or leadership. Players are getting run into the ground as there is no trust in the players that we have to cover for them. And those back up players have hardly played, apart from against a team of kids from China. If Oniki plays the ‘first team’ next Wednesday against Sapporo University I think he should be fired regardless of the result. Maybe the reason he doesn’t choose some players is because they lack experience. But they lack experience because he never ever chooses them even once in a while against perceived weaker opposition. Last time I compared watching us to a kids anti-drugs video, as it felt like our style and performance was an attempt to wean the viewer off being interested in football. After this game I think I’ve been too soft and should more accurately compare it to some kind of masochism or death cult. Perhaps a lot of us fans think that we deserve the worst kind of punishment for things we might have done in the past. Don’t get me wrong, if we were just bad it would still be painful. Instead we flatter to deceive right up until the opposition box. The first half in this game felt like an improvement from Wednesday. Admittedly there wasn’t really any lower place we could sink to. But this was just a false dawn brought on by a new stadium and a fun day out before we got to the stadium. Soon reality came hurtling back and we’d lost another game.

Ten shots, one on target. Of course I can’t blame Oniki for missing those shots, or for absolutely blasting the ball into his own goal, but I can blame him for making a once exciting team play such turgid stuff. I can blame him for sticking endlessly with tired and out of form players. And for only changing the formation when we were already in a lot of trouble and apparently doing so with no preparation and also no apparent concept of how a changed formation might change the way we play. If anyone knows what formation we were playing at the end, please let me know. All I remember is Marcinho on the right and apparently no one on the left. We had plenty of scrambles in and around the opposition box but so low is morale that even when presented with a nice chance we still messed it up. People are moaning about Damiao. I think this is a bit mean and shortsighted. Things aren’t falling for him, but who exactly are they falling for at the moment? It’s the absolute tactical inflexibility when everyone in the league has worked us out that is infuriating.  Endless fast breaks from which the ball is returned to our own defence. It’s just the inevitability that is killing me right now. We knew we were going to be shit, the starting line up reinforces that feeling, the first half slightly softened it, but the second half turned it into a granite monolith in the shape of a curly turd. I don’t like openly saying people should be sacked, but ONIKI OUT! Get him out whilst we still are vaguely alive in the title race. It’s too late for the ACL. It will probably be too late for the Emperor’s Cup after Wednesday and too late for the league during the next round of games. I feel like I know Oniki quite well. With our team absolutely grasping for some form and morale, a cup tie against a university side and an upcoming international break… He’s going to play the first team isn’t he? And we’ll lose. Yamane and Taniguchi won’t be able to play on Wednesday I think, but I bet he’ll go with the rest of the usual players with a view to getting them some confidence back and instead will deal another hammer blow to a structural beam in what is already quite a wobbly Frontale house. Get him out!

This all seems quite Oniki focused. So let’s have a go at some others too. Tanimoto the ref was an absolute disaster, clearly out of his depth, and lacking any kind of control. He didn’t bother to try to stop any Kyoto time wasting (which began in the first minute and lasted the full ninety). When they were making obvious time wasting subs (which, don’t get me wrong is totally fair enough), he demanded a Kyoto player leave the field on the side of the pitch he was on a few metres from the touchline, and just keep waving at the player as he walked right past him, totally ignoring him. And he apparently also didn’t notice the obvious message go round to the ball boys that they should stop throwing the ball back once Kyoto were in the lead. He didn’t however ignore lots of Kyoto diving and rolling around on the floor, all of which got them free kicks. One particularly galling example was when Marcinho (remember, the guy who does nothing according to Oniki, and didn’t start this game…) broke through with the ball by hassling the defender who went down holding his face. A few minutes later, perhaps the same defender, (I dunno, the details are a bit sketchy and watching back on DAZN is driving me potty so I’ve given up), absolutely scythed Marcinho who’d done a smart turn, getting nowhere near the ball. Guess which challenge got them a free kick and which one was apparently ok? Their captain seems quite a detestable person, whining and diving relentlessly and therefore bravely leading and setting an example for the rest of his team. But basically, whatever they wanted from the ref, they got. I read on Twitter that apparently the VAR review for the possible penalty when Sasaki cleared off the line (shortly after clearing into the roof of his own net) went perhaps unfairly in our favour. Which I would say goes to prove my point that the officials were fucking useless but to be honest on the replay I can’t see any way that it could ever have been given. Except by a totally inept referee. So there you go, a lucky escape for us. The basic fact of the matter though is that Cho is a manager who knows how to change tactics to suit the game. Gamesmanship and diving and whining is all a semi-legitimate tactic and if you are the apparent underdog you have every right to use them. It’s just a shame that Tanimoto was quite so blind to them. And it’s a shame that whilst other teams managers have some kind of guile or savvy, our manager has one idea and then after that it’s just randomly shuffling magnets round a board and then failing to even communicate that to the players on the pitch. Definitely luck isn’t with us right now. We hit the post late on (so couldn’t grasp a ‘brave’ draw), and we got absolutely nothing from the ref who definitely should have sent off at least one Kyoto player for a second yellow (I’m looking particularly at you Appiah). But even against ten men, I don’t think Oniki would have had the know-how to turn this game round. I think we actually play even worse against 10 than we do against 11 usually.


So, another awful game. Exactly as predicted. But that’s not saying much as Oniki’s idea of clearing the air and changing things up apparently means keep on doing the same. Thank you to Tachibanada, who’s after hearing the rumours about foreign interest this summer did his best to have an awful game and put off any potential suitors. His tackling was great but I don’t think he could have completed a pass from his front door to out of his genkan in this match. Yamane was alright in the first half but then reverted to recent Yamane form. Everyone is tired though. They need a break. Yamane and Taniguchi won’t get one unless they don’t play whilst on international duty, as inevitably as soon as they are back, they’ll be straight back into the team for further grinding down. Before then, Oniki will play Yamamura and Kurumaya at centre back and probably put Tachibanada or Seko at right back. Which admittedly would be an improvement on playing Seko at left back. And probably keep everything else as it is. Never has that house on fire, drinking a cup of tea meme been more true than it is for us right now. Right up until he starts getting singed, Oniki’s not going to do anything and by then it will be too late. And also by then our title hopes and the fans’ collective mental health will have been irreparably damaged. Honestly, I’m fed up of watching these games. But of course I will still keep going. People might think I’m being spoilt child moaning when things go bad after a few good years, but we’re not a bad team, we’re just being made to be bad by some utterly insane decisions from the top. What would be the ideal result on Wednesday in the Emperor’s Cup? I honestly don’t know. A defeat would put Oniki in real trouble but I don’t think we’d sack him and I don’t think he’d resign. A big victory would paper over the cracks and if it came with what is predominately the first team playing it would give Oniki license to keep doing the same old nonsense when the league returns. I’m struggling to work out what would actually constitute a fun evening at the game to be honest. Every scenario comes with some kind of bad feeling, whether it is towards Oniki or feelings of guilt  towards a team of students who suffer the consequences of a bounce back after our worse run for years. To be honest, I think it will be an ultimately frustrating 1-0 win for us, where we once again run into the invisible fence around the opposition penalty box but someone finds a sneaky way through and scores with our one shot on target. And then this rotten situation rolls on to the next league fixture in a few weeks. Which we lose. I should reiterate that the dream scenario for me is that Oniki wises up and turns things around, but I just can’t see it happening. Likewise, I can’t see us parting ways, so basically we’re going to limp our way to the end of this season slowly sliding down the table, occasionally picking up a 1-0 win with a goal going in off the opposition keeper’s backside to bridge the gaps between miserable defeats to relegation contenders. Oh well, at least we have the Levain Cup group stage games to look forward to next year!


Team 
 
GK 1. Sung-Ryong JUNG
DF 13. YAMANE Miki
DF 7. KURUMAYA Shintaro
DF 31. YAMAMURA Kazuya
DF 15. SASAKI Asahi
MF 8. TACHIBANADA Kento
MF 19. TONO Daiya
MF 14. WAKIZAKA Yasuto
FW 11. KOBAYASHI Yu
FW 9. LEANDRO DAMIAO
FW 24. MIYAGI Ten

Subs
GK 27. TANNO Kenta
MF 6. JOAO SCHMIDT
MF 16. SEKO Tatsuki (on for TONO 61')
FW 20. CHINEN Kei (Yellow card 90+5') (on for WAKIZAKA 70')
FW 23. MARCINHO (on for MIYAGI 46')
MF 31. YAMAMURA Kazuya (on for SASAKI 88')
FW 41. IENAGA Akihiro (on for LEANDRO DAMIAO 61') 
 

My Frontale Man Of The Match

THE ROOF OF THE STAND WE WERE SITTING IN - made watching the game a bit more bearable, but not much more bearable. At least we didn't have sunburn and heat stroke to add to complete frustration.

Goals
 
SASAKI (Frontale) OWN GOAL 60' 1-0

Highlights

Friday 27 May 2022

Vs Shonan Bellmare (home) 25/5/22 J League match 15


Kawasaki Frontale 0 - 4 Shonan Bellmare

In 270 minutes of football, including games against the bottom two teams in the league, we’ve managed to score one goal. But that’s not a surprise really as we’ve only managed to hit the target 13 times. But we’ve kept things tight at the back, haven’t we? Well, until this game we had. But conceding four against a team who’d only previously scored 9 times in 14 games has kind of undermined that point too. Over the course of the last few match days we’ve been very lucky with other teams managing to help us even as we weren’t quite doing the job. In this game though we were beyond help and even a last minute equaliser from Sagan Tosu to make it 4-4 against Kashima wasn’t enough to help us desperately cling on to what was undoubtedly an absolutely ridiculous top spot in the league. I don’t want to come on like a know it all, but in this game, all of the problems I have consistently been moaning about came home to roost. And thanks to me watching the DAZN feed afterwards to check how bad we were for the goals, all I am now left it is an image of Oniki studying his magnet board apparently unaware that we are losing 4-0 at home to the second bottom team in the league. If I hadn’t left immediately on the final whistle I would have felt very bad for the players who had to present themselves to the fans after the game. Some of them had nothing to do with the shocking loss. Bizarrely though, some of our fans were still applauding them. I’m not going to boo players after a game, and even if I’d wanted to, we’re not allowed to at the moment, but to applaud anyone after a totally gutless, pointless and frustrating performance is baffling. I guess some of the players may feel the same way too. At half time in this match, after we’d had a few long range back pass style ’shots’ and had had a few let-offs I said that the only way was up from here. How wrong I was. Don’t expect anything positive in this post and there probably won’t be any laughs either. But there will be plenty of moans, all wrapped up in the form of a couple of bullet points hopefully explaining why this kind of result was long overdue and pointing the finger firmly in one direction.

Ridiculous lack of reinforcement -

I’m not sure how many years it is that I’ve been moaning about us not bothering to buy any defenders. It’s bitten us a few times already but clearly the chickens are home to roost this year. Jesiel’s injury was unfortunate of course. But not reinforcing at all when we were aware that he would be out for months of the next season is stupid. Tanguchi’s red was unfortunate too. But remember the last time we shipped a load of goals at home in a wake-up call defeat (three home games ago…), and recall that he was at fault for most of the goals. Perhaps it doesn’t help that our two central defenders in this game were a midfielder and a left back. And the fact that one of our left backs is playing in central defence means that we’ve had a young player in his first season playing game after game for us. Sasaki had a rotten first half but I feel like that’s fair enough as he’s been overused without a break. What’s bizarre is that Oniki kept him on for the start of the second half. Ah, but that’s because we had no cover in that position! So after we went 2-0 down Oniki made a quick change put on our right footed central midfielder Seko there. And then we conceded two more. And then Oniki switched to a back three putting Yamane in the three and for some reason giving him the captain’s armband, presumably as a reward for looking like he absolutely doesn’t give a shit for the last however many games. At least that put some slight brakes on his attacking. Yamane in 2022 doesn’t want to defend. When it comes to attacking he always has enough energy. When it comes to the opposition attacking, Yamane is usually strolling back from the left sided attacking position, watching from a distance as his teammates try to cover for his absence. He too is probably tired as he hasn’t had a break for ages, so maybe I should cut him some slack. But he never looks tired when he has a chance to attack. And this points to my second and main moan…


Super conservative Oniki -

Oniki is apparently so worried about the possibility of not winning that he’ll run his best players into the ground, apparently under the illusion that even if a player is knackered, starting them will be better than taking a chance with another squad member. We actually do have other defenders in the squad but they’re young and Oniki won’t ever give them a chance. Seko, a player who was captain of Yokohama FC last year, has only recently made his way into the team after having to undergo Oniki’s usually one year long ‘I’m not sure I know you, so I’m not going to use you unless I really really have to’ treatment. He apparently can play at right back. Not that we’d know though as Yamane can only be dislodged by being physically distant from the stadium, (rather than mentally distant as he appears to be in most games). But still, we don’t really have another right back. Again it’s a midfielder being played out of position there. Tanabe who can play there and is actually a defender is in the squad, but even Takai seems to have gone ahead of him in the pecking order. But let’s be honest, for the most part, even when a youngster makes the bench they are there strictly in an unused sub capacity. It’s not just with selections though that Oniki is so conservative. He has long lacked a plan B, persevering with plan A relentlessly, occasionally moving players around and squeezing them into positions that don’t suit them. Perhaps this is due to our horrendously unbalanced squad. Every time I see Kobayashi on the right I feel for him. He does his best, but it doesn’t really work. You can multiply this feeling by a hundred when he’s on the left. Perhaps at stages of 2022 we have seen the emergence of a plan B, but more often than not it looks like the tactical change is the result of Oniki dropping his magnet board on the floor and just going with the mess that remains. We ended up with a 3-4-3 in this game, but still somehow Damiao seemed isolated in the middle. I feel for him too. He’s not scoring, but to be honest, I can really remember him actually getting many opportunities. His job seems to to be more winning headers, the ball then rolling through for the opposition keeper as there’s no-one there with him. I guess though we didn’t concede after going 3-4-3. But that probably more to do with Shonan giving up. Honestly, I don’t know why they were bothering with all the time wasting. They could have got double figures against us if they’d wanted. Apparently there have been some kind of talks between Oniki and Taniguchi after this game to refresh things and clear the air. I hope this works as the air was getting pretty stinky and that’s not just because summer is coming and the temperature is going up. If one player is playing badly in one game, well, that’s unfortunate, but it happens. If all of the players are playing badly for the whole of the season, then you’ve probably got to look elsewhere. I don’t think Oniki has any ideas to get us out of this mess and if we hadn’t squeaked all those late goals and were in a more realistic league position for the way we’ve been playing, I think the pressure would be mounting. I reckon that he was probably going to leave us at the end of the season, the third consecutive league title in the bag and go out on a high, perhaps going into the Japan job after Moriyasu fucks up the World Cup. Now I’m almost certain that he won’t have the three-peat, and that his reputation will be so tarnished that he won’t have a job lined up so might continue. It would be tough to sack him after all he’s achieved, but can you imagine what we might have achieved if we’d had someone in charge who could actually do the job instead of a very lucky Oniki?

Isn’t it fun this year? Can you actually remember the last time we played well? I can’t. We haven’t scored more than two goals in a game this year and have conceded four or more on three occasions. It’s fair to say that when we lose, we lose big! When we win, we squeak it. Perhaps Kashima away was the last feel-good game. But you’ve got to remember than aside from the first 15 minutes when we went 2-0 up we spent the rest of the game hanging on and playing the same old shit as we’ve been playing the rest of the season. We can’t shoot, we have games where we can’t defend, the players look a mix of bored, disheartened, out of form, some of them managing all three. And what’s more now we have rumours that Tachibanada might be leaving in the summer. Which I don’t want to believe and indeed would find hard to believe judging by some of his recent performances, but which seems likely when you consider that Joao Schmidt was pretty much frozen out but is now being slowly reintroduced. And also perhaps an awareness of his impending departure might be making some players feel a little pessimistic about our chances of pulling ourselves together. Of course we have plenty of players to take people’s places, but the fact is, none of them get much of a chance due to Oniki’s conservatism and lack of ideas. Add to this, the news that we’re going to play PSG in a friendly at the national stadium in July. We’ve just conceded four at home to Shonan… The cheapest ticket for this game comes in at ¥7000 and when you consider that the national stadium is one that isn’t really suited to football, this just looks like a massive cash grab. Presumably given our willingness to let our players leave for not much, we’ll let PSG keep all the money and also have a few free picks from our squad too. All this adds up to me feeling pretty uninterested in us at the moment. Not just because we’re not doing so well, but because there’s a grinding predictability to us and it’s also a surprisingly ineffective predictability too. I said it before but the best bits of match days are all the hours when we’re not at the stadium. Frontale in 2022 is like one of those films intended to stop kids taking drugs. All we’re seeing is the miserable side of matters with the intention of scaring/boring kids into never wanting to watch football again. I wonder if we’re taking some backhanders from the Japanese baseball league who are worried about young people being more interested in football than baseball and want to get some young fans back. Watching us play PSG in a friendly for ¥7000 a ticket would be rotten I think. When we play Vissel and Iniesta trips over the ball we get gasps of adoration and ripples of applause and glowing praise from our fans. The already horrendous view from behind the goal at the national stadium would be further ruined by a wall of phones taking videos of basically some of the financially greediest players in the football world. I’m not interested. Let’s finish up this downer post on a massive downer by saying that the comparisons to 2019 can’t be avoided now. After two good seasons we are again incomprehensibly shitting the bed, have a manager who instead of changing the sheets and looking onto our eating habits and pre-bedtime routine is just pushing the shit around the bed sheets, imagining that he’ll be able to wipe it off, but is instead perfectly smearing steaming poo around to cover exactly 100% of the bed clothes. And sadly we have to sleep in that bed for the next 19 league games…

Team 
 
GK 1. Sung-Ryong JUNG
DF 13. YAMANE Miki (Yellow card 90+4')
DF 7. KURUMAYA Shintaro
DF 31. YAMAMURA Kazuya
DF 15. SASAKI Asahi
MF 8. TACHIBANADA Kento
MF 19. TONO Daiya
MF 14. WAKIZAKA Yasuto
FW 41. IENAGA Akihiro
FW 9. LEANDRO DAMIAO
FW 23. MARCINHO

Subs
GK 27. TANNO Kenta
MF 6. JOAO SCHMIDT (on for TONO 57')
FW 11. KOBAYASHI Yu (on for WAKIZAKA 66')
MF 16. SEKO Tatsuki (on for SASAKI 57')
FW 20. CHINEN Kei (Yellow card 90') (on for IENAGA 66')
FW 24. MIYAGI Ten (on for MARCINHO 66')
DF 29. TAKAI Kota

My Frontale Man Of The Match

Oh come on!

Goals
 
MACHINO (Shonan) 50' 0-1
IKEDA (Shonan) 54' 0-2 
MACHINO (Shonan) 60' 0-3 
ELYOUNOUSSI (Shonan) 61' 0-4 

Highlights
 

Sunday 22 May 2022

Vs Sagan Tosu (away) 21/5/22 J League match 14


Sagan Tosu 0 - 0 Kawasaki Frontale

After a round trip of around 2200km, a lot of drinking, and a lot of fun, our little away odyssey is over. I should make it clear that the above description refers to us rather than our players who probably had less fun and almost certainly didn’t drink as much. Fukuoka home, Kobe away and Tosu away looked like a very tricky run of games and to come away from them with 7 points out of 9 and to have had Kashima slip up once and YFM slip up twice in the same period is extremely rewarding. Definitely it was a little more difficult to be so optimistic/realistic immediately after this game, a match in which it felt like we might actually be about to get something away at Tosu until another Taniguchi DOGSO red card. More on that later. Not saying we were all over Sagan Tosu. Far from it and they had some good opportunities. But just as we were building some momentum and some pressure and actually making some good chances we got hobbled. Actually though, we continued to attack after the red card and it would have been lovely to have grabbed a win. But we probably wouldn’t completely have deserved it and it would have been harsh on Tosu. Perhaps we as a club and as fans are becoming more aware that we’re not as good as we used to be. Coming away from Tosu (and more generally a Kyushu away game) with a point is something of a victory and should maybe be celebrated compared to recent season’s results. But we have been somewhat spoilt in recent years with exciting and effective football and we now only seem to be able to get one of those at the most and sometimes neither. Whilst Tosu and Fukuoka flip from doing great and doing terribly seemingly at random, you can always rely on them to give us a beating, perhaps justifiably, or perhaps unfairly. Whichever way, we usually lose. And we didn’t this time! And the booze at the stadium is still great! And it was a nice day and our area was in the shade! So many things to be positive about. But I probably should moan a bit too, right? And I should definitely get this post out of the way quickly, right? Ok!

 
So, some moans. Oniki shuffled the pack a little but we are still suffering from the same lack of excitement in front of goal. In the last three games we haven’t managed more than five shots on target in a match. We still break quickly and then stop and play the ball backwards. In spite of us scoring a few goals from corners, we still play pretty much every free kick that isn’t just outside the box short, basically surrendering any advantage we might have got from getting it and any chance that we might have of getting someone on the end of it. In the first half of this game we had three shots, all of which missed the target. We picked things up a bit in the second half as we tend to do, but it’s not exactly promising that whoever starts the match struggles to do anything. If manage to win the game it’s not so much of a problem I guess, but we’ve really squeaked our way to some wins this year and could very easily be significantly lower down in the table if we hadn’t been lucky. We certainly have good players, but it seems that we don’t have a good game plan at the moment. For once though, I’m going to resist giving out advice from my position of zero knowledge. I haven’t got a clue what’s going wrong. Or more accurately what’s going OK if you judge us on results rather than performances. In the past we could perhaps say that a few teams or managers had us worked out. Now it seems more like only a few haven’t worked us out. So maybe a change needs to be made. And we now have to make a change at the back as Taniguchi is banned for the next game. In a way it’s a shame that Yamane wasn’t sent off instead, as he’s the one who really needs a rest. On that red card, well I dunno… When the challenge went in, I said he’s taken one for the team as I knew the yellow was coming. To have it upgraded to a red was pretty annoying but quite predictable when you consider that Araki has sent off Taniguchi before for a DOGSO, (which he also initially gave as a yellow I think, but was a clear red in my eyes at the time), and that Kasahara, who constantly seems to ruin things for us has also sent off Taniguchi and gave a penalty at the same time away at Oita a few years ago, was the VAR guy. With these two things in mind it seemed inevitable that any slight mis-step from Taniguchi was going to end up with a red. I’ve done a little research on the DOGSO rule and will bore you with some probably factually inaccurate moaning shortly. But DOGSO just seems to be another one of those new rules that has been created just to justify the existence of VAR. In the past a ref could be fairly sure from weighing up the situation and general feel whether an offence was a red card or not. But now he has to go through an immediate mental check list to decide if all the criteria have been met. Just seems a bit like the people who run football might want, for some unfathomable reason, to make VAR exciting and necessary, and in order to get it rolled out for use a few times in each match, have made the job of the on field ref so difficult that he needs back up from some jumped up prick in the VAR room who doesn’t have to justify the decision in person. I don’t even really understand why it’s used sometimes. We hear a lot that it’s for situations when a clear and obvious error has been made. If it takes a ref going to the pitch side monitor and repeatedly watching a replay, I’d say that the error isn’t so clear and obvious. Anyway, apparently there’s a SPA and a DOGSO which is good news for those of you who like acronyms.
 

A SPA is ‘stopping a promising attack’ and is a yellow apparently, but gets upgraded to a red if it meets the four DOSGO requirements, which are something like distance from the goal, lack of covering defenders, distance from the ball, and direction of the player’s run. These four requirements seem to be set out in lots of places but I can’t really find anywhere that goes into them in much detail. However, apparently the direction one has the clarification that the attacker needs to be running directly towards the goal and not the goal line which I’d say probably rules a DOGSO out on this occasion. But who knows? Anyway, I’m not denying it was a foul or a yellow and I don’t know if the red was right under the rules as I suspect the real guidelines are kept under lock and key along with the bungs that various football associations have received from the companies who make the VAR equipment. I don’t just hate VAR when it goes against us. I constantly hate it and despair when people say that it’s necessary as it brings accuracy. I dunno, do we need 100% accuracy? It’s not like we’re launching a rocket or something. It’s more like VAR introduces another layer of interpretation which almost certainly leads to frustration at not being able to celebrate goals. Perhaps though the celebration hasn’t been destroyed, it’s just been shifted on to the defending team in the occasion of a goal being ruled out. So yeah, great! VAR is so good that now we can celebrate when something negative happens to the opposition, rather than something good happening to your own team. What joy! Anyway there was no guarantee that we were going to win anyway. And we probably could easily have lost. So not sure why I have gone on for so long about this and about nothing much else. Perhaps it was the shochu, but in my mind there was a general feeling of this being another game where we didn’t do much until it was a bit too late so if that’s true, there’s probably not much else to write about. I do love a moan about a ref though, and also a moan about VAR, so I guess it’s not a big surprise that I’ve spent so much time going on about it. 

 
Next up Shonan at home on Wednesday. Not as much of a bogey team as our previous three opponents and not so much of a bogey team at home compared to away, but I don’t expect it to be an easy game, in spite of their league position. I mean, our league position is pretty false I think, so perhaps their’s is too. And they did beat Vessel Kobe a bit easier than we did. After that we’re away at Kyoto on Sunday, an away fixture which has apparently proved to be very popular with our fans and has sold out. So perhaps a full away end to watch a potential bed-shitting on the horizon. I wonder if they have shochu in their stadium? Go SHOCHU! And in a more desperate and fearful way, go Frontale! 



Team 
 
GK 1. Sung-Ryong JUNG
DF 13. YAMANE Miki
DF 7. KURUMAYA Shintaro
DF 5. TANIGUCHI Shogo (Red Card 82')
DF 15. SASAKI Asahi
MF 6. JOAO SCHMIDT
MF 17. KOZUKA Kazuki
MF 16. SEKO Tatsuki
FW 41. IENAGA Akihiro
FW 20. CHINEN Kei
FW 11. KOBAYASHI Yu

Subs
GK 27. TANNO Kenta
MF 8. TACHIBANADA Kento (on for IENAGA 62')
FW 9. LEANDRO DAMIAO (on for CHINEN 62')
MF 14. WAKIZAKA Yasuto
MF 19. TONO Daiya (on for KOBAYASHI 76')
FW 23. MARCINHO (on for KOZUKA 46')
DF 31. YAMAMURA Kazuya (on for SEKO 83') 
 

My Frontale Man Of The Match

Once again, can't really be bothered to do this. Sorry!

 
Goals
 
None

Highlights
 

Thursday 19 May 2022

Vs Vissel Kobe (away) 18/5/22 J League match 11

Vissel Kobe 0 - 1 Kawasaki Frontale

As we’re on the road at the moment, (and when I say we, I mean me and my wife not Frontale but that applies too. The reason I specified this is that some people get annoyed when fans refer to their team as we. Must remember to say we in that respect many more times in this blog post in order to irritate the kind of people that find it annoying), this is going to be another truncated blog post, with the details and the highlights added when I’m in front of a computer again. Here you’ll get just some general feelings put down before I forget them. What a win! Well, maybe that should read what a stroke of luck to get that win. A lot is said about luck in football. Oniki is clearly a lucky manager. And based on this game, Vissel Kobe in 2022 are an unlucky team. This game really should have finished 0-0, as both teams had semi-decent chances but both were found lacking in front of goal. Once again we had the lion’s share of the possession, but once again I’ll say that doesn’t mean anything. All that matters is the fact that we won, even if it was with seconds to spare and came from a Taniguchi goal, a player who really hadn’t had the best of games. Delighted he got his goal though, not just for us (I’m talking about Frontale here, so that’s the first ‘us’ or ‘we’ designed to irritate, in case you didn’t notice), but also for him. In the past I have moaned a bit about him, but aside from the Cerezo game, I think he’s had a really good season so far. We’ve somehow managed to go back to the top of the league. In the game that was being played at the same time as this one in Saitama, perhaps Frontale fans might have found themselves in the strange position of wanting Urawa to win. Sadly they couldn’t, but a late equaliser sealing a comeback from 3-0 down against the Yokohama sailors is good enough for me! Hopefully it will give them plenty of confidence going into their game this weekend against Kashima. It’s not often that I want Urawa to win two games in a row, but that’s definitely the case. Possibly this feeling will expire at the end of the weekend.

So yeah, we weren’t great again, but we did win. Kobe’s pitch wasn’t awful! Bit of a revelation. And I have to say that strolling around the city centre before the game, I think I have been a bit mean to the city of Kobe in the past. It was very nice. Perhaps my feelings were swayed by their extremely unlikeable (for rival fans) football team and the absolute lack of decent beer options in the city if you don’t want to drink macro stuff. For such a big city, and with such an air of upmarket sophistication, it’s a bit of a surprise that they have so few craft beer bars in town. However we found a couple of places, and Taniguchi’s goal gave us a lovely lift as we made our way to Kobe Minato Brewing for post game refreshment. I would suggest you all check it out, but as the place is pretty small, I hope you check it on a day that we’re not trying to go there. More niceness on this blog post to Vissel Kobe comes in the form of praising *some* of their stadium music. There was a kind of Northern Soul thing going on before the game which was very surprising. But then Kobe’s keeper became the guest DJ and selected an absolute turd of a song which ruined things a bit. Then we moved on to generic pop-punk. It was nice though that we were able to exit the stadium on an absolute high after stealing a win with a soundtrack of Teenage Fanclub. I realise this is all a bit niche and maybe you don’t care about it or have different musical preferences, but this old fart had quite a fun time. 



Quick bit of football talk. Oniki went with the same starters and bench but really shook things up by taking off Tachibanada instead of Ienaga in the last few minutes. Other than that, everything was the same. Equally similar was our quick breaks which deteriorated into a backward pass as the quick break was too quick for both the opposition and our own players. On this occasion it was particularly annoying though, as Vissel were irritatingly organised when it came getting players back in numbers to defend. Quite why we were slowing down our attacks to allow them to do so, I don’t know. And quite what Oniki said in his half time team talk, I also don’t know. We were doing alright in the first half and then in the second, raced out of the traps, missed a good chance and then totally fell to pieces. But anyway, we won! The ref for this game Sato was on a ‘no cards’ tip which probably worked in our favour on a few occasions so I won’t moan about it. He did seem a bit flaky though. My annoyance at him was probably primarily due to our own inadequacies though.

So all in all, this was a kind of exciting game with little overall quality, but with a great finish that really gave us all a lift! Somehow, we’ve gone back to the top of the league after winning a notorious bogey game for us. Next up, another notorious bogey game… away at Sagan Tosu on Saturday. I’m slowly making my way there. Go me! Go Frontale! Go us! 

 

Team 
 
GK 1. Sung-Ryong JUNG
DF 13. YAMANE Miki
DF 5. TANIGUCHI Shogo
DF 7. KURUMAYA Shintaro
DF 15. SASAKI Asahi
MF 8. TACHIBANADA Kento
MF 14. WAKIZAKA Yasuto
MF 19. TONO Daiya
FW 41. IENAGA Akihiro
FW 9. LEANDRO DAMIAO
FW 23. MARCINHO

Subs
GK 27. TANNO Kenta
MF 6. JOAO SCHMIDT (on for TONO 63')
FW 11. KOBAYASHI Yu (on for WAKIZAKA 75')
MF 17. KOZUKA Kazuki (on for TACHIBANADA 85')
FW 20. CHINEN Kei (on for LEANDRO DAMIAO 63')
FW 24. MIYAGI Ten (on for MARCINHO 75')
DF 31. YAMAMURA Kazuya 
 
Goals

TANIGUCHI (Frontale) 90+2' 0-1

Highlights

 

Sunday 15 May 2022

Vs Avispa Fukuoka (home) 14/5/22 J League match 13


Kawasaki Frontale 2 - 0 Avispa Fukuoka

As the season progresses my laziness grows exponentially. I took hardly any notes during this game and my photos are bad too. And now am banging this post out as quick as possible. I had a pretty busy week at work and have some long away trips to do in the next week so maybe it’s best that I get this out of the way with minimum fuss. Also, once again there is an hint of there not being that much to write about happening in this match. This game went almost entirely as expected. Well, the first half did anyway. Much like the away game at Fukuoka last year where we dominated but failed when it came to the whole ‘having shots’ thing and then fell victim to a sucker punch goal, the first half was a real treat for Frontale fans who love possession but hate goals and excitement. The one thing that went against all expectation in this match was the fact that we managed to score twice from two nice chances. It’s a bit of luck that we did, as we only had 8 shots in the whole game. Somewhat encouragingly, half of them were on target though. But basically we’re still shot shy and seem to be playing with the handbrake on. We often had possible opportunities from quick breaks in this game but they would invariably peter out to a backward pass as soon as they reached the opposition’s penalty box. Again we went with the same starting line up and subs. But Oniki dramatically shook things up tactically by not making his regulation substitutions till the 80th minute, doing them in groups of three, one and one instead of the usual two, two and one and shockingly changing around the order of subs, by removing Ienaga before Wakizaka. Yes, I know sarcasm is the lowest form of wit, but the same players started, the same players were on the bench, the same players came off and the same players came on. I shouldn’t moan though as the subs didn’t seem quite as destructive to our play in this game as they were in the Shimizu match. And two 2-0 victories fresh on the heels of another ACL disaster is very welcome, especially given that Kashima are still ahead of us in the league. Would love a couple more 2-0 wins in the next two games which both are potentially dodgy ones for us. We hardly ever win away at Kobe with their dodgy pitch and we hardly ever win away at Sagan Tosu with their excellent selection of match day alcoholic refreshments in the stands. Perhaps that second part isn’t really helping to explain why we don’t win, but it does explain why Sagan Tosu is one of my favourite away games. And also maybe the lack of decent beer in Kobe and our results there explain why Kobe away is always something of a hard sell for me. But we’re going and I’m sure we’ll have a good time. Put your bets on now to predict both the starting line up and the substitutions though. 

 
I’ll put a little bit more talk about the game here. Firstly from our point of view, it seems that we’re now doing zonal marking at corners we’re defending. I first noticed it at Shimizu and suspect that I would have noticed it before if it wasn’t a new thing as the sight of players just standing in their areas whilst the opposition line up somewhere else was quite disconcerting and arresting. If we did start doing this in the Shimizu game though I guess it’s working ok so far as we haven’t conceded since the ACL. Plenty of time for that to go wrong in the next few matches though I guess! In a quick preview of what I’ll write in my next blog post, our passing wasn’t that great in this game. In the next blog post I will blame that on the rotten Kobe pitch. In this post, I’m not sure what to blame it on… Also we seemed to have changed our tactics from goal kicks, lumping the ball forward to Damiao. It’s a bit weird that we persevered with these tactics as they weren’t really working. The Avispa defenders seemed to be winning most of them. Oh well. The ref in this game was Fukushima who seemed alright I thought. He’s definitely from the ‘no cards’ school of officiating though and I felt like he probably should have handed a few out. Given that one at least probably should have gone to us though, I’ll not moan about it. There were plenty of hard tackles going in on Croux in this game. Perhaps our players got the same impression of him and his style of play from the away game last year that I did. He definitely deserved to be sent off in that game and I don’t think he even got a yellow. So it was nice that we could crunch him a few times in this game when we had a no card ref. Croux looked like he was also suffering a bit with the conditions to be honest. I can sympathise with him as a fellow Western European. It was horribly humid. After he scored an annoyingly good goal against us last year in the game when we forgot how to even get near the goal let alone shoot, I can’t help but say that I enjoyed the fact that he had an uncomfortable afternoon both from the point of view of the weather conditions and the absolutely perfectly fair tackles that were going in on him. 
 
 
If you’d told me before the game that I would have a new number one Avispa hate figure after the match I would have been quite surprised, but step forward Mae, who was a horrible whiny little shit in this game. As Kurumaya headed in our second Mae was rolling around on the floor clutching his face which seemed to have been caved in by a light breeze blowing through the stadium. Even his teammates knew he was play acting as no-one bothered to check how he was, instead just getting on with it. He stayed down for ages though, prompting a VAR review which thankfully confirmed the goal. It did take a while though, but I suspect on this occasion they were looking at multiple replays to try and work out why he was on the floor and apparently mortally wounded as it seemed clear from even a cursory look that he had nothing to moan about. Even at the end of the match, as his teammates lined up in front of the Avispa fans waiting to bow and say thanks and then get back in the changing room, he endlessly whined on at the ref in the middle of the pitch, perhaps hoping that the ref would change his mind and take the play back 35 minutes and rule out the goal. I feel sorry for Nara for being on the same team as him. But then again I always feel sorry for Nara. Well, apart from when his header was saved by Sung-Ryong denying Avispa a goal. That was a bit of a squeaky moment. Oh and if you're wondering why one of those photos is a bit weird, that's because there was a Diego Maradona impersonator at the game as part of the pre-match entertainment. The comedians whose catchphrase Wakizaka has taken his goal celebration from were also there, but I couldn't really see any link between the two acts, other than they were both apparently comedy. Have to say though, that I do enjoy watching this pre-game stuff and I find it helps if you start from a position of almost complete ignorance. It seems a lot more fun that way.


Next up, as mentioned above, two slightly dodgy away games. We can be pleased that although Kashima are ahead of us in the league, we have a game in hand and will go ahead of them if we win it. However, that does mean we have to win it and that game is away at Kobe… Aside from their defeat to Sanfrecce last week, Kashima don’t particularly look like they’re going to lose many games this year. And I wouldn’t say we are looking so comfortable that we’re going to win all of our games. Still along way to go in the league though, but another win on Wednesday would certainly make the league table look a lot better for us. And if Urawa pull their finger out and get something against Kashima at the weekend, well, that would also be nice. If they can’t raise their game for a visit of one of their most hated rivals, I’m not sure how they will get out of the bottom half of the table. Anyway, we shouldn’t worry about other games and should instead concentrate on winning our own matches. Fingers crossed that Kobe’s win this weekend is a false dawn and they’re back to their previous dodgy selves on Wednesday. I kind of doubt it though… In any case, Go Frontale!

Team 
 
GK 1. Sung-Ryong JUNG
DF 13. YAMANE Miki
DF 7. KURUMAYA Shintaro
DF 5. TANIGUCHI Shogo
DF 15. SASAKI Asahi
MF 8. TACHIBANADA Kento
MF 14. WAKIZAKA Yasuto
MF 19. TONO Daiya
FW 41. IENAGA Akihiro
FW 9. LEANDRO DAMIAO
FW 23. MARCINHO

Subs
GK 27. TANNO Kenta
MF 6. JOAO SCHMIDT (on for TONO 80')
FW 11. KOBAYASHI Yu (on for IENAGA 86')
MF 17. KOZUKA Kazuki (on for WAKIZAKA 90+3')
FW 20. CHINEN Kei (on for LEANDRO DAMIAO 80')
FW 24. MIYAGI Ten (on for MARCINHO 80')
DF 31. YAMAMURA Kazuya

My Frontale Man Of The Match

I don’t really like to do the obvious with these but I think I’m going to disappoint anyone who is expecting me to pull out a surprise this time. It wasn’t a great performance and I would probably usually not bother with it. But seeing as I did that last time I probably shouldn’t do it again. It could have gone to Marcinho, who seems to be our main threat recently, but in the interests of sentimentality, I’ll give it to…

TONO Daiya - scored when it looked like we wouldn’t and put in a decent performance against the team he was on loan to a couple of seasons ago. Whilst I’d like to see him play in the Ienaga position some time, he’s making a real case for being a regular starter in the midfield. 
 
 
Goals

TONO (Frontale) 55' 1-0
KURUMAYA (Frontale) 59' 2-0

Highlights

Sunday 8 May 2022

Vs Shimizu S Pulse (away) 7/5/22 J League match 12


Shimizu S Pulse 0 - 2 Kawasaki Frontale

It’s often said that it’s better to have a lucky manager rather than a good manager. We can probably say that over the last few years luck has quite often gone our way. Well, aside from the ACL that is, where luck remains ever elusive for us. They also say that you make your own luck, and with that in mind, you probably have to give Oniki some credit in that department. We’re lucky because we have good players that we’ve developed and have been playing with a successful system which has also been worked on and honed for a long time. This year we’ve had quite a bit of luck already getting wins that should have been draws and draws that should have been losses, and haven’t been hammered as often as we probably have deserved to be. After a pretty mediocre and at some times hideous ACL campaign we’re back to league action and back to getting lucky again. On this occasion though, rather than in this game itself,  the luck was more to do with Sanfrecce hammering Kashima who had taken the lead in the league and were starting to look pretty dangerous. It’s fair to say that Sanfrecce have been quite inconsistent so far this year, with them bedding in a new manager and some new thinking. They have done us a massive favour this weekend though. We still sit in second place in the league, two points behind Kashima but with a game in hand. So theoretically things are back under our own control again. Whether we are able to control those things is another matter. At times in this game it looked like we were back and banging, but you definitely wouldn’t say about the 90 minutes as a whole that we’re playing great and looking difficult to beat. We had a couple of big let-offs in this game and in the second half only managed four shots, all of them off target. On Saturday, the top tier of the away stand at Nihondaira was a pretty hot place to be, in direct sunlight, protected only by liberal applications of sun cream, a 2020 ’26 KAMIYA’ towel and a bottle of water. I managed to survive but my phone was getting so hot that I kept the photos and notes to a minimum. So, basically this is the usual ‘I can’t remember much, so don’t expect much from this post’ disclaimer, but with slightly different circumstances than normal. Let’s get this over and done with. I’ve got a busy week of work coming up.

 
As I said above, this was a decent performance for the first 45 minutes. We looked quite dangerous, made a few chances and ! shock ! horror ! actually took a couple of them. I don’t know if there was some kind of rocket put up the players arses after our ACL exit. If there was, I certainly hope Oniki fired one up his own rear too as he was also far from blameless. Our players came out of the traps looking quite driven, perhaps wanting to make up for what had recently occurred in Malaysia. Wakizaka was noticeably better than he has been recently. He seemed to be playing with the confidence that we used to expect from him but which since he took over Kengo’s 14 shirt number seemed to have deserted him. It was weird to see him score a goal and run back down the pitch away from his teammates’ celebrations in order to do his goal celebration in front of the fans. There was a significant ‘two fingered up yours’ component to it which I think will maybe be lost on most fans but was very much enjoyed by at least three people in the stadium. I’m looking forward to being able to enjoy this many more times this season. Our starting line-up was utterly predictable. Well I say predictable but I couldn’t be sure that Oniki wouldn’t stick with the dull as ditchwater when it comes to scoring goals, about as effective as ditch water would be for cleaning your bathroom, double defensive midfield formation. Thankfully he didn’t so we got what we probably expected, regardless of how badly this first choice eleven have been playing this year. But, as I said, they did alright and it was actually quite fun to watch us play for the first time in a while. Certainly some of this was to do with us being back in the stadium. And there has been some hinting from the J League about the potential return of singing coming some time soon. Because of this the Kazoku were trying out some of the old songs, but obviously instrumental versions. It made for quite a confused support. I had a lot of trouble working out what songs we were clapping and continued to do so until a helpful person behind me, started quietly humming the tunes so people could work out what they were and where we were in the song. I do miss singing and the atmosphere it creates but I’m not going to demand it is reinstated immediately. When it comes to most things, I think I’m usually closer to the more progressive end of the scale, but in matters of public health and getting on with others in day to day life, I’m happy to be conservative. With a small c. Definitely not a big c. Other things of note when it comes to us doing well would be a burgeoning relationship between Sasaki and Marcinho. They really seemed to be clicking in the first half of this game. And they also were combining well with Damiao, who right now seems to be putting in lots of hard work, but not really getting any luck in front of goal. I hope he knows his efforts are appreciated. This is all quite optimistic isn’t it, so maybe let’s change the tone a bit and talk about the second half.

 
Damn, it went a bit crap, didn’t it? I seem to recently have discovered a previously untapped seam of sympathy for Oniki. I’ve spent so long moaning about him not having a plan B and when he finally came up with one and used it, I moaned about him not using it at the right times, or it not really working. In this game we were doing alright until he made his first changes and (maybe) reinstated the double defensive midfield by bringing on Joao Schmidt. I say maybe as, once again, I couldn’t really work out if Joao and Tachibanada were both playing in that position. From an attacking effectiveness point of view, it definitely seemed like it. I’m never sure if we are playing them both at the base of the midfield to protect what we’ve got or whether Tachibanada is actually playing further forward. If he is, he’s not really that much further forward and I think perhaps that his usual game plan is stuck in his head. Basically, after these first two subs, our supporters might as well have gone home really, as there wasn’t much to write home about happening. So yeah, I feel some sympathy for Oniki as his proactiveness which I've been calling for actually seemed to destroy our play. Well, maybe that’s a touch harsh as we didn’t concede, but it definitely wasn’t much fun. So basically, he's damned if he does and damned if he doesn't. The usual shuffling of the front players followed around 10 minutes afterwards but nothing much changed. It just felt a bit like someone getting into the rowing boat, snapping the oars in half and launching the broken remains as far away as possible in different directions from the boat. The wind and the tide is in control. You might get closer to where you want to go, but at the same time would probably settle for not getting blown back to where you came from or sinking. Perhaps I should also have some sympathy for Yamane, who unlike some of the other squad members who have got a kick up the backside from our woeful Malaysian adventure, seems to still be knackered and out of form. I’m slightly worried that he can’t be arsed recently. He drifts in and out of games, somewhat in tandem with when we are attacking and defending. I don’t know if he needs a rest or he needs some competition for his place. I very much doubt he’ll get either.


I’ll quickly round this up by mentioned the truly shocking royalty free version of Europe’s ‘Final Countdown’ that Shimizu played as the players entered the pitch. I say version, but the truth is probably more that it’s one of those songs that are designed to be just different enough to avoid a lawsuit. Change the keyboard sound a tiny bit, slow it down a touch, add some notes to some phrases and remove some from other phrases. It’s really worth checking DAZN to hear it. And also feel like I should say that the ref in this game was Koya and I don’t think I have anything to moan about with him! Shocking! For some reason he was always listed as K.Hut on Flashscore, which is a bit strange as I have never seen them translate anyone else’s name. As that’s something that no-one really does… ever. Clearly Flashscore got wind of their mistake and he’s now listed as K.Koei, so some progress I guess, but still not right. Maybe we should get our manager O.Toru to have a word. Or maybe our captain T.Shogo. Next up we have Avispa Fukuoka at home next weekend. This time they definitely won’t be the first team to beat us this year as they were in 2021. Plenty of teams have done that already. They always seem to frustrate us though, so I’m not expecting it to be much fun. But fingers crossed! Go Frontale!
 
Team 
 
GK 1. Sung-Ryong JUNG
DF 13. YAMANE Miki (Yellow card 55')
DF 7. KURUMAYA Shintaro
DF 5. TANIGUCHI Shogo
DF 15. SASAKI Asahi
MF 8. TACHIBANADA Kento
MF 14. WAKIZAKA Yasuto
MF 19. TONO Daiya
FW 41. IENAGA Akihiro
FW 9. LEANDRO DAMIAO
FW 23. MARCINHO

Subs
GK 27. TANNO Kenta
MF 6. JOAO SCHMIDT (on for TONO 61')
FW 11. KOBAYASHI Yu (on for MARCINHO 71')
MF 17. KOZUKA Kazuki (on for IENAGA 89')
FW 20. CHINEN Kei (on for LEANDRO DAMIAO 61')
FW 24. MIYAGI Ten (on for WAKIZAKA 71')
DF 31. YAMAMURA Kazuya

My Frontale Man Of The Match

Hmmm. Dunno really. The first half was good but the second wasn't really. I can't think of anyone who particularly stood out so let's leave it for this game.

 
Goals

WAKIZAKA (Frontale) 14' 0-1
MARCINHO (Frontale) 32' 0-2

Highlights