Vs Kashima Antlers (home) 27/8/22 J League match 27

Kawasaki Frontale 2 - 1 Kashima Antlers 

Before this game I met up with FC Ryukyu fan Okinawa Ozzy for some beers at Haneda airport. I went there straight from my Saturday morning work. After he’d headed off, I had a bit of time to kill as I was going to arrive in Kawasaki much too early. So I popped to the pub. Even though I’d had plenty of time to spare, I somehow managed to not really get any lunch or dinner along the way, relying on a few snacks. After the game I went to the usual post match pub to celebrate the result and then caught the last train home. I think you might be able to see what this is all leading to. Basically, I probably didn’t pay enough attention during the match, didn’t make any interesting notes, got caught up in the excitement… and so on. Yes, this post is going to be pretty vague. However, I’m pleased to see that my feelings about and impression of the match seem to broadly line up with the match stats. We did alright, got off to a good start, rode our luck at times, and didn’t have much of the ball. We did however take the three points, which let’s be honest, at this stage of the season is far more important. With Kevin Muscats’ lot not playing this weekend due to the ACL (even though their participation in that competition didn’t last much longer than ours did and they have effectively been free for the last nine days), we now have closed the gap on them to two points, winning our games in hand. Their form is pretty horrible, four defeats in a row, but presumably that will break soon. Hopefully it won’t. Our form is better! Three league wins in a row was what we needed and somehow what we got. It’s a shame that we had to play that Urawa game when we were so COVID depleted as if we’d won that game we’d now be top of the table. With YFM not playing till next weekend and us having a game on Wednesday, (the home game against Sagan Tosu that was postponed due to them having COVID), there is the mathematical possibility that we could go top of the table on Wednesday night. I say mathematical possibility, as everyone in the world knows that game will almost certainly finish 0-0, as it does, EVERY DAMN YEAR. We follow that up with an away game at Shonan, a team who hammered us at home and whose lowly league position and bad form never seems to matter when it comes to us playing them. YFM have FC Tokyo. Come on Tsukagawa, get stuck in and cause some mayhem. So this game, eh? I have two main memories of the match so I’ll give each one a paragraph. 

 

Do you remember the away game against Kashima this year? This was pretty much the same as that. We started alright, scored twice early on and then hung on for most of the match. In that game, they didn’t manage to score and in this one they got one which made everything a bit squeakier, but effectively the feeling was the same. Go ahead, perhaps slightly against the run of play, double the lead and then grimly hang on. In that game it was Chinen and Sasaki who scored. In this one it was Ienaga and Wakizaka. Chinen was back in the matchday squad though. As was Nobori, which I guess means his rumored back injury wasn’t so bad. Damiao wasn’t though. Which I guess means his injury is as bad as we expected… Also absent were Sung-Ryong, who was back in Korea due to a family bereavement and Chanathip and Seko, who were… I dunno. Oshima was also back from his injury and managed 20 minutes at the end of the match. Chinen got 30 minutes and I thought he did ok again. Recently poor old Kobayashi just never seems to have any luck when it comes to him making a mark when he gets an opportunity to start. I guess he’ll have more chances though as it seems we might be missing Damiao for a while (no evidence of this, just a feeling). The first half was quite exciting, which I guess is exactly how you describe a match where there are chances at either end and your team scores and the opposition don’t. Kashima were extremely fouly and the ref started the match well giving them a few yellows. I think he felt he’d overdone it though, as for large portions of the match it seemed that plenty of players were getting away with murder (metaphorically speaking. They fouled a lot but none of them were actually fatal blows, not for want of trying from some players). Going in for half time 2-0 down the Kashima Fans kept on drumming and clapping. And continued to do so for the whole of half time. Which I was all ready to make a snarky comment about, but then their team came out blazing in the second half and scored so I guess I can’t. Sadly for us they stopped fouling so much in the second half and started playing a bit more. But we held on and took the three points. Phew!

 

The only other points I have to make are the usual 'amusing' borderline abusive comments that I like to make about opposition players who I don’t like. I have never seen Diego Pituca look so shocked as he did when the penalty was awarded against him. Well, not since he allegedly pushed an assailant into an Amsterdam canal and possibly committed manslaughter in self-defence. Or perhaps that time when he had to leave daytime TV quiz show Eggheads due to an allegation that he was later cleared of. (Yeah, this is a very niche reference and weak comparison, but I’m to keep going with it every time he plays against us and annoys me. Actually, the second half of that is probably superfluous). Hmmmm. Who should I whinge about next…? Maybe there’s no-one worth mentioning. No-one who really embodies the (spit on the ball when the decision goes against you) ‘Spirit of Zico’ in the Kashima team… Ah! How could I forget? It's Yuma Suzuki, whose panto villain elements just increase game by game. Perhaps worried that he will soon engineer a transfer to an extremely minor level foreign league on a big salary by sulking and refusing to play, he now seems to have been made Kashima’s captain, setting an example for his teammates with cool-headed and reasonable reactions to decisions, and fair play at all times. Clearly I’m aware that he’s a good player, and in this game everything seemed to be going through him for Kashima. Pleasingly that meant that when the ball did make it into the box he wasn’t there, as he tended to be the supplier instead, and therefore he didn’t manage to score. He did however manage to shin one of our players in the face in an incident that surely warranted a yellow and probably a red. But refs seem to be scared of him. He could basically do anything he wanted in this game and never get booked. I guess he does look like the type of guy who would respond to what he considers an unjustified yellow card for a machete amputation of an opposition player’s limb by murdering first the ref, and then tracking down all of his family and friends and doing the same to them. Surely it’s only a matter of time before he punches an official or perhaps his manager and then gets loaned to FC Tokyo, where he can follow the path of Kashima’s other recent troublemaker Leandro. Anyway, Kashima’s noble captain for some reason was rocking a shirt tucked-in, shorts rolled-up look which brought to mind nothing other than a full nappy. And judging from his grumpiness I think that nappy had been filled for quite a while, hadn’t been changed and the nappy rash was starting to kick in. I suppose that’s one way to explain the sulking. Anyway, what’s the point of even writing this, nobody likes him and everybody knows he’s a horrible dirty player. The real shame is that he’s actually quite good too. But as long as he’s sulking, I’m happy. 

 

So there we go, a weak and detail free comparison to a game earlier in the season and a paragraph of moaning about Kashima players. What a masterwork! On Wednesday I’ll be working (and therefore not getting drunk) before the game so will probably come away with some more detailed thoughts about that match. I would say it’s a must win, but that goes without saying, as they are all must win games now. But yeah, probably a 0-0. Or maybe even worse. And then Shonan away on Saturday. Whether we’ll see any rotation for those games, I’m not sure. Judging by Oniki’s previous decisions in similar situations where he’s shown unwillingness to change things unless he really has to, I’d say probably not. But at least we have a team who are winning at the moment. Not changing a team that isn’t winning is frustrating, so let’s hope we can keep this momentum going!
 

Team 

 
GK 27. TANNO Kenta
DF 13. YAMANE Miki

DF 5. TANIGUCHI Shogo

DF 4. JESIEL

DF 2. NOBORIZATO Kyohei
MF 6. JOAO SCHMIDT (Yellow card 26')

MF 8. TACHIBANADA Kento (Yellow card 68')

MF 14. WAKIZAKA Yasuto

FW 41. IENAGA Akihiro

FW 11. KOBAYASHI Yu

FW 23. MARCINHO

Subs

GK 21. ANDO Shunsuke

DF 7. KURUMAYA Shintaro (on for NOBORIZATO 59')

MF 10. OSHIMA Ryota (on for WAKIZAKA 72')

MF 19. TONO Daiya (on for MARCINHO 72')

FW 20. CHINEN Kei (on for KOBAYASHI 59')

FW 24. MIYAGI Ten
MF 31. YAMAMURA Kazuya (on for TACHIBANADA 90')

 

My Frontale Man Of The Match

Joao Schmidt had another great game I thought. He’s just a troublemaker for the opposition and I thought his yellow card was a bit dodgy. I could give it to him again but instead I think I’ll go for…

IENAGA Akihiro - playing really well at the moment. Seems to be impossible to get the ball off him and I love his attitude and reaction when someone dares to try to do so. Kashima fans apparently believe that they will never beat us ever again if he is playing which sounds good to me. Great penalty too. 

 

Goals

 

IENAGA (Frontale) PEN 8' 1-0

WAKIZAKA (Frontale) 14' 2-0

NAKAMA (Kashima) 52' 1-0

 

Highlights

Vs Avispa Fukuoka (away) 20/8/22 J League match 26

Avispa Fukuoka 1 - 4 Kawasaki Frontale

We won in Kyushu! But, as usual when it’s an away trip with a fun game and a good result, I didn’t take enough notes and then consumed too much alcohol after the game to be able to write anything much about the game. Oh well, I’ll do my best I suppose. This was actually a decent performance and a nice result. Both Fukuoka and us have had quite a few COVID problems recently but this game saw both teams with full benches… well, up until the day of the game when (we think) Nobori had to pull out due to what I heard was a back injury. Apparently if we called someone up to replace him they wouldn’t have arrived till the second half of the game at the earliest so they just decided to not bother. I thought that we always had a couple of spare players traveling with the team in case of emergencies. I think Ando has been doing this for pretty much the last ten years, so if he was there we could have gone with our multiple keepers on the bench thing again but perhaps decided against it. Or perhaps in COVID times and with our squad recently having gone through the ringer a bit with cases, they’ve decided to not take anyone who doesn’t need to be there. In the end it didn’t matter really, but it did mean Tachibanada at left back again and perhaps because of that a reprieve for Joao Schmidt who may otherwise might have been dropped. Or perhaps we would have gone with that ‘nice and tight but pretty bad at getting goals’ double defensive midfield again. Anyway, this is far too many maybes for a post that I thought would be quite short and we haven’t even made it out of the intro paragraph yet…

Ok, now we have. Four goals! It’s been ages since we last scored four! Or at least it feels like it. We actually got four against Gamba but that was due in no small part to a very early red card for them. On this occasion we also faced 10 men, but at that stage we were already two goals up and had scored three so maybe it wasn’t quite so decisive. Also, after Ienaga cooly converted the penalty which came with the red card, I think both teams significantly took their feet off the gas(es)(?), (a phrase that sounds really uncomfortably weird in the plural…). I should mention here that the weather was pretty brutal in Fukuoka on Saturday. We’ve had our fair share of unpleasantly hot days recently but the humidity was off the scale for this game. Big thanks to the guy who was restocking the stadium vending machine as it ran out. And big credit to Avispa for pricing the water at ¥110 a bottle inside the stadium. Plenty of other teams don’t show such restraint when it comes to the possibility of making a bit of extra cash. And I seem to remember that some clubs, (Kashima comes to mind, but maybe I’m not right about that and am just drawn to them because of their policy of confiscating the lids of PET bottles when you enter the stadium), don’t even bother selling water and instead go with the sports drink option, where presumably the price can be jacked up a bit. Anyway, it was hot and with the game at 4-1, I think both teams thought that the result was unlikely to change significantly in the last 20 minutes so eased up. No such luxury for us fans behind the goal. This was a singing game! Cerezo away in the Levain was too, but I don’t think many people went to that one. Singing games mean that we had to have our ticket checked every time we re-entered the area behind the goal. I guess this is because every other seat was out of action with everyone sitting at a (slight) distance from each other. Here are my ‘exciting’ takes on the return of singing at Frontale games. 1. It isn’t easy to sing loudly with a mask on if you’re an aging unfit and slightly overweight man. I declined to join in with the jumping. I’ve never been much good at that anyway, (see the points mentioned above), and given that singing was a struggle I don’t think I needed to add anything else to the equation. (I did jump quite enthusiastically to the ‘Vai De La Frontale’ at the end though. By then I knew my endurance challenge was nearing its end. I hadn’t reckoned with standing in such a long queue for the bus though, but if you can’t stand in a queue for a bus after a 4-1 away win, when can you? And I am a Brit too, so queuing is pretty much a natural behaviour for me. 2. I think we were pretty loud. If felt like it anyway. 3. It’s so much fun to sing again and really improves the game experience. I’m not sure if being able to sing also means I can shout at the ref, but I guess it’s a similar endeavour. Both are fun but probably pointless. I’m not one of these people who is going to demand it immediately returns everywhere, but I wouldn’t be surprised if it does come back fairly soon. After all, we are still getting new high levels of cases in Japan on a daily basis but there seems to be no return to any kind of restrictions to daily life so the direction of travel does clearly seem to be towards getting back to normal regardless of the situation. 4. Our new player songs are nice. I did a post about them on here recently. Significantly, not so many lyrics in the new ones and a lot more lala-ing, perhaps because there are a lot of songs for people to remember at the same time due to us not having any singing for the last couple of years. I wonder why Tanno doesn’t have a song though. I know he hasn’t played much, but he’s breaking new records for being an unused sub. Go on Kazoku and give him a song. I think he deserves it.

 

One song we had plenty of practice with on the day was Marcinho’s one. Apparently his hattrick was the first one of his career. Previously Oniki has taken him off after scoring twice on a couple of occasions I think, so perhaps the lack of subs really worked in his favour this time. He seemed very happy as you’d expect after the game and somewhat bizarrely was given man of the match by the sponsors who you would imagine would normally pick an Avispa player. This was another sign of Avispa being a nice club it seems. Not even a late appearance from flying-double-footed-to-the-kneecap tackler Jordi Croux was able to dull my positivity towards Avispa. They also had their own club beer, which was pretty nice. Unfortunately after buying it just before kick off and forgetting that I wouldn’t be able to take it into the singing section and therefore to my seat, I had to dispatch it pretty quickly. Drank it all in about half the time it took Grolli to leave the pitch after getting his red card, (so about 3 minutes). Their cheerleaders were very friendly to us too. Hmmmm… there must be something to moan about….. hmmmmm. Lukian was a bit of a diver maybe. Oh, I know, maybe their supporters starting a chant as Damiao was on the floor apparently seriously injured and continuing it whilst he got taken off on a stretcher. Not particularly classy, but you know, these things happen with call leaders sometimes and to be honest I’m clutching at straws a bit. The Damiao injury doesn’t look good apparently. Oniki said something along the lines of never having seem Damiao in such pain and that it was beginning to swell up quite soon after the game. So maybe we have a striker problem approaching. Perhaps also I should moan a little about their policy with light sticks/pen lights, whatever you want to call them, even though my moan is hardly worth bothering with. It was all a bit confusing as we were using them before the game, as were some of the Avispa fans and the cheerleaders did a dance with them at half time. Apparently they are banned during the match though so the poor steward had to basically individually go and talk to everyone who was doing it one at a time. As most people don’t use them all the time it was something like an illuminated whack a mole for him. Just as one person has been told and puts theirs away, another person gets theirs out for the next illumination-worthy incident. Probably would have been easier to just make an announcement, but well done to the steward anyway. The policy was something of a mystery though. Someone on Twitter retweeted my video with someone using one in front of me questioning (as far as I can tell) somewhat sarcastically whether Frontale fans are allowed to use them. Other people seemed to think that only Avispa coloured ones were allowed. Others, that none were allowed, perhaps due to it being near the airport, although given that their website was selling them that seemed unlikely. Buried in the small print somewhere on their website was the request to not use them during the game. Perhaps this was a slight overreaction to the recent scandal where the significantly higher powered laser pointers were being used to put off players mid match in the African Nations Cup. I though the airport issue was quite amusing, perhaps based on the thought that during a game waving light sticks in the away end might confuse a pilot and end up with them trying to land a flight from Haneda on the pitch. Presumably the same thing has happened when a local resident went into their garden with a torch looking for their dog’s favourite toy. Or when someone used the toilet without putting the blind down before turning the light on. You would have thought the big flood lights would have distinguished the stadium from the runway anyway. But it is nice though to have a city where the airport is so close to the city centre and the football stadium. If only those buses were a bit better…

 

 

Anyway, this is all quite petty stuff so let’s whinge about the ref a bit and here I’m sure Avispa fans might want to join in here too. Long before he’d sent off Grolli and long before he taken a weak clearance from the Avispa keeper, controlled it with his privates and then his hand instead of getting out the way and letting our player, who the ball was going to fall perfectly to, take a shot or possibly make a chance, I was already moaning that he and his assistants were useless. I find it very annoying when a linesman signals for a throw in with his flag held directly above his head, waiting for the ref to tell him which way to give it. I find it more annoying when the ref is doing the same thing and they both just stare at each other waiting for the other to flinch first, both wanting to avoid making an error, until the ref just gives it to whoever protests more. To be fair to the ref he was in a tricky situation when he decided to get in the way of the ball with his…. erm… balls. It was clearly going to fall to us but I think he would have been in a world of trouble if he’d given us a drop ball on the edge of the box. With neither team really in control of the ball I guess he had no choice, but let’s not let that get in the way of a moan. The red card was a weird one but did bring some enjoyable entertainment. It was an absolutely obvious penalty I thought and I think most people would agree. If you look at the initial incident, the ref is reaching for his pocket immediately. When I saw it getting referred for VAR with the dreaded finger on the ear I was bamboozled as to how we were going to be denied a nailed-on penalty. It gave the Avispa players a bit of confidence and hope though as they seemed to redouble their efforts at negotiation and upped the level of haranguing they were directing at the ref. It was very enjoyable when he got the red out though, a bit like being given an expensive Christmas present from a relative you didn’t know existed. At the time I thought I must have missed some kind of shove or ‘fuck off you cheating shit of a ref’ bit of abuse from Grolli to the ref as I wasn’t sure why he’d been sent off. But after a little bit of research of the rules, (which are so horrendously vague and open to interpretation that they defy belief), perhaps it was the right decision.

The whole double jeopardy thing has gone now so we can have a red and a penalty so that wasn’t an issue. The four points (and I feel like I have written this on a few occasions thanks to the ongoing DOGSO battle between Tangiguchi and perhaps Japan’s shittiest ref Kasahara) are 1. Location and number of defenders (there was no-one who was going to get to Tono before he shot), 2. Distance (you couldn’t get much closer to the goal and apparently the closer the better), 3. Likelihood of the keeper getting the ball (you can’t really say he was going to do that before Tono could shoot) and 4. Direction of play (Tono was going directly towards the goal). So maybe it was right. But it did feel pretty wrong. Not complaining though. Well, not till Taniguchi gets sent off again for a similar incident. As usual with recent rule changes, things seem to be getting more complicated and difficult to easily decide, which in turn justifies the existence of VAR (oooh, that’s a coincidence!). I really feel for refs at levels and in leagues where there is no VAR who have to make ‘correct’ decisions on the spot about events that VAR likes to watch from multiple angles for a few minutes at a time. Yes, I still hate VAR. But admittedly this time the finger on the ear gave instead of taking away.

So lots in this post about small aspects of the game and hardly any discussion of anything that might be in the highlights package. Lovely! Bet you’re glad I gave you all that light stick talk, right? Next up we have Kashima at home on Saturday. Would be nice to keep this little league run going but Kashima are on a horrible run, which probably means they’ll turn up and beat us easily. Hopefully we’ll be able to fill the bench on that occasion. I’m guessing Kobayashi will be starting up front and with both Damiao and Chinen probably injured, we might be looking at maybe Igarashi getting on the bench. I suspect it will be Yamamura as the replacement striker though. He does seem to like to score against his old team though so maybe that’s a good thing. I’m slightly concerned that after the fun of this game it might be a bit of a let down. No singing obviously, but maybe, just maybe we might be able to play well again. Fingers crossed!

 

 

 

Team 

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

DF 5. TANIGUCHI Shogo

DF 4. JESIEL

DF 8. TACHIBANADA Kento
MF 6. JOAO SCHMIDT

MF 18. CHANATHIP

MF 14. WAKIZAKA Yasuto

FW 41. IENAGA Akihiro

FW 9. LEANDRO DAMIAO

FW 23. MARCINHO

Subs

GK 27. TANNO Kenta

DF 7. KURUMAYA Shintaro (on for WAKIZAKA 60')

FW 11. KOBAYASHI Yu (on for LEANDRO DAMIAO 45+3')

MF 16. SEKO Tatsuki (on for IENAGA 90+2')

MF 19. TONO Daiya (on for CHANATHIP 46')

MF 31. YAMAMURA Kazuya (on for MARCINHO 90+2')

 

My Frontale Man Of The Match

As much as I don’t like to just give it to the goalscorer, who am I to disagree with the Avispa sponsors….

MARCINHO - Scored. And scored again. And again. And never stopped running. And his new song is good.

 

Goals

 

MARCINHO (Frontale) 7' 0-1

YAMAGISHI (Avispa) 22' 1-1

MARCINHO (Frontale) 45' 1-2

MARCINHO (Frontale) 64' 1-3

IENAGA (Frontale) PEN 73' 1-4

 

Highlights
 

Vs Cerezo Osaka (home) 10/8/22 Levain Cup quarter finals second leg

Kawasaki Frontale 2 - 2 Cerezo Osaka

Oh well. After the excitement and optimism of last weekend we've been brought back to earth with a bump with a game that has so many similarities to previous games that I’ll do a whole section on that below. So we're out of the Levain cup at the first time of asking again. Much like we were with the ACL. Thankfully we had a wonderful run in the Emperor’s Cup this year, defeating a university team before bravely bowing out against a J2 team. So we're left with only the league where we're 8 points behind our local rivals at the top and sitting in fourth place. Admittedly we have two games in hand, but the thing about games in hand is that you don’t necessarily win them. We won't have any distractions to stop us scheduling them now though! Last weekend was glorious, but a bit lucky. But if we don't beat Kyoto this weekend we might as well pack up now and forfeit the rest of the season. We already need YFM to mess up and they unfortunately look far less likely to do so this year than in previous years. And even if they do, you've got to imagine that we need to win all of our remaining games. And the last time we managed to string even two wins together was in... May. Blimey… Unlike with the first leg, I managed to attend this game. Much like the first leg, I don’t want to write much about this game. Inevitably this post will probably stretch out a bit longer than I expected though. So let’s get on with it.

 

After having almost no-one to chose from and still going ahead with games we now have a bit more choice when it comes to selecting starting lineups and subs. We've gone from zero left backs to apparently now having three fit ones and this game saw Nobori back in the starting line up and Kurumaya on the bench. Nobori looked a bit out of condition I thought, but did reasonably well. This meant that Oniki again had the midfield headache that comes from having a massively unbalanced squad when it comes to the number of midfielders, particularly when we seem to be locked into playing only three each game. Tachibanada is this season's great undroppable it seems (apart from Yamane naturally who is this century's great undroppable), but Joao Schmidt did really well in the YFM game. So he went with both, but with Tachibanada further forward. I'm sure it doesn't make a great difference to his game, but at the same time feel like he never plays as well there. To facilitate the return of Nobori, Wakizaka dropped to the bench. Perhaps Oniki thought it might make us a bit more defensive, and maybe it did but it also blunted our attack. Marcinho again showed why he's one of our most dangerous players with his pace and the fact that he scored twice. He probably could/should have had four or five goals though as he missed what looked like easier chances than he scored. People will probably criticise Damiao for his performance but that's mostly because people are stupid. I thought he had a great game making chances for other people and holding on to the ball up front. Sadly, we couldn’t take those chances. We really should have been out of sight by the time it came to injury time. Instead we conceded one and then humongously wobbled our way out of the cup. Jesiel had left the pitch on a stretcher but I think he’s probably ok and it might have instead been some kind of plan that he would signal when he'd had enough in the game and wanted a rest in order preserve him for future matches. At 2-0 we should have been comfortable but maybe the subs messed us up a bit. Yamamura it now seems will be used to replace the central striker instead of the central defender. You've got to feel a bit sorry for him presumably having spent the last few years focusing on upping his central defender game only to now be asked at short notice  to play up front instead. Given that he's naturally a midfielder it seemed a bit strange that we ended up with both him and Kobayashi playing out of position. Apparently another reason for us messing up at the end might have been that Oniki said the message about what we were supposed to be doing tactically was confused. I'm not sure how much of a mea culpa this was from him, but considering that he’s the manager, you’ve got to say that if the message was confused it was probably down to him. But to be honest, I think we can also blame COVID again. We just ran out of steam, players coming back from being sick weren’t quite fully fit and the small number of players who’d been  having to fulfill a crazy summer schedule without a break or without even a hope of substitution just ran out of puff. We've got to give some of them a rest at the weekend. Apparently a typhoon is coming and presumably plenty of games will be called off. I suspect though that we'll bravely play on, the ball caught in a mini tornado, spinning round above the centre circle for the entire ninety minutes and we’ll come away with a 0-0 with both teams having 0% possession and no shots and the weather being awarded man of the match. Probably still with some interminable and frustrating VAR delays too though. I also think a big issue was that old chestnut tactical inflexibility. I praised Oniki for changing thing last up against YFM and going a bit more direct, waiting at the back to draw the opposition front line forward and then launch the ball over them cutting them out of the game. Obviously that wasn’t going to work in this game. Cerezo always sit back and hit us on the counter attack, like many other J League teams do. So our problems now seem to be: 1. That the old ponderous tactics don’t seem to work against anyone anymore. 2. We've come up with some new tactics that work only against teams who are expected to beat us and whilst those tactics do kind of work, there’s only one of those kind of teams in the league at the moment. 3. We still don't seem to have anything prepared for when we play the other 16 teams in the league. So unless Oniki thinks again we might be seeing the same relentlessly ineffective stuff this weekend as we've seen for last 12 months. Kyoto messed us up royally in the away fixture and beat us. I can’t see that they’re going to attack much when they visit us. We'll see on Saturday I guess.

So a quick note on those similarities. Although to be honest, there's probably not much to learn from them and instead it's more of a curiosity. Firstly, you can’t help but notice that this game was quite like the first leg, with us taking the lead, hanging on till almost the end and then running out of steam and conceding. Look a little further back to the league game against Cerezo in Osaka. Once again we took the lead, had plenty of possession and then ran out of steam. In that game we conceded a goal midway through the second half though, so the injury time goal was a winner. And then look back to the same stage of this tournament a year ago against Urawa Reds. A 1-1 first leg with our team plagued by injuries and then a second leg which was a draw but in which we went out on away goals after a late goal getting them back into the game and then a last minute equaliser/winner. In 2021, this was in the 94th minute and this year in the 96th minute. Ugh. In the last seven games we've played we conceded a horrendous amount of late/injury time goals. In fact the only two out of the nine goals we've conceded in that time have either been in the last ten minutes of the 90 or in injury time. Those two were in the ‘classic’ Urawa four goalkeepers match when we were at our most COVID ravaged and probably not in a great place mentally either so probably are a bit of an outlier. Hopefully Oniki has noticed this. Although maybe given that he said we were disorganised at the end of the game suggests it was something of a surprise. I guess tired teams concede goals late on and tiredness isn't exactly easy to fix. Oh, unless you rotate a bit more and now we have the luxury to do that slightly, we should. I'll just finish here with a list of the times at which we've conceded in the last seven games. 90, 90+6, 45+3, 89, 4, 17, 85, 90+2, 85. If we're winning going in to the last ten minutes on Saturday, it might be worth closing you eyes and putting your fingers in your ears. It probably won't be easy watching!

So, next up Kyoto at home on Saturday. If we manage to get through that we have a week till our next game away at Avispa the following weekend. That one was a stinker last year and we never do well in Kyushu. Blimey… After the end of the game on Saturday better take those fingers out of your ears and keep them firmly crossed for the next week. Might make daily life a bit tricky, but it's all we can do right now… 

Team 

 

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

DF 4. JESIEL

DF 5. TANIGUCHI Shogo

DF 2. NOBORIZATO Kyohei
MF 6. JOAO SCHMIDT

MF 8. TACHIBANADA Kento

MF 18. CHANATHIP

FW 41. IENAGA Akihiro

FW 9. LEANDRO DAMIAO

FW 23. MARCINHO (Yellow card 67')

Subs

GK 27. TANNO Kenta

DF 7. KURUMAYA Shintaro (on for JESIEL 56')

FW 11. KOBAYASHI Yu (on for IENAGA 80')

MF 14. WAKIZAKA Yasuto (on for CHANATHIP 46')

MF 16. SEKO Tatsuki

MF 19. TONO Daiya (on for MARCINHO 80')

MF 31. YAMAMURA Kazuya (on for LEANDRO DAMIAO 85')

 

My Frontale Man Of The Match

Yeah we lost and we weren't great but I think one person deserves a mention...

LEANDRO DAMIAO - didn't really have any chances to score but did the unappreciated parts of playing up front really well and people should probably look beyond just his goals scored total.

 

Goals

 

MARCINHO (Frontale) 40' 1-0

MARCINHO (Frontale) 53' 2-0

KATO (Cerezo) 90' 2-1

YAMADA (Cerezo) 90+6' 2-2

 

Highlights

Vs Yokohama F Marinos (home) 7/8/22 J League match 24

Kawasaki Frontale 2 - 1 Yokohama F Marinos

Football is delightful isn’t it? From that opening burst of positivity you might think that you had stumbled upon a different blog than Frontale Rabbit. But no. For some reason I’m suddenly in quite a good mood. This season hasn’t been much fun up to now with us severely underperforming and with an apparent absolute dearth of ideas to improve things. And then we had the recent COVID cases debacle, games with an absolute minimum of 4 goalkeepers in the match day squad and the fit outfield players looking like they were almost dead on their feet, which they probably were due to having to play 90 minutes every few days with no hope of substitutions. But for this game we actually managed to name a bench with just the one keeper on it and fill the other spots with almost fit players. There is a god! It’s a miracle! I really hope we don’t look back on the Urawa game at the end of the season and find that it was crucial. It was basically three points thrown away. If the game had been postponed and we’d gone on to win it at a later date, (I appreciate that the latter wasn’t necessarily going to happen, particularly in 2022), we would have found ourselves in the position that winning our games in hand would take us to the top of the table. But yeah, lots of ifs here and it’s probably better to get on with things rather than moaning. They’ll be plenty of time for that at the end of the season, eh? Let’s get a lot more positive, a bit more gloaty and introduce a massive skip full of schadenfreude. We’ve been floundering this year, but what better way to shake us out of that flounder and the COVID nightmare that followed it than to beat the team at the top of the table, who also happen to be our local rivals in the very last minute of the game? And let’s ramp that schadenfreude up further when before the game the Marinos fans proudly unfurled a big flag with what I presume was supposed to be the league trophy but actually looked more like a cupcake baking tray with their colours and a big 2022 on top of it. I won’t say that pride comes before a fall, as I think they are still very much the favourites for the title, but I am really enjoying thinking about how long they took to make the flag and how they felt when they were folding it up after the game. Let’s hope we never see it again and they have to burn it in a skip round the back of the Nissan stadium in a couple of months. They can borrow the skip of schadenfreude we have as we’ll probably be done with it by then if things go the right way. Yes, this was only one game, but I think the boost it has given us could make it a season changing moment… if we beat Kyoto next weekend, which we probably won’t and will come crashing back to earth. Similarly, I hope it might become a season changing moment for YFM too. I hope their upcoming opponents will have a look at how we played against them, try the same thing and hopefully get some success. But things are still in their hands, so we need someone else to do us a favour.

 

A bit of chat about the game. It was quite a well matched and exciting encounter. I’ll stop short of saying it was a high quality match the two teams only managed five shots on target in total between them. But it definitely was exciting. It has been rare for me to be positive on here recently and it has probably been even rarer for me to praise Oniki but he did his homework for once and actually thought about how we could best play against YFM and it worked! In his post match interview, birthday boy (hope you enjoyed the gift) Kevin Muscats had a bit of a dig at us when he talked about how they had had to deal with a lot of ‘rockets’ from us. It had been noticeable from the start of the match that we were going a bit more direct. I really enjoyed us holding the ball at the back, waiting for the YFM team to move forward and then launch it over their front five or six players taking them out of the game. I’m really pleased that for once Oniki has actually modified our tactics slightly, instead of just ploughing on with the same thing endlessly. As much as Mr Muscats wanted to hint that we were playing long ball stuff, it wasn’t really us launching the ball down the middle of the pitch for the tall guy to head it to the short fast guy. There was definitely a bit more nuance to it. But I’ll let him have with his attempted dig as we were able to get the three points. As an aside, apart from when he’s whistling, I find Kevin Muscats an infinitely less irritating manager than their previous guy. Somewhat surprisingly given his playing career, Muscats seems to be far less of an arsehole and I even find myself feeling a bit sorry for him as when YFM win it’s because of Angeball and when they lose it’s because of Kevin Muscats. Would be quite fun to see Muscats move to Rangers and compare the two managers directly when they are both playing in a league with two teams that are hugely richer than the rest of the clubs around them. Might be quite fun for him too actually, and a good chance for him to be appreciated in his own right. Anyway, back to our directness and a bit of a whinge about the ref Kimura. There were an unbelievable amount of fouls on Damiao as he jumped to win the ball from goal kicks. Time after time he was fouled, time after time the ref gave the free kick but kept his cards in his pocket. It was intensely frustrating for me. When he finally did book someone it was Damiao himself. I haven’t watched that foul back but it was probably the right decision, but the fact that it followed a deluge of wrong decisions, (not all against us, but I’d say 95% against us), made it slightly annoying. He missed the studs up element of a tackle from Nishimura on Damiao which ended up with Nishimura leaving the pitch injured (karma eh?). It’s never nice to wish an injury on anyone but sometimes things do come back to bite the perpetrator. As was the case with the ref Kimura himself who had to leave the pitch after getting injured in the second half. In the interminable delay that arose from him subbing himself he was clearly able to pass on his game plan to the fourth official who was equally shit when he came on. I didn’t think that refs would have a game plan, but it was clear on this occasion that Kimura instructed his replacement to carry on ignoring most things and by doing so hopefully ensure a YFM win. We had a clear penalty turned down (well, I would say turned down, but more accurately its existence was just completely ignored), when Iwata elbowed Damiao in the chest (with absolutely no attempt to play the ball) in the box in front of the goal as he was waiting to head a cross into the net. But it wasn’t a great surprise really. 

I said above that both teams were up for it but I feel like neither were completely on top of their game. We looked like a team that has recently been ravaged by COVID and is still slightly trying to get back up to speed. YFM looked like a team that are probably mostly infected but aren’t testing positive yet. The amount of completely random misplaced passes and balls kicked directly off the pitch from them could only come from players with a certain amount of brain fog. In some ways, you could say that attitude-full, straight-from-the-salon shithead Nakagawa noticeably progressed in his COVID confusion as the game went on. Before the match when some of our fans applauded him, (he was a Frontale youth player, but to be honest his shitheadedness since that time prevents me from clapping him even slightly), he probably noticed it. Midgame he was in a slight delirium as he ‘accidentally’ celebrated his goal in front of our fans. The poor guy must have got disorientated as I’m sure it couldn’t be down to him being an absolute arsehole could it? (Hmmm, although he does tend to do these kind of things). At the end of the game it seemed that his COVID had set in as it looked like he was in pain, about to cry, and his silver hairdo was distinctly ruffled. I would say ‘the poor guy’ but I think the internet would crash when faced with my utter insincerity. I think both teams hit the post in the second half, so it could have gone either way really, but it’s nice that the luck fell our way as it hasn’t particularly done in the last couple of months. Some might say that the luck was really falling our way before then and they’d have a point as we definitely had been getting better results than our performances deserved. But perhaps some of this is a hangover from the last two seasons where we’ve had the luxury of a lot of good players and some exciting football. But now, after this big old blip, maybe we could be turning the corner. Yamane seems to have come back firing, perhaps the enforced break being something he needed as he’s been playing way too much for the last couple of years. I have no idea how bad his symptoms were but in this game you could see he was really up for it, and his volleyed cross for our first goal was beautiful. Perhaps not as beautiful as Jesiel’s header in the 98th minute though, (by the way, Jesiel was up front because he got cramp, so he and Yamamura swapped places for the last few minutes. Thankfully, his cramp didn't prevent him from scoring and celebrating wildly, although the run to the crowd did look quite painful), which again came from a lovely cross (maybe we could try crossing a bit more…), this time from Ienaga. He too seems to have stepped things up a bit. And Joao Schmidt was great in this game I thought, just giving the YFM midfield a lot of hassle. So maybe we could say that whether it was due to enforced COVID breaks for some players or a focussing of the mind and a pulling up of the sleeves from other players who weren’t infected but were very much affected by the absence of the infected, we seem to be coming out of a difficult patch with a new found desire and togetherness. I certainly feel a lot better about us than I have at any other stage of the season. But as I said above, anything but a good win against Kyoto and we’ll be back to the bad old days again. 

 

Before we get to that Kyoto game we have the small matter of a second leg against Cerezo in the Levain Cup on Wednesday. So basically the schedule doesn’t ease up at all. And of course we’ve still got those games to make up that were canceled due to other people’s COVID postponements. I suspect we’ll see some rotation on Wednesday and I really hope we do change things a bit. We have in recent years had a habit of finding something that works and then screwing the system and players into the ground until it doesn’t work at all and they can’t walk at all. But hopefully we’ll change things due to the tough summer conditions at the moment. I’m not saying we should be prioritising either the Cerezo game or the Kyoto game, but we should be prioritising not breaking a squad that is just about holding together at the moment and maybe turning a corner. How nice would it be if we could get a couple of wins from those two games? Also YFM are playing Shonan at the weekend. Shonan got hammered at the weekend so will be looking to bounce back (hopefully) and I feel like after we gifted them three points and four goals, they could give us a little something in return. Perhaps it’s a bit much to hope for though, as I’m sure YFM will also be looking to bounce back. But just imagine that the little attempted throat clearing, slight wheeze and little cough that we heard from YFM in this match developing into a full blown choke. That would be lovely! Particularly if they are wheeling out the 2022 league title flag again!

Team 

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

DF 5. TANIGUCHI Shogo

DF 4. JESIEL

DF 8. TACHIBANADA Kento
MF 6. JOAO SCHMIDT

MF 18. CHANATHIP

MF 14. WAKIZAKA Yasuto

FW 41. IENAGA Akihiro

FW 9. LEANDRO DAMIAO (Yellow card 45')

FW 23. MARCINHO

Subs

GK 27. TANNO Kenta

FW 11. KOBAYASHI Yu (on for MARCINHO 71')

DF 15. SASAKI Asahi

MF 16. SEKO Tatsuki (on for WAKIZAKA 71')

MF 19. TONO Daiya (on for CHANATHIP 62')

FW 24. MIYAGI Ten

MF 31. YAMAMURA Kazuya (on for LEANDRO DAMIAO 90')

 

My Frontale Man Of The Match

My man of the match section is back! This could have gone to a few people for once. Some might have said Jesiel as his contribution at the back and up front was immense, particularly scoring when he was struggling to walk, but he's almost always great so for a change I'll give it to...

JOAO SCHMIDT - has struggled at times to fit in and to get a decent run of games. I also think he's been blamed unfairly when things have gone wrong. But in this game he was just immense, winning the ball in the middle and breaking up YFM attacks. Bravo!

 

Goals

 

LEANDRO DAMIAO (Frontale) 25' 1-0

NAKAGAWA (Yokohama) 45'+3 1-1

JESIEL (Frontale) 90+9' 1-0

 

Highlights  

Vs Cerezo Osaka (away) 3/8/22 Levain Cup quarter finals first leg

Cerezo Osaka 1 - 1 Kawasaki Frontale

Sorry everyone, I missed this match in every possible way. I wasn’t able to go and wasn’t able to even watch it. Thankfully we managed to fill the bench on this occasion. But three of those players were goalies again. Chanathip is back from injury but the fact that he didn’t come on suggests that maybe he isn’t really back from injury. The only other addition to last weekend’s squad was Shin Yamada, a specially designated player who jumped straight into the starting line up. Damiao, Jesiel and Ienaga dropped to the bench, which presumably means they are being saved for Sunday against YFM and therefore we were prioritising that game over this one. Hopefully we’ll have a few more players back by then as the current lot must be getting pretty knackered. And we have the second leg of this tie next Wednesday so there’s no break for us at all really. All things being considered, this was a decent result I guess. We’ve got an away goal, we did better than we did last time we went to Cerezo (although once again we conceded late on in the game). Wakizaka’s goal was nice. Their goal was apparently offside if you listen to Twitter. But there was VAR (I think) so you’ve got to think that if it was, it would have been disallowed. It would be unfair to be disappointed about any kind of result at the moment, such is the position we’re in. There are a few other clubs with loads of COVID cases now. I wonder if any will get their games postponed or whether we’ll all just be gritting our teeth and getting on with it now (getting on with passing the infection around our clubs). The attitude towards COVID in the J League now does seem to reflect the societal attitude to be honest. Record high numbers but it seems that we’re going with a policy of not thinking too much about it and hoping it will go away at the moment. It would be really annoying if these not-enough-players games came back to haunt us at the end of the season. However, I think we’d already messed things up before this came up though. Anyway, I’m writing too much considering I didn’t even see any part of this game. Next up a very important/too late already so not important anymore game against Kevin Muscats’ YFM on Sunday. I don’t think we can win the league, but I really hope we give them a right pasting. 

 

Team 

 
GK 1. Sung-Ryong JUNG
DF 16. SEKO Tatsuki

DF 5. TANIGUCHI Shogo

DF 31. YAMAMURA Kazuya (Yellow card 41')

DF 8. TACHIBANADA Kento
MF 6. JOAO SCHMIDT

MF 19. TONO Daiya

MF 14. WAKIZAKA Yasuto

FW 24. MIYAGI Ten

FW 32. YAMADA Shin

FW 23. MARCINHO

Subs

GK 27. TANNO Kenta

GK 21. ANDO Shunsuke

GK 22. HAYASAKA Yuki

DF 4. JESIEL (on for MIYAGI 84')

FW 9. LEANDRO DAMIAO (on for YAMADA 84')

MF 18. CHANATHIP

FW 41. IENAGA Akihiro (on for MARCINHO 73')

Goals

 

WAKIZAKA (Frontale) 33' 0-1

TAGGART (Cerezo) 89' 1-1

Highlights

Vs Urawa Reds (away) 30/7/22 J League match 23

Urawa Reds 3 - 1 Kawasaki Frontale

Urawa away is always a bit of a mess of contradictions. The journey’s not that far but that walk from the station is right pain in the arse. Away games are fun as we get to visit some places, but the area around the Saitama Stadium remains something of a wasteland. Which in a way, makes it all the more bizarre that given that there’s nothing much there, that the stadium had to be so far from the station. If you’ve never been to Urawa’s ground you might think that it would be pretty easy to get to. Urawa is on plenty of train lines and it’s still very much in the greater Tokyo urban area (or whatever it’s called). However the Saitama stadium is on an handsomely overpriced train line which seems to have been constructed only to serve the stadium and some residential areas that you probably aren’t going to be visiting unless you live there. It’s also a stadium where we have some mixed memories. In recent years, we’ve got knocked out of the ACL there after totally collapsing after a red card and have lost a few cup finals there before we broke our jinx. But there are some good memories too… probably… I can’t really remember many off-hand. Checking our recent games there it seems I wasn’t able to go to the last three league games, all of which we won (COVID stopped away fans attending on two occasions and the previous time we had a game rescheduled to a Tuesday and having to work put the mockers on that for me). In fact the last time I saw a league game there was in 2018, the day after my birthday and we lost, giving me a wholly unwanted late birthday present. This year the game was the day before my birthday and whilst I still got the same present, this time it came with a resigned shrug. I was expecting this game to be called off as COVID cases in our camp grew day by day. Even on the day of the game at lunchtime in Higashi Jujo in a brewery with one shoe having recently self-destructed I was still expecting us to have to turn round and go home as a complete lack of players would probably make it impossible for the fixture to go ahead. I guess I was half right. There was absolutely a complete lack of players, but the game went ahead anyway. I’m sure you’re aware that we had three goalkeepers on the bench, two of whom were wearing outfield shirts, and even then we had two empty spots. So basically 16 players available, four of whom were keepers. If you only looked at the starting line up though, you might not have noticed anything much up. Whilst Oniki hasn’t yet tried out the ‘midfielder at both left AND right back’ thing, I don’t think anyone would have been that surprised to see him give it a go. If we hadn’t loaned out Tanabe (who can play at either left or right back) to JEF the previous week I’m not even sure that he would have made it any further than the bench. You would presume that anyone who wasn’t in the squad must be either COVID positive or injured. However I wouldn’t put it past Oniki leaving Igarashi out of the squad. After all, he was the only player apart from Tanno who didn’t make it on to the pitch against PSG (apparently we played them. I am denying the existence of that game). We had another player test positive the day after the game, so who knows what position we will be in on Wednesday (Cerezo away in the Levain Cup) or next Sunday (YFM at home, when we to all intents and purposes, might hand them the title)? Apparently Chanathip doesn’t have COVID and had a slight injury instead. So maybe he will be back… but then again we have one more COVID case so we’re effectively in the same position, and to be honest, given that the player must have been with the match day squad, I can’t imagine they will be the last person to get infected. Oh joy! But apparently the show must go on…

 

COVID issues are probably the big talking point about the game. We’ve had two games postponed already due to COVID. On both occasions it was the opposition with the cases and who asked for it to be called off. The Nagoya game is the contentious one. There is some kind of scandal about them lying/getting confused (delete as to your preference) about whether they had been told to cease club activities by the local health authorities. They said that they had been told to shut down the club due to it being a cluster but apparently weren’t. (Don’t quote me on any of this, it’s all second hand information and something may have been lost in translation). So it was a convenient misunderstanding which worked in their favour which was either accidental or intentional. They had a squad of 39 registered players and only nine cases. We have a smaller squad and more cases but still went ahead. Plenty of Oniki’s post match comments have focused on us doing the right thing and following the rules. It’s obvious that Nagoya didn’t do this but you can kind of understand why they didn’t. I’m unsure how I feel about this all. Of course we never would have known if we did end up manufacturing a few extra close contacts and having sufficiently few players to get the game called off. I think it’s a good thing that we didn’t cheat, but at the same time, if we don’t cheat and other teams do, we’re making a great statement and sacrifice but are definitely shooting ourselves in the foot. I’ve said the league is gone plenty of times but YFM stumbling recently has given us a little hope. Us playing and losing this game has destroyed any remaining hopes I’d say. Three games in nine days with not enough fit players to fill up the bench doesn’t exactly suggest that we will be at our best when it comes to the last of those three games against YFM. If you want to moan a bit more, add in the fact that the weather is pretty extreme right now too, so not enough players, and hardly any chance of subs to give anyone a rest. During the game, obviously the lack of subs means we lack the ability to change things round when things aren't working. But I think another big issue is that the fact that with effectively only two subs, you can't use them too early on in case you get an injury and end up having to play a goalie out field for a long time. But of course, if you leave it too late people are going to get even more knackered and the time a sub has to change things is going to be limited. So basically it's an impossible situation, and one which we knew we'd be in from the start. If we’re in the same position on Wednesday and next weekend and go ahead and play the game again, well, I hope everyone appreciates the stance we’ve taken. Certainly YFM and Kevin Muscats will appreciate it. Lots of people have said that us having three keepers on the bench and going ahead with the match will raise questions as to how these things are considered in the future. So even though we’ve shot ourselves in the foot by playing we are apparently doing the right thing and perhaps changing things for the better. Not sure how many bonus points this will get us and whether they’ll just award us a third consecutive league title as a reward for doing the right thing. Most likely there will be a rule change which benefits all of our rivals when they are in a similar situation which will come about thanks to our sacrifice. At least we’ll have the moral high ground to hang on to. Maybe we could put that in the trophy cabinet this year as I’m pretty sure nothing else will be going in there.

In this game though, we looked predictably out of sorts and we started really badly. I guess this is what happens when you play midfielders as full backs and have a centre back pairing that hasn’t spent any time together for almost a year. It showed. Without a doubt Taniguchi and Jesiel are our best options at centre back, but they were all over the place in this game. I’m not going to blame them though. I’m not going to blame anyone as we were up against it from the start. And then conceding two goals early put us even more up against it (if that makes any kind of sense). This wouldn’t be a post about an Urawa game if I didn’t slag them off a bit would it? Ridiculous time wasting after they went a goal up after four minutes and hoofball for most of the game. Typically my new hate figure Ito scored but didn’t seem to spend the whole game diving and feigning injury like he did in the super cup which is frustrating as that means I can only dislike him for things he’s done in the past. Irritating… It’s interesting to compare this game to the Super Cup actually. In that game we were atrocious and came into the game with one player absent due to COVID which seemed to totally dispirit and destroy our team. In this game we had hardly anyone available but managed to play a bit better. We had plenty of chances but couldn’t put them away, (as admittedly has been the case for most of this year). When you look at how we dominated the stats you’d imagine that the scoreline would have been the other way round. But when you consider one team was ravaged by COVID the scoreline makes sense the way it was. Since that Super Cup game, after which everyone said Urawa would storm the league, (and I said they weren’t that good, it was just that we were crap) they have been pretty poor up until recently. We have continued on in the same crappy way all year, getting a bit of good fortune with results at some stages but never really playing at all well. Attitudes to COVID seem to have changed a bit too! At that stage it was a bit of a shock for us to have a player absent due to COVID. Now it’s par for the course and the prevailing attitude seems to be that we need to get back to normal as soon as possible and just not really think about the effect that kind of thing might have. One of my recent pet hates is people on Twitter, (actually maybe I could stop this sentence here…), outside of Japan telling us all how Japan should be doing things. I’m not saying Japan is doing everything right (or indeed anything right) but what I do know is there are plenty of people who seem obsessed with displaying their ‘knowledge’ on matters that they don’t really know anything about and have no context for. 

A few quick brief observations to maybe lighten things up a little at the end here. Urawa, in addition to their normal disco heavy and perhaps inadvertently camp music selections which always make me think the stadium DJ went on a year abroad to the UK sometime in the 90’s, went with the previously unheard at their ground Beastie Boys track ‘You’ve Got To Fight For Your Right To Party’. There’s no way that this was a coincidence is there? After an element of their fanbases recent run in with the J League over their right to sing and generally be wannabe hooligans they seem to be a bit sulky and are sticking it to the man with this sly dig. Ooooooohhhh, those cheeky rebels. The ball boys in this game seemed to all have come in fancy dress and had all chosen to go with the same costume theme, which was match day Ricardo Rodriguez. They also seemed to get word, perhaps from the man himself, halfway through the second half, to not go so crazy and exert themselves and instead just take their time when it came to returning the ball. To be honest though, the ref wasn’t worried about the Urawa players’ time wasting though, so it makes sense that he wouldn’t notice the ball boys doing it. Oh and finally, we now know which kind of players are most serious about COVID prevention and are perhaps therefore the most responsible figures our squad. All the Brazilians and all the goalies were COVID free. Draw your own conclusions about this.

That’ll do. Not much talk about the game again, but you’ve probably come to expect that. This was a match in which we were doomed from the start and then got even more doomed shortly after the start. As I said above, I don’t know what I think about the whole COVID postponement thing. Instead I’m just letting the whole issue just hang around somewhere in my periphery like the fog of something I don’t want to deal with and am hoping will just go away before I get round to having to think about. I’d like to think that the issue won’t come up again, but I’m pretty sure that we’ll be in pretty much the same position on Wednesday and next weekend and also that other clubs will be in similar positions with perhaps different outcomes. So basically, we’ll all have something to moan about forever. I hope no-one uses it as an excuse for why we won’t win the league as the title was already long gone before this match. It’s a bit of a bummer to have any lingering hopes killed quite so dead by matters out of our control though. Oh well! Next up Cerezo Osaka, (who recently beat is when we had almost a full squad to choose from), away in the Levain Cup. The blog post for that hame will be perfunctory at best. I’m away in Tohoku so probably won’t even be able to watch the game. Probably for the best! Hopefully the next week of games won’t be quite as disheartening as this match was, but I suspect it will be. 

Team 

 
GK 1. Sung-Ryong JUNG
DF 16. SEKO Tatsuki

DF 5. TANIGUCHI Shogo (Yellow card 51')

DF 4. JESIEL

DF 8. TACHIBANADA Kento
MF 6. JOAO SCHMIDT

MF 19. TONO Daiya

MF 14. WAKIZAKA Yasuto

FW 41. IENAGA Akihiro

FW 9. LEANDRO DAMIAO

FW 23. MARCINHO

Subs

GK 27. TANNO Kenta

GK 21. ANDO Shunsuke

GK 22. HAYASAKA Yuki

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

DF 31. YAMAMURA Kazuya (on for TONO 78')

 

My Frontale Man Of The Match

EVERYONE IN THE MATCH DAY SQUAD - There's no way you could fault the effort of anyone involved. I probably haven't praised the players enough, so consider this some effort to do that.

 

Goals

 

ITO (Urawa) 4' 1-0

MATSUO (Urawa) 17' 2-0

IENAGA (Frontale) PEN 82' 2-1

IWAO (Urawa) 85' 3-1

 

Highlights