Vs Kashiwa Reysol (home) 28/5/23 J League match 15

Kawasaki Frontale 2 - 0 Kashiwa Reysol

Back at home and back to winning ways! All is great, right? Well perhaps superficially this result might look good but I think once again it says just as much about the opposition as it says about us. Time is short this week so please excuse me for not whinging in detail and instead just whinging the headlines only. Next up we have Kobe away and the day after the game I’m playing a concert in Kobe and I’m woefully underprepared. The fact that I’m sitting here writing this now instead of practicing makes me think that I might have my priorities slightly mixed up. So let’s get this out of the way with the usual old headings.

Us -

Kamifukumoto was back in goal as predicted. Not sure Sung-Ryong deserved to be dropped again but not surprised Oniki did it. Kamifukumoto had a decent game, aside from one horrendous blunder which Kashiwa couldn’t capitalise on. Kashiwa had one shot on target and Kami saved it, so that’s got to go down as a big improvement on recent games. Oshima started in midfield and also had a good game I thought. Wakizaka’s corners are still horrible most of the time, but I thought that aside from those he played well. It was something of a game of two halves for us as we came out in the first half with some enthusiasm and determination and looked quite dangerous. Still had the old problem of turning possession into shots and shots into goals though. But at least in the first half we shot, which is always nice when you have bucket loads of possession. The second half, aside from a bright first five or so minutes, was pretty pedestrian stuff. We only had seven shots (most of which came pretty early on I reckon), and didn’t force a save even once. Thankfully Kashiwa played similarly. Oniki having found a formula that actually managed to create a goal, clung on to it with grim determination, only making his first sub in the 67th minute and not doing anything else for another 20 minutes after that. In the end we only used three subs. Damiao and Chanathip back on the bench may have excited some, but the fact that they weren’t used hints that possibly I was right about Damiao just making up the numbers and avoiding injury until he leaves in the summer if the rumours are to be believed. I’ve been wrong before though and I’m sure I’ll be wrong again. So, basically we had a semi-decent half (some caveats to follow in the next section) and hung on for a victory that hopefully will do our morale some good, particularly if the performance isn’t looked at too closely. It would be remiss of me not to mention that Nobori scored again, this time with his weaker foot, and got injured by Kobayashi in the ensuing celebrations. Kind of sums up our year so far in some ways. Was pleased to see he made it back out for the second half.

  

Them -

I was lamenting to Ryo Nakagawara, (writer of the great Shogun Soccer newsletter, which I read to help me understand what Oniki is at least trying to do sometimes), before the game that after recent matches I was slightly worried about relegation if Oniki didn’t come up with something new. His take was that there are too many worse teams than us to worry about that and that we’d probably end up in mid-table. At the time I wasn’t sure as this year I’ve seen us totally fail to get anywhere near playing football against YFC, just about squeak past Kyoto with a very late goal and lose to Gamba. But Kashiwa put a very different spin on my feelings. I think they were by far the worst team we’ve faced this year on this showing. Unlike YFC who seemed content to sit back and defend in numbers and then occasionally break quickly to shoot and inevitably score, Kashiwa looked like they were unsure of what they were doing. They didn’t really defend in numbers and they didn’t really bother attacking either. For large parts of the game it looked like we were watching kids football, as almost all the players seemed to be within a few metres of the ball, the whole mass of people moving up and down the pitch as each team attacked. Even though everyone was congregating around the ball, at the same time it seemed like the midfield wasn’t really being used, the ball occasionally fly out of the melee for an unsuccessful attack. It was a really weird game to watch and felt like one where neither team really knew what they were doing. Kashiwa will be hoping they can get a little bit more of the new manager bounce after a bit of a stutter but I wonder if maybe the manager wasn’t the problem for them and that they are going to have a tough season. YFC lost so perhaps they’re back in it if they continue in the same way for a few more of their upcoming games, (guess they must still be fatigued from ‘pumping’ us), and Gamba won so things are getting interesting down there. Somewhat unbelievably, we’re now in 9th, which I think speaks volumes about the quality of the league this year. If you asked me who I want to go down, I’d have a few options, and one reason for wanting Kashiwa to be the ones who do might be that they treat the opposition fans like shit at their ground. And also they booed our players coming out, which is kind of par for the course, but always seems a bit unnecessary. But maybe that’s because they’re ‘Kashiwa Stupid’. Interpret their famous banner how you want.

 

Ref -

Didn’t want to give any cards really, made Ienaga explode in anger, but in truth didn’t have much to do really so for once I don’t have anything much to moan about. We had a female lines… person. Assistant referee I guess is that correct name, but always seems to not quite describe the job properly for me. Quite pleasant when this section is this short and inane, isn’t it?

 

Next up Kobe away. They’re way ahead of us at the top of the table and we always struggle at their stadium, which suggests we’re going to have a tough game. Fingers crossed we can continue subverting expectations this year. Lots of people thought we’d be good and we’ve been shite. We always struggle there so how about us doing really well instead? We can dream!

 

 

Team 

 
GK 99. KAMIFUKUMOTO Naoto

DF 13. YAMANE Miki

DF 3. OMINAMI Takuma
DF 7. KURUMAYA Shintaro

DF 2. NOBORIZATO Kyoehi

MF 6. JOAO SCHMIDT (Yellow card 90')

MF 10. OSHIMA Ryota

MF 14. WAKIZAKA Yasuto

FW 41. IENAGA Akihiro

FW 11. KOBAYASHI Yu (Yellow card 76')

FW 33. MIYASHIRO Taisei

Subs

GK 1. JUNG Sung-Ryong

FW 9. LEANDRO DAMIAO
MF 16. SEKO Tatsuki (on for WAKIZAKA 90+2')

MF 18. CHANATHIP

FW 30. SEGAWA Yusuke (on for MIYASHIRO 87')

MF 31. YAMAMURA Kazuya

MF 47. KOZUKA Kazuki (on for OSHIMA 67')

My Frontale Man Of The Match

 

I don’t know what to do here really as no one really stood out much and the game was pretty mediocre so it’s tough to pick anyone. But as I’ve done before in the past, I’m going to cop out and give it to a goal scorer without a great deal of evidence behind the decision. So it goes to…

NOBORIZATO Kyohei - scored for the second time in a season for the first time in… ages/ever and got injured in the celebration. Kobayashi was ruled out from sharing this award as he was the one who injured Nobori. 

 

Goals

 

KOBAYASHI (Frontale) 21' 1-0

NOBORIZATO (Frontale) 45+1' 2-0

 

Highlights

Vs Urawa Reds (away) 24/5/23 Levain Cup group stage game 5

Urawa Reds 2 - 1 Kawasaki Frontale

I’m going to be a bit busy in the next few weeks as I’m playing a concert in Kobe and I’m woefully underprepared. This is why I’m writing this on my phone on the way home from another exhilarating 2-1 defeat. Little did we know that after three minutes we’d only see another 2 shots on target in the remaining 91 minutes. I remember one of them, (Ienaga’s pretty tame shot straight at the keeper (good to see we’re carrying on from where we left off against YFC)), but if you offered me a winning lottery ticket to describe our other shot on target I’m sad to say I’d fail and be even more depressed than I am after watching another shocking game. (I’ve watched the highlights now and it was an Ienaga header). There’s not much to grasp on to if you’re looking for something positive. Sure we almost got a draw, but it was a draw that would be pretty much against the odds and against the run of play. Unbelievably, we had more possession in the second half, but as usual we did next to nothing with it.  Last time we went to the Saitama Stadium we had three keepers on the bench, and even then we couldn’t fill it. This time we’ve got plenty more players to choose from but a manager who hasn’t got a clue who to pick. And to be honest, it doesn’t really matter who he picks as whoever starts, we play the same dull stuff. If you’re looking for positives, well, Sung-Ryong did a lot better than Kamifukumoto has recently. Ominami looked decent at right back. Tono made a difference when he came on. Kozuka probably had his best game for us that I can remember. But all of this is against a backdrop of three shots on target. Another amazing Oniki half time team talk saw us drop from top of the group at half time to bottom (and barring a miracle in four different games, out of the cup), at full time. And the same team talk resulted in us fluffing a chance and then conceding from the next attack only five minutes into the second half. I’ve been saying Oniki is out of his depth and out of ideas since Mitoma left. Well, actually also a bit before then as 2019 was also pretty awful. Perhaps people are bored of hearing me say it. Or perhaps some people might be agreeing with me now. I still don’t expect any change in management before the end of the season though. Instead we’ll keep on plugging away, perhaps avoid relegation, Oniki will leave and so will probably lots of players who are unsettled by the fact that we’re utterly shite and will be manageress. We’ll also be back to the drawing board, starting with a new manager and (hopefully) new ideas which will take some time to bed in. So basically, the next six months are utterly pointless and probably so will be the first part of next season. 

 

I’m fully aware that whatever team Oniki picked I would find something to moan about but this one seemed to underwhelm in every possible way. Still grimly sticking to the same formation and tactics. Resting some of the big names although some of them deserved to be dropped anyway. It was a mystery as to whether it was a first choice side with some changes or a reserves side with some changes. Whichever it was, it didn’t work, so I guess it’s pointless thinking about it too much. Marcinho seems to have now joined Damiao in the mystery zone. Get injured, come back for one game and then disappear. I suspect Damiao has a transfer lined up and we don’t want him to get injured. Perhaps Marcinho has too. (Actually, today it’s been announced that he’s injured again, in training, our for three months, another victim of our full-contact cage fighting training methods). I wonder who of our players might not want to get out of the club at the first opportunity. I can’t blame those who want to leave. At the moment going to these games feels more like an addiction than any kind of hobby or fun pastime. There’s certainly not much pleasure to be found. A third minute goal and then hanging on and not doing much for the rest of the game. Sure it’s a game of small margins. If Kobayashi had scored and we had gone 2-0 up at the start of the second half, it would have obviously been a different game. If we hadn’t conceded a clanger of an own goal we might have scraped a point. But when things aren’t going well, you do seem to get this kind of luck. But is it really luck? We’ve been crap, and we’ve got the results a crap team should get. In fact perhaps we’ve got better than expected results considering how bad we’ve been. That was certainly the case for the whole of the 2022 season. I’ve also said this before, but it’s not who we pick, it just seems to be the whole approach. I’m sure Oniki will comment and say that Urawa just wanted it more, we need to make better decisions when we’re shooting and some of the other usual platitudes he wheels out. He won’t consider changing the formation. He won’t shake up the line up too much. He won’t actually suggest to the players that we try to actually shoot instead of sideways pass. What a shit season. What a shit manager.

Urawa looked alright. I think it was very much a reserves team that we lost to. Their fans even made some noise. Perhaps the ACL title has put them in a good mood. The pre-game music is still unbelievably awful. A mix between the shittest of shit ROCK MUSIC!!!! and upbeat house versions of what were already pretty camp songs in their original form. This time they added some dull country rock too, probably with lyrics about good old boys, drinking whisky and some kind of relationship ups or downs. I guess the stadium is pretty much in the countryside though. And maybe this love of good old Southern country music, combined with their fans' previous penchant for slightly exclusionary politics might explain why they use a burning cross in their scoreboard graphics. Cheeky and a bit of an on the nose way for them to express certain elements of their ultras politics quite so openly. 

 

Considering it’s still part of the greater Tokyo sprawl there is a surprising feeling of being in an absolute wasteland with a baffling amount of houses for the apparent total lack of amenities. And don’t forget them playing the whole of East 17’s house of love accompanied by a video where their club crest looks like it’s being spied on by a pervert, zooming in on various areas and lingering a little too long, as the crest assembles and disassembles itself in 3D like some kind of AI generated sexy video made by a heraldic loving pervert artificial intelligence. Presumably the reason for the song choice is that there is a house (or big long building) on the top of their crest. But is that really enough of a reason? The crowd loved it though and politely applauded at the end of the video, as if they’d just seen their grandchildren doing a hip-hop dance demonstration. Probably the same way FC Tokyo fans feel when the flame cannons get wheeled out. The only other observations I have about the Urawa crowd is that they still clap Kurumaya for some reason. And that they also seem to think that incessant booing and whistling when their opponent has possession will spook them. Honestly, there’s no need to bother trying. We are more than likely going to give away the ball without the interaction of either the opposition fans or even the opposition players. They could all stay rooted to the spot from kick off and we’d still contrive to lose the ball to their ‘high press’.

Oh, we had Yamashita, the J League’s new female ref, and aside from one occasion when we were once again absolutely robbed by an awful failure to play the advantage, I can’t say I have anything to moan about. The linesman nearest us, well, that’s a whole different matter. He was an absolutely useless arsehole of the highest order, who seemed to find it more difficult to see things the closer he was to them. But forget the officials. They didn’t rob us. We just had nothing much to give and therefore nothing much to be robbed of. Same old crap again.

Next up Kashiwa at home in the league. They had a slight new manager bounce but then lost in the Levain. What’s the betting that we can give them a gift wrapped three points on Sunday, further cementing our absolute shiteness against teams near the bottom of the league. Who knows who’ll play? I think if Kamifukumoto is back in goal it will just be baffling, but at the same time totally predictable. Once again we sang the team off the pitch. Well, I say we, but this time unlike last weekend, I was out of there at the final whistle. At this stage the relentless positivity is just making us look like we’re severely damaged people utterly out of touch with reality. 

Team 

 
GK 1. JUNG Sung-Ryong

DF 3. OMINAMI Takuma

DF 31. YAMAMURA Kazuya
DF 7. KURUMAYA Shintaro

DF 5. SASAKI Asahi

MF 6. JOAO SCHMIDT

MF 14. WAKIZAKA Yasuto

MF 49. KOZUKA Kazuki (Yellow card 47')

FW 20. YAMADA Shin

FW 11. KOBAYASHI Yu

FW 30. SEGAWA Yusuke

Subs

 

GK 99. KAMIFUKUMOTO Naoto

MF 8. TACHIBANADA Kento (on for KOZUKA 73')

DF 13. YAMANE Miki

MF 16. SEKO Tatsuki (on for WAKIZAKA 73')

FW 17. TONO Daiya (on for SEGAWA 58')

FW 33. MIYASHIRO Taisei (on for KOBAYASHI 73')

FW 41. IENAGA Akihiro (Yellow card 88') (on for YAMADA 79')

Goals

 

SEGAWA (Frontale) 3' 0-1

KANTE (Urawa) 51' 1-1

OWN GOAL (Frontale) 89' 2-1

 

Highlights

 

Vs Yokohama FC (away) 20/5/23 J League match 14

Yokohama FC 2 - 1 Kawasaki Frontale

Jeez, where do you possibly start with another calamitous showing from us? Saturday saw us make the relatively short trip to Yokohama to attempt to bounce back from a totally shite Tamagawa Classico game. I don’t know exactly what the opposite of bounce back is, but I’m going to say that this was more of a sink further rather than a bounce back. Sure, we were slightly hamstrung by a ban for Wakizaka for his red, a ban for Joao Schmidt for four yellows and an enforced break for Ominami due to his brutal attacking of Morishige’s elbow with his head. But at least two of those absences are in the midfield where we have a ridiculous overabundance of players who can never get time on the pitch. In contrast, we seem to have an absolute paucity when it comes to having any idea how to play football any more. YFC fans seem to think this was a massive and great performance from them but I think they are being fooled by the fact that we used to be quite good. If they paid any attention to what we did in this match they’d have noticed that we are now absolutely awful when it comes to making and taking chances, and seem to be getting worse at defending too. So many players all playing bad at once. What could possibly be the cause? Well, I think it’s obviously Oniki, but whenever I say this I get people telling me that he’s won loads of things with us, (true, and he might have the opportunity to add the J2 title to that next season if he keeps up the way he’s going at the moment and he stays with the club), and that we’d be nothing without him (we are currently not much better than nothing with him). Even his usual post match platitudes seemed lacking in conviction this time and they’re normally pretty pedestrian stuff. Apparently YFC wanted it more than us and we were perhaps not trying to shoot in the right way. Oh and the pitch was dry. Kind of feels a bit like he has as much confidence in himself as some fans do now. I say some fans, as we still sung the team off in spite of us playing terribly and losing to a team that many people had down as certs for relegation. If you look at the current bottom six in the league, we’ve lost to Niigata, YFC and Gamba, snatched a draw against Shonan with a late goal and unbelievably snatched a win against Kyoto with an even later goal. And we play the other team next weekend. We’re awful! Or rather were playing awful stuff as our players haven’t all become terrible at football since last year. And don’t forget, this is the season where we’re focusing on the league. I guess we will approach the rest of the season also focusing on the league but rather than in a ‘let’s get the title back’ way and more of a ‘let’s try to avoid being the one team that is relegated’ way. Has Oniki got a job lined up already and is intentionally trying to lose games so he gets sacked and gets some kind of redundancy payment? I can’t really think of any other reason why he seems so utterly incompetent at the moment. I don’t think we’ll sack him, and I don’t think he’ll resign. And whilst I don’t think even with his current incompetence he’ll manage to take us down to J2, I am more certain that he won’t find a way to make this season even slightly more bearable. I think it’s going to be a long long year. It certainly feels like it is. And it’s something of a shame that I’m currently at 100% when it comes to attending our games home and away this year. I normally don’t miss many, but jeez, what a year to have not missed any so far. Yes, I would like a medal please.

 

So let’s have a little moan about what I think he’s doing wrong. Well, apart from the fact that he seems to not have a clue how to get our team to play. He shuffles the players until we fluke a win and then hangs on to that team as long as possible, ignoring the opposition or how bad anyone is playing or how many games anyone has played. As I always say, I don’t really get tactics, but I think I know enough to say that our constant focus on possession at all costs and sideways/backwards passing to keep the stats ticking over isn’t the way you win games. It’s all very well having Joao, Seko or in this game Oshima, playing nice looking long passes when whoever receives the ball immediately stops, turns round and waits a bit before passing it backwards to one of our players in our own half. Oniki constantly talks about us needing to shoot more, but our complete unwillingness to shoot until we’re less than a metre away from the goal can’t just be something that is coincidentally happening week after week, can it? I wonder if Oniki just keeps forgetting to practice making or taking chances in training or forgets to tell the team to try to score a goal in his prematch team talk. We could have played for the rest of the weekend in this game and I don’t think we would have scored from open play. A few people have said how great Brodersen was in the YFC goal, but honestly, I think the only thing he had to do was collect a few ‘shots’ that we gently rolled directly towards him. Oh, and pick the ball our of the net after Seko scored direct from a free kick! Hooray! Naturally Oniki almost immediately substituted him, lest we get any kind of confidence or good feeling about having scored. We’ve had five shots on target in each of the last three games and in each game we’ve scored once but I can’t really remember more than a couple of real chances aside from the goals. My only guess is that we’re aiming to win every game 1-0 but occasionally forget that these tactics don’t work if you hand the opposition a two goal head start. I don’t feel particularly good about pointing the stats out, but Kamifukumoto who is now clearly Oniki’s first choice, hasn’t been doing that well. In the last two games the opposition have had a total of five shots on target between them. We’ve conceded four goals, so that means he’s made just the one save in 180 minutes of football. I don’t want to have a go at him, but I don’t think his distribution is particularly better than Sung-Ryong (forgetting a couple of clangers from earlier this year) so I don’t know why he’s been made the number one. As I’ve said many times before, I believe Oniki doesn’t treat all of the players equally. Some people can have stinker after stinker for 90 minutes every game and not get dropped and then others can come in, misplace one pass and be exiled from the match day squad for the rest of the year. It’s like he looks for excuses to do what he’s already decided. Once again in this match Ienaga looked like he couldn’t give a shit. Well until we were losing 2-0 when he seemed a bit more interested but ultimately not to any real use. Both YFC goals came from fast breaks where we seemed to have things covered but contrived to fail when it came to the whole ‘stop them scoring’ thing. They scored a couple of minutes either side of half time, basically making the match a sandwich of us-conceding bread with a filling of a presumably totally uninspiring and shit half time team talk from a manager who at the moment might struggle to motivate a native English speaker to pass Eiken 5 (a little ‘joke’ there for the English teachers). We gave the ball away cheaply for both goals and we failed to stop the attacks even though we initially had plenty of players nearby. And I failed to not lose my rag at another utterly inept managerial performance from Oniki. 

 

 
A few words about the opposition and the ref. YFC seemed a bit better than the last time we played them at Mitsuzawa, but I’m not sure I’d say they ‘pumped us’, as I saw written on Twitter. Fair play to them though, they did a job on us, and got the win. I would say that we seem to struggle if a team wants to sit back and hit us on the break, but what’s the point of saying that, as it’s been the case for the whole of Oniki’s time with us and he hasn’t managed to come up with any answer to this problem yet. One thing we could learn from them is that when we have a fast break or long ball forward it’s a good idea to try to shoot, as sometimes you can score that way. The other main takeaway kind of relates to the ref and it is that I have never seen such a coordinated time wasting effort. Whichever side of the goal Brodersen was on when he got the ball turned out to be the opposite one to the one he wanted to take the kick from. 100% of the time. There was an inordinate amount of ‘injuries’ which required at least a lengthy lie on the floor to heal. I was slightly worried when we didn’t return the ball to them after they threw it off the pitch for one of their poor fragile fellers to get some ‘treatment’. If we’d had scored we would have never heard the end of it. I say I was slightly worried, but I think we were totally justified in not returning it as they were unrelenting in their time wasting. The ball boys were also involved, seeming to disappear completely when they had something to do when their team was winning. And even some arsehole in the crowd at the side of the pitch hung on to the ball instead of throwing it back. As I said, a real team effort. Oh, by the way, their fans at the side of the pitch clapped Seko when his name was announced, but the fans behind the goal booed him in case you were wondering. Oh, and I should give Brodersen some credit as he did a little bow to us and gave us the thumbs up when we clapped Hasegawa as he was subbed off. He seems like a nice guy. Just a shame he always forgets which side of the box he wants to take his goal kicks from. Whilst all of this time wasting was going on, Ikeuchi the ref was just grinning and occasionally waving his arms in a vaguely ‘get on with it’ way, but which could also have just been him flapping to try to cool down his face as he looked like he was on one of those ‘your dream comes true’ type TV programs, his dream was to be a ref for a day, and the excitement was all getting a bit much for him. To be honest, aside from him not bothering to stop any of the time wasting, (which no refs in the J League ever do), I can’t really complain too much about him. He did seem to bow to the YFC stadium video screen operator’s commands though, as although he’d signaled for a free kick, when the guy put the VICTORY video on the screen and started playing music, the ever accommodating Ikeuchi decided that in spite of the majority of the allotted six minutes having been filled with time wasting, he might as well call it a day. But yeah, like I said, we wouldn’t have scored anyway, so it doesn’t really matter. One last thing, before I run out of words here, although he was hardly involved at all, Mita is of course still undeniably an absolute cu

Ah, looks like I got cut off there. Next up, Urawa away in the Levain Cup on Wednesday and then Kashima at home in the league on Sunday, where we can make our record against the current bottom six even worse. Perhaps we can even join them. We certainly deserve to be down there. Barring any disasters my 100% attendance record will still be intact, but I can’t really say the same for my mental faculties.

Team 

 
GK 99. KAMIFUKUMOTO Naoto

DF 13. YAMANE Miki

DF 31. YAMAMURA Kazuya

DF 7. KURUMAYA Shintaro

DF 2. NOBORIZATO Kyohei

MF 8. TACHIBANADA Kento

MF 16. SEKO Tatsuki

MF 10. OSHIMA Ryota

FW 41. IENAGA Akihiro

FW 33. MIYASHIRO Taisei

FW 17. TONO Daiya

Subs

GK 1. JUNG Sung-Ryong

DF 5. SASAKI Asahi (on for NOBORIZATO 54')

FW 11. KOBAYASHI Yu (on for TONO 76')

MF 18. CHANATHIP

FW 20. YAMADA Shin (on for MIYASHIRO 83')

FW 30. SEGAWA Yusuke (on for OSHIMA 54')

MF 49. KOZUKA Kazuki (on for SEKO 76')

My Frontale Man Of The Match

 

We were shite so I don’t want to do this, but as he scored against his old club and a set piece was the only way we were going to trouble their keeper it will go to…

SEKO Tatsuki - scored. And was almost immediately subbed off. Oniki masterclass.

Goals

INOUE (Yokohama) 44' 1-0
YAMASHITA (Yokohama) 48' 2-0
SEKO (Frontale) 68' 2-1

Highlights
 

Vs FC Chofu (away) 12/5/23 J League match 13

FC Chofu 2 - 1 Kawasaki Frontale

So here we are, back to being shit again. The signs were there in recent games. Actually the signs have been there all season and a fair bit of last season too, but have been plastered over by the occasional flukey win. I think I said last week that after a performance which gave us some reasons to be upbeat against Avispa, you could see the skills and energy draining out of us as we squeaked to 1-0 wins at Kyoto and at home against Tosu. On Friday at the National Stadium the reservoir was empty and plenty of players were back to being out of sorts. Somehow we managed to score, but by the time we managed to do that we’d already given away two goals and consequently needed something special, which was unlikely as we were playing far from special stuff. In the intervening days I’ve been busy working, so those of you thinking that I’d been putting off writing this are not exactly right. Writing this has been lingering not very near the top of my to do list, getting endlessly knocked down the pecking list by important things like ‘clean the fridge’, ‘look out the window’ and ‘check social media for the third time in five minutes’. In these intervening days I’ve been coming up with a few whinges and just downright rude comments so I’ll do my best to squeeze them all in here.
 

Us -

Takai was absent due to him traveling with the Japan U20 team. Hopefully he’ll do more than just travel with them. FC Tokyo had a couple of players absent too. Because of this we had a mini shuffle at the back with Ominami coming in to partner Kurumaya with Nobori returning at left back. It goes without saying that Yamane played at right back. I don’t know if he’s getting tired, but he had a bit of a nightmare being involved with, or actually more accurately, nowhere near involved in stopping, both FC Tokyo goals and didn’t contribute much going forward so I guess he probably is. The whole of our right side was awful in the this game, Ienaga back to being almost invisible and only noticeable when he tried to do his usual ‘hold the opposition at arm’s length and stop them getting the ball’ thing, although on this occasion it was more like ‘fail to hold them off and just give them the ball’. It can’t be a coincidence that both of their goals came through massive gaps in the right hand side of our defence. To be fair it was a nice finish for the first goal, but we did basically leave him alone to gather his thoughts and take his time to shoot. In the midfield Joao had a bit of a tough time. He definitely wasn’t helped by some of the passes he got whilst surrounded by three or four Chofu players though. He’ll get a break next week as I think he is now banned for one game due to four yellow cards. Also having a break will be Wakizaka who got sent off, and you can’t say there was anything wrong with the decision. Of course I did in the stadium though. We’ve had four red cards already this year, more than we had in the whole of last year, and only one less than we had in the previous three years combined. Also probably missing next week is Ominami, who was taken off as a concussion sub after he was elbowed in the face before he clashed heads with Morishige. More on this later. So we can expect some big changes to the line up in the next game. But that could be handy to be honest as we’re totally shit at the moment. Wakizaka has had a few decent games recently but his set pieces have been terrible. Ienaga shouldn’t start the next match, and angered some fans by trudging slowly off the pitch when we were losing. The way he was playing it was a miracle he remained on the pitch as long as he did. I didn’t even really notice Marcinho was playing. I don’t want o have a go at Kamifukumoto but I don’t really understand why he has so completely replaced Sung-Ryong as our number one keeper. people talk about his skill on the ball but I don’t think that has been particularly useful and it really doesn’t work when he has to kick it a bit longer as normally this results in us losing the ball immediately. Of course it’s impossible to say whether Sung-Ryong would have done any better, but if I were him, I might be feeling a but miffed at the moment. So, once again a lot of players not playing well, and therefor once again I’m going to point the finger at Oniki. Somehow he stumbled on a winning line up against Fukuoka and since then has tried to change as little as possible regardless of the opposition to keep the winning run going. It’s a miracle it worked for three games. It has very much stopped working now. What I don’t understand is why he apparently doesn’t even consider who we are playing when setting the team up. Two things that were apparent about Chofu was that they have a keeper who is extremely dodgy with the ball at his feet and they have a right back who is so old that he’d probably have voted for Brexit. But we didn’t seem to hassle Slowik on the ball at all and even though our fastest player and best dribbler was directly up against Nagatomo I don’t think he ever got the chance to take advantage of the Chofu defender now needing to use a zimmer frame for each game. Add to this the apparent blindness of some of our players when it came to persevering with the whole play it short free kick thing even if the ball needs to dematerialise to go through two Chofu players standing in the way before rematerialising at our players feet. It didn’t work, obviously and we instead just gave the ball away instead. Next up we have YFC away. If we lose that game, Oniki really needs to have a look at himself. Probably the kind of opponents we might want to try to bounce back against after this shit peformance. But at the same time, exactly the type of opponents we would fail to bounce back against.

Them -

Congratulations to FC Chofu who apparently won the World Cup, Nobel Prize, Best In Show and Oscar for best direction on Friday. At least you’d imagine that is what had happened the way they celebrated. Even though we’re having our worst season in years, at the moment we’re still ahead of them in the league though. Which is truly shocking. They definitely wouldn’t have won the Oscar for special effects though as their pre-game ‘entertainment’ was one of the most cringeworthy things I’ve ever seen in a football stadium. When people across the world think of Tokyo they perhaps think of a huge urban metropolis, a 24 hour city with cutting edge technology. When FC Chofu’s commercial team think of exciting Tokyo they think more of Guns N Roses’ ‘Sweet Child Of Mine’ and early noughties club bangers with some flame cannons that wouldn’t have looked out of place on the set of the TV show Gladiators. It was good to see that Roger from the local Eikawa was able to knock off early and make the long trek into Tokyo from Chofu to do the stadium announcements. ‘Ladies and gentlemen, welcome to the National Stadium. Please turn to page 17 of your textbooks and consider signing up for our six month payment plan and get one month of lessons for free!’. I’m convinced that after the ‘DJ’ finished, (I couldn’t see where they were, but I can almost certainly guarantee that it was some prick in an FC Chofu shirt with one of those mixers for digital music, occasionally twisting the treble and bass knobs of a channel that wasn’t being used), Roger announced proudly ‘Thank you DJ Crap!’ If that was indeed what he said, I was in total agreement. The whole turn the lights off and only light up your team huddle thing was also unbelievably naff. But those flame cannons though… jeez. Maybe also wasn’t a good idea to turn the lights off but forget to tell your fans to bring light sticks. When Roger flicked the switch to turn off the lights, (I presume it was him who did it, multitasking), the stands almost up to half way were lit up in light blue. I guess that even when you try to play your home games a bit closer to civilization, it must sting that you still can’t fill up the stands in a city of 14 million people. The only possible solution - MORE FLAMES AND FIREWORKS! ‘You’ll Never Walk Alone’ was as laughably quiet as it always is. FC Chofu just seem to have fans who aren’t at all loud, and perhaps aren’t really that interested. Best get Roger to turn up the music a bit louder then and if he can just raise the fader on the right there’s some prerecorded singing on there. But don’t overdo it though or it will be obvious.

 


On to their players! Diego elbowed Kamifukumoto totally off the ball early on. I was angry at the time, but not as angry as I was when I saw the replay on DAZN and you can clearly see him have a quick look before he accidentally bumps into Kami with his elbows out. And elbows were quite the story of this match. Certain players in red and blue must be more arachnid than human as they seemed to be able to find an elbow available whatever the angle. Morishige’s was perhaps the nastiest. Poor him, hurting his elbow when he took out Ominami who was trying to head the ball. I’ll discuss the wonderful ref’s reaction to this incident in the next section. After the initial assault which left Ominami bleeding and probably concussed, Abe and Slowik piled in to shake a dazed player on the floor with a head injury. They should both be arrested! Credit to Tokumoto for pulling Abe away before he could do too much damage. Not only has Tokumoto got an amusingly retro haircut, he also seems to have some old-fashioned decent humanity too. As for Higashi and Nakagawa,  I don’t think I’ve ever seen a pair of players who go down so easily. I really don’t know what happened to Nakagawa in our youth team all those years ago, but he seems to be on a mission to aggravate us as much as is humanly possible since then. And perhaps what ever it was also can help explain his haircut, as the only other possible reason I can think of for it could be deep-seated self loathing. For once I agree with the FC Tokyo Kai Guys who have said that Higashi is a useless specimen. Perhaps they might have a different opinion of him after this match though. I don’t think there was a single two minute period in the game when either he or Nakagawa weren’t on the floor rolling around clutching some part of their anatomy whilst gurning after a waft of air knocked them to the ground. Perhaps it was a hangover from the flame cannons or something. Or they got dazzled by some pyrotechnic or drone display. Both of them could find a way to get ‘injured’ even when locked inside a padded cell.

So the general consensus seems to be that the players are mostly pricks, and the club is one of the tackiest organizations around, whose only solution to a total lack of atmosphere at their games is to throw money at getting in the latest technology, and then employing in the cutting edge fashion of 2003. Perhaps that’s how they came up with the opening ceremony idea. They asked AI to come up with a plan with the prompt ‘totally cool and really quite super pre-game entertainment…. with fire’. There was definitely some kind of alien weirdness to the whole thing. But maybe that’s just the way they like to do things. FC Chofu is that video of the Microsoft guys dancing at the Windows 95 launch. FC Chofu is a group of salaryman with their ties around their heads doing air guitar to a musical section of Top Gear. FC Chofu is a right wing ex-newsreader mayor. FC Chofu is being expected to get to the office early, stay late and then go out with your boss and pour them drinks. FC Chofu is hostess bars where you pay a 1000% mark up on a bottle of champagne you don’t want to drink, in order to have it opened and poured for you by someone who is your daughter’s age and would have nothing to do with you if you weren’t paying for her company. Quick, someone set off the flame cannons again.

Ref -

It was Nishimura, who has been alright for us recently but really shat the bed on this occasion. No arguments about the red card, (which let’s be honest, was for a foul he hadn’t even given a yellow for, until VAR notified him, so I guess he got that wrong too), but he was just useless for the rest of the game. I don’t know if he has a large amount of shares in a company that supplies flame cannons or something, but he clearly seemed to be leaning one way in this game. Ominami got a yellow card for getting elbowed in the face by Morishige. Nishimura was so useless that Joao looked like he was going to smash him in the face at one stage, and to be honest, if he had, I’d fully support our Brazilian hero. He bought every dive from Higashi and Nakagawa and so often was the game stopped that it seemed to be more like American football than football. I don’t know when he’ll retire, but surely the writing has to be on the wall for him. And I can’t imagine many fans will be disappointed when he does.

Don’t get me wrong, all this moaning about Chofu and Nishimura shouldn’t detract from the fact that we 100% didn’t deserve to win this game. Lots of lovely possession again! Not much fun again… Even our usual reserve tactic of playing better when we’re down to 10 men ran out of steam towards the end of this match. 2023 is a season of short sharp shocks to our system. The real shock is that we aren’t paying attention to them though. If we win next week we’ll be back to being all fine again, until the post win buzz has drained slowly away over the course of the following two or three games and then we’ll get hammered by someone. (Looks like that will be either Vissel or Sanfrecce). Well, that’s if we actually manage to get a little positive run going again. All of this just keeps the doubts far enough out of most fans minds. You can’t say that most of the players aren’t trying their best. It’s just that there is no plan and are no new ideas. It’s like Oniki luckily packed his paintbrushes and it ended up being an art exam, but the following week he’s trying to write a 1000 word essay with the same brushes. And then the week after, seems totally perplexed that he has to make a bird house and the brushes don’t work well when it comes to hammering the nails into the wood. But our beautiful passing art project continues. I say beautiful, but it’s more about getting the pass numbers up, rather than anything aesthetic. Lovely lovely completed passes. Sideways, sideways, backwards, sideways, and then release the tension with a possession losing hoof up the field. If we lose to YFC, well anything is up for grabs. By which I mean we’ll be totally fucked. And it wouldn’t be a great surprise, as we’ve already lost comfortably to the team who are currently at the bottom of the table. Blimey.

Team 

 
GK 99. KAMIFUKUMOTO Naoto

DF 13. YAMANE Miki

DF 3. OMINAMI Takuma (Yellow card 90+5')

DF 7. KURUMAYA Shintaro (Yellow card 90+1')

DF 2. NOBORIZATO Kyohei

MF 6. JOAO SCHMIDT (Yellow card 45+3')

MF 16. SEKO Tatsuki

MF 14. WAKIZAKA Yasuto (Red card 52')

FW 41. IENAGA Akihiro

FW 33. MIYASHIRO Taisei

FW 23. MARCINHO

Subs

GK 1. JUNG Sung-Ryong

MF 8. TACHIBANADA Kento (on for IENAGA 75')

MF 10. OSHIMA Ryota (on for SEKO 59')

FW 11. KOBAYASHI Yu (on for MIYASHIRO 75')

FW 17. TONO Daiya (on for MARCINHO 59')

FW 20. YAMADA Shin (on for JOAO SCHMIDT 82')

DF 31. YAMAMURA Kazuya (on for OMINAMI 90+7')

My Frontale Man Of The Match

 

Absolutely without a doubt it has to go to…

JUNG Sung-Ryong - the only player in the match day squad who had nothing to do with the result. Bravo!

Goals

TOKUMOTO (Chofu) 12' 1-0
ABE (Chofu) 25' 2-0
MIYASHIRO (Frontale) 39' 2-1

Highlights

Vs Sagan Tosu (home) 7/5/23 J League match 12

Kawasaki Frontale 1 - 0 Sagan Tosu

Another game for us when it was absolutely pissing it down. Unlike in Fukuoka where I was fully expose to the elements, on this occasion I was thankfully undercover in my usual seat. That’s probably where the similarities to the Fukuoka game end. Oniki shuffled the pack (slightly) on this occasion finally breaking the three match no changes run. I think it was long overdue, and perhaps he should have changed a bit more if we’re being honest as we looked quite tired again. But I totally get it. He’d been scrabbling around for so long, the long standing way we got wins had totally stopped working and the shuffling of line ups wasn’t changing anything. He got a draw against Urawa, kept the same line up and then got a win. And then another one. So I didn’t think he’d change anything unless it was absolutely necessary. I guess he thought Nobori was tired and you can’t blame him for favouring Marcinho over Tono now he is fit again. Everyone else though is going to keep playing until they physically break down. We now have a bit of a break till our next match with no midweek fixture. So probably the same line-up in the next game.

We weren’t great in this game, but this fixture normally finishes 0-0, so for us to nick a goal and turn the 0-0 into a 1-0 win is very welcome. It was our first home win in the league since…. October 29th! Bloody hell! I know the last season finished early but this really does hammer home quite how bad we’ve been this year. But now that’s three wins in a row, right? Well, yes it is, but of those three wins, aside from away at Fukuoka they’ve been fairly tight. At Kyoto it took us till the 94th minute. In this game we had loads of shots but missed plenty of good chances. Yeah we hit the woodwork on three occasions (I think), but their keeper only had to make four saves in the whole game. Marcinho looked very dangerous in his approach play, but seems to have lost his shooting skills a bit. Hopefully they’ll be back soon. Apart from when we hit the woodwork, I can’t remember anyone else having a decent chance, which almost certainly says more about my memory than anything else. The club stats said Seko had the most shots (4) and he went off at half time. I guess those shots were at the other end of the pitch, but I don’t remember them at all. Not saying this wasn’t a fun match to watch. My notes say ‘kind of entertaining but nothing really happening’ and I think that nicely sums things up. Our new tactics seem to be to go quite direct, playing some lovely long balls out to the wings, starting some very exciting attacks. Oh and then as soon as we get to the opposition’s penalty box, immediately slowing things down, which seems like a bit of a waste of time and negates any benefit of the initial directness. And then after we scored, we really shut things down. I was astonished when I saw the stats that showed we had almost 3/4 of our shots in the first half and that we only had five shots in the second half. Given that we’d hit the woodwork twice before we scored in the 52nd minute, this does reinforce the feeling that we spent most of the second half hanging on to what we had, the final 40 minutes of the game resulting in no more than two shots for us, none of which were on target (if my stats are right). We definitely were wasting time in the second half with lots of this being done (legitimately) by Kamifukumoto and with us trying to keep the ball by the corner flag for most of the final ten minutes. Not exactly confidence inspiring. But yeah, this is a fixture we struggle in and we managed to win. And the players must be more tired than I am, and I’m pretty tired. So on the whole, a thumbs up, I suppose.

 

Nothing much to say about the ref again (I think there was nothing much to say about him the last time either), which I guess means he’s a good ref. Not a lot to say about Sagan Tosu either. I quite like them as a club so will avoid making any arsey comments about them. I know that’s what some people come here for, so I’m sorry if you’re disappointed, but I suspect there will be plenty in the next post.

 

Next up, the Tamagawa Classico and praise the lord, even though it’s the away fixture, we don’t have to go to Chofu for it! But curse the lord, it’s at the National Stadium instead, a stadium wholly unsuited for football and quite unsuited for having a good time. This time we’ll be in the away end, unlike my previous two experiences there, but I suspect the view is equally bad there too. FC Chofu have had an up and down season with their last game being a significant down. Hopefully they will fail to bounce back and we can compound their misery. I’m not wholly confident that will happen though. Fingers crossed it will!

Team 

 
GK 99. KAMIFUKUMOTO Naoto

DF 13. YAMANE Miki

DF 3. OMINAMI Takuma (Yellow card 74')

DF 29. TAKAI Kota 

DF 7. KURUMAYA Shintaro

MF 6. JOAO SCHMIDT

MF 16. SEKO Tatsuki

MF 14. WAKIZAKA Yasuto

FW 41. IENAGA Akihiro

FW 33. MIYASHIRO Taisei

FW 23. MARCINHO

Subs

GK 1. JUNG Sung-Ryong

MF 8. TACHIBANADA Kento (on for WAKIZAKA 78')

MF 10. OSHIMA Ryota (on for SEKO 46')

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

FW 17. TONO Daiya (on for MARCINHO 68')

FW 20. YAMADA Shin (on for MIYASHIRO 86')

DF 31. YAMAMURA Kazuya

My Frontale Man Of The Match

 

There has been one big constant in our recent turnaround and that has been great performances from the player who I’m giving this to, who has basically made himself undroppable and is now keeping our captain out of the team. It’s got to go to…

JOAO SCHMIDT - again, just great. Always involved and on this occasion almost scored too. 

Goals

 

WAKIZAKA (Frontale) 52' 1-0

 

Highlights

Vs Kyoto Sanga (away) 3/5/23 J League match 11

Kyoto Sanga 0 - 1 Kawasaki Frontale

Back home now after a nice trip that involved two games where we miraculously managed to find some form and win twice! Well, the second part is perhaps a bit less certain but we definitely did win twice. I quite enjoyed keeping the last post brief and as I’m back home with a hell of a lot of things I need to catch up with, this one will be done in a similar way. We’ll see whether I return back to the lengthy rambles for subsequent games. I will divide things up on this occasion with the usual headings but will not go into much detail.

Us -

We went with the same team again as I kind of expected and you can’t really blame Oniki for sticking with a winning formula after a long time of trying to find one. But we looked really tired in this game. I think some changes need to be made for the next match, but I said that last time too. In this match we weren’t very good, and a 0-0 probably would have been the fairest score. Both teams had goals rightly disallowed and apart from, that not much happened. We had four shots in the first half and five in the second. But in the second I think all of them apart from the goal came from the same late attacking move where we were foiled on numerous occasions. It’s also telling that Kobayashi was the shots leader in the game stats with three, despite only coming on in the 80th minute. Anyone that thinks that this could be the start of a good run should probably take into consideration quite how average we were again. But I guess that’s no surprise when the same players have started three games in ten days. Probably one bright point we can take from the game is that Kobayashi and Marcinho were on the bench again. Although the former’s recent absences were more to do with not being picked rather than being injured I think. Perhaps he’s given Oniki a selection headache for the next match. Perhaps… And of course, another bright point is the fact that we won again, and this could help us get some of the confidence we have been in desperate need of for a while. Perhaps winning so late on and when we probably didn’t deserve to might give us another little boost. Let’s hope so!

Them -

I think Kyoto looked a bit more positive than last year when they just seemed content to dive their way to a 0-0 but ended up winning thanks to our generosity. I don’t know if their captain Kawasaki was the player I moaned a lot about in this game last year, but if he wasn’t he certainly is a worthy successor for whoever that was as both of them spent most of their time on the pitch writhing around on the floor in fake agony. Delighted we won in the way we did after so much fakery from their players. Their fans gave Kamifukumoto a big old boo at the start of the match and continued to do so every time he touched the ball. Not sure what he did when we scored but would like to see the footage of it. I can understand their feelings to some extent though. Not sure what they had against Kurumaya who got a load of booing for getting injured by a hack from one of their players though. Maybe a hack... I can’t remember and it was at the other end of the pitch, but they were definitely booing him. I’m not sure how I can fit in the one zinger I thought of for this post so I’ll just wedge it in here at the end of this paragraph. Kyoto in Golden Week is insanely busy with everywhere being extremely crowded. Everywhere except the home sections of the Kyocera Stadium that is. We must have accounted for something approaching almost half of the attendance, with light blue shirts all the way to the half way line. I guess the train journey is a bit of a pain in the arse though. But it is a nice stadium, and now has Pilsner Urquell available in proper glassware in the football diner part that you can go into before you enter the stadium. Good price too!

Ref -

Let’s keep this brief and just say that Imamura is obsessed with free kicks being taken from the exact correct spot but doesn’t understand how to play an advantage. And was wildly inconsistent, particularly when it came to bookings. Whilst I always moan about refs, I don’t think I have screamed so loudly at one for a long time. Let’s hope it’s a long time till we ever see him at one of our games again.

Next up Sagan Tosu at home on Sunday. I’m not going to make any predictions about line-ups as I should by now realise that Oniki does things his own way. It would be lovely to make it three wins in a row, but Tosu at Todoroki is more often than not a draw, and usually a 0-0. We still haven’t won at home in the league, so it would be lovely to round off Golden Week with a third win in a row, but that might be a bit optimistic. Fingers crossed though!

 

Team 

 
GK 99. KAMIFUKUMOTO Naoto

DF 13. YAMANE Miki (Yellow card 53')

DF 29. TAKAI Kota (Yellow card 12')
DF 7. KURUMAYA Shintaro

DF 2. NOBORIZATO Kyoehi

MF 6. JOAO SCHMIDT (Yellow card 27')

MF 16. SEKO Tatsuki

MF 14. WAKIZAKA Yasuto

FW 41. IENAGA Akihiro

FW 33. MIYASHIRO Taisei

FW 17. TONO Daiya

Subs

GK 1. JUNG Sung-Ryong

DF 3. OMINAMI Takuma (on for NOBORIZATO 74')

MF 8. TACHIBANADA Kento

MF 10. OSHIMA Ryota (on for SEKO 67')

FW 11. KOBAYASHI Yu (Yellow card 90+4') (on for MIYASHIRO 80')

FW 20. YAMADA Shin (on for IENAGA 74')

FW 23. MARCINHO (on for TONO 67')

My Frontale Man Of The Match

 

This wasn’t a vintage performance so it’s a bit tricky. I think Takai and Joao had good games but most players looked quite tired. It’s a cliche to give it to a goalscorer but, why not…

KOBAYASHI Yu - came on with a drive and purpose that really helped us get over the line and shot and SCORED! Also it was generous of him to take his shirt off and gave Imamura the chance to actually get one decision in the match right by booking him. 

 

Goals

 

KOBAYASHI (Frontale) 90+4' 0-1

 

Highlights

 

Vs Avispa Fukuoka (away) 29/4/23 J League match 10

Avispa Fukuoka 1 - 3 Kawasaki Frontale

The main reason why this post is initially quite useless is the fact that as it’s golden week and we have away games on Saturday and Wednesday, we’ve decided to combine them both into one long trip, and therefore I don’t have access to my computer to do this properly. It will later become a bit less useless but still fairly useless as I didn’t take any notes in this game as it was absolutely pissing it down for the entire match. I’ll update the team line-up and goals part when I get home but probably won’t write any more than what you have here already. I would apologise but for some people it’s probably a relief.

 
So this match in brief. Same line up as last time, but noticeably different result. I felt like perhaps we’d finally given ourselves a boot up the backside and got ourselves into shape slightly. In spite of there being no running track at Avispa’s stadium, the behind the goal area is pretty flat and it’s not that easy to see what’s going on. Add to this the fact that the weather was so bad and you have a recipe for vagueness. However, of course I could see the myriad of mistakes that my most disliked ref of the season so far Yamamoto made. And you can’t miss him trying to draw attention to himself as it is extremely clear. It was a shame that it was Nara who scored the own goal for us. Would much rather it had been Grolli who I reckon could/should have been sent off for the second season in a row. It was referred to VAR and not given, but nowadays there’s no guarantee that something getting checked by VAR means that it will end up being in any way correct. Nobori ‘got goal’! It’s been a long time since that happened. Kashima away maybe if I remember correctly. Quite a few years ago though. It felt like we were in control of the game and making plenty of chances. The stats somewhat undermine that thought though, but we did win so I’m not going to moan too much. We did fail to keep a clean sheet again, but to be honest, who cares about that if we’ve won? Will this win spur us on in the next few matches? I hope so. But we’ve had a few false dawns before and when we played Kyoto away (our next fixture) last year we were totally crap and lost. (Another one of the many, ‘if only we’d won that game we would have won the league’ occasions that happened last year). Given that we’ve named the same starting line for two games in a row and the next game is coming soon, you might think we’d rotate a bit in the next game. At the same time, Oniki does like to stick with the same thing, especially if we won, so who knows really?

Next up Kyoto away on Wednesday. Fingers crossed.

Team

GK 99. KAMIFUKUMOTO Naoto
DF 13. YAMANE Miki
DF 29. TAKAI Kota
DF 7. KURUMAYA Shintaro
DF 2. NOBORIZATO Kyoehi
MF 6. JOAO SCHMIDT
MF 16. SEKO Tatsuki (Yellow card 63')
MF 14. WAKIZAKA Yasuto
FW 41. IENAGA Akihiro
FW 33. MIYASHIRO Taisei
FW 17. TONO Daiya

Subs
GK 1. JUNG Sung-Ryong
DF 3. OMINAMI Takuma (on for NOBORIZATO 89')
MF 8. TACHIBANADA Kento (on for SEKO 79')
MF 10. OSHIMA Ryota (on for WAKIZAKA 90+2')
FW 20. YAMADA Shin (on for TONO 79')
FW 26. EINAGA Takatora
MF 31. YAMAMURA Kazuya (on for IENAGA 90+2')

My Frontale Man Of The Match

Difficult to see much through the sheets of rain. Joao was great I thought. As were Seko and Wakizaka. Yamane made an amazing saving tackle. Miyashiro caused them lots of trouble. Nobori scored. Ienaga looked back to his old self. I dunno, maybe…

The whole team - it’s a lot easier to be generous with these things when we win and even more so if you can’t see what’s going on in the match.

Goals

NOBORIZATO (Frontale) 12' 0-1
NARA (Avispa) OWN GOAL 47' 0-2
NOBORIZATO (Frontale) 65' 0-3
TSURUNO (Avispa) 85' 1-3

Highlights