Kawasaki Frontale 3 - 1 Tochigi City
After Saturday’s canceled game in Kobe, on Wednesday we were back at Todoroki for our first Emperor’s Cup outing of 2023. Tochigi City, (formerly/otherwise know as Tochigi Uva), were the opponents. When you consider how many possible opponents there are and how we usually go out of this competition without playing many games, it’s a bit of a surprise how we keep playing the same teams. Since I started writing this blog in 2016 we’ve faced Tochigi City twice, Blaublitz Akita twice and JEF United twice. And this year in the next round we have Mito who we played a few years ago in a game that was almost impossible to get home from due to bad weather and a penalty shoot out. Rather than another home game our next round match is away at Mito, which I’m kind of pleased about but it would be nice to get the chance to go to a new ground. It would be nice if the first round match had been away too. But on we trot to the grass verge behind the goal in Mito because we did so well in this game. Well, we got through anyway. Due to the difference in level of the teams, it’s always easier to find negative things to say in these situations. I don’t think we were that bad though. As always with games that aren’t league games it’s quite difficult to find stats. The set of stats on the official website reinforce the fact that I felt we once again had plenty of the ball and were enjoying our apparently pointless and endless build ups but didn’t really make that many real chances. But we did score three times, so I should probably stop moaning. Our line up was a bit of a mix of probable first choice players and some reserves, but that is quite difficult to judge properly as no-one, including Oniki, knows what our best line up might be. Takai and Einaga were back from crashing out of the U20 World Cup due to the usual national team managerial incompetence, (I’ve heard, I didn’t pay it much attention to be honest), and the former started with the latter coming on midway through the second half. Takai looked pretty good in the first half, but perhaps the jet lag set in later on as he had a truly horrible five minutes where he was at fault for their goal and almost gave them a couple more. Thankfully he managed to steady himself.
Kozuka looked really assured in the middle of the pitch I thought. Some people sitting near me groaned when the occasional pass from him got intercepted but I suspect that those people were wearing Oshima or Wakizaka shirts and were annoyed that their guy wasn’t playing. Damiao and Chanathip started. Perhaps the former is coming back again from his injury but he did take part in a previous game this year as a sub before disappearing completely, so I don’t know if that was fitness related or there was another reason for it. Chanathip seems to be destined to not get anywhere near starting in games other than these kind of ones. In the past Oniki has played him well out of position and has dropped him when he started to come into some form. I really like him and think he’s definitely got something to give, but suspect that he should move on somewhere else as with he current manager and system he’s not getting much of a chance and when he does get a chance it’s not the right chance. For some reason in this game Segawa was switched to the right hand side instead of his usual left for us, with Tono on the other side. I don’t know if the right is his preferred side or it’s just because Ienaga wasn’t playing. Tachibanada at right back would previously have caused me to groan, saying why can’t we play players in the right position. On this occasion though I thought he did better there than when he was moved into the midfield. And if Oniki is still mulling over the whole right back moving into the midfield to build attacks thing, well it worked much better with Tachibanada doing it than it has with Yamane. However when Ominami came on at right back he had a stormer. So as I always say, I think I’d prefer us, particularly when we’re not exactly setting the world alight with our ‘exciting’ and ‘progressive’ (or perhaps all over the place and ineffective) tactics to just keep things simple and play people in their preferred positions.
So Tono scored twice, probably in part because he actually wanted to shoot. We missed quite a few good chances in the manner of a team for whom things aren’t clicking and aren’t getting that little bit of luck that helps build confidence and runs. But we did win relatively comfortably. And it would be remiss of me not to say that the third goal was very nice, with great work from Wakizaka and Ominami. Tochigi City looked like a potential banana skin with their fancy bus and fancy player intro video. I think they’ve spent most of their money on forwards though as they looked dangerous at times in attack, but the defence was more of a work on progress, giving the ball away cheaply on occasion and the rest of the time defending in numbers in quite a rudimentary but effective way. They definitely gave us a game though. But pleasingly we managed to get through. Last year we cruised through our first game before crashing out against Verdy limply in the following game. Hopefully we don’t do the same against Mito this year. No mention here of Nishimura the ref, who I thought… had a good game! Also no real mention of Ozeki and Myogan making the bench. Oniki only made four changes for some reason, and stuck with his more familiar players as he does on occasions like this, so Ozeki was denied a debut and Myogan was denied a home debut and a chance to get some confidence back after he got subbed at half time away against Shimizu and then got dumped by our wise and esteemed leader. I wish our managerial lord would instead dump some of his ineffective tactics and think about trying to add some shooting to the end of our lengthy and beautiful middle of the pitch build up play. But we can dream I guess!
So Tono scored twice, probably in part because he actually wanted to shoot. We missed quite a few good chances in the manner of a team for whom things aren’t clicking and aren’t getting that little bit of luck that helps build confidence and runs. But we did win relatively comfortably. And it would be remiss of me not to say that the third goal was very nice, with great work from Wakizaka and Ominami. Tochigi City looked like a potential banana skin with their fancy bus and fancy player intro video. I think they’ve spent most of their money on forwards though as they looked dangerous at times in attack, but the defence was more of a work on progress, giving the ball away cheaply on occasion and the rest of the time defending in numbers in quite a rudimentary but effective way. They definitely gave us a game though. But pleasingly we managed to get through. Last year we cruised through our first game before crashing out against Verdy limply in the following game. Hopefully we don’t do the same against Mito this year. No mention here of Nishimura the ref, who I thought… had a good game! Also no real mention of Ozeki and Myogan making the bench. Oniki only made four changes for some reason, and stuck with his more familiar players as he does on occasions like this, so Ozeki was denied a debut and Myogan was denied a home debut and a chance to get some confidence back after he got subbed at half time away against Shimizu and then got dumped by our wise and esteemed leader. I wish our managerial lord would instead dump some of his ineffective tactics and think about trying to add some shooting to the end of our lengthy and beautiful middle of the pitch build up play. But we can dream I guess!
Next up Sanfrecce Hiroshima at home, a team who are doing better than us in the league, are fancied by some but also have a real talent for putting in some dodgy performances between their good ones. Oniki has a few decisions to make regarding personnel as he has wavered between quite a few different line ups, never really finding one that works particularly well with his tactics. It’s a Sunday night game, so if it goes badly there’s sadly not much time in the pub afterwards to commiserate. Let’s hope Sanfrecce have one of their dodgy games and that we can put together something vaguely resembling attacking football.
Team
GK 1. JUNG Sung-Ryong
DF 8. TACHIBANADA Kento
DF 29. TAKAI Kota
DF 31. YAMAMURA Kazuya
DF 31. YAMAMURA Kazuya
DF 5. SASAKI Asahi
MF 47. KOZUKA Kazuki
MF 16. SEKO Tatsuki
MF 18. CHANATHIP
FW 30. SEGAWA Yusuke
FW 9. LEANDRO DAMIAO
FW 17. TONO Daiya
FW 17. TONO Daiya
Subs
DF 3. OMINAMI Takuma (on for CHANATHIP 68')
MF 14. WAKIZAKA Yasuto (on for KOZUKA 88')
FW 24. MYOGAN Toya
FW 26. EINAGA Takatora (on for LEANDRO DAMIAO 68')
MF 28. OZEKI Yuto
MF 28. OZEKI Yuto
FW 33. MIYASHIRO Taisei (on for SEGAWA 63')
My Frontale Man Of The Match
For me there was one player who stood out, but given that another player scored twice I’m going to give it jointly to…
KOZUKA Kazuki & TONO Daiya - the former had his best game for us I thought, looking assured and progressive whereas the latter did what has been toughest for us this year and put the bloody ball in the bloody net. Well done to both of them.
Goals
TONO (Frontale) 18' 1-0
TOSHIMA (Tochigi) 65' 1-1
TONO (Frontale) 71' 2-1
MIYASHIRO (Frontale) 89' 3-1
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