Vissel Kobe 2 - 2 Kawasaki Frontale
This was the first game this year that I haven’t attended. I guess all good things come to an end sooner or later. Although perhaps it’s a bit weird to describe watching Frontale this year as a good thing. Certainly there have been some big highlights. Well actually I can’t really think past the winner at YFM at the moment but I guess there were a couple of others. There have been plenty of lowlights though. I wondered if my attendance was bringing us bad luck and if I watched from afar we might be much better. At half time I envisioned myself doing a lot less traveling in the upcoming months. But at full time I was reassured that our performances have nothing to do with me. I’m not a curse and we can contrive to mess things up quite nicely by ourselves without any outside influence. As I didn’t attend the game, this will be a short post. There’s no point in me boring on about what everyone else could see on the broadcast. My unique selling point is boring on about things you can’t see so clearly or more likely aren’t interested about.
So a few words about the match. This game (along with the previous one and the one after next) gave us a real chance to shake up the title race. You could probably say that we’ve shaken it a little, but by losing a two goal lead haven’t shaken it enough to get ourselves involved. I don’t think anyone really expected that to happen anyway. I was ‘slightly intoxicated’ whilst watching this match so please feel free to correct any mistakes I have inevitably made. I felt like we got our two goal lead a little bit out of nowhere. We were ok in the first half but fortunately Vissel were pretty rubbish and it felt like it could have been the Kobe of a few years ago playing. Was nice to score first and even extend the lead. Wasn’t so nice to throw it away in the second half though. Our stats weren’t very different for the first and second halves, but Vissel upped their game quite a bit and we couldn’t deal with it. Can’t blame Oniki for sticking with a winning team but probably can blame him for not noticing that the starting line up in the last game didn’t do the business. It did in this game, but ran out of steam. I dunno if that’s Oniki’s fault particularly, but there was a certain inevitability about our capitulation. Maybe the same players are getting tired. Or maybe our luck has deserted us a little. Can’t say we totally deserved to beat YFM, although it was lovely, so perhaps we’re currently playing at more of a draw-every-game level and we just got lucky in that one. One note I wrote whilst watching the game, and I didn’t write many, was that it was a surprise to see Sasaki take a free kick with his right foot. Whether this actually happened, I can’t say for sure, so it’s kind of pointless mentioning it I guess. I think my overall summing up of the game would be that we weren’t great, but that Kobe were crap in the first half, but sorted themselves out a bit in the second.
A few words about Kobe and the ref. I have some very bad things written about the ref in my notes and that comes as no surprise really as the ref was Kimura. I think he’s truly awful, but can’t say if my opinion of that being the case in this game was accurate or not. My notes about Kobe mainly concern the fact that loads of their players were doing that weird thing Yuma Suzuki does with his shorts where he rolls them up around the... groin.... Osako did it, Sakai did it and there were a couple of others too. Perhaps the Vissel kit isn’t particularly well designed for use in hot weather. Or perhaps they’re all just weirdos. Or perhaps both. I suspect it is the case that autonepiophilia is spreading though the Vissel squad. I had to look up that word and perhaps now you have to too. The awful pitch, which is not as awful as it used to be, but still is pretty awful when you consider how many people slip over on it, claimed another victim in this game. My notes say that a Yuruki injury was because of the pitch. I guess it makes it more likely that they might do something about it if their players get the injuries. I think ours came away relatively unscathed. Although Nobori was replaced as a concussion substitution. (Well, we made six changes, and as far as I can remember, he was the most likely one to be the concussion change).
Anyway, that’s enough. I can’t really remember the game so with that in mind, I’ve almost certainly written too much already. Next up Kochi United away on August 2nd. Nothing is happening till then as far as I’m concerned. I won’t even be able to watch the Kochi game as I have to work, so imagine how bad that blog post will be. And then the weekend after that we’ve got Gamba at home. That’ll do for now. Bye!
Team
GK 1. JUNG Sung-Ryong
DF 13. YAMANE Miki
DF 29. TAKAI Kota
DF 2. NOBORIZATO Kyohei
MF 6. JOAO SCHMIDT
MF 14. WAKIZAKA Yasuto
MF 16. SEKO Tatsuki
FW 41. IENAGA Akihiro
FW 20. YAMADA Shin
FW 33. MIYASHIRO Taisei
Subs
GK 99. KAMIFUKUMOTO Naoto
DF 3. OMINAMI Takuma (on for SEKO 70')
DF 5. SASAKI Asahi (on for NOBORIZATO 46')
MF 8. TACHIBANADA Kento (on for YAMADA 70')
FW 9. LEANDRO DAMIAO (on for MIYASHIRO 84')
FW 17. TONO Daiya (on for WAKIZAKA 84')
FW 17. TONO Daiya (on for WAKIZAKA 84')
FW 30. SEGAWA Yusuke (on for KURUMAYA 76')
Goals
WAKIZAKA (Frontale) 23' 0-1
MIYASHIRO (Frontale) 30' 0-2
OSAKO (Kobe) 59' PEN 1-2
OSAKO (Kobe) 62' 2-2
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