Vs Johor DT (away) 19/9/23 ACL Group stage match 1

Johor DT 0 - 1 Kawasaki Frontale

With just three days between games which included a flight to Malaysia, naturally Oniki went with the same team that just about squeaked past FC Tokyo. And perhaps unsurprisingly, seeing that this was another game against a team in red and blue, thankfully with a single goal from Marcinho for a Frontale team who look increasingly unlikely to score as the season continues, it was another pretty disappointing performance. But let’s not be too pessimistic as we have a tendency to mess up everything that is related to this competition, so it was nice for us to actually manage to win. This is particularly true as the majority of the second half seemed to be played at walking pace and was mainly a contest of which team could get more opposition players booked as the ref slowly lost control. I don’t know what this game says about the quality of Johor this year, but we’ve got three points against them which can only be a good thing. Ulsan won their game against Pathum 3-1, so I guess they will be the favourites in the group and our toughest opposition. Our next match in the competition will be the home game against them. I wonder if Oniki will start with the same eleven for that game, and for the two games we have in between (winking emoji goes here). Anyway, we’ve done the job so we can be happy about that. And perhaps it actually feels even better when we’ve done the job whilst playing so mediocrely. A few final points which are perhaps interesting but probably aren’t really. The pitch looked awful so it’s kind of fitting we played awfully on it. VAR in the ACL seems to be as painstakingly slow as it is in the J League. And has Oniki got lots of different sets of coloured magnets so that he can match his magnet board to the opposition’s kit, or was that merely a coincidence in this game? Oh, and YFM lost 4-2 at home. Hehehehehehe! That’ll probably happen to us in the next match day though…

Next up Shonan away, but at the National Stadium, on Sunday. Surely he won’t play the same team, will he? Surely he won’t…. surely….

 

Team

GK 1. JUNG Sung-Ryong

DF 13. YAMANE Miki

DF 7. KURUMAYA Shintaro (Yellow card 75')

DF 3. OMINAMI Takuma

DF 2. NOBORIZATO Kyohei

MF 8. TACHIBANADA Kento (Yellow card 81')

MF 16. SEKO Tatsuki

MF 14. WAKIZAKA Yasuto

FW 41. IENAGA Akihiro

FW 18. Bafetimbi GOMIS

FW 23. MARCINHO

 

Subs

GK 22. HAYASAKA Yuki
GK 99. KAMIFUKUMOTO Naoto

MF 6. JOAO SCHMIDT (Yellow card 90+6') (on for IENAGA 84')

FW 9. LEANDRO DAMIAO (on for GOMIS 68')

FW 11. KOBAYASHI Yu
DF 5. SASAKI Asahi (on for NOBORIZATO 74')
FW 17. TONO Daiya

FW 20. YAMADA Shin
DF 29. TAKAI Kota
FW 30. SEGAWA Yusuke (on for MARCINHO 68')

DF 31. YAMAMURA Kazuya (on for SEKO 83')

FW 33. MIYASHIRO Taisei

 

Goals

MARCINHO (Frontale) 45' 0-1

Highlights