Kawasaki Frontale 3 - 3 Kyoto Sanga
Sorry this is a bit late but I had an unpleasant start to the week as I think I caught the flu. Given that, I'm a bit worried that I was at the Frontale game on Sunday and then the Brave Thunders game too, (deal on tickets as it was a collaboration with Frontale. Have never been to a basketball game before and it was a lot of fun). This morning I’m feeling slightly human again so am sitting down and trying to get this post out of the way as quickly and painlessly as possible. Time always dulls the details and when you add three days of high fever to this, you can expect that there won’t be much that makes sense in this post but I’ll do my best from the notes I made. Here we go.
People excited by the starting line up and imagining we were changing formation and approach probably don’t know Oniki as well as they think they do. Naturally, no left back in the line up means we’ll probably be playing an attacker there. And so we did. You could say there was some rotation as Takai was in for Yamamura and the front three were changed. It’s basically the same 15 or 16 players still though. I think the last time Takai started at Todoroki he had a nightmare and was directly responsible for three opposition goals. On this occasion he was the solid link in the defensive chain and Jesiel instead was giving away goals for fun. Their second was particularly shocking, when it appeared that Jesiel was stuck in slow motion and could only look on as the Kyoto player easily beat him by… not really doing anything. I suspect that Jesiel has been rushed back from his injury and is feeling the pace. If only we had a manger who actually knew how to rotate, particularly in games that are absolutely meaningless for us! It was a shock when he was replaced at half time though, but definitely the right decision as he’d been really out of sorts. Not sure why Joao also got subbed, but that does seem to be Oniki’s reaction to a poor first half (remove the midfielder who isn’t Wakizaka or Tachibanada). If only we could get to a situation where we could actually choose the right players or approach right from the kick off if would be nice! So terrible have all of our first halves been recently, that if there was a bar in the stadium, it really wouldn’t be worth leaving it till half time. There’s one thing we can always guarantee recently and that’s that we’ll concede for fun in the first half. At least in this game we managed a couple of goals in the first 45 minutes and they were nice ones. Miyashiro was back starting again and scored a good goal and got an assist for Kobayashi's goal. I wonder what might have happened if Oniki hadn't dropped Miyashiro (our then top scorer) completely from our squads earlier in the year? Anyway, to sum us up in this game, we still look utterly surprised that teams will come and try to score goals against us, totally unprepared for what they might try to do, struggle to get decent shots in from our normal ponderous build up play, and will apparently persist in playing anyone at left back apart from an actual left back. I’m surprised he hasn’t given Kamifukumoto a go there yet. It’s weird that in a year when we are targeting reclaiming the league title we are woefully off the pace and when we haven’t mentioned the ACL and are in tough group we seem to be negotiating it pretty well. I think the only conclusion we can draw is that we’re not very good at doing what we want to do, or perhaps that our manager's plans to get what we want are so poor that they have no chance of succeeding. I guess the even more bizarre thing is that Oniki has never really been one for prioritising any one competition. In anything other than very early Emperor’s Cup rounds against amateur or university teams, Oniki’s gone with pretty much the same group of players and the same approach. Surely it can’t only be me who has noticed that they don’t work, can it?
On to the opposition and the officials. Let’s start with Kyoto as there’s not much to say about them really. They haven’t really looked like they were in relegation trouble for a while this season but as it comes to the crunch they find themselves hanging around in the wrong area again. So should be easy picking for a resolutely mid-table team like us, right? Well, of course not. Previous to this game they’d only scored 33 goals in their 31 games, but we let them score three against us. It seems to me that Kyoto have three main skills, time wasting, play acting and cutting through our defence with ease and scoring against us. Thankfully they devoted the second half to the first two having had their fill of the latter in the first half. I don't really have anything moany to say about them. We all know that with their manager they will be well organized and difficult to break down, We probably didn’t imagine that they’d cut us to pieces though. I normally get really angry about their captain but the only bitchy note I wrote about this game was that ‘their keeper is annoying’. I’m not sure the point has guaranteed their safety. Three would have done and looked likely for most of the match. They are definitely not the team I want to go down the most who are in the bottom five. Let’s move on to the officials or more accurately the ref. Takasaki was a new name for me and as I tweeted, this usually is a bad sign but I wasn’t going to pre-judge him. I should have trusted my gut though as he was by far the worst ref we’ve had for absolutely years! Apparently unaware of basic rules and almost always looking in the wrong direction at all times, I felt like he was a youngster who in their first proper game was determined to show that he wasn’t going to play favorites and give decisions to the home side and overcompensated the other way. He also seemed to be making every decision by using a complicated system of dice rolling like the dungeons and dragons nerd he probably is. (Sorry D&D fans, you probably weren’t expecting a dig at you here, but at the same time, I guess you’re kind of used to that kind of thing happening). The first dice roll was for whether to have his eyes open or not, then another roll for the direction in which to look, one for whether to blow his whistle or not, one for which team to give the decision to. There was probably another dice to roll later on when writing his report to decide how to justify his totally random decisions in the game. I can’t help but feel that if his first dice roll had come up with eyes closed and whilst his eyes were closed someone had nicked all of his dice and therefore he had to officiate the rest of the game by sound alone, we would have had a more consistent and accurate performance from him.
People excited by the starting line up and imagining we were changing formation and approach probably don’t know Oniki as well as they think they do. Naturally, no left back in the line up means we’ll probably be playing an attacker there. And so we did. You could say there was some rotation as Takai was in for Yamamura and the front three were changed. It’s basically the same 15 or 16 players still though. I think the last time Takai started at Todoroki he had a nightmare and was directly responsible for three opposition goals. On this occasion he was the solid link in the defensive chain and Jesiel instead was giving away goals for fun. Their second was particularly shocking, when it appeared that Jesiel was stuck in slow motion and could only look on as the Kyoto player easily beat him by… not really doing anything. I suspect that Jesiel has been rushed back from his injury and is feeling the pace. If only we had a manger who actually knew how to rotate, particularly in games that are absolutely meaningless for us! It was a shock when he was replaced at half time though, but definitely the right decision as he’d been really out of sorts. Not sure why Joao also got subbed, but that does seem to be Oniki’s reaction to a poor first half (remove the midfielder who isn’t Wakizaka or Tachibanada). If only we could get to a situation where we could actually choose the right players or approach right from the kick off if would be nice! So terrible have all of our first halves been recently, that if there was a bar in the stadium, it really wouldn’t be worth leaving it till half time. There’s one thing we can always guarantee recently and that’s that we’ll concede for fun in the first half. At least in this game we managed a couple of goals in the first 45 minutes and they were nice ones. Miyashiro was back starting again and scored a good goal and got an assist for Kobayashi's goal. I wonder what might have happened if Oniki hadn't dropped Miyashiro (our then top scorer) completely from our squads earlier in the year? Anyway, to sum us up in this game, we still look utterly surprised that teams will come and try to score goals against us, totally unprepared for what they might try to do, struggle to get decent shots in from our normal ponderous build up play, and will apparently persist in playing anyone at left back apart from an actual left back. I’m surprised he hasn’t given Kamifukumoto a go there yet. It’s weird that in a year when we are targeting reclaiming the league title we are woefully off the pace and when we haven’t mentioned the ACL and are in tough group we seem to be negotiating it pretty well. I think the only conclusion we can draw is that we’re not very good at doing what we want to do, or perhaps that our manager's plans to get what we want are so poor that they have no chance of succeeding. I guess the even more bizarre thing is that Oniki has never really been one for prioritising any one competition. In anything other than very early Emperor’s Cup rounds against amateur or university teams, Oniki’s gone with pretty much the same group of players and the same approach. Surely it can’t only be me who has noticed that they don’t work, can it?
On to the opposition and the officials. Let’s start with Kyoto as there’s not much to say about them really. They haven’t really looked like they were in relegation trouble for a while this season but as it comes to the crunch they find themselves hanging around in the wrong area again. So should be easy picking for a resolutely mid-table team like us, right? Well, of course not. Previous to this game they’d only scored 33 goals in their 31 games, but we let them score three against us. It seems to me that Kyoto have three main skills, time wasting, play acting and cutting through our defence with ease and scoring against us. Thankfully they devoted the second half to the first two having had their fill of the latter in the first half. I don't really have anything moany to say about them. We all know that with their manager they will be well organized and difficult to break down, We probably didn’t imagine that they’d cut us to pieces though. I normally get really angry about their captain but the only bitchy note I wrote about this game was that ‘their keeper is annoying’. I’m not sure the point has guaranteed their safety. Three would have done and looked likely for most of the match. They are definitely not the team I want to go down the most who are in the bottom five. Let’s move on to the officials or more accurately the ref. Takasaki was a new name for me and as I tweeted, this usually is a bad sign but I wasn’t going to pre-judge him. I should have trusted my gut though as he was by far the worst ref we’ve had for absolutely years! Apparently unaware of basic rules and almost always looking in the wrong direction at all times, I felt like he was a youngster who in their first proper game was determined to show that he wasn’t going to play favorites and give decisions to the home side and overcompensated the other way. He also seemed to be making every decision by using a complicated system of dice rolling like the dungeons and dragons nerd he probably is. (Sorry D&D fans, you probably weren’t expecting a dig at you here, but at the same time, I guess you’re kind of used to that kind of thing happening). The first dice roll was for whether to have his eyes open or not, then another roll for the direction in which to look, one for whether to blow his whistle or not, one for which team to give the decision to. There was probably another dice to roll later on when writing his report to decide how to justify his totally random decisions in the game. I can’t help but feel that if his first dice roll had come up with eyes closed and whilst his eyes were closed someone had nicked all of his dice and therefore he had to officiate the rest of the game by sound alone, we would have had a more consistent and accurate performance from him.
Ironically, the most egregious error he made, which cost us a goal and was confirmed as a horrible mistake by J League Judge Replay, (presumably to absolutely no consequence to the referee), was one that I didn’t see at all. Probably because I already had my head in my hands as we were clearly about to gift the opposition a goal. Little did I know that it was the ref who’d passed the ball out wide for the Kyoto play to make the assist. Our players surrounded the ref afterwards which is never a good look, but is something we don’t normally do, so I guessed something shocking had happened. Perhaps he thought he’d play an advantage instead of giving the absolutely obviously correct drop ball decision, as maybe he wants to get a reputation as a ref who lets the game flow. I’d like to see his career flow straight down the plughole if I’m being honest right now. Apparently VAR can’t intervene in this situation as there wasn't a foul committed, so it’s good to see that VAR, with its strictly prescribed guidelines, is ruling out those errors that we all care the most about, namely whether a striker’s toenail is offside or not, but failing when it comes to the reason for its whole existence, ie. fixing clear and obvious errors. Not saying I think it should be used more. I personally think we should just dump it now and forget it ever existed. Surely no-one thinks the game is better with it? I don’t think VAR was used at all in this game, which suggest that for a ref with very little experience and apparently very little skill, Takasaki was quite confident in his own abilities. Oh well, at least it wasn’t a shocking refereeing error in a potentially title deciding game…. oh 😺. Not being a fan, (and that’s quite an understatement), of either Vissel Kobe or Yokohama F Marines, it has been a bit difficult for me to decide who I would prefer to see win the league this year, but perhaps Vissel Kobe winning it, in part thanks to a truly awful refereeing cock up and therefore really irritating YFM fans whilst at the same time undermining Vissel’s first league title, well, that would suit me just fine I think. But there are still two games left, so plenty of chance for some more clowning from the guys who apparently know the rules of the game but seem to forget them every time they step on the the pitch and get their hands on their whistle. Some people have welcomed the introduction of the J League Judge Replay program to draw attention to the mistakes that are made, but it doesn’t seem that them highlighting previous cock ups has made it is any less likely that future cock ups will happen. So perhaps in the end, the whole thing only has the purpose of undermining the refs further. I would imagine that they don’t watch it anyway. After all, they are the experts and have nothing to learn. I don’t know if there have been more mistakes this year, but it feels like it. I know it’s a hard job, but is it too much to ask that some of them aren’t absolutely terrible at doing it?
Next up Kashima at home in another one of those pointless league games. Then we have Johor at home in a very important ACL game only four days later. What’s the betting he’ll start pretty much the same team for both of those games? Quite high I’d say. Sorry this post is a mess. I've had to make a lot of corrections already in my post-fever state and have probably missed some more. But you don't come here for accuracy anyway, do you? You come here for the wonderful insight, right? Sorry that is once again absent too. And not even much trolling of the opposition. See! I clearly am still a bit ill.
Team
GK 1. JUNG Sung-Ryong
DF 13. YAMANE Miki
DF 4. JESIEL
DF 29. TAKAI Kota
DF 30. SEGAWA YusukeMF 6. JOAO SCHMIDT
MF 8. TACHIBANADA Kento
MF 8. TACHIBANADA Kento
MF 14. WAKIZAKA Yasuto
FW 11. KOBAYASHI Yu
FW 18. Bafetimbi GOMIS
FW 33. MIYASHIRO Taisei
Subs
GK 99. KAMIFUKUMOTO Naoto
DF 2. NOBORIZATO Kyohei
MF 16. SEKO Tatsuki (on for JOAO SCHMIDT 46')
FW 20. YAMADA Shin (on for MIYASHIRO 71')
FW 23. MARCINHO (on for GOMIS 61')
FW 23. MARCINHO (on for GOMIS 61')
DF 31. YAMAMURA Kazuya (on for JESIEL 46')
FW 41. IENAGA Akihiro (on for SEGAWA 79')
Goals
FUKUDA (Kyoto) 7' 0-1
MIYASHIRO (Frontale) 19' 1-1
TOYOKAWA (Kyoto) 42' 1-2
TOYOKAWA (Kyoto) 45+1' 1-3
KOBAYASHI (Frontale) 45+5' 2-3
WAKIZAKA (Frontale) PEN 90+1' 3-3
Highlights
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