Kawasaki Frontale 4 - 2 Pathum United
So we’re back to the 4-2 wins again after the brief diversion of a dodgy 1-1 draw. It would be wrong to say some things never change as not all of our last five games have been 4-2 wins. When it comes to us having terrible first halves though, some things really never change. Thankfully in this match, our visitors gave us two penalties. Which was a bit of luck as I didn’t think we were going to score otherwise. I have no idea why we’re so useless in the first half of games recently, but it’s pretty undeniable. At the same time as we were clutching at penalty kick straws, our former player Chanathip was scoring for fun up the other end. He never really seemed to do that for us. I wonder why…? Perhaps because he was always played out of position? Oh well, perhaps our esteemed chairman was right and he should just have waited for his chance to play, (presumably when hell froze over with the ice encasing the rest of our midfielders and attackers). Anyway that’s all in the past now so I can just be pleased that he got his chance to show us what could have been and also enjoy his nice greeting to our fans and our reaction to him. I don’t think any of us wanted him to leave, but I don’t think many of us can begrudge him for doing so.
On paper this was our easiest game in the group stage of this year’s ACL. Our group isn’t the easiest but somehow we seem to be navigating our way through it quite nicely at the moment. Bizarrely we haven’t conceded against the two ‘stronger’ teams, but have conceded four times in the two games against Pathum. To be fair though, one of the goals in the previous game was an absolute gift from a hopeless ref and both in this game were gifts from our defence and Sung-Ryong. The Sung-Ryong one was particularly weird, almost as if he forgot Chanathip wasn’t playing for us anymore. Plenty of Pathum’s dangerous moments came courtesy of us and our ridiculous tactics at the back. It seems that Oniki is definitely right back to the play-it-around-at-the-back-to-‘draw-out’-the-opposition tactics. It’s never really worked particularly well, and on the occasions in this game where we managed to get a couple of their players drawn out and play the ball past them, perhaps successfully implementing the tactic, we then followed Oniki’s second rule of football which is that as soon as you enter the opposition half, you immediately need to pass the ball backwards, which was perfect for allowing their strikers to retreat into position and therefore make the whole first part of the tactics utterly pointless. It does feel like we’re deliberately trying to make things more difficult for ourselves recently. It was perhaps a surprise to see Wakizaka taking our penalties. It seems that we’ve gone through quite a few penalty takers recently and none of them have exactly shone. Therefore it was nice to see Wakizaka put both of his away nicely. Particularly as aside from the penalties he didn’t have a great game, I thought. But then again, no one did really. Marcinho was perhaps unlucky to get two goals disallowed through VAR, (haven’t looked back at them as I wasted enough time on VAR at the game to want to waste any more watching replays), but at the same time, he did seem to do his usual thing of making a really good run, but sadly one that outwitted not only the opposition but also his teammates, and then couldn’t do anything with the ball. Ienaga missed what for him were a couple of absolute sitters. Damiao seemed to try to do an overhead kick from just in front of the goal line, when it presumably would have been easier and more effective to do almost anything else (this was at the other end of the pitch though, so I might have seen things slightly differently from reality). Yamane was still doing his ‘hit it first time thing’, to the extent that this really must be either a new Oniki tactic or the case that he’s developed an intense fear of the ball. Perhaps the low-light of the game for me was when Tachibanada burst into the box in the 81st minute with Gomis lurking at the far post and instead of kicking the ball towards the goal, we went backwards and away from the goal instead. Just kind of summed up the match really. That, and the fact that our time wasting started over ten minutes before the final whistle. It was really a surprise that we managed to get our fourth goal actually as there seemed to be a lot more focus on doing anything other than attacking at that stage. Plenty of weird things happened in this game. At the time it felt like one of our worst performances for ages, but somehow we won, even after we had two goals chalked off. Which all sounds like the whinings of a fan spoilt by recent seasons success (not including this or last season obviously!), but blimey, aren’t we getting some luck recently? Long may that continue!
On to the match officials, all of whom were overshadowed in this game by our old friend VAR. I think I’ve actually stopped moaning every week about VAR recently, which I guess is something of a surprise, as I still intensely hate it. The fact is, it’s clearly here to stay, in spite of the fact that it doesn’t eliminate refereeing errors, the one thing that it was implemented to get rid of. Instead now we have the potential of errors coming from two angles, apparently depending on the seniority of the person on VAR compared to the ref on the field. In this game, I didn’t have any problems with the outcome of the decisions, mostly because I haven’t actually checked most of them, and we didn’t get any replays in the stadium. The amount of times decisions were sent to VAR was crazy though. We had nine minutes of injury time at the end of the second half and I think most of this was for finger on the ear moments when everyone on the pitch and in the stands was just hanging around twiddling their fingers. Some have said that the red card was a bit harsh, but from a quick look at a replay it seems like a stamp on an ankle nowhere near the ball so I think it’s probably fair enough. This seems to be happening to Seko every game recently. Perhaps because he’s so cool on the ball and maybe some opponents have focused on him as being the key player in the middle for us. Every game sees him get booted after he’s already passed the ball and most of the time the refs don’t really even notice. On this occasion, the ref didn’t even give the foul and VAR only intervened when we’d put the ball out of play for Seko to get some treatment. Surprisingly, the linesman nearest to us was so bad that he made the ref look like the star graduate of the refereeing academy. Constantly either behind the play or running on the pitch instead of behind the line (what is it about that in the ACL? Don’t think I’ve ever seen it in a J League game), he was absolutely hopeless. For Yamamura’s goal it was our friend the lino who alerted the ref to the fact that the Pathum players thought there had been a handball. There was no way he could have seen it himself from his position so basically he was just giving them an official line of complaint. If requested, he probably would have taken care of their post-match interviews for them and cleaned their changing room afterwards. To be fair to the ref, he looked as bored and pissed off by the VAR delays as everyone else was. It’s all too easy to focus on the cock ups VAR makes and forget about the absolute ruination of match atmosphere that it’s responsible for. When every possible goal is accompanied by the potential of it being ruled out after an interminable wait, it becomes difficult to know how or when to celebrate. I’m sure there is a lot more initial celebration of goals that are ruled out compared to celebration when goals are awarded after a lengthy delay. I’m also sure that this really is not how delayed gratification works. If you deny yourself the beer till after you’ve deep-cleaned the bathroom it might taste nicer. But if you pour the beer before you start cleaning, by the time you get round to drinking it, it might not taste as nice anymore. Every goal celebration is now undermined by the very real prospect that it could be ruled out and the knowledge that even if it is given, the intervening minutes will have taken the shine of the moment sufficiently that the excitement becomes about as heightened as seeing your number come up on the screen at the post office. The fun of seeing the build up and the ball hitting the net is undermined, the experience being reduced to seeing the result of a toss of a coin broadcast on a massive TV and not even getting to see the bit where they flip it. One last word about the officiating. The ref booked a Pathum player for an obvious dive in the second half. It was one of the best things I’ve seen this season. I can’t remember the last time anyone in the J League got booked for diving. I really wish they’d do it more often and I can think of plenty of players who absolutely deserve those cards!
I should probably put in this last paragraph something about the Pathum fans who had traveled in reasonable numbers and who did their best to cheer on their team stuck away down in the far corner. I hope they had a nice time in Kawasaki. And also a word about the Pathum players who very graciously waited for our overlong end-of-game celebrations to finish so that they could come round and bow to our fans. One in particular seemed totally amazed at the reception Chanathip got. How nice it is to support a team who clap the opposition at the end of an ACL game, rather than one who hate everyone who ever comes to their stadium. Not mentioning any names… hehe. Next up, Kyoto at home on Sunday, another one of these pointless end of season games. Given that Oniki didn’t make any changes until the 76th minute in this match, you’ve got to think he’ll change the side significantly for that match, right? Hahahahahahaha. After that, almost two weeks till the following game. It’s a good thing we crammed all those matches in early on in the season isn’t it? So now we can have a nice leisurely and excitement undermining run in. I mean, there’s nothing for us to play for in the league anyway, so I guess it doesn’t really matter. But it does seem that most football associations have a knack of finding exactly when the fans don’t want and implementing it every time. The next new innovations will probably be replacing the seats in the stands with thorny bushes, forcing any player who scores or assists a goal to immediately retire and playing the Emperor’s Cup generic ‘uplifting and lightly funky but with plenty of rock guitar solos’ theme song at ear-splitting volume throughout every game, but putting the song back to the beginning every time the ball goes out of play so you never even find out what happens in the middle section (probably a light breakdown with a more mellow but still rocking guitar solo). Looking forward to seeing those changes coming in in 2024!
Team
GK 1. JUNG Sung-Ryong
DF 13. YAMANE Miki
DF 4. JESIEL
DF 31. YAMAMURA Kazuya
DF 2. NOBORIZATO Kyohei
MF 8. TACHIBANADA Kento (Yellow card 90+4')
MF 16. SEKO Tatsuki
MF 14. WAKIZAKA Yasuto
FW 41. IENAGA Akihiro
FW 9. LEANDRO DAMIAO
FW 23. MARCINHO
Subs
GK 22. HAYASAKA Yuki
GK 99. KAMIFUKUMOTO Naoto
GK 99. KAMIFUKUMOTO Naoto
MF 6. JOAO SCHMIDT (on for SEKO 84')
FW 11. KOBAYASHI Yu (on for MARCINHO 84')
DF 15. TANABE Shuto
DF 15. TANABE Shuto
FW 17. TONO Daiya
FW 18. Bafetimbi GOMIS (on for LEANDRO DAMIAO 76')FW 20. YAMADA Shin
FW 24. MYOGAN
DF 29. TAKAI Kota
FW 30. SEGAWA Yusuke (on for WAKIZAKA 90+5')
FW 33. MIYASHIRO Taisei (on for IENAGA 76')
FW 33. MIYASHIRO Taisei (on for IENAGA 76')
Goals
CHANATHIP (Pathum) 33' 1-1
WAKIZAKA (Frontale) PEN 40' 2-1
CHANATHIP (Pathum) 41' 2-2
YAMAMURA (Frontale) 68' 3-2
Highlights
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