Sagan Tosu 0 - 1 Kawasaki Frontale
Another league campaign draws to a close and unlike last year, where we came miraculously close to kind of undeservedly getting something on the last day of the season, this year it was effectively all over months ago and all we could look forward to on the last day of the season was getting that most desired of all prizes, a top eight finish. This year’s league campaign has been an unmitigated disaster. I’ll write more about this in my end of year round up if I can be bothered to write anything at all. But it’s not all doom and gloom. We have the knockout stages of the ACL and the Emperor’s Cup final to look forward to. If we win the Emperor’s Cup and go a bit further in the ACL, perhaps this season will be looked back on as being a bit of a success. Of course objectively that will be correct, but an 8th place finish in the league isn’t something we’ve been used to recently.
As I’ve said before, you can’t really make much sense of why we’ve done better in some competitions than others this year. It’s basically been the same players and the same approach all the way, but maybe we’ve just been luckier when we aren't playing league games. It doesn’t even make sense when you consider the quality of the opposition. For some bizarre reason, even in past seasons when we’ve been flying high, it’s always the ‘weaker’ teams that get us. And that’s been the case again this year in the league. Although the truth is that pretty much everyone has had a decent chance of getting us at some stage of the season. Well apart from Kashima, hehe. When it comes to playing some noticeably weaker teams in the ACL however, we seem to brush them aside without too much trouble. A very confusing year. The only thing we can predict with any kind of confidence is that we’ll play terribly in the first half of pretty much every game.
Guess I’d better talk about this game a bit. In this match we didn’t play particularly well in the first half. But thankfully neither did Sagan Tosu. Both teams looked like they were already on the beach. Neither team had anything much to lose in this game when you consider league position so maybe that was why almost all the players on the pitch looked like they were thinking about plenty of other things than football. However, the thing is that we very much should not be on the beach yet. We have the cup final next weekend, and what better preparation for that game could there be than a game where we apparently managed four shots on target, none of which I can particualrly remember. As usual with Tosu away, part of this is probably to do with the shochu consumed whilst standing behind the goal. In a game of little quality it is kind of fitting that we won through an own goal. I think a fair result, particularly when you consider the level of both teams’ play, would have been a 0-0. Apparently Sagan Tosu didn’t manage a single shot on target, so perhaps if anyone ‘deserved’ to win it, it was probably us. But yeah, 0-0 would have made more sense. But still I had a lot of fun at this game. Think it was a kind of last day of term feeling, and will be the last time I get to watch Frontale from a reasonable distance in 2023 so I guess I just got a bit carried away and sang myself hoarse. Sorry if you were expecting more details from this post.
Maybe I should briefly say that the ref again seemed a bit rubbish, but rubbish in general rather than for any particular clanger. (We should have had a free kick inside their box for a back pass though, when they took a free kick, passed it back to the keeper who handled its and decided to take the free kick again from completely the wrong position. This was at the other end of the pitch though and… you know, shochu…). It was just a general low standard J League officiating performance. Clearly I couldn’t do a better job myself, but I don’t think that exempts me from being able to moan a bit. Especially given that this moaning has been the most entertaining part of many of this year's games for me. I feel like I should also write more about Oniki signing a new contract at the end of the season, so I won’t talk about it too much here. I will say though that depending on the result of the cup final, the decision will seem either well made or perhaps a bit of a rash decision. Certainly, as soon as the ink was dry on the new contract we seem to have gone back to the terrible early and mid season toothless performances. Presumably there is no connection, unless Oniki is really getting an early start on trying to lower expectations before picking things up shortly before the next contact renewal time.
It is quite funny, (well, maybe funny isn’t the right word…), quite how bad we became between the last couple of matches and this one. But we do always play pretty badly against Sagan Tosu, so maybe snatching a 1-0 win from a late own goal should actually be considered a bit of a coup. Plenty of fans seem to have greeted Oniki’s new contract with glee. I can’t say I feel the same way, but thought it was kind of inevitable after we cruised through the ACL group stages. The weird thing about the timing of that competition is that now it straddles two J League seasons there is the very real chance of a team who qualified from the group stage looking very different when it comes to the knockout stage. I wonder if players would be cup tied if they transfered from one ACL team to another. Anyway, 2024 will be another year for us with Oniki. If we finish the year playing how we have for the most part of the last couple of months, I think we can be a bit more optimistic. If we revert to the same old rubbish of the previous months in the final, I think it’s going to be another long year.
Next up, this Saturday, the Emperor’s Cup final against Kashiwa Reysol. We were pretty ineffective when we played them at their place recently, (one of the bad games in what was a pretty good run). Our previous Emperor’s Cup final at the National Stadium was a pretty dull affair so I guess this one could be too. But fingers crossed anyway. After that, the following Tuesday we finish 2023 with an away trip to Ulsan. I will be on my way to the UK for my Christmas holiday on the day of that game, so don’t expect anything more than a couple of sentence for that blog post and because of pre-holiday lack of preparation coming home to roost, also expect the Emperor’s Cup one to come out around the same time.
Team
GK 1. JUNG Sung-Ryong
DF 13. YAMANE Miki
DF 4. JESIEL
DF 31. YAMAMURA Kazuya
DF 2. NOBORIZATO KyoheiMF 8. TACHIBANADA Kento
MF 17. TONO Daiya
MF 17. TONO Daiya
MF 14. WAKIZAKA Yasuto
FW 33. MIYASHIRO Taisei
FW 11. KOBAYASHI Yu
FW 30. SEGAWA Yusuke Subs
GK 99. KAMIFUKUMOTO Naoto
DF 3. OMINAMI Takuma (on for JESIEL 81')
MF 16. SEKO Tatsuki (on for SEGAWA 59')
FW 18. Bafetimbi GOMIS (on for WAKIZAKA 81')
FW 20. YAMADA Shin (on for KOBAYASHI 59')DF 29. TAKAI Kota
FW 41. IENAGA Akihiro (on for TONO 71')
Goals
HINO (Sagan Tosu) OWN GOAL 87' 0-1
Highlights
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