Vissel Kobe 0 - 1 Kawasaki Frontale
It’s February 18th and already we’ve played our second game of the year. By the time 16 out of the 20 J1 teams kick off their first competitive game of 2024, we’ll be starting our fourth. And there’s no time to sit around enjoying not writing blog posts because game number three is fast approaching. After our first eleven just about did enough against what looked like a not particularly strong Shandong team last Tuesday we turned up at the National Stadium with a completely different first eleven. I think I expressed my doubts that Oniki would rotate much for this match, but he totally did so I have to eat some humble pie. Maybe he really has changed his approach. I guess that will become clearer as the games continue to come thick and fast. I know I always make a joke about the Levain Cup being the most prestigious of all Japanese football titles, but the Fujifilm Super Cup, as I believe it is now called, is most definitely the title all teams take least seriously and care the least about. Well, unless you are the troll Marinos fan who always finds something to criticise us about and expressed his disgust at us not taking this prestigious cup final seriously by rotating too much. Perhaps he’s still a bit sore after his side threw away a two goal lead against Bangkok United. I think a competition that only two teams have a chance of winning and which is usually crammed in between the last pre-season friendly and the season opener is absolutely the least admired trophy to add to the cabinet. But I am delighted that we snatched it away from Vissel Kobe’s clutches. Actually, that makes it sound like they were cruelly denied the cup by some misfortune, but I think we looked much better than them. To add a bit more detail and heat to that burn let’s say I think our second team looked much better than their first team. And even if they want to use the excuse that we’d already started our season, I’d like to add that any start to the season that our starting eleven had had, was basically sitting on a plane, and then sitting on a bench. I’m sure Mikitani could have funded a similar trip for their players if they’d wanted it. Anyway, this introduction has already gone longer than I wanted the whole post to go on, so I’d better get on with rolling out some more insults, as I’m sure that’s why you’re here. Let’s use the usual headings.
Us -
Massive changes as I said above. First pitch time for Ze Ricardo, Patrick Verhon and Yamauchi. First starts for Van Wermeskerken and Maruyama. And I thought everyone did alright! There was no-one on the pitch for us who didn’t show some real positive promise. Certainly there were a few dodgy moments, but that’s to be expected with a team and partnerships that have never played together. And presumably there was a bit of a language barrier between Ze Ricardo and Patrick as they’ve only been in the country about a month. Sai almost made the perfect start to his Frontale career, coming very close to scoring with a backwards header very early on in the game. He later went on to actually make the perfect start to his Frontale career by scoring in the second half. It doesn’t bother me that he basically blocked a clearance which was then deflected into the net. I’ve seen goals that have more egregiously been not designated as own goals. I thought the rule was that if the ball was going on target before the final deflection it’s not an own goal. But anyway, I’m sure he’s happy to be credited with it and us fans are just happy it went in. To be honest, I couldn’t see a great deal of difference in the way we approached the game to how we did last year, but it just felt a lot better than it has recently. I guess this is due to the novelty factor of there being different players. I don’t think it’s particularly apparent that the ‘first choice’ team is better than the ones who started this match, which is something that if Oniki agrees with, will give him some difficult decisions to make. Certainly in the past I have been frustrated by us not changing anything much when the one plan we had wasn’t working. Seems like I’m easily placated by seeing some new faces though. Oh, and perhaps by winning! As I said above there were plenty of decent performances. I’m a bit biased as I like him a lot, but I thought Seko had a really good game and was unlucky to see his free kick hit the bar. His corners looked better than Wakizaka’s 2023 corners too. (I do remember thinking his corners were a bit better in the ACL game though). Takai was the other stand out I thought. He was clam and assured at the back and dealt with Osako pretty easily for the most part. He also looked good coming out of defence too. He showed this kind of promise in his first few games, so it’s good to see that kind of thing coming back after he had a bit of a wobble. I felt a bit sorry for Gomis in this game as he’s coming closer and closer to scoring but just doesn’t seem to have any luck. When he did put the ball in the net, (see below), the ref wasn't having it and he was denied an almost certain goal when after Marcinho came on and did one of his trademark dribbles, he tried to shoot rather than pass to an unmarked Gomis. Hopefully he’ll score soon, as I think that when he does he’ll start banging them in for fun. So, a much improved performance from our last game in this stadium and maybe some reason for optimism. Hopefully that doesn’t come crashing down in the immediate future.
Them -
After years of laughing at Vissel Kobe’s splashing of the cash to no effect I think everyone had to admit that last year they were deserved champions. Certainly their ability to sign plenty of high profile and effective players, somewhat in contrast to some of their recent more high profile foreign imports, helped them do well, but they more than earned their success. This is especially easy for me to say as they stopped YFM winning the league and did so with an extremely dodgy decision, hopefully rubbing salt in the YFM wounds. Not sure what’s happened to them since last year though. Now they seem like an ineffective long ball team. I particularly enjoyed the English language interview of Sai (van Wermeskerken, from now on just know as Sai as it’s a long name to have to keep typing), where he singled out the fact that it had been a challenge because we had to deal with a lot of long balls from Kobe. I don’t know if this was a wonderfully taken dig, but I kind of hope that it is. I guess their shooting was pretty bad in this game and that helped us out. Sakai was particularly awful when it came to getting shots or passes on target. I wonder if they’ve turned into 2023 Frontale. I saw they had plenty of possession and a decent amount of shots but failed to score. Got to love it when one of the three teams who people seem to be tipping for the title start out their year like that. Their keeper looked awful too. I’ve been trying to think of a more amusing second half to the following comparison but haven’t quite been able to find one so you have to make do with this. Maekawa had more flaps than a migrating Arctic Tern in these 90 minutes. And one of these set up our goal. It’s a bit of a shame that we couldn’t have taken advantage of more of them though. One final point on Kobe. Seeing Arai and Miyashiro in their colours was a bit of a wrench. Arai was much loved at Frontale and we were kind of surprised when he left. The fact that he went down to J2 for a few seasons with JEF and then ended up at the J1 champions is a surprise, but I guess he’ll be playing a back up role there. Perhaps judging on how bad Maekawa played though, he could be getting more action than anyone expected. Miyashiro is a tough one. I had his shirt last year, (curse of the shirt, basically it’s my fault he left), but can’t begrudge him leaving us as he was underused, never really played in his best position and even though he scored more goals from open play than any other player in far less minutes, it was clear that Oniki wasn’t going to either make him his first choice striker or change our system to suit him. I was a bit shocked to see how many of our fans booed him before, during and after the game, and kind of disgusted that it happened when he and Arai came to greet us after the match. I don’t know if it’s because they resent him for leaving for a bigger pay packet, for the reigning champions or just because he was a youth team product who didn’t stay with us for the rest of his career. It seems that no-one has a problem when our players leave for foreign teams, regardless of the level, but if they leave to a J1 rival they should be hated. Of course it wasn’t everyone booing, but it was a significant amount of people. Perhaps these people think it would be better for him to stay with us forever, playing fewer and fewer games as the years pass, but still being there to take pictures with bananas for themed match day events and to make everyone in the crowd feel comfortable and warm inside. I don’t know what 2024 will hold for him, but maybe Kobayashi is an interesting comparison. He turned down some offers to go to teams where he’d definitely have played more and is apparently going to have a career with us after he stops playing. I can’t imagine it’s much fun for him though, particularly in a season like 2023 where the rotation was really minimal. Fingers crossed for him in 2024.
Ref and VAR -
This game had the potential to be a perfect storm of absolute shitness when it came to officials. The ref was Ikeuchi who is notoriously bad, but who I faintly praised in the last game we had with him saying that I ’didn’t find much if anything to get irritated about’. Perhaps he read this and was infuriated and determined to prove that there is always something to get irritated about when he’s in charge. The first note I made during the game said ‘four mins till first absolute shit decision’. I can’t remember what it was now, but I guess it was one of many, in my opinion, absolutely one-eyed decisions he made in the game. I knew we were in trouble when he decided to apparently warn Tanabe after a tackle that he didn’t even give a free kick for. Then unsurprisingly, the very next tackle Tanabe made he was booked. Gomis pointed this out to Ikeuchi but perhaps that only encouraged him, and it wasn’t long before he was able to book Gomis too. It seemed like everything was given Vissel’s way. I wouldn’t be surprised if you checked his fridge you’d find a massive bit of Kobe beef in there and a big pile of Rakuten gift cards on top of it. Of course I am naturally biased in favor of Frontale and my Vissel supporting friend seemed to think he’d done ok in the game. I find though that in the J League, if you feel like the ref has had a decent game, he’s probably been biased in your favour. I think a ref having a decent game is rarer than a cross that Maekawa doesn’t flap at. Or a bit of Kamifukumoto distribution that doesn’t end up flying off the side of the pitch,(this is hugely unfair, as I thought he had a decent game yesterday). The most egregious Ikeuchi cock up though was him blowing for a free kick when Yamada absolutely fairly won the ball by the goal line, passed it back to Gomis who put the ball in the back of the net. He clearly blew up for a free kick as it looked like some of the Kobe players had stopped. So I guess he must have been confident he was right, or does that 'let the play go on and get VAR check it' thing only work with offsides? I can’t remember if it was Ikeuchi who previously decided to blow the whistle for a goal that we scored that was incorrectly flagged offside, but crucially blow the whistle before the ball went in, so ruling out any possibility of VAR coming into play? I don’t know if it was him, but I wouldn’t be surprised if it was. I know it’s not a good look for our fans to boo the ref as he went up to receive his medal for a job truly terribly done, but to be honest, I thought he was awful, so probably got what he deserved. One thing that I thought was interesting was that the stadium screen which was broadcasting the action throughout the game stopped showing the action or replays as soon as there was any kind of hint of a decision which could have been contentious. I guess they are fed up of the referee’s incompetence being clearly shown to all in the stadium, and I suppose if you have incompetent refs it’s easier to try to hide their incompetence than try to actually make them not incompetent.
Next up, Shandong at home in the second leg of our ACL knockout game. We did our best to try to make the second leg interesting by gifting them a few goals late on in the first game, but it would be nice if we could put in a good and confident performance in what will be a library of a stadium given that the kick off has been set for 5pm on a Tuesday. I can only imagine this is due to us being obliging with the opposition's request which was probably intended to minimise any home advantage we might have. Certainly, there isn’t a rational reason to start at 5 when it comes to other time zones. Fingers crossed for a good result. I’m hoping that these posts might become a bit less rambly, a bit funnier and a lot less moany in 2024. I’m not sure I’ve started that particularly well though. And I guess a lot depends on what’s happening on the pitch. Definitely it’s a lot easier to not moan when the team isn’t playing badly, but I’m honestly trying to be less critical and a bit fairer to people who are doing their best. I’m sure Ikeuchi would be happy to hear this. Of course the useless bastard would. 😉
Us -
Massive changes as I said above. First pitch time for Ze Ricardo, Patrick Verhon and Yamauchi. First starts for Van Wermeskerken and Maruyama. And I thought everyone did alright! There was no-one on the pitch for us who didn’t show some real positive promise. Certainly there were a few dodgy moments, but that’s to be expected with a team and partnerships that have never played together. And presumably there was a bit of a language barrier between Ze Ricardo and Patrick as they’ve only been in the country about a month. Sai almost made the perfect start to his Frontale career, coming very close to scoring with a backwards header very early on in the game. He later went on to actually make the perfect start to his Frontale career by scoring in the second half. It doesn’t bother me that he basically blocked a clearance which was then deflected into the net. I’ve seen goals that have more egregiously been not designated as own goals. I thought the rule was that if the ball was going on target before the final deflection it’s not an own goal. But anyway, I’m sure he’s happy to be credited with it and us fans are just happy it went in. To be honest, I couldn’t see a great deal of difference in the way we approached the game to how we did last year, but it just felt a lot better than it has recently. I guess this is due to the novelty factor of there being different players. I don’t think it’s particularly apparent that the ‘first choice’ team is better than the ones who started this match, which is something that if Oniki agrees with, will give him some difficult decisions to make. Certainly in the past I have been frustrated by us not changing anything much when the one plan we had wasn’t working. Seems like I’m easily placated by seeing some new faces though. Oh, and perhaps by winning! As I said above there were plenty of decent performances. I’m a bit biased as I like him a lot, but I thought Seko had a really good game and was unlucky to see his free kick hit the bar. His corners looked better than Wakizaka’s 2023 corners too. (I do remember thinking his corners were a bit better in the ACL game though). Takai was the other stand out I thought. He was clam and assured at the back and dealt with Osako pretty easily for the most part. He also looked good coming out of defence too. He showed this kind of promise in his first few games, so it’s good to see that kind of thing coming back after he had a bit of a wobble. I felt a bit sorry for Gomis in this game as he’s coming closer and closer to scoring but just doesn’t seem to have any luck. When he did put the ball in the net, (see below), the ref wasn't having it and he was denied an almost certain goal when after Marcinho came on and did one of his trademark dribbles, he tried to shoot rather than pass to an unmarked Gomis. Hopefully he’ll score soon, as I think that when he does he’ll start banging them in for fun. So, a much improved performance from our last game in this stadium and maybe some reason for optimism. Hopefully that doesn’t come crashing down in the immediate future.
Them -
After years of laughing at Vissel Kobe’s splashing of the cash to no effect I think everyone had to admit that last year they were deserved champions. Certainly their ability to sign plenty of high profile and effective players, somewhat in contrast to some of their recent more high profile foreign imports, helped them do well, but they more than earned their success. This is especially easy for me to say as they stopped YFM winning the league and did so with an extremely dodgy decision, hopefully rubbing salt in the YFM wounds. Not sure what’s happened to them since last year though. Now they seem like an ineffective long ball team. I particularly enjoyed the English language interview of Sai (van Wermeskerken, from now on just know as Sai as it’s a long name to have to keep typing), where he singled out the fact that it had been a challenge because we had to deal with a lot of long balls from Kobe. I don’t know if this was a wonderfully taken dig, but I kind of hope that it is. I guess their shooting was pretty bad in this game and that helped us out. Sakai was particularly awful when it came to getting shots or passes on target. I wonder if they’ve turned into 2023 Frontale. I saw they had plenty of possession and a decent amount of shots but failed to score. Got to love it when one of the three teams who people seem to be tipping for the title start out their year like that. Their keeper looked awful too. I’ve been trying to think of a more amusing second half to the following comparison but haven’t quite been able to find one so you have to make do with this. Maekawa had more flaps than a migrating Arctic Tern in these 90 minutes. And one of these set up our goal. It’s a bit of a shame that we couldn’t have taken advantage of more of them though. One final point on Kobe. Seeing Arai and Miyashiro in their colours was a bit of a wrench. Arai was much loved at Frontale and we were kind of surprised when he left. The fact that he went down to J2 for a few seasons with JEF and then ended up at the J1 champions is a surprise, but I guess he’ll be playing a back up role there. Perhaps judging on how bad Maekawa played though, he could be getting more action than anyone expected. Miyashiro is a tough one. I had his shirt last year, (curse of the shirt, basically it’s my fault he left), but can’t begrudge him leaving us as he was underused, never really played in his best position and even though he scored more goals from open play than any other player in far less minutes, it was clear that Oniki wasn’t going to either make him his first choice striker or change our system to suit him. I was a bit shocked to see how many of our fans booed him before, during and after the game, and kind of disgusted that it happened when he and Arai came to greet us after the match. I don’t know if it’s because they resent him for leaving for a bigger pay packet, for the reigning champions or just because he was a youth team product who didn’t stay with us for the rest of his career. It seems that no-one has a problem when our players leave for foreign teams, regardless of the level, but if they leave to a J1 rival they should be hated. Of course it wasn’t everyone booing, but it was a significant amount of people. Perhaps these people think it would be better for him to stay with us forever, playing fewer and fewer games as the years pass, but still being there to take pictures with bananas for themed match day events and to make everyone in the crowd feel comfortable and warm inside. I don’t know what 2024 will hold for him, but maybe Kobayashi is an interesting comparison. He turned down some offers to go to teams where he’d definitely have played more and is apparently going to have a career with us after he stops playing. I can’t imagine it’s much fun for him though, particularly in a season like 2023 where the rotation was really minimal. Fingers crossed for him in 2024.
Ref and VAR -
This game had the potential to be a perfect storm of absolute shitness when it came to officials. The ref was Ikeuchi who is notoriously bad, but who I faintly praised in the last game we had with him saying that I ’didn’t find much if anything to get irritated about’. Perhaps he read this and was infuriated and determined to prove that there is always something to get irritated about when he’s in charge. The first note I made during the game said ‘four mins till first absolute shit decision’. I can’t remember what it was now, but I guess it was one of many, in my opinion, absolutely one-eyed decisions he made in the game. I knew we were in trouble when he decided to apparently warn Tanabe after a tackle that he didn’t even give a free kick for. Then unsurprisingly, the very next tackle Tanabe made he was booked. Gomis pointed this out to Ikeuchi but perhaps that only encouraged him, and it wasn’t long before he was able to book Gomis too. It seemed like everything was given Vissel’s way. I wouldn’t be surprised if you checked his fridge you’d find a massive bit of Kobe beef in there and a big pile of Rakuten gift cards on top of it. Of course I am naturally biased in favor of Frontale and my Vissel supporting friend seemed to think he’d done ok in the game. I find though that in the J League, if you feel like the ref has had a decent game, he’s probably been biased in your favour. I think a ref having a decent game is rarer than a cross that Maekawa doesn’t flap at. Or a bit of Kamifukumoto distribution that doesn’t end up flying off the side of the pitch,(this is hugely unfair, as I thought he had a decent game yesterday). The most egregious Ikeuchi cock up though was him blowing for a free kick when Yamada absolutely fairly won the ball by the goal line, passed it back to Gomis who put the ball in the back of the net. He clearly blew up for a free kick as it looked like some of the Kobe players had stopped. So I guess he must have been confident he was right, or does that 'let the play go on and get VAR check it' thing only work with offsides? I can’t remember if it was Ikeuchi who previously decided to blow the whistle for a goal that we scored that was incorrectly flagged offside, but crucially blow the whistle before the ball went in, so ruling out any possibility of VAR coming into play? I don’t know if it was him, but I wouldn’t be surprised if it was. I know it’s not a good look for our fans to boo the ref as he went up to receive his medal for a job truly terribly done, but to be honest, I thought he was awful, so probably got what he deserved. One thing that I thought was interesting was that the stadium screen which was broadcasting the action throughout the game stopped showing the action or replays as soon as there was any kind of hint of a decision which could have been contentious. I guess they are fed up of the referee’s incompetence being clearly shown to all in the stadium, and I suppose if you have incompetent refs it’s easier to try to hide their incompetence than try to actually make them not incompetent.
Next up, Shandong at home in the second leg of our ACL knockout game. We did our best to try to make the second leg interesting by gifting them a few goals late on in the first game, but it would be nice if we could put in a good and confident performance in what will be a library of a stadium given that the kick off has been set for 5pm on a Tuesday. I can only imagine this is due to us being obliging with the opposition's request which was probably intended to minimise any home advantage we might have. Certainly, there isn’t a rational reason to start at 5 when it comes to other time zones. Fingers crossed for a good result. I’m hoping that these posts might become a bit less rambly, a bit funnier and a lot less moany in 2024. I’m not sure I’ve started that particularly well though. And I guess a lot depends on what’s happening on the pitch. Definitely it’s a lot easier to not moan when the team isn’t playing badly, but I’m honestly trying to be less critical and a bit fairer to people who are doing their best. I’m sure Ikeuchi would be happy to hear this. Of course the useless bastard would. 😉
Team
GK 99. KAMIFUKUMOTO Naoto
DF 31. Sai VAN WERMESKERKEN
DF 2. TAKAI Kota
GK 99. KAMIFUKUMOTO Naoto
DF 31. Sai VAN WERMESKERKEN
DF 2. TAKAI Kota
DF 35. MARUYAMA Yuichi
DF 15. TANABE Shuto (Yellow card 15')
MF 6. ZE RICARDO
MF 16. SEKO Tatsuki
MF 26. YAMAUCHI Hinata
FW 20. YAMADA Shin
FW 18. Bafetimbi GOMIS (Yellow card 25')
MF 26. YAMAUCHI Hinata
FW 20. YAMADA Shin
FW 18. Bafetimbi GOMIS (Yellow card 25')
FW 28. PATRICK VERHON
Subs
GK 21. ANDO Shunsuke
MF 8. TACHIBANADA Kento (Yellow card 90+3') (on for YAMAUCHI 80')
DF 13. MIURA Sota (on for TANABE 46')
FW 23. MARCINHO (on for PATRICK VERHON 65')
MF 25. MATSUI Renji
FW 30. SEGAWA Yusuke (on for VAN WERMESKERKEN 80')
MF 77. YAMAMOTO Yuki (on for SEKO 85')
My Frontale Man Of The Match
This game and the team showed something of a work in progress, but some of that work was more complete so I have to give it to...
TAKAI Kota - looked great at the back and also bringing the ball out from the back. Really pleased to see him back on track after a little wobble.
Goals
VAN WERMESKERKEN (Frontale) 48' 0-1
Highlights 
No comments:
Post a Comment