Sanfrecce Hiroshima 2 - 2 Kawasaki Frontale
This game seems to have divided opinion somewhat. I came away from the stadium having had a pretty good time and being kind of encouraged at least by the fact that we managed to score a goal for the first time in ages. There were loads of players who had a decent game too I thought. At the same time, I guess this is another draw, and Hiroshima didn’t look particularly good, I thought. On the day and in the stadium I felt quite pleased with how things had gone. But sitting here writing this a few days afterwards, it’s clear to see that another draw isn’t going to help us much more than a defeat would have. And conceding so soon after finally taking the lead in a game won’t exactly give our confidence the boost that holding on for an unlikely win would have done. As I’ve left it quite late to write this I’m going to get it out of the way quite quickly, so here we go under the usual headings.
Us -
Plenty of decent performances from the players we had available. The players who did particularly well I thought included Sasaki, Tono, Ienaga and Kamifukumoto. Sure Kami could have done better for their goals but at the same time he did save us on numerous other occasions. It was a blow losing Sung-Ryong in the warm up but Kami did a good job, even when it seemed that the Hiroshima players were doing their best to injure him, knowing that we basically had no keeper on the bench. Sung-Ryong has a back injury apparently. He sat on the bench for the whole game but was never going to take part. I think he didn’t even come to us after the game. I suspect that he won’t be available for the next game. Oniki decided to ‘go back’ to the old 4-1-2-3 formation for the start of the game. Once again, I say ‘go back’ but some of the formation changes that he apparently made were almost imperceptible I thought. He didn’t keep this formation for long though, half way through the first half giving the ‘no top’ formation he once used against Sapporo a go. It worked in that game but was useless in this one. It doesn’t seem to make much sense to me to have Erison on the right wing and Ienaga and Tono in the middle. I wonder if Erison isn’t completely fit. He went off at half time in this game and hadn’t really done that much. How I wish we could see the start of the season Erison back again. We didn’t have a great first half and were slowly retreating further and further backwards, pissing around with the ball to absolutely no effect, as you would expect. It still felt a bit unfair that they went a goal ahead though. There wasn’t much quality in the first half so I think a 0-0 would have been fairer. If someone had to score, well, I suppose on balance it should have been them, but it did hurt a bit.
For the second half we came out charging though. Kobayashi, having replaced Erison, seemed well up for it and Ienaga looked like a changed man, the little rest apparently having done him the world of good. There was something inevitable in the fact that after scoring, Kobayashi would end up getting injured. That just seems to be the way things are going for us this year when it comes to injuries. I feel gutted for him, and you could see that he was pretty upset about it. His replacement though scored with his first touch, and it was bouncing in the stands. Would have been nice if we could have enjoyed the excitement a little bit longer, but no, we conceded almost directly from the restart. A real gut punch but not entirely surprising in 2024 I guess. The remainder of the game was pretty crazy I thought. It was a bit of a mess with chance after chance coming, play swinging from one end of the pitch to the other. Either team could have nicked a winner I think, but a draw was probably fair.
As this has all been a bit too positive, let’s have a little moan. Please can we stop playing Segawa in defence. He’s doing the best he can, but it’s a ready made weakness for the opposition to attack every match. If the opposition can see this, and I can see this, surely Oniki has seen it. Sure, we don’t have a great deal of options in defence, but we do have players who can play there who are defenders. I feel sorry for Segawa. Maybe if we were playing a back three and he was a wing back it might work a bit better, but in our usual formation, it’s just an easy target for the opposition. Our shooting is still a bit suspect. We only got three of our twelve shots on target in this game. Thankfully their goalkeeper failed to save two of them! We missed some pretty easy chances I thought. and when you look at the stats and see that Sanfrecce had double the amount of shots as us with 10% less possession, well that tells the whole story of recent Oniki Frontale doesn’t it? Way too much pointless possession and when we do manage a shot, more often than not, we can’t get it on target. But, let’s end on some positivity. We scored not once, but twice! Recently we’ve at least been making a few more chances. This game was not as infuriating as recent ones have been. I actually enjoyed it! And the atmosphere in the stands was great. It’s not a high bar to clear, but this was probably my favourite game of the season to watch. And looking forward, whilst I wouldn’t say I’m filled with optimism, I am at least not filled with the despair that I have been for much of the season so far,
Them -
I guess the first thing to say in this section is that the Pee Swing Stadium is a very nice one. Perhaps it’s a touch smaller than it could have been, but maybe Sanfrecce don’t have that many fans. This game was a sell out which according to people I spoke to in a bar before the game is a rare thing. The capacity is about 26000, which is around the same size as Todoroki. Naturally though the views are a lot better given that the Peas Win doesn’t have a running track. It got me kind of excited about the possibilities for our new stadium. It’s also pretty accessible, in the middle of numerous stations so giving multiple routes to get to the stadium. And we got to queue in the shade. Perhaps because the away end is next to an old apartment building, our end was quite enclosed so we could make quite a lot of noise. This was a bit of luck for those watching online as there was almost no noise apart from the sound of clapping coming from the two sides of the ground. Nothing but good stuff to say about the Piece Wind. Ah, except for the fact that the PA was insanely loud, Sanfrecce perhaps using the FC Tokyo trick to try to cover up the lack of atmosphere by playing extremely loud motivational music. The pre game music was quite weird actually, seeming to have been created from an AI command to create a song in the style of Rage Against the Machine but just different enough to not be a copyright infringement and without any kind of inflammatory or political lyrics. Oh and the AI was probably also employed to create their videos for encouraging their fans. It featured an animation of their mascot waving a towel or clapping their hands but the AI instruction this time to determine the movement probably contained the phrase uncanny valley, as the weird hip shake was somehow quite distressing. The Sanfrecce players, well, they are distressing in a different way. Perhaps inspired by the numerous flags I’ll mention in the section below, they seemed to be determined to be as mischievous as possible, taking every opportunity to either feign injury, or complain to the ref, or to kick our goalkeeper, feign injury and then complain to the ref in one smooth sweep. Perhaps my favorite whinging from a Sanfrecce player was when Sotiriou was screaming at the ref to restart the game after their second goal, apparently thinking we were time wasting, whilst he himself was standing in the centre circle, ensuring that the game couldn’t restart. Perhaps it’s not only in front of goal that he’s not the sharpest. Skibbe said after the game that they’d played well against a strong Kawasaki side. I think he’s probably not exactly right about either aspect of that sentence to be honest. A couple of short mentions of individual players. Marcos Junior has some hair now so doesn’t look quite so psychopathic anymore. Now he looks like he’s the guitarist in a moderately successful late 90’s melodic punk band on their reunion tour. And Ohashi, well he just seems to be a total wanker. He bravely managed to go through the pain barrier after being felled by a slightly too long blade of grass, summoned up just enough energy to wave an imaginary yellow card at the ref before crumpling back onto the turf.
Ref and VAR -
Who knows if the VAR guys were actually watching this game. Judging by the second Sanfrecce goal, I’d say probably not. Of course, it’s too much to expect the ref to notice the foul on Tachibanda. If you were watching online you wouldn’t have seen it as the footage was still showing a replay of our goal when it happened. The only evidence is in one replay angle where he’s lying on the floor as play continues. VAR presumably had the angle to watch if they wanted though. Seems like it was also too much to expect the ref or VAR to notice either Sotiriou either barging our player out of the way as he’s about the head the ball, or if you think Sotiriou actually made contact with the ball, as some sites do with him being given the assist, well then why didn’t they spot the scorer was offside. What do you expect from the absolutely useless Okabe (on the field ) or the absolutely useless Iida (on the VAR)? Okabe was terrible in this game. I realise I am biased but I thought he was unbelievably generous to the home side. Once again, I’ve broken my voice from screaming at a referee. I probably should just calm down a bit. It’s a bit like getting angry about Japanese summer. Yes, the heat and humidity is horrible, but it always is, there’s nothing you can do about it and presumably it will only get worse. And yes, J League referees are atrocious, but what do you expect? They always are, and presumably always will be. As sure as your toast ending up butter side down if you accidentally drop it, you know that as soon as a J League ref picks their whistle up, they are about to lose both their vision and rationality.
Us -
Plenty of decent performances from the players we had available. The players who did particularly well I thought included Sasaki, Tono, Ienaga and Kamifukumoto. Sure Kami could have done better for their goals but at the same time he did save us on numerous other occasions. It was a blow losing Sung-Ryong in the warm up but Kami did a good job, even when it seemed that the Hiroshima players were doing their best to injure him, knowing that we basically had no keeper on the bench. Sung-Ryong has a back injury apparently. He sat on the bench for the whole game but was never going to take part. I think he didn’t even come to us after the game. I suspect that he won’t be available for the next game. Oniki decided to ‘go back’ to the old 4-1-2-3 formation for the start of the game. Once again, I say ‘go back’ but some of the formation changes that he apparently made were almost imperceptible I thought. He didn’t keep this formation for long though, half way through the first half giving the ‘no top’ formation he once used against Sapporo a go. It worked in that game but was useless in this one. It doesn’t seem to make much sense to me to have Erison on the right wing and Ienaga and Tono in the middle. I wonder if Erison isn’t completely fit. He went off at half time in this game and hadn’t really done that much. How I wish we could see the start of the season Erison back again. We didn’t have a great first half and were slowly retreating further and further backwards, pissing around with the ball to absolutely no effect, as you would expect. It still felt a bit unfair that they went a goal ahead though. There wasn’t much quality in the first half so I think a 0-0 would have been fairer. If someone had to score, well, I suppose on balance it should have been them, but it did hurt a bit.
For the second half we came out charging though. Kobayashi, having replaced Erison, seemed well up for it and Ienaga looked like a changed man, the little rest apparently having done him the world of good. There was something inevitable in the fact that after scoring, Kobayashi would end up getting injured. That just seems to be the way things are going for us this year when it comes to injuries. I feel gutted for him, and you could see that he was pretty upset about it. His replacement though scored with his first touch, and it was bouncing in the stands. Would have been nice if we could have enjoyed the excitement a little bit longer, but no, we conceded almost directly from the restart. A real gut punch but not entirely surprising in 2024 I guess. The remainder of the game was pretty crazy I thought. It was a bit of a mess with chance after chance coming, play swinging from one end of the pitch to the other. Either team could have nicked a winner I think, but a draw was probably fair.
As this has all been a bit too positive, let’s have a little moan. Please can we stop playing Segawa in defence. He’s doing the best he can, but it’s a ready made weakness for the opposition to attack every match. If the opposition can see this, and I can see this, surely Oniki has seen it. Sure, we don’t have a great deal of options in defence, but we do have players who can play there who are defenders. I feel sorry for Segawa. Maybe if we were playing a back three and he was a wing back it might work a bit better, but in our usual formation, it’s just an easy target for the opposition. Our shooting is still a bit suspect. We only got three of our twelve shots on target in this game. Thankfully their goalkeeper failed to save two of them! We missed some pretty easy chances I thought. and when you look at the stats and see that Sanfrecce had double the amount of shots as us with 10% less possession, well that tells the whole story of recent Oniki Frontale doesn’t it? Way too much pointless possession and when we do manage a shot, more often than not, we can’t get it on target. But, let’s end on some positivity. We scored not once, but twice! Recently we’ve at least been making a few more chances. This game was not as infuriating as recent ones have been. I actually enjoyed it! And the atmosphere in the stands was great. It’s not a high bar to clear, but this was probably my favourite game of the season to watch. And looking forward, whilst I wouldn’t say I’m filled with optimism, I am at least not filled with the despair that I have been for much of the season so far,
Them -
I guess the first thing to say in this section is that the Pee Swing Stadium is a very nice one. Perhaps it’s a touch smaller than it could have been, but maybe Sanfrecce don’t have that many fans. This game was a sell out which according to people I spoke to in a bar before the game is a rare thing. The capacity is about 26000, which is around the same size as Todoroki. Naturally though the views are a lot better given that the Peas Win doesn’t have a running track. It got me kind of excited about the possibilities for our new stadium. It’s also pretty accessible, in the middle of numerous stations so giving multiple routes to get to the stadium. And we got to queue in the shade. Perhaps because the away end is next to an old apartment building, our end was quite enclosed so we could make quite a lot of noise. This was a bit of luck for those watching online as there was almost no noise apart from the sound of clapping coming from the two sides of the ground. Nothing but good stuff to say about the Piece Wind. Ah, except for the fact that the PA was insanely loud, Sanfrecce perhaps using the FC Tokyo trick to try to cover up the lack of atmosphere by playing extremely loud motivational music. The pre game music was quite weird actually, seeming to have been created from an AI command to create a song in the style of Rage Against the Machine but just different enough to not be a copyright infringement and without any kind of inflammatory or political lyrics. Oh and the AI was probably also employed to create their videos for encouraging their fans. It featured an animation of their mascot waving a towel or clapping their hands but the AI instruction this time to determine the movement probably contained the phrase uncanny valley, as the weird hip shake was somehow quite distressing. The Sanfrecce players, well, they are distressing in a different way. Perhaps inspired by the numerous flags I’ll mention in the section below, they seemed to be determined to be as mischievous as possible, taking every opportunity to either feign injury, or complain to the ref, or to kick our goalkeeper, feign injury and then complain to the ref in one smooth sweep. Perhaps my favorite whinging from a Sanfrecce player was when Sotiriou was screaming at the ref to restart the game after their second goal, apparently thinking we were time wasting, whilst he himself was standing in the centre circle, ensuring that the game couldn’t restart. Perhaps it’s not only in front of goal that he’s not the sharpest. Skibbe said after the game that they’d played well against a strong Kawasaki side. I think he’s probably not exactly right about either aspect of that sentence to be honest. A couple of short mentions of individual players. Marcos Junior has some hair now so doesn’t look quite so psychopathic anymore. Now he looks like he’s the guitarist in a moderately successful late 90’s melodic punk band on their reunion tour. And Ohashi, well he just seems to be a total wanker. He bravely managed to go through the pain barrier after being felled by a slightly too long blade of grass, summoned up just enough energy to wave an imaginary yellow card at the ref before crumpling back onto the turf.
Ref and VAR -
Who knows if the VAR guys were actually watching this game. Judging by the second Sanfrecce goal, I’d say probably not. Of course, it’s too much to expect the ref to notice the foul on Tachibanda. If you were watching online you wouldn’t have seen it as the footage was still showing a replay of our goal when it happened. The only evidence is in one replay angle where he’s lying on the floor as play continues. VAR presumably had the angle to watch if they wanted though. Seems like it was also too much to expect the ref or VAR to notice either Sotiriou either barging our player out of the way as he’s about the head the ball, or if you think Sotiriou actually made contact with the ball, as some sites do with him being given the assist, well then why didn’t they spot the scorer was offside. What do you expect from the absolutely useless Okabe (on the field ) or the absolutely useless Iida (on the VAR)? Okabe was terrible in this game. I realise I am biased but I thought he was unbelievably generous to the home side. Once again, I’ve broken my voice from screaming at a referee. I probably should just calm down a bit. It’s a bit like getting angry about Japanese summer. Yes, the heat and humidity is horrible, but it always is, there’s nothing you can do about it and presumably it will only get worse. And yes, J League referees are atrocious, but what do you expect? They always are, and presumably always will be. As sure as your toast ending up butter side down if you accidentally drop it, you know that as soon as a J League ref picks their whistle up, they are about to lose both their vision and rationality.
 |
| Ref apparently going to miss a clear handball because he forgot to pay attention to the game |
Banner wisdom -
'Bad Boys'
It’s back! The section that no-one asked for and no-one enjoys! After a disappointing lack of amusing banners against Cerezo and Verdy we were back and banging in this game. Ignore Duran Duran, these fans are not ‘Wild Boys’. The Sanfrecce fans, no matter where they’re from are BAD BOYS! I don’t know where they got this reputation from. Perhaps it was from Kansai teams’ fans objecting to their way of making okonomiyaki, (sorry Gamma and Cerezo fans, I’m with the bad boys on this one). Or maybe it was a natural reaction to having to watch very dull football for quite a long time. But these bad boys are here to stay and wherever they are from, (regular bad boys, Tokyo based bad boys), they are going to shout about it. Guess the guys with the ‘Sanfecce Club Okayama’ flag don’t qualify as real bad boys, although perhaps some might say that if you have to get a shinkansen to go to home games rather than supporting your local club, you actually are the baddest of all bad boys.
Next up, Urawa at home on Friday. I’m don’t like Friday Night J League but thankfully as Friday is a holiday, this is Friday Afternoon J League. Urawa are another team who were strongly fancied pre-season. They haven’t lived up to those expectations quite as much as Sanfrecce have though. In fact you could probably say that they have really lived down to those expectations. I don’t think lived down works in that sentence but you know what I mean. However, the fact is, we’re still not doing very well, so a game against anyone is most likely a loss. But maybe we have just a little bit of confidence from the Sanfrecce match. At the same time, maybe we don’t really have enough fit players to fill a match day squad. After fumbling around for the first nine games of the season though, it would be quite nice to turn our season round against the two teams who everyone said would win the league, wouldn’t it? It’s a home game so obviously it won’t be as much fun as an away one, but after this game I am kind of slightly looking forward to it. Hopefully those words won’t look too stupid on Saturday morning...
Team
GK 99. KAMIFUKUMOTO Naoto
DF 30. SEGAWA Yusuke
Subs
GK 1. JUNG Sung-Ryong
DF 4. JESIEL (on for VAN WERMESKERKEN 68')
MF 6. ZE RICARDO
FW 11. KOBAYASHI Yu (on for ERISON 46')
MF 16. SEKO Tatsuki (Yellow card 87') (on for SEGAWA 68')
GK 99. KAMIFUKUMOTO Naoto
DF 30. SEGAWA Yusuke
DF 3. OMINAMI Takuma
DF 5. SASAKI Asahi
DF 31. Sai VAN WERMESKERKEN
MF 8. TACHIBANADA Kento
FW 17. TONO Daiya
DF 31. Sai VAN WERMESKERKEN
MF 8. TACHIBANADA Kento
FW 17. TONO Daiya
MF 14. WAKIZAKA Yasuto
FW 41. IENAGA Akihiro (Yellow card 51')
FW 9. ERISON (Yellow card 41')
FW 23. MARCINHO
FW 41. IENAGA Akihiro (Yellow card 51')
FW 9. ERISON (Yellow card 41')
FW 23. MARCINHO
Subs
GK 1. JUNG Sung-Ryong
DF 4. JESIEL (on for VAN WERMESKERKEN 68')
MF 6. ZE RICARDO
FW 11. KOBAYASHI Yu (on for ERISON 46')
MF 16. SEKO Tatsuki (Yellow card 87') (on for SEGAWA 68')
FW 20. YAMADA Shin (on for KOBAYASHI 74')
MF 77. YAMAMOTO Yuki (on for WAKIZAKA 89')
Goals
OHASHI (Sanfrecce) 38' 0-1
KOBAYASHI (Frontale) 65' 1-1
YAMADA (Frontale) 74' 1-2
KATO (Sanfrecce) 75' 2-2
MF 77. YAMAMOTO Yuki (on for WAKIZAKA 89')
Goals
OHASHI (Sanfrecce) 38' 0-1
KOBAYASHI (Frontale) 65' 1-1
YAMADA (Frontale) 74' 1-2
KATO (Sanfrecce) 75' 2-2
Generally we played a lot better than we have recently so I felt I had to do one of these today. I can’t really chose between the people mentioned above though, so let’s split it between…
SASAKI Asahi, TONO Daiya, IENAGA Akihiro & KAMIFUKUMOTO Naoto - yeah, I know they weren’t perfect but well done to them and to all of the players really I guess.
SASAKI Asahi, TONO Daiya, IENAGA Akihiro & KAMIFUKUMOTO Naoto - yeah, I know they weren’t perfect but well done to them and to all of the players really I guess.
Highlights
