Vs Urawa Reds (away) 24/8/24 J League match 28 Part 1

Urawa Reds 1 - 0 Kawasaki Frontale
(match abandoned at half time)

I’ve spent most of this week enjoying not having to worry about writing a blog post about this half game. For some reason I thought I’d just do it when the game was replayed and write this off. But I hadn’t really considered that it would restart from half time and that meant that I probably needed to write something about the first part. So after relishing a blog post free week I’ve now realised I’ll eventually have to write two blog posts about this game. However, it’s not all doom and gloom as this first half was so predictably dull that I can knock that part out in a few sentences and then focus, as I like to do, on the chaos surrounding the match instead. So here we go.

- Pretty irritating starting line up, or more accurately bench, in my eyes at least. Our young keeper Hayasaka who conceded three against YFM, none of which were down to him as far as I was concerned dropped out of the match day squad completely. There was talk that he was ‘sick’ but at the time I suspected this was ‘bullshit’ and it seems to have proved to be. Yamaguchi was on the bench which slightly confuses my usual rant about new players needing to spend a year in the stands aside from emergency situations, but the fact that Hayasaka wasn’t there does back up my other usual rant that Oniki is an absolute psychopath when it comes to not being able to understand the emotional impact of the usually pretty random decisions he makes on players’ morale. Guess Hayasaka can at least get some consolation from Ando, who seems destined to be our fourth keeper eternally, regardless of who signs for us.

- Similarly when it comes to psycho Oniki it must have been a bit of a shock for Yamamoto, one of our big summer signings to see that Kawahara, after his arrival from Sagan Tosu on Tuesday, made it to the bench on Saturday. I feel sorry for Yamamoto. As has been the case with multiple midfielder signings in recent years, the new guys are held to a much higher standard than Oniki’s golden boys. Any sub-magnificent performance in a rare start will certainly mean another month on the sidelines. In the meantime, those preferred players can have stinker after stinker and only lose their place when hell freezes over. I imagine Ze Ricardo is probably feeling similarly. I guess the revival, (however long it lasts), of Oshima has lessened their chances further. Now Oniki has three automatic picks in midfield. And practically a quarter of the squad sitting on the bench or in the stands who would like to play in one of those spots. Utterly ridiculous recruitment again in a transfer window. I suspect Kawahara is a very good player. But so is Yamamoto. And so probably is Ze Ricardo (we haven’t really had a chance to judge him). Let’s hope they enjoy showing their skills in practice sessions because with Oniki in charge, as long as we avoid injuries or suspensions, they aren’t going to be getting much of a chance.

- The return of Oshima has caused a great deal of excitement on Twitter. We did alright when he came back from injury. We actually won some games. As I’ve said before though, those wins come with some massive caveats. We also got absolutely walloped by YFM with him in the team and went a goal behind in this game. All the time we’re getting little clips of Oshima skills appearing online, apparently without any acknowledgment of that fact that whilst he’s doing well, we’re still shit. I’m not saying he shouldn’t play or isn’t doing well. I am saying that people’s excitement about him is a perfect distraction for the club from the absolute dogshit performances down to Oniki’s absolute refusal to change anything. The little run of wins was perhaps the worst thing that could have happened when it comes to the likelihood of us making any progress. It gave him the perfect excuse to stay strong in his belief that farting around with the ball and avoiding shooting unless absolutely necessary is the way to win matches. There has been some talk this week that we’ve been experimenting with playing two up front in practice. It speaks volumes that we’re only trying this now when our football has been ineffective and predictable for at least the last three years. And Oniki giving this a go in practice by no means guarantees that he’ll ever try it in a game. He does have form for changing things when we play Sapporo though, (remember the year he decided the perfect approach would be to put the strikers on the wing and play with Ienaga ‘up front’? I think we just about scraped through that game), so perhaps he’ll do it for one game and then revert to the same old stuff afterwards. It all seems kind of performative anyway, and I think a certain section of the fanbase isn’t really that bothered about our lack of success with Oniki’s usual approach. Even when we play our shittest football, there are people who praise the players for giving it their best and looking a bit upset by yet another horrible result. It doesn’t have to be like this. It’s a terrible thing to say, but I’m kind of hoping we get destroyed in our first four ACL games as I think if we do well in them there’s a chance that Oniki will be ‘persuaded’ to sign a contract extension.

- Oh, so on to the actual game. Hmmm. I didn’t have many notes but one was ‘45 mins of possession, passing and conceding’ and I think that just about sums it up. More possession, more passes, less shots and one goal down. It’s classic Oniki stuff. Perhaps the game and our current season were summed up in the move, (which has also been widely shared online, again with no apparent acknowledgement that the skills were ultimately pointless), where Yamada raced through shrugging off the Urawa defender several times before a nice turn put him on his backside, at which point with the goal in front of him and only the keeper to beat, Yamada passed the ball backwards. Oniki ball at its finest. No write up of the game would be complete without mentioning that the conditions were absolutely awful due to the heavy rain which seemed to start just as the ref raised his whistle to his mouth and continued until long after we’d all left Saitama. When the game was abandoned after an initial decision to prolong half time by 20 minutes the Urawa fans broke into a chorus of boos. Hmmm, I say ‘broke into’, but ‘resumed’ probably would have been a more accurate word as once again the ‘amazing’ atmosphere their fans create was definitely one which focused more on booing and whistling the opposition rather than actually supporting their own team. When Wakizaka and Oniki came out to apologise to/thank our fans, the brave Urawa ultras who’d stayed on just to be able to boo a little longer, wholeheartedly resumed their booing, clearly convinced that because we’d been losing we had asked for the game to be abandoned and because everyone hates them and everyone loves us, it immediately happened. Anyone in the stadium who thought that the game could go ahead was clearly delusional (hmmmm, I guess that does sum up the attitude of quite a large element of their fanbase…). This was particularly demonstrated when Miura attempted to run up the wing, pushed the ball ahead of himself, the ball grinding to a halt as it entered a Biwa-esque lake, which in turn then tripped Miura over. If you asked the Urawa fans though they probably would have had a theory that Frontale after going a goal behind had been secretly watering the pitch to try to get the game called off. Or perhaps that not only are the league and the other teams anti-Urawa, but also Mother Nature is against them too. Perhaps it’s because the strength of their support is greater than anything else in heaven or on earth and therefore even the elements are jealous and want revenge.

- Whilst I’m on an Urawa bashing roll, might as well keep going, right? After all, there wasn’t much else to write about regarding this match if I’m being honest. I work in Urawa and on Saturday morning had been at work. The thought of going from home to Urawa, then back home for a couple of hours at the most, then back to Urawa and then back home again wasn’t exactly appealing so instead I decided to see out the day boozing my way around Urawa. One thing that I always moan about when it comes to going to the Saitama stadium is how crap the journey is. When you consider that the line was built pretty much to serve the new stadium, it’s impressive that Urawa Misono station is still absolutely miles from the stadium. For away fans coming from Tokyo, well, I guess it’s not supposed to be easy, but I was shocked how difficult it is to get to the stadium even from Urawa. I suppose this is what happens when you build a stadium in the middle of nowhere. To be honest though, I usually don’t really mind the walk. It’s much better than cramming on to a shuttle bus. The problem is when it is absolutely pissing it down and the rain floods the sewers on the path back to the station. What better way to top off an abandoned game after a shit first half than to wade through toilet water that at points goes over ankle level filling your shoes with watered down faecal matter. Actually I suppose it was kind of appropriate considering what we’d seen in the first half. After all, I’m sure we’re all fed up of seeing the same old shit on the pitch so perhaps it was interesting to encounter some different diluted shit directly flowing into your shoes on the way home. Can’t blame them for the weather though. (As much as they seemed to want to blame us for it). Can however blame them for the usual absolutely awful music they play. I’m starting to wonder if there is some kind of secret agent in their stadium staff who is looking to undermine the tough guy image that their fans so desperately want to pursue. Of course we always get East 17’s ‘House of Love’ which still entertains me for its bizarreness. But on this occasion it was backed up by what could only be selections from one of those CDs you get from a TV shopping channel. ‘Love all those great soul anthems from the 70s and 80s but disappointed that they’re not quite uplifting enough? Yearning for something a bit more like what you might hear at a party night in a medium sized town’s All Bar One on a Saturday night? Well buy this CD and play it to a stadium full of tough guys! Featuring mid tempo versions of ‘The Greatest Love of All’ and ‘Loving You’ complete with a foot tapping light house beat.’ It’s so absolutely hilariously out of step with the image their fans seem to want to portray that it can only be the work of someone trying to undermine them! Extremely amusing!

- Also perhaps trying to undermine them are… themselves. After hiring yet another foreign manager and splashing the cash and then starting to freak out when the team isn’t immediately top of the English Premier League and hasn’t won the World Cup within the managers first 30 games, Urawa have once again dumped another manager! It used to be the case that getting beaten by Frontale, (somewhat surprisingly even when we were absolutely flying), was the straw that broke the camel’s back and was enough to get any manager sacked. Now we’ve fallen so far that only being 1-0 up against us at half time is enough of a reason to change things at the top. Urawa, like FC Tokyo, seem to be a club that thinks that the only reason they aren’t winning everything is the manager, and haven’t noticed that the same problems keep happening whoever they hire. It’s quite amusing to watch from the outside. And as for the fact that they’ve rehired their previous manager, who seemed to spot that the club was perhaps rotten from top to bottom and left before he was fired, well, I hope he’s getting a lot of money, because I’m sure he knows what’s going to happen. When I quit my previous job due to the working conditions becoming unbearable I felt great relief. I was stupid enough to go back when they begged me to return, and whilst things were better for a while, it came as no surprise when things started getting shitty again and I had to quit a second time. Skorża, I hope it’s going to be worth it. It wasn’t for me. Maybe this might be the first time in the J League that the manager of a team has been changed at half time in a game. Although judging by the number of batshit chairmen and clubs that are around I wouldn’t bet that it hasn’t happened somewhere before. Probably best to restart the game at 0-0 though, right?😉 If there’s any sign of rain in the area for when the second half is played, I think a great deal of people might be traumatised and give the game a miss. It’s certainly a bit of a pain in the arse to make the trip given we probably know what’s going to happen anyway. Well, unless you’re really addicted to seeing passes and the occasional piece of skill that doesn’t even result in a shot but looks nice when cut up for Twitter.

Considering there were only 45 minutes played in this match and I have hardly written about the actual football, this has turned out to be a surprisingly long post. I thought I’d stopped doing that kind of thing recently, so after I’ve put this up I’ll have a moan at myself to add to all the other moans I’ve had already. Or maybe as a tribute to Urawa I should scream, whistle and boo as loudly as I can whilst looking myself straight in the eyes in a mirror. Next up, Sapporo away on Sunday. At least it’s a nice trip! I think we’ll probably lose. And it could be another game that is tricky due to weather. Of course as it’s being played in the Dome the game will be fine, but the approaching typhoon is making our flight back look a bit dicey. Still I guess it would be more fun to be stranded in Sapporo than to be stranded in Urawa Misono! After that we have a Levain double header against Kofu. I’m not exactly confident about that either, but once again, at least the trip is a nice one. So here’s to good away trips! And to good times (before and after but probably not actually) at home games! The games are mostly frustratingly crap right now, so let’s be grateful there’s more to life than the 90 minutes! 

Team

GK 1. JUNG Sung-Ryong

DF 31. VAN WERMESKERKEN Sai

DF 5. SASAKI Asahi
DF 7. KURUMAYA Shintaro
DF 13. MIURA Sota
MF 8. TACHIBANADA Kento

MF 10. OSHIMA Ryota

MF 14. WAKIZAKA Yasuto
FW 41. IENAGA Akihiro
FW 20. YAMADA Shin
FW 23. MARCINHO

Subs

GK 98. YAMAGUCHI Louis
FW 9. ERISON

FW 11. KOBAYASHI Yu

DF 15. TANABE Shuto

MF 17. TONO Daiya
MF 19. KAWAHARA So

DF 44. Cesar HAYDAR

Goals

WATANABE (Urawa) 23' 1-0

Highlights

Seems like Youtube agrees with me that there were no highlights in this game

Vs Yokohama F Marinos (home) 17/8/24 J League match 27

Kawsaki Frontale 1 - 3 Yokohama F Marinos

In a totally shite season, this was probably the one game many of our fans wanted to win more than any other. Which makes it all the more disappointing that we put in an absolute turd of a performance. Let’s not kid ourselves though, our previous three wins came with massive caveats and before that we had a long line of lacklustre draws. So basically we could just hope that this game went one of three ways. Apparently the only ways we can win are the massive dose of luck route (Kashiwa), the opposition self destruct route (Kobe) or the they play alright for 10 minutes and then don’t bother to do anything for the rest of the match route (FC Tokyo). Sadly, and utterly justifiably, it wasn’t to be and instead we got exactly what we deserved. So shit were we that I didn’t even get any stick from YFM fans online, the depths of our performance perhaps being so low that even our biggest rivals felt sorry for us. If you’re looking for insight into the match, please understand that it won’t get any deeper than the ‘we were shite’ that I’ve already said. But in case you’re still reading this, here are this week’s bullet points.

- In a week that we almost certainly lost two players to overseas transfers, (curse of my shirt continues, although not confirmed just yet), it was nice to see that we at least attempted to bury that bad news with the release of a new ACL shirt. Think that’s shirt number six this year, isn’t it? What a blessing that we can instead focus on the (de)merits of a new shirt rather than think about how crap we are. Talking about transfers it probably once again bears mentioning that the players who move overseas to ‘better’ clubs never seem to be the ones that Oniki favours. Don’t forget he has pedigree in this area, thinking that both Miyoshi and Itakura should go out on loan as they weren’t good enough for us, before other teams, (Manchester City in Itakura’s case), thought that they were good enough for them. Of course I guess that other teams imagine it’s easier to prise one of our players away if they’re not starting regularly, so maybe that’s why we haven’t lost Wakizaka or Tachibanada. At the same time you could probably easily make a case for the fact that Oniki is so shit that even though he sees them every day, he doesn’t know who our best players are. Remember also that he’s the guy who watched Arsenal train once and decided there was nothing for him to learn from the experience. I wish I had his confidence.

- Let’s have a bit more of a dig at Oniki, eh? I think it’s almost accepted that he’ll be leaving at the end of the season, (which I think is at least two years too late, but what did we expect, eh?), but perhaps this will give him one last chance to fuck us up in a competition, as half of our next, and judging on current standards last ever, ACL campaign will be under the command of someone who has persevered with exactly the same tactics and approach for the last seven years. For the majority of this year I’ve been moaning about his absolute dearth of ideas and his apparent resolute optimism that doing the same thing will eventually result in us doing well against all logic. In the last three games I’ve had to bite my tongue a little as it’s never a good look to whinge when you’re winning but I think this game showed the Oniki master tactics showing their true colors. The fact that we could have so many shots in one game but at the same time it feel like we were utterly outplayed and would probably never score is a real bit of Oniki magic. The one goal we got was at the stage where Oniki basically just gave up and threw on all the attacking players to at least pretend that he was giving it a go. But the fact that we’d stunk the place up and he hadn’t seen fit to make any subs before the 71st minute, a full 11 minutes after we’d gone two goals behind speaks volumes about the incisive wisdom of our great leader. Even though we’d been awful for most of the game he probably only started unpacking the magnet board after their first goal and didn’t unwrap all the magnets till about ten minutes later. Even those first subs looked pretty hopeless, particularly when you consider that they included Oniki’s usual ‘I haven’t got a clue what to do’ move of putting Tachibanada at right back. To give him some credit the whole of the left side had been crap for most of the game, (Miura’s corners were even worse than Wakizaka’s and that’s saying something), and he changed it. To take some of the credit away, it took 26 minutes of the second half and two goals conceded to actually fucking do anything. 

- Whilst we’re on players who didn’t have a good day, (actually maybe it would be easier to list players who didn’t have a terrible game), it probably deserves mentioning again that Takai had a bit of a dodgy game. Much like he has in the past, it seems that just as he gets settled and in a comfortable spot he has a blunder-filled game. I guess he won’t be leaving us this summer after Japan crashed out of the Olympic tournament early, denying him the chance to catch some clubs’ eyes, and perhaps with that in mind he’s settled in to a guaranteed starting berth for the rest of the year and celebrated it by giving away two goals. I don’t want to single him out though, as the crap was spread quite evenly across the pitch. But I think that when people are praising him for his good games they shouldn’t forget that he does tend to throw in an absolute stinker every now and then. Hopefully he’s done with the stinkers for the rest of the year. We do have potential competition for him at the back, but of course our new Colombian defender will presumably languish in the stands right up until the most pressing of emergencies when Oniki will throw him in due to a lack of alternatives. Add to this our new singing confirmed this morning, which is… a defensive midfielder! Perfect! Because with Seko leaving we really needed more numbers in this area to ensure that the level of dissatisfaction amongst players who aren’t playing continues. With almost zero rotation and plenty of players getting nowhere near the team even though we’re crap, it seems like a pretty stupid thing to do, but I guess we’ve got used to these kind of signings. After all, it seems we need to always have at least two disappointed Brazilians in the squad. I don’t know why we need to, but it definitely seems like part of the master plan. One recent disappointed Brazilian Erison was back in this game. Back for a whole twelve minutes! He scored, but don’t expect that to have been noticed by the master tactician. Yamada will almost certainly start up front by himself the next game. And play all of the 90 minutes which seems to be a privilege reserved only for him. Normally the striker, especially if they get a big wage and are foreign gets dragged off as soon as possible. As for the suggestion that I’ve seen a few people mentioning on Twitter that we should play Erison and Yamada up front together, well, let’s just see if that or hell freezing over happens first. It doesn’t matter that it seems like a good idea. The fact that it’s not Oniki’s idea, (emphasis on the singular here), means that it’s not going to happen. 

- The ref was a bit floppy I thought. Quite happy to put up with torrents of abuse from YFM players and do nothing about it. Bring back Kasahara! He does something about dissent! 😉 The penalty seemed pretty soft, but can't really complain. The VAR seemed non-existent in this game, which I don’t mind at all. This made it a bit of a surprise that we had nine minutes added on in the second half. But then again YFM were doing some top level time wasting. And who can blame them? Although they probably should have tried to score some more goals to make our humiliation all the more profound. They almost certainly would have succeeded. At the same time, it also seemed like we were time wasting at the end, perhaps happy with our 3-1 defeat, playing the ball along the defence line and not being that bothered about trying to attempt to get it forward. Bit disappointed that the ref didn’t stop Anderson Lopes from doing that fucking ridiculous run up for his penalty, where he clearly stops twice. If running on the spot apparently counts as moving forward the next time we get a penalty in a game that we are leading we should get the taker to just skip all over the pitch for the remainder of the game as part of his ‘run-up’ and run the clock down. I don’t know which out of Diego Oliveira’s ballet dance run up or Anderson Lopes’ running man dance is more effective, but I can confirm that both are equally irritating and almost certainly the work of complete tossers. But we didn’t lose because of the penalty run up or the ref, we lost because of Oniki being shit at his job. A quick dig at the Marinos fans whilst we’re here as this post would not be complete without one. I thought it was a bit shitty for them to start singing as loud as they could as our youth team graduate was presented to the fans after singing his first pro contract. A bit shitty, but very much in character as proved by a cyclist after the game. As we left the stadium pretty sharpish after the final whistle we heard someone moaning quite aggressively about how disgusting it was that she couldn’t ride her bicycle down the road that about 50% of the fans leaving the stadium use. If it had been a football hating local, well, I guess it could have been excused. But the fact that it was a Marinos fan who seemed to have left that ground as quickly as utterly pissed off Frontale fans and then seemed upset that other people had done the same thing as her, well that was a bit annoying. Particularly considering that there are numerous other routes she could have taken which would have been clearer. I hope she got a puncture. But I’m sure she’ll be the first one to back me up when I get irritated trying to drive my combine harvester across that bridge outside the Nissan Stadium and am foiled by the people who are leaving the same event as me at the same time.

- Oh, I’ve got to the end and didn’t mention Hayasaka making his debut. It was a hell of a shock and we can only presume that Sung-Ryong is injured. Hope it’s not serious. Hayasaka did a decent job, almost got to the cheater penalty and can’t be blamed for the other goals, but it can’t have been much fun for him to concede three times on his debut to our local rivals. Hopefully he doesn’t take it to heart. Equally it can’t have been much fun for Ando on his birthday to see that in spite of Kamifukumoto leaving and Sung-Ryong being presumably injured, he still doesn’t even warrant a place on the bench. Yamaguchi came straight into the squad after transferring from Machida. In previous years a move from Machida to Frontale might have seemed like a big step up for a player. Right now with our current clown in charge, it looks like the career of anyone who does so is probably going in the opposite direction. At least he won’t have to train with that twat Tani anymore though!

This was longer than I intended. Next week I’ll do my best to get it back to being a bit less of a hassle to write and read. But that will be a post about an away game at Urawa which pretty much always is filled with some kind of bitching so we’ll see. Urawa have been rubbish this year, so perhaps we can be slightly hopeful. At the same time, they haven’t been as rubbish as us, so maybe not. After that we’re away to Sapporo. I don’t know what it says about me that I’m more hopeful for the Urawa game. We briefly climbed the table a bit after our recent run of wins but the truth is we’re still only six point off the drop zone. And still the clown remains in charge, doing exactly the same thing, mostly getting exactly the same results. I wonder if the transfer of Kawahara from Tosu is partly to try to weaken one of our relegation rivals. Any chance we can tempt away some other rivals’ players to allow them to train in a different training ground and watch games from the stands instead of actually play them? It’s not the most exciting way to assure our J1 survival, but to be honest, any way is good right now.

Team

GK 22. HAYASAKA Yuki

DF 31. VAN WERMESKERKEN Sai

DF 2. TAKAI Kota (Yellow card 63')

DF 5. SASAKI Asahi
DF 13. MIURA Sota
MF 8. TACHIBANADA Kento

MF 10. OSHIMA Ryota

MF 14. WAKIZAKA Yasuto
FW 41. IENAGA Akihiro
FW 20. YAMADA Shin
FW 23. MARCINHO

Subs

GK 98. YAMAGUCHI Louis
DF 7. KURUMAYA Shintaro (on for MIURA 71')
FW 9. ERISON (on for IENAGA 78')

FW 11. KOBAYASHI Yu (on for OSHIMA 78')

MF 17. TONO Daiya (on for MARCINHO 71')
FW 30. SEGAWA Yusuke

MF 77. YAMAMOTO Yuki (on for VAN WERMESKERKEN 71')

Goals

SOME WANKER (Yokohama) PEN 58' 0-1
SOME WANKER (Yokohama) 60' 0-2
SOME WANKER (Yokohama) 79' 0-3
ERISON (Frontale) 89' 1-3



My Frontale Man Of The Match

Seems a bit strange to give this to a defender when we lost and conceded three goals but I think it has to go to…

SASAKI Asahi - some great defensive work in difficult situations and did equally well when he had to shift to left back after Oniki’s master level substitutions. And crucially unlike most of his teammates wasn’t absolutely shit.

Highlights

 

Vs FC Tokyo (away) 11/8/24 J League match 26

FC Tokyo 0 - 3 Kawasaki Frontale

This is the start of a new streamlined Frontale Rabbit blog. It will be like this for the time being as the more important parts of my life are getting a little out of control and I probably shouldn’t be spending so much time writing sarcastic blog posts. So let’s give this new style a go, hopefully with all of the snark still in place.

- This was another welcome win, albeit another one with some caveats. Against Kashiwa we were pretty lucky. Against Kobe, they shot themselves in the foot with some stupid red cards. And in this game, well Tokyo weren’t very good. The stats aside from possession, (which recently seems to more often than not have an opposite correlation with our success in a game), were pretty even, but I can’t really remember ever being that worried in this match. However that may be due at least in part to that fact that….

- I had consumed a few drinks before this game. So perhaps my memory isn’t as clear as it could have been. It was also a brutally hot day. With this in mind, well done to FC Tokyo for turning off the vending machines inside our end and making people queue for ages for ¥300 bottles of soft drinks. I guess the vending machine vends at a lower price so that avenue had to be stopped in order to leverage as much income as possible to pay for their next expensive mid-contract manager dismissal package. During an injury break in the first half I thought I’d pop to the loo and at the same time get some water as I thought it would be horrible at half time. Even at the 30 minute stage there were about 40 people in the single line for the drink stall and given that I’d attended in order to watch a football game rather than the subs warming up at half time I returned to my seat sadly empty handed but thankfully empty bladdered.

- I always like to poke fun at the ‘laydeeeez and jennnelmun’ stylings of the announcer. Today, I think I’ll call him Tony from the local Eikaiwa. On this occasion he seemed to be aping the general mood of some FC Tokyo fans. I don’t know what he’d taken before the game but perhaps in keeping with the oppressive weather, his announcements seemed quite sedated. Apparently so sedated that he made a massive error. Perhaps expecting the atmosphere to be at fever pitch due it being ’THE BIGGEST DERBY BETWEEN TAMAGAWA TEAMS IN THE WORLD!’ he made the big error of dropping out the usually extremely loud backing track for ユールネバ (as I think it’s referred to among Tokyo fans) halfway through the first verse revealing the utter silence in the ground. Perhaps the lyrics to the verse are a bit tricky to remember or perhaps no-one ever really sings it, but I’d say that Tony definitely overestimated the white heat of the Tokyo support on this occasion and instead triggered a giggling fit in me. I’m sorry Tony, but you made a big mistake.

- As did Nakagawa when it came to his hair. He is pushing on in his apparent desire to resemble a British granny in a bar in Benidorm, tanned to the point of crispiness from five days straight on the beach with seemingly thinning grey hair that has just about been disguised as blond but is clearly not. Either that or he’s looking for a role as a mini me for Donald Trump, with his orange skin tone and unruly yet fake looking shaft of weirdly coloured hair spiking out at a jaunty angle. At one point in the game when he made a tackle something dropped to the floor and he had to run and pick it up. I suppose it was a shin pad, but given that it seems that his goal is to either look as old as possible or perhaps conceal the fact that he is very old, it could as easily have been his dentures. Nakagawa, it doesn’t matter how many years pass, I will still detest you for your shithead goal celebration right in front of our fans.

- This game has reinforced my confusion when it comes to FC Tokyo and pyrotechnics. I liked to laugh at them for their national stadium ‘atmosphere’ building flame throwers but had to take that back to some extent when other teams used the same things in the same venue. It seems the flame throwers came as a job lot with the stadium hire, showing quite how hip the people who run the national stadium games are. In this game though Tokyo went big with the fireworks before the game. Everyone loves fireworks, don’t they, so that was kind of fun. The problem with having a mini display before a football game though is that the smoke just hung around for ages. Our first goal probably came in part due to the fact that no Tokyo defender could see through the gloom as the cross came over. Although the smoke had begun to clear by the time the second went in in similar fashion. And definitely had by the time the third went in… in similar fashion. Three headed goals in a game! And three goals for the third game in a row. Football is fun right now so let’s enjoy it and not worry about the possible reasons behind those wins. 

- Erm, the ref was Nishimura. But once again, he was… alright wasn’t he? I don’t remember anything even of note. This is all a bit uncomfortable for me. Sure we’ll get a stinker of an officiating performance soon though. 

- Finally, that FC Tokyo substitution sponsored slogan seems a bit harsh. It can’t feel very good if you’re leaving the pitch and they flash up ‘Change For The Better’ as they announce your removal. I won’t truly know how it feels till I hear one of my students say ‘thank god that wanker is leaving’ as I finish a class, but at least in that situation I would have the pride of knowing that my students have the ability to insult in perfect English, so could probably take some satisfaction from that.

Next up YFM at home next weekend. Would be lovely to continue this winning run and lovely to continue scoring three goals every game. Not sure if I’d like the Kobe self destruction route or the Tokyo not-at-all-with-it route to a win though. To be honest, if we get a win, I’ll be delighted however it comes about. Oniki said recently that if we win every remaining game we can still get 70 points, which is absolutely an amazingly ballsy thing to say considering how terrible we’ve been for most of the year, but perhaps shows that Oniki is a positive thinking kind of guy. If we’re thinking about trends continuing, and Yamada continues to score twice every game for the rest of the year he’d end up on 35 goals which would be pretty impressive but unfortunately wouldn’t be a record so I guess he’ll need to get a couple of hat tricks on the way. And if I continue to enjoy alcohol the way I have after the Kobe game and this match, I too might be reaching some kind of surprisingly high level, but perhaps not in a positive way. Long may the former things continue but maybe I should have a little rest from the latter.

Team

GK 1. JUNG Sung-Ryong

DF 31. VAN WERMESKERKEN Sai

DF 2. TAKAI Kota

DF 5. SASAKI Asahi
DF 13. MIURA Sota
MF 8. TACHIBANADA Kento

MF 10. OSHIMA Ryota

MF 14. WAKIZAKA Yasuto
FW 41. IENAGA Akihiro
FW 20. YAMADA Shin
FW 23. MARCINHO

Subs

GK 22. HAYASAKA Yuki
DF 7. KURUMAYA Shintaro
FW 11. KOBAYASHI Yu (on for IENAGA 84')
MF 16. SEKO Tatsuki (on for OSHIMA 73')

MF 17. TONO Daiya (on for MARCINHO 57')
FW 26. YAMAUCHI Hinata (on for YAMADA 84')
FW 30. SEGAWA Yusuke  (on for VAN WERMESKERKEN 73')

 
Goals

YAMADA (Frontale) 15' 0-1
YAMADA (Frontale) 20' 0-2
TAKAI (Frontale) 72' 0-3


My Frontale Man Of The Match

Although the details of the game are a bit vague in my mind, I think that given how I’ve long been saying our starting striker never scores and that I don’t think him starting there works and then he’s gone on to score two in all of the last three games, it has to go to…

YAMADA Shin - scoring goals is what he’s in the team for and he’s doing it. And you’ve got to love him for his Vai De La performance too, haven’t you? Surprisingly it doesn’t get old.

Highlights

Vs Vissel Kobe (home) 7/8/24 J League match 25

Kawasaki Frontale 3 - 0 Vissel Kobe

This game was delightful. It’s always fun to beat a team who splash the cash and even more so this season considering we are struggling to beat almost anyone. This was the first time this year that we’d managed to win two games in a row. We’ve somehow ended up in 12th after this result. Although the score might suggest otherwise, this wasn’t a magnificent demolition of Kobe by us. Instead it was something more like someone trying to do their washing up by throwing a grenade into the sink by them. Which probably made it even better. Let’s get straight into this in depth and considered post. (Well, actually more like into the pointless rambling bitching).

Don’t believe everything, (hmmm, maybe anything), you read on Twitter. That second red was an absolutely nailed on one. You can’t see it from the single replay everyone has used to add their measured expert opinions after viewing but Thuler was shouting at the linesman to enter the field to take off an extra ball that was in play. The linesman said he couldn’t, to which Thuler responded with a torrent of abuse and then kicked the ball directly at him. The Kobe manager says he doesn’t know why he would even be booked as he was passing the ball to the linesman, perhaps ignoring the fact that the ball didn’t need to go to the linesman and Thuler would have been fine kicking it anywhere in absolutely any other direction other than directly at the official. It was clearly intended to intimidate the linesman so fair play to him for drawing the ref’s attention to it. We constantly hear people talking about players lacking respect for officials and when they are pulled for doing something that exactly demonstrates that kind of thing everyone thinks it’s a disgrace. Wonderful double standards! And even better coming from a point of view of almost complete ignorance about what actually happened in the stadium. If I were a Kobe fan or anyone to do with the club I’d be more angry at a totally dickish bit of petulance from a player whose team was already down to ten man rather than moaning about the officials.

Initially wasn’t as sure about the first red. At the time I couldn’t see what had happened so was relieved to see the card going to them and not us. On replays which apparently have convinced Kobe fans in the absolute opposite direction, I think it’s probably fair enough. From the majority of his first half performance it seemed that Iino was mainly concerned with diving so it was a really pleasant surprise to see him get booked for it. It always annoys me that no one seems to get booked for diving anymore. He was definitely looking for contact and even seemed to stop as he got in front of Ominami, perhaps aiming for the red card rather and a free kick rather than a penalty and a yellow. And he did that really fucking annoying thing of grabbing the ball as he went down. He seemed to be an intensely annoying character and this is even reflected in his name which whenever it is typed in romaji looks like lino, a common shortened form of linesman. See you can’t even tell the difference, can you? I might have just typed the same thing both times. It’s probably a bit of luck that Thuler was the idiot kicking the ball at the linesman rather than Iino otherwise we’d be talking about an interaction between the Iino and lino. It could be even further confused if that situation had taken place on an interior floor surface as them we’d be talking about Iino and the lino on the lino.

As I constantly say that Kasahara is normally a nightmare ref for us due to us always getting DOGSO reds when he’s in charge of our games it would probably cause the irony detector to explode if I were to praise him on this occasion. Put your hard hats on, because he got both decisions right as far as I’m concerned. I’m sure Twitter experts all over the world though will know better though from their one camera angle of the second red, which was coincidentally the exact worst one possible to understand the decision. Everyone knows the best place to truly enjoy football is on a screen thousands of miles from the stadium with a dubiously stained Sorare tshirt on. Even better if you can parade the fact that you are truly of superior intellect by saying something like this would only happen in Japan, right? It doesn’t matter if you only got the tiniest glimpse of something, you can still have an EXPERT OPINION. I’ve seen that picture of the dinosaurs looking slightly perturbed as a massive meteor crashes into the earth and although it is only an artistic rendering of something that may have happened millions of years before I was born I can conclusively say that that kind of thing could only have happened in that particular place, (I have no experience of it and no knowledge about it, but that doesn’t matter because I KNOW). In addition those dinosaurs went down too easily and the linesman missed a clear offside from the meteor. Don’t forget this is not an opinion this is CAST IRON TRUTH. Don’t doubt it, I’ve watched a two second gif of one dinosaur’s eyebrow movement several times so don’t need to see the rest of the picture. Oh, and I have managed a premier league team for over 200 matches on Championship Manager.

Now, let's take a little break and look at some whining at the ref for giving correct decisions Kobe photos!

Red whine - pair with beef dishes.
Particularly good if the beef is misplaced

White whine - pair with roasted official,
sorry, I mean roasted pork

Rosé whine - pair with a green salad
with a very sour citrus dressing

Sparkling whine - pair with something cheesy,
like your chairman's online presence

Dessert whine - pair with bitter
(at decisons) chocolate pudding

This was a thoroughly enjoyable game because of what happened. It’s a bit difficult to say whether we were any good or not. Especially given that for the majority of the first half this was a game that perhaps could be described as one between two great teams who were cancelling each other out. Equally though the same could be true if it were two teams playing mediocre to dogshit level stuff. And seeing as neither team managed to hit the target in the first half this is probably closer to the truth. In spite of this being a wonderfully entertaining victory, it does leave a bit of a bad taste in the mouth when you consider that it has probably done Machida a bit of a favour. I guess a distaste for Machida is one thing we can all agree on. Hopefully they’ll have three people sent off when we play them. On the notoriously tweaky J League forums Vissel fans were talking about it being a league wide conspiracy because ‘THeY dOn’T wAnT Us tO wIn tHe LeAgUe’. I think pretty much everyone would rather they do than Machida do. I don’t think us Frontale fans ever said that when decisions went against us when we weren’t doing absolutely shit like we are this year. Guess Rakuten money can’t buy any relief from paranoia or a persecution complex, eh?

Hmmmm, wasn’t a great deal of actual content in this post was there? Next up, FC Tokyo away and then YFM at home the following weekend. Would be lovely to keep the run going. Actually can you call it a run if it’s only a run of two matches. Guess it’s more of a brisk stroll at this stage. It would be a miracle if either of those games ended up being as amusing and entertaining as this one though. It’s somewhat unfortunate that us finally managing to string two wins together is coinciding with a period for me where I have way too many more important things to do than write these blog posts. So I know I always say this, but they will be a lot shorter in the future, for a while at least. Which is a huge shame after the way this game went and considering that we’re playing two derbies in our next two games. I’ll do my best to leave out the informative bits and leave the snark and insults in though. With this in mind, I’ll finish by briefly resurrecting a recently dormant format point and see you next time for the new ‘don’t have the time or inclination to do this properly’ style Frontale Rabbit blog.


Banner Wisdom

 

‘We shall overcome’

What do they mean by this? Is it the massive amounts of cash that they’ll overcome? Is it the constant interference from their chairman? Perhaps it’s the well known on the internet anti-Vissel conspiracy that runs through the entire league and is especially rife amongst the officials? Or is it the handicap of two of your players being idiots and getting sent off? Ah, actually it’s definitely not that last one, is it? Because that resulted in a 3-0 defeat. 😉

 

 

Team

GK 1. JUNG Sung-Ryong

DF 31. VAN WERMESKERKEN Sai

DF 3. OMINAMI Takuma

DF 5. SASAKI Asahi (Yellow card 20')
DF 13. MIURA Sota
MF 8. TACHIBANADA Kento

MF 10. OSHIMA Ryota

MF 14. WAKIZAKA Yasuto
FW 41. IENAGA Akihiro
FW 20. YAMADA Shin
FW 23. MARCINHO

Subs

GK 22. HAYASAKA Yuki
DF 7. KURUMAYA Shintaro (on for SASAKI 90+1')
FW 11. KOBAYASHI Yu (on for IENAGA 86')
MF 16. SEKO Tatsuki (on for VAN WERMESKERKEN 78')

MF 17. TONO Daiya (on for OSHIMA 78')
FW 26. YAMAUCHI Hinata (on for MARCINHO 78')
FW 30. SEGAWA Yusuke 

 
Goals

IENAGA (Frontale) 57' 1-0
YAMADA (Frontale) 71' 2-0
YAMADA (Frontale) 85' 3-0


My Frontale Man Of The Match

A slightly left field selection on this occasion as they haven’t started any games for us so far this season, but it has to go to…

KARMA - it’s a bitch when you break the rules and get caught, isn’t it? 😉

Highlights