Vs Al-Sadd (home, but really away) 28/4/25 ACL 2024/25 quarter final

 

Kawasaki Frontale 3 - 2 Al-Sadd (AET)

We’re through to the semi-final! As I watched this game from my sofa and it was pretty late, I’m not going to be able to provide you with any special insight on this occasion. Some might say that is always the case I guess. I’ve long been saying that I thought we might have been holding back slightly this year with this final stage in mind. And on the evidence of this match, well, perhaps that was right. Considering the numerous things that have been stacked against us, (and most of the other East Asian teams), you’ve got to say that going through to the semi is a great achievement. For periods of this game I thought we were able to show what we could really do. Along with that though, there were also periods of the game where we didn’t cover ourselves in glory but that’s to be expected I guess. Whilst on paper we got the easiest draw when it came to the team we were playing, (they finished fourth in their group, behind the three other teams that made it to this stage), we definitely haven’t got a good draw when it comes to the frequency of games. Many people have spoken about how this whole tournament seems to have been massively skewed in favour of the West Asian teams, and even more so in towards the Saudi teams. Al Hilal and Al Nassr will have had three clear days between games, while Al Ahli and us only get two days. Add to this the fact that we’re the only team who have played 120 minutes, it doesn’t really look that positive for the next round. But let’s not be negative, disregard the dubious scheduling, and the fact that three teams have home advantage and instead be positive about getting this far. And after all who knows what might happen in the next match? It’s going to be another late night, but perhaps could be an equally rewarding one if we can find enough players fit enough to play again so soon.

So a few things I noticed in this match. Don’t expect anything enlightening here… We scored three times, and the first two were lovely goals. It’s kind of fitting that the third came from a cock up by the opposition as we’d gifted them the second equaliser through Miura trying to kick the ball out and off of them to win a throw and it backfiring. It was a bit of a dodgy goal to concede. As was the first one, where Yamaguchi got beaten at his near post and perhaps even helped the ball in a bit. I think it was probably going in anyway, but it did feel like a very soft goal. Particularly as we’d gifted them the ball immediately before they scored by doing one of those stupid goal kick routines that we seem to be wedded to this year. Whilst it was disappointing to go ahead twice and get pegged back twice, it was delightful to go ahead a third time and survive till the final whistle. We did miss quite a few good chances, and not all of them were from Yamada apparently being determined to not pass the ball ever. I went a bit overboard with the moaning about him never passing in the hope that it might prove to be a reverse jinx and I guess it worked as he assisted for the winner. I don’t want to be mean to anyone though as it was a decent performance and one which seemed to show a bit more oomph than the recent lacklustre ones. However, saying it was a decent performance doesn’t include much of extra time where both teams looked utterly punch drunk, incapable for the most part of stringing together more than a couple of passes. Again the scheduling of another game for the victor just three days afterwards seems a bit shitty. But after all, this is the AFC we’re talking about. In previous years I’ve moaned about their impact on the stadium experience and ‘enjoyed’ the piss poor standard of their coverage when watching online. Maybe the directors have got a touch better this year. Now we only miss about 25% of the game due to them showing replays or shots of staff or players or fans whilst the game continues on. One thing I thought was quite amusing this year was when they showed an Al Sadd chance, cut to the player’s reaction and then showed exactly the same chance again from the same angle. It was as if someone had said to them to not restrict replays to just the one clip, but they hadn’t noticed the bit where they said show it from another angle too. Instead we got the same thing twice, which is probably of no interest to most people but I quite enjoyed the absurdity of it. The whole ACL experience seems to be a bit like an attempted copy of the UEFA Champions League done by people who have only seen the Champions League a couple of times and don’t know anything about football. And this is probably close to the truth, so well done to them for demonstrating it so accurately. Perhaps the worst part is that plenty of people think the European Champions League and UEFA have long since jumped the shark with their money chasing and endless tinkering. I guess it’s a bit much to expect that the AFC might have noticed that and avoided it themselves. They probably thought it was a good thing.  

A few words about Al Sadd. I really liked their fans, many of whom seemed to be dressed in the same white t-shirts and were kind of swaying and clapping as if they were at a gospel concert. It felt like they weren’t very loud, but I know how deceptive these things can be so can’t say of that was accurate or not. Their players liked a dive it seemed. But the ref was actually really good in this match. Both of these things are only my biased opinion though. I guess the final thing of interest (perhaps) was that Hasebe made good use of our subs. Not sure if it was intentional or not, but by only using four in normal time, he was able to make two changes in extra time, (one of them at half time), and maybe this made a real difference. At the same time, he has recently quite often only used four subs, so maybe I’m reading too much into this.

Anyway, all in all, an enjoyable watch. Can’t say I’m desperately gutted that I’m not there as clearly there are some issues that might make Saudi Arabia a difficult place for me to visit. I think the final stage format is a bit of a stitch up and think it would have been much better to do things another way. This is a shocking thing for me to say, but I feel sorry for the YFM fans, (and of course of the other defeated teams), who presumably with a bit of optimism in mind booked a stay which stretched until the final and are now twiddling their thumbs or doing some kind of desert tourism. The latter sounds quite appealing to me, but not being able to have a beer undermines the appeal of that quite significantly. Anyway, I’m sure the other East Asian team’s fans will now all be supporting us, right? Right? Probably not considering the defeated YFM fans left lots of ‘Fuck Frontale’ stickers in the stadium. What a class act they are. Guys, you might be out of the ACL, but don’t be sad. You’ll have plenty of new stadiums to sticker next year hopefully. I’ve clearly written too much here considering I watched this game bleary-eyed on my laptop. Expect a similar level of insight when it comes to the next post on our game on Thursday morning Japan time against Chris Ronaldson and his Al Nassr colleagues.

 

Team

GK 98. YAMAGUCHI Louis
DF 5. SASAKI Asahi
DF 2. TAKAI Kota
DF 35. MARUYAMA Yuichi
DF 13. MIURA Sota
MF 19. KAWAHARA So
MF 77. YAMAMOTO Yuki
MF 41. IENAGA Akihiro
MF 14. WAKIZAKA Yasuto
MF 23. MARCINHO
FW 9. ERISON

Subs

GK 1. JUNG Sung-Ryong
GK 21. ANDO Shunsuke
MF 8. TACHIBANADA Kento (on for YAMAMOTO 82')
DF 15. TANABE Shuto
MF 16. OZEKI Yuto (on for WAKIZAKA 100')
FW 20. YAMADA Shin (on for ERISON 56')
FW 28. PATRICK VERHON
FW 30. SEGAWA Yusuke (on for IENAGA 82')
DF 31. VAN WERMESKERKEN Sai (on for SASAKI 106')
FW 32. KANDA Soma
MF 37. ITO Tatsuya (on for MARCINHO 65')
DF 44. CESAR HAYDAR

Goals

ERISON (Frontale) 4' 1-0
PAOLO OTAVIO (Al-Sadd) 9' 1-1
MARCINHO (Frontale) 21' 2-1
CLAUDINHO (Al-Sadd) 71' 1-1
WAKIZAKA (Frontale) 98' 3-2


Highlights

 

Vs Tokyo Verdy (home) 20/4/25 J League match 11

Kawasaki Frontale 0 - 0 Tokyo Verdy

After a brief diversion into the world of defeats, we’re now back in the comfortable warm embrace of draws again. We’ve now had every possible draw up to and including 3-3 in the last five games. First, the slightly crazy anything could happen, (anything including injuries to all of our squad thanks to the useless ref ‘letting the game flow’) 2-2 against Machida, then the throwing away a lead and almost turning a win into a defeat 3-3 against YFM, (where the ref was alright), and after that the 1-1 against Shimizu where another less well known ref did a decent job. To complete the set we have this 0-0 against Verdy. I’d like to make some pithy comment about it, but the fact is, this was just an abomination of a game. Although perhaps using the word abomination is giving it a bit too much credit. Certainly the standard of football on display was diabolical, but the experience of watching the match was much closer to absolute soul-crushing tedium, rather than any kind of thrilling horror show. I’ve been saying for most of the season that I feel that we’ve been holding back a bit with the ACL looming large, but in this game, we held back so much that we came close to slipping into reverse at times. Thankfully now we’ve headed off to the ACL and can stop worrying about picking up (more) injuries before and go for it 100%. However, there is one horrible nagging doubt that is lingering in the back of my mind. I really hope we have been holding back in recent games. If that was us going for it 100%… well, that’s not a very pleasant thought.

Us -

Totally understandable starting line up as far as I was concerned. Given that we hadn’t won in five games it made sense for us to start with the first choice players and get back some of those good feelings with a nice win which would help us start the Saudi part of the ACL in good spirits and good form. Admittedly there would always be the slight risk that someone might get injured and throw a spanner in the works, but given that morale is an important part of football it definitely made sense to go full strength and finally get back to winning ways. The only possible thing that could go wrong could be if the first choice players dithered their way to another disappointing result putting in another rotten performance. Oh dear… Well at least we didn’t seem to pick up any more injuries. In hindsight maybe we could have played some players who might have something to prove, but I think the win was the most important thing, so Hasebe didn’t want to risk it. Obviously we didn’t get the win though. Perhaps we could have seen some more dramatic changes a bit earlier in the game when it looked like things weren’t going our way. We definitely could have done with Kanda coming on a bit earlier. And Ito too. After all, there were no shortage of players who deserved to be changed. Whilst I think Ozeki is getting better and better, I don’t think he’s really the impact sub that some might think he is. I guess the truth is that we didn’t have that many options off the bench. Yamauchi and Verhon seem to have now very much dropped out of favour and Miyagi, who was Hasebe’s preferred reserve is now injured. As long as we are apparently determined to stick with the 4-2-3-1 or 4-3-3 or whatever you want to call it, I am worried we are going to remain as ineffective as we’ve been recently. Against Shimizu we scored when we went with two up front. And then failed to score again after we changed back to the usual formation. It’s a shame we can’t try 4-4-2 from the start of a game. But I think this is mainly due to Wakizaka, who maybe doesn’t want to play on the wing. Hasebe did say that he wouldn’t change much initially this year as we had the ACL to think about, so hopefully he will start making his own mark on the team when we’re back to thinking about the league. Hopefully that won’t be as early as next Monday morning.

Don't be fooled. Although this looks like something
exciting happened, I can assure you it didn't.

Them -

There’s nothing to say in this section. Verdy weren’t very good, but neither were we. We had the ACL in mind, but I don’t know what they were holding back for. They’ve had a dodgy start to the season and having only one shot on target in a game against us in the form that we’re in at the moment doesn’t bode well for the rest of their season. Some might look at us getting a clean sheet in this match as a positive, but I think we probably could have got one even if we’d played Mecaboo (I didn’t know that was how you spell it…) as a lone centre back. I don’t have anything amusing to write here, so dull was this game. Ok, hmmm, let’s introduce a new section to pad this out a bit.

The wind -

Certainly the wind played a significant part in this match. In the first half we were kicking into it and seemed incapable of dealing with it. I was willing the first half to end as the number of times we were skewing clearances out of defence into the wind and somehow conceding a corner was starting to get a bit worrying. So bring on the second half I thought, when we could really feel the benefit. Sadly we struggled with it just as much, any apparent benefits that Verdy had got from it, deserting us when we were playing with it at our backs. I guess you could probably blame the wind for the general shitness on display from both teams.

Ref -

Ikeuchi was back again and as reliably useless as ever. On this occasion his signature move seemed to be him flapping his hand towards himself to encourage someone to take a goal kick or a throw in quickly. The rest of the match he seemed to be wandering around looking as if he were on work experience and was waiting for his mentor to tell him what to do. At one stage I was worried we might get stuck in an infinitely long match when the ball went out of play and clearly neither the ref or linesman had a clue whose throw it should be, and both waited for the other to do something. There were some truly bizarre decisions Ikeuchi made in this match, but to be honest, that’s probably exactly what we’d expect from him. Hopefully we won’t have him again for a while. It really says something that the less well known refs seem to be doing a much better job recently. Normally I’d expect them to be equally useless, but this year it seems that the less familiar names seem to know what they’re doing a bit more. Anyway, Ikeuchi was the perfect ref for this match, as we were awful and Verdy were awful, so it made sense that we had an awful ref too.

So, a terrible game that had no redeeming features as far as I’m concerned. When I checked into the game on Futbology it reminded me that exactly one year before I had been in the same seat watching us play Tokyo Verdy in a terrible game that finished 0-0. I guess some things never change! Both teams in this match seemed to want to try and play football but were incapable of doing so. It was a bit like watching your friend show you how they’re learning to juggle and instead of starting with two balls, they’ve instead jumped straight to the five chainsaws stage. There was no way it was going to end well. At the same time it felt a bit like being told that someone was going to cook you a delicious meal, but that person kept repeatedly dropping both the ingredients and the cooking utensils, the only thing they were able to keep hold of being the thought that they were a good cook. Or maybe (why not make it a trio of not quite right comparisons…) watching a 110m hurdle race between two athletes who plough into every hurdle and fall over repeatedly. It should be easy for their opponent to win, but each one seems to outdo the other when it comes to lack of ability. Funnily enough, the most entertaining and exiting part of this match was the half time relay race which was very close and did end up with someone falling just before the line as it looked like they were about to win, and smashing their face on the track. Why did I bother coming up with all those comparisons when the half time show perfectly reflected the match? Well actually, I guess the half time show did have a winner and some drama and excitement, so maybe the comparison doesn’t work so well.

Next up, our ACL quarter final against Al-Sadd of Qatar. Their recent form is five wins in a row. Our recent form is… well you don’t need reminding about that. I don’t know anything about them or their players, but that clearly is down to me rather than a reflection on them. We can be hopeful that it will be a good game and a good performance from us, but I guess it doesn’t look like that is very likely right now. I have a horrible feeling though that we’ll end up getting knocked out of this competition by our despicable neighbours YFM. Of course that would require a few things to happen before though. When you look back on the last few games, you’ve got to think that the only way is up, so let’s end on some positivity and cling to the hope that we’ve been taking it easy till now in 2025 and are about to start playing to the best of our abilities. Big fingers crossed for that.

Team
 

GK 98. YAMAGUCHI Louis
DF 5. SASAKI Asahi
DF 2. TAKAI Kota
DF 35. MARUYAMA Yuichi
DF 13. MIURA Sota
MF 19. KAWAHARA So
MF 6. YAMAMOTO Yuki
MF 41. IENAGA Akihiro
MF 14. WAKIZAKA Yasuto
MF 23. MARCINHO
FW 20. YAMADA Shin

Subs

GK 1. JUNG Sung-Ryong
FW 9. ERISON (on for YAMADA 68')
FW 11. KOBAYASHI Yu
MF 16. OZEKI Yuto (on for WAKIZAKA 80')
MF 17. ITO Tatsuya (on for IENAGA 80')
FW 26. YAMAUCHI Hinata
DF 31. VAN WERMESKERKEN Sai

FW 38. KANDA Soma (on for MARCINHO 89')
DF 44. CESAR HAYDAR

My Frontale Man Of The Match

 

In the stadium this usually goes to a goal scorer or to someone for some kind of sentimental reason. Perhaps it was with the latter in mind that their man of the match on this occasion was ‘ALL OF THE PLAYERS’. Whilst I understand what they were thinking, I think this is a little inaccurate and it should go to…



NONE OF THE PLAYERS - come on, this was just rubbish, wasn’t it? Not get-really-angry rubbish though, more like what’s-the-point rubbish. Congratulations no-one, you truly deserved the award.

Goals

None

Highlights

Vs Vissel Kobe (away) 16/4/25 J League match 12

 

Vissel Kobe 2 - 1 Kawasaki Frontale

Finally! Finally we’ve broken that run of drawn games. Oh… Whilst it’s never good to miss a game, sometimes, with hindsight it might seem that you did the right thing by going to work instead and not even bothering with the highlights. I realise that this is an utterly ridiculous thing to say. After all, how can I even comment that the game was terrible without even seeing a moment of it? Well, I guess the scoreline helps give you an idea. And then you could look at the stats. We had only six shots and only one on target, which their keeper let in. Might have been worth trying a few from our own half if he was that dodgy. In the second half apparently we only had two shots, both off target. I still think these games don’t really show where we are as a team, the closer we get to leaving for Saudi Arabia, the more cautious we’re becoming perhaps. It’s just a shame that we’ve had so many games crammed in to such a short period already. It’s almost as if the league is willing us to fail. Can you imagine the situation if Oniki was still in charge. The same players would have played every single minute of both the ACL and league games. But anyway, I keep saying we’re playing with the handbrake slightly on and while I still think this is the case, It’s getting as boring for me to say it as it must be for you to read it. Thankfully there’s only one more game before we leave. It’s probably a must win though, as otherwise we’ll be leaving for our biggest recent challenge with no wins in five games. Hasebe played the first team in this match and we lost. I presume he’ll rotate for Verdy. But the truth is we don’t seem to have that many options right now with an already massive and increasing by the week injury list. And if we do manage to win our first match in Saudi Arabia we’ll then be up against a really stupid schedule of games. Will there be anyone left standing by the time it comes to our first league match after returning from the ACL? Anyway, this is way too long considering I saw nothing of the match and I have nothing new or interesting to say. Perhaps there will be more to write after the game against Verdy at home on Sunday. Hopefully it will be a bit more positive. At the same time, I remember how bad the home game against Verdy was last year so I’m not holding out too much hope. Keep your fingers and your toes and your arms and your legs and even your eyes crossed, I guess. Actually maybe skip that last one.

Team
 

GK 98. YAMAGUCHI Louis
DF 5. SASAKI Asahi
DF 2. TAKAI Kota
DF 35. MARUYAMA Yuichi
DF 13. MIURA Sota
MF 19. KAWAHARA So
MF 6. YAMAMOTO Yuki
MF 17. ITO Tatsuya
MF 14. WAKIZAKA Yasuto
MF 23. MARCINHO (Yellow card 12')
FW 9. ERISON (Yellow card 45+2')

Subs

GK 1. JUNG Sung-Ryong
FW 11. KOBAYASHI Yu (on for MARCINHO 78')
MF 16. OZEKI Yuto (on for KAWAHARA 78')
FW 18. SEGAWA Yusuke
FW 20. YAMADA Shin (on for ERISON 61')
FW 26. YAMAUCHI Hinata
DF 31. VAN WERMESKERKEN Sai (on for SASAKI 78')
MF 41. IENAGA Akihiro (on for ITO 61')
DF 44. CESAR HAYDAR

Goals

SASAKI (Kobe) 31' 1-0
THULER (Kobe) 45' 2-0
MARCINHO (Frontale) 45+3' 2-1

Highlights
 

Vs Shimizu S Pulse (away) 12/4/25 J League match 10

Shimizu S Pulse 1 - 1 Kawasaki Frontale

Three draws in a row and somehow, as of Saturday night, we’re still in third. The extremely enjoyable part is that the two teams above us are Fukuoka and Kyoto. This year is quite a fun J League season so far. Of course, this could all go wrong tomorrow if Machida win. Fingers crossed they’ll lose. (They did!) As I write this I’m on the train home and I’ve just checked who Machida are playing and found it’s Urawa. Hmmmm. Maybe a 0-0 is ok then. It would see us drop to 4th, but whilst it is extremely enjoyable to see YFM in the relegation zone, I guess it would be quite enjoyable to see Urawa join them there. Obviously this is impossible from tomorrow’s games, but you know, let’s just be positive and hope they both have a disastrous season. Schadenfreude, eh? Is it a wonderful thing? I’m not 100% sure, but in this season of transition where it’s sometimes difficult to work out whether our results are good or bad, let me at least have some enjoyment about teams I don’t like doing badly. But back to the matter in hand, another slightly disappointing game, but at the same time another one which wasn’t so bad in the grand scheme of things. It’s probably more of an issue that we’ve managed to only get a draw in this match with what we probably imagine is the first team playing rather than the game against YFM where we played the reserves. But I don’t have anything much to complain about really. Which probably all means that this is going to be a brief blog post. Maybe. Let’s get on with it.

Us -

Aside from injuries, probably our first choice eleven, although I guess the Yamada / Erison question is still something for people to think about. As this is something that I have spoken about in previous blog posts there’s no point rehashing that. We made plenty of chances. We didn’t get that many on target. And much like in previous games, although I don’t think I have said this before, there seems to be a feeling recently that with our form, it’s a matter of whatever the opposition do, we’ll do similarly, us playing up or down to the opposition’s level. I’m not going to go on about this too much though as the massive caveat is that we’re preparing for, or rather trying to avoid cocking up before, the ACL knockout stage. I don’t think you’ll see us cutting loose until that tournament is finished, hopefully with us being crowned champions. (Bit optimistic that, isn’t it?).  So what is there to say about this match? Not that much as I was stuck behind a big flag so missed quite a lot of it. So big and so close was the flag that if you wanted to recreate the experience at home I’d suggest that you sit quite close to your screen and ask a friend to dangle a towel in front of you, occasionally revealing the screen, occasionally stretching it out and holding it right in front of your face for about ten seconds, and occasionally lightly whipping you in the face with it, or draping it over your head. Maybe one notable thing was that Hasebe finally did the 4-4-2 Yamada Erison thing and that we scored whilst doing it. It was a bit of a shame after the elation of seeing Hasebe give that a go and put Wakizaka out on the wing, that it didn’t last long and we went back to the usual 4-2-3-1 briefly before going back to 4-4-2 again later. I guess though that Erison was tired so had to be changed. We could have brought Kobayashi on for him though and kept on with the 4-4-2. But I don’t think Kobayashi / Yamada is the same kind of partnership as Erison / (insert someone else here) is. Erison definitely offers something different from our other strikers at the moment. Hopefully we can use the things he brings efficiently in upcoming games. 

 

Anything else apart from being kind of vaguely positive and negative at the same time? Not much. I noticed that Wakizaka again tried to chip the keeper, this time he got it a bit higher but with the same outcome of the ball going straight into the hands of the keeper. Ideally here I would make a joke about how Wakizaka loves chips but the best I can come up with is that I also love chips, especially with either ketchup, brown sauce, curry sauce, mayonnaise, samurai sauce… I could go on but I think I’ve already hammered the joke so hard that it’s barely even slightly amusing anymore. At the moment it seems that we can score goals, and move the ball nicely, but don’t seem to be up for doing that for the whole game. The first half again was a bit crap, but as I’ve said before I’m sure we all don’t mind this being the case as long as we go gang-busters in the second half. We did at times, but switching the formation back and forwards apparently at odds with how well it was going might have undermined our gang-busting attempts on this occasion. As I seem to just be repeating myself now, I’ll just finish this part with one more repetition and say that as long as we have the ACL on the horizon, I’m fine with us not really going full out. Thankfully the rest of the league seems to be playing similarly and it’s very tight right now. If we’d managed to turn even one of these recent draws into a win we’d be top so clearly things aren’t going too badly. But let’s still keep our fingers crossed that we’re playing with the handbrake slightly on right now and that we’ll see what Hasebe Frontale really can do after the ACL is over and done with. Hopefully it won’t turn out to be the case that we have actually been going full out so far and are not quite up to the job. Everything will, (or maybe might), become clear in the near future I guess.

Them and ref -

Not much in this section again. Dealing with the ref first, we’d only had one game with Kamimura and that was the 7-0 win over Consadole from a few years ago. It became clear quite early on that it wasn’t going to be a 7-0. Think that the ref probably got both the penalty for their goal and the red card against them right. To be honest, I have no notes about the ref at all. In a way, it wouldn’t have been a disaster if he hadn’t given the red as we never seem to do very well against 10 men. To be fair to Shimizu though, they didn’t just shut up shop after the red though. They were still trying to win the game too. There was a bit of time wasting though, but that’s to be expected. Alright we had a bit more possession and a lot more shots, I think a draw was the right result. So what else can I say in this section…. Hmmmm. Well as usual the bus to and from the stadium was awful. Considering the game finished around 4 it’s pretty bad that we didn’t get to the station until 5:30. And we didn’t hang around long after the final whistle. I know people love Nihondaira, but the access is terrible and I’m looking forward to when they build their new stadium. Or sort out the buses. The former will probably take years, but maybe is easier and more likely than the latter.

So next up, Vissel Kobe away on Wednesday. I’m kind of pleased that they won at the weekend as hopefully that win will give them some complacency and we will be able to turn them over. After that, we’re back at home on Sunday for the visit of Verdy. And then we’re off to Saudi Arabia. Or rather the players are, as the trip doesn’t appeal to me for a multitude of reasons, most significantly financial ones. In the time we’re away the league will have four rounds of fixtures so after returning we’ll be playing catch up, which I think might suit us. But obviously means the busy schedule will continue. And the quality of these blog posts will continue to plummet. Wonderful!

 

Team

GK 98. YAMAGUCHI Louis
DF 5. SASAKI Asahi
DF 2. TAKAI Kota (Yellow card 45')
DF 35. MARUYAMA Yuichi
DF 13. MIURA Sota
MF 19. KAWAHARA So
MF 6. YAMAMOTO Yuki
MF 41. IENAGA Akihiro
MF 14. WAKIZAKA Yasuto
MF 23. MARCINHO
FW 9. ERISON

Subs

GK 1. JUNG Sung-Ryong
DF 7. KURUMAYA Shintaro

FW 11. KOBAYASHI Yu (on for MARCINHO 85')
MF 16. OZEKI Yuto (on for KAWAHARA 85')
MF 17. ITO Tatsuya (on for ERISON 77')
FW 18. SEGAWA Yusuke
FW 20. YAMADA Shin (Yellow card 90+8') (on for IENAGA 64')
DF 31. VAN WERMESKERKEN Sai
DF 44. CESAR HAYDAR

My Frontale Man Of The Match

No-one again really. A kind of average game, people seemingly with their minds on the upcoming long away trip for a horrendously weighted in certain teams’ favour dog’s breakfast of a competition.

Goals

KITAGAWA (Shimizu) 62' PEN 1-0
YAMAMOTO (Frontale) 68' 1-1

Highlights

Vs Yokohama F Marinos (home) 9/4/25 J League match 5

Kawasaki Frontale 3 - 3 Yokohama F Marinos

Aaahhhhh. Definitely some mixed emotions after this game. The fact that a two goal win for us would have put us top and put them bottom seemed too good to be true and so it proved to be. This was a game that swung back and forth so many times that it was a bit difficult to keep up with it at times. It was far from our best performance but almost ended being a good result. Then threatened to become a disaster, before turning out… maybe well. Put it this way, it definitely felt better to have scored a last gasp equaliser rather than have conceded one. I guess the elation of that partly came from the relief that a few minutes before it had looked like we’d turned three points into no points. It’s never nice to not beat YFM, but on this occasion, I think there are a few things we can be pleased about and a few mitigating factors. Which I’ll go into in the usual sections. Here we go.

Us -

How good would it have been to have won this game with the starting line up Hasebe picked? I think even getting a draw is a decent enough snubbing of our nose to YFM considering we played only a couple of regular starters, mostly players who are usually subs, and some who rarely even get a look in to even the bench. There were only two players who started both this game and the previous game against Machida and one of them, Marcinho, only started because Miyagi got injured in the warm up. Five of the starters in this match didn’t even make the bench against Machida. And still right up until the 89th minute it looked like we were going to win. Don’t get me wrong, this wasn’t a great performance by any means. But that’s to be expected when you consider many of these players have never started a match together and there were new partnerships all over the pitch. And still it was almost enough to win… But yeah, we didn’t play particularly well for most of the game. I’m fully in favour of Hasebe rotating though. After the Machida game the treatment room has filled up once again, partly due to Machida’s skillful booting of our players all over the pitch. There was an injury update today from the club and it was announced that in addition to Tachibanada and Jesiel being injured, which we pretty much knew, Oshima is also injured again. It’s perhaps a bit of a worry that our only loss of the season so far was the game against Kyoto where we also rotated a lot. So we definitely need to do a bit more work to get the guys who Hasebe doesn’t favour the most up to speed with the regular starters. But at the same time, I think that the upcoming ACL game, (fingers crossed, games), in Saudi Arabia is something that is on everyone’s mind at the moment and not knackering any of our players before then is quite important. It’s a bit of shame that our preparation for that trip is filled with a relentless schedule of Wednesday and weekend games. But the fact is that even with a new manager, with new ideas (maybe), we’re still doing alright in the league at the moment. So I don’t think there are any reasons to complain right now. But blimey, it would have been nice to win this game, wouldn’t it? 

So anything notable from this match? It was nice to see Ozeki get his first start and then his first goal.  It was kind of unbelievable to see Haydar score, and what a lovely goal that was. Kobayashi is back from injury, and Kanda had his first decent involvement in the league. It’s a bit of a shame that neither Kobayashi or Kanda really had much impact though. I don’t think Segawa in the Wakizaka position was a great success, and I thought he did better when moved to the wing in the second half. And I was very happy to see Tsuchiya get his first minutes. It’s unfortunate that his introduction coincided with us conceding twice, but I don’t think he was to blame, even if the look on his face at the end pf the match suggested that he thought he was. Don’t worry Tsuchiya, we were pretty unlucky with those goals. Probably for their first goal we weren’t so unlucky, unless it is bad luck to let in an absolute pea-roller of a shot. Perhaps Sung-Ryong was unsighted by the ball coming through a few players and there was a hint of a deflection too. A very soft goal to concede. We didn’t do much aside from score our first goal in the first half. The second half was a bit better. Well, up until the 89th minute anyway. But it’s no big deal. I think YFM will be much more upset about the way the game finished than we did, and them getting one point instead of the zero I’d hoped for won’t help their relegation fight that much. So in conclusion, fair enough to rotate heavily with big games coming up especially when playing a team so low down in the table 😉. We weren’t that good, but we didn’t lose. But we could do with a couple of wins in the next few games to get us back on track again, I reckon.

Them -

YFM were rubbish for most of this match and hopefully they will continue with that form for the rest of the season and go to J2. They had plenty of possession but for the most part did nothing with it. It was delightful. Tono seems to have settled in at YFM quickly as he appears to have turned into a cheating, diving, moaning wanker. Normally I feel a kind of residual warmth towards ex-players but Tono seems to have undergone a severe character change. I guess it’s because he’s now spending a lot of time in Yokohama. As a quick aside, it’s easy to tell that someone lives in Yokohama, because they incessantly bore on about how great Yokohama is. In a way, it was crushingly inevitable that they’d end up fluking a couple of late goals. These matches do tend to more often than not leave everyone slightly disappointed. At the time, I was obviously gutted that we’d conceded so late. Looking back at the replays, I feel like we were pretty unlucky. For their second goal they somehow managed to turn a totally off-target over head kick attempt into a goal via two point blank deflections off our defenders. For their third, the ref seemed to be not bothered by a handball by them in the build up and then they managed to set up the tap in by having the ball boing off their player’s shoulder. It’s clear that luck wasn’t on our side. But perhaps it generally is, given that our neighbours look so utterly crap this year. Whilst it would obviously be hilarious if they soon fired the new manager that they thought would be so good, it might actually be funnier if they held on to him for a bit longer so they can put themselves in genuine relegation danger. Hopefully Holland can go one better than Postecoglou did when he almost got them relegated. Wonder how Postecolgou is doing now? I guess that given how many players he signs and how great a manager he thinks he is, he’s probably won everything there is to win in England by now. I don’t know where this new thing of me doing a conclusion for every paragraph has come from but, in conclusion, they are shite, so it’s bad of us that we didn’t beat them, but at the same time, it’s delightful that we could deny them the win they thought they’d got so late on in the game, and it will be even better if come the end of the season they get relegated because they conceded that late Takai goal.

Ref and VAR -

Mikuriya is still a name that fills me with dread, but I didn’t have that much to moan about in this game. Aside from the usual petty little biased whinges that come as easily to me as breathing, I could probably only complain about one of our attacks that he decided to stop for a foul after he seemed initially to have played the advantage for but then changed his mind once the advantage started becoming advantageous. I guess I should probably moan about him potentially missing a handball in the lead up to their third, but I might be clutching at straws a little with that. Can’t really complain about the VAR either I guess, although I still hate it for the same old reasons. I did start thinking during this game though that I don’t think we’ve had VAR overturn anything in our favour this year. On the occasions it has gone our way it has been to back up what the ref had given on the pitch. We’ve definitely had some goals ruled out by it though. In spite of there being plenty of overly lengthy checks in this match, again, we didn’t seem to get the luck of VAR. So this year I can hate it for both its very existence and the way the decisions are going for us. People will say these things even themselves out over the course of a year. If that’s true, I’m looking forward to the times when we start getting some decisions going our way. I’m a bit sick of that red screen right now and those long delays are losing me valuable post-game drinking time.


Next up Shimizu away on Saturday. I reckon we need a win to get back on track after a couple of disappointing draws where we’ve thrown away leads. There were definitely mitigating circumstances in both of those matches though. After that it’s Vissel Kobe away on Wednesday as the relentless churn of fixtures continues. I won’t be able to either go to or watch that match, so the blog post will be a breeze for me to write and for you to read. Hopefully that game on Wednesday against a cellar-dweller will go better than this one did against a different cellar-dweller. And hopefully both of them will be in the relegation zone as the final whistle blows on the final match of the season. Go Frontale! And Go (YFM and Vissel) to J2! 

Team

GK 1. JUNG Sung-Ryong
DF 31. VAN WERMESKERKEN Sai
DF 2. TAKAI Kota
DF 44. CESAR HAYDAR
DF 15. TANABE Shuto
MF 19. KAWAHARA So
MF 16. OZEKI Yuto (Yellow card 76')
MF 17. ITO Tatsuya
MF 18. SEGAWA Yusuke
MF 23. MARCINHO
FW 11. KOBAYASHI Yu

Subs

GK 21. ANDO Shunsuke

DF 5. SASAKI Asahi (on for TANABE 82')
MF 6. YAMAMOTO Yuki (on for KAWAHARA 46')
MF 14. WAKIZAKA Yasuto (on for MARCINHO 46')
FW 20. YAMADA Shin

FW 26. YAMAUCHI Hinata
FW 28. PATRICK VERHON
FW 38. KANDA Soma (on for KOBAYASHI 62')
DF 39. TSUCHIYA Kaito (on for CESAR HAYDAR 88')

My Frontale Man Of The Match

Honestly speaking, we weren’t that great and as much as I’d like to give it out to someone for some spurious reason, it probably might make me look more deluded than I already am, so let’s skip it on this occasion.

Goals

OZEKI (Frontale) 7' 1-0
YAN MATEUS (Yokohama) 41' 1-1
CESAR HAYDAR (Frontale) 66' 2-1
AMANO (Yokohama) 89' 2-2
YAN MATEUS (Yokohama) 90+2' 2-3
TAKAI (Frontale) 90+9' 3-3


Highlights

Vs Machida Zelvia (away) 6/4/25 J League match 9

 

Machida Zelvia 2 - 2 Kawasaki Frontale

Another local-ish derby(ish) and another… ah, not a win on this occasion. But this was, I think, a reasonable result in the circumstances. More about those circumstances later. I’ve got a few things to say in the usual sections, but due to a pretty shitty view from the stands, I imagine that anyone who watched online will have a better idea of what went on in this game. The Gion Stadium might have a relatively new medium-sized ‘back stand’ but the fact is that the view from behind the goal isn’t the best. And it was made worse by the fact that we arrived a bit late, (by which I mean just the one hour before kick off), so ended up quite near the front. Don’t get me wrong, it wasn’t all bad. The atmosphere was pretty good, with some top level ref and Machida baiting, (not from me on this occasion. At least not wholly). But from my eye level, I couldn’t even see the bottom of the goal. It almost felt as if they’d raised the pitch up a bit and we were watching in a little dip, meaning that the advertising hoardings obscured anything below the kneecaps of the players. This made it a tad tricky to work out if the ball had gone in or not and therefore any celebrations or frustrations started after interpreting the reactions of our players. All of which is to say that I couldn’t see much of what happened and now I’ve started to forget what happened, so expect this post to be the usual old shit. With that in mind, let’s get right into it.

Us -

A few surprises in the starting line up, mainly Takai being absent and Jesiel starting in his place, with Kurumaya coming onto the bench. Further forward we had the usual kind of rotation that we’ve seen recently, with those few players who seem to be un-rotatable keeping their spots and the other usual switches taking place. I’m not sure what to hope for when it comes to Takai. I guess we should hope for him being rested, worry about him being injured and really worry about him being prepared for some kind of janky transfer. In spite of my past comments about him playing amazingly for a few games then dropping a series of absolute clangers, I have to say that he really seems to have come on this season and had a great partnership with Maruyama. Clearly the main talking point of this match has to be the two (probably serious) injuries to Tachibanada and Jesiel, both of which came in the first half. With us having to make two separate changes before half time, (and for a while it looked like we might also have to make a third when Marcinho went down before half time), we were really up against it when it came to being able to use subs to change the game, what with us only having the one change window left. I think I might have just made up the phrase ‘change window’, but hopefully you know what I mean. I understand why, aside from changes made at half time, subs have to be made in a maximum of three slots, but the rule really screwed us in this game. I’ll speak more on the Tachibanada incident later, but with the Jesiel one, whilst it looked kind of innocuous at the time, it quite quickly became apparent that it was serious from his reaction. I guess we can pray that it’s not as bad as Jesiel clearly thought it was, but I suspect it could be another long term injury. And given that he’s had so many, you might have to wonder if it could be even more serious than that. Even though we were put in a tricky situation by those enforced early changes I think we still did a decent job of trying to win in this game. The two goals we conceded looked a bit soft, which was all the more surprising given that recently we’ve looked pretty sturdy at the back. But their first did come directly after our second enforced change of the match and was from one of their grotty long throws. I guess you can’t blame them for pursuing the tactic as it works but… actually do blame them, they are a team of terrible wankers, aren’t they? (Aside from Shimoda of course). At the end of the game I felt like both teams were really going for the win, which was quite nice. At the same time, I feel like with a bit better finishing we could have already been home and dry as we missed some very good chances. But, given the circumstances and the fact that the ref (who somehow Machida thought was against them!! Insane!) was absolute dog shit, a 2-2 draw felt kind of like we’d done quite well. The fact that Machida’s game-plan was able to dictate some of our subs and that the ref seemed to be, if not excactly encouraging their play, but definitely enabling it, meant that a 2-2 draw away from home against a team above us in the table who had an extra man on their team was reason to send me home reasonably content. And the fact that the reasonable contentment could be combined with some top level disgust for certain members of the opposition and some irritation at a ref who always disappoints meant that Sunday evening was quite alright by me.

A characteristic Tani flap as seen from the trench
that the stand behind the goal was in

Them and the ref-

Sometimes I combine these two sections as there’s not much to say about them individually. On this occasion, I think they should go together as they were working hand in hand, one clearly enabling the other. I don’t know how much of this needs to be said in every Machida blog post, but given that this is the first game against them this season I’ll put it in. What a scummy team they are! I don’t think this phrase is often used without the negative, but ‘Machida Zelvia, what’s… to like?’. When usually used in the negative this is a rhetorical question, but for a neutral fan, I think would be hard to come up with something positive to say about them. I guess people who like watching (ex) national team players who have pursued their dream of playing at the ‘highest level’ overseas only to be lured back to the club of their dreams… oh sorry, I meant the club that plays horrible football but can give them more money than others, might be interested in going to watch Machida. What other positives are there? Charismatic and charming manager? Errrrmmm, no. Beautiful football? Errrrmmm, no. A nice and well connected stadium? Ermmm, no. A charming story of a small team of underdogs who through great team work managed to get to the top of J1? Errrrmmm, no. Machida quite rightly don’t seem to have many neutrals’ support and I fully support the neutrals for not supporting them. I don’t really know why they are so horrible as clearly they have good players. But they kicked us all over the pitch in this match and a very weak ref didn’t let the rules of the game interfere with their plans. The foul on Tachibanada was horrible, the Machida player basically just booting him as hard as possible on the front of the ankle. I’d be surprised if we see him playing again soon. The ref Kimura barely gave the foul and wasn’t interested at all in any kind of card. Also, a player who has never particularly annoyed me in the past has now joined my shit list. I don’t remember Soma being such a petulant little twat but he seems to have become a proper arsehole. Perhaps this is just top quality coaching from top quality shithead Kuroda, the Machida manager. As an aside, what a surprise it was to see some power harassment allegations come out about him! And equally surprising to see that the club had a good look at the evidence and decided that there was no case to answer. Perhaps Kuroda also used the ‘Be careful, I’m very close to the owner’ threat on the person who was investigating. But the thing is we knew Machida would be cheating shitbags, so there has to be a lot of blame given to the ref, who was happy to go along with everything. I wasn’t aware that the J League has introduced a personal ref consultation system now. I don’t know why we didn’t use it, as it seemed that everything the ref did had to go through a discussion with Kuroda before it was given. I don’t know if Kimura was intimidated by Kuroda or whether he’s just a shit ref. Actually, there’s a high probability that both are true. And who wouldn’t be intimidated by the sports jacket, white t-shirt, white trainers and skidmark beard that Kuroda rocks? When there’s someone that cool around, there’s no other option than to do exactly what the Machida Fonz wants, right? In my last blog post on a game we had with Kimura I said that he gives way too many cards out. Perhaps he read it and overcorrected in this match as he went from deluge to drought. I reckon they could have had at least two players sent off in the first half and still the arseholes harangued the ref presumably all the way to the officials toilet where he had to look the door and repeatedly press the running water sound button and wait till they went away, probably distracted by someone carrying something that looked like a envelope of cash. Anyway, I’m going to restrict my abuse to just the ref, Kuroda and some of the Machida players and instead switch to poking fun when it comes to the club itself. I was quite baffled by the bizarre loosely-medieval theme they seem to go with for home games. I guess they are trying to promote the image of FORTRESS NOZUTA, which has a certain amount of sense to it, as the first thing everyone knows about castles is that they are usually on a hill with the intention of making approaching it as difficult as possible. Nice that they back up the Fortress Nozuta idea when it comes to their shuttle bus policy. For those who didn’t find the Fortress Nozuta name evocative enough there were some aural and visual hints to push you in the right direction. First the unusual and intriguing music being played in the food area outside the stadium and immediately before the game in the stadium, which was akin to the lightest of EDM being produced with a drum machine and some flutes, pipes and lutes. Or at least the flute, pipe and lute settings on a mid-range Casio. I have to say, I quite enjoyed it, particularly as the bassline was getting a bit farty on the speakers in the food area. Once inside the stadium the medieval vibe was amplified by the bizarre sight of some prancing shirtless flag-wavers who appeared to be dressed in something halfway between a kilt and that sarong that David Beckham briefly flirted with wearing. The whole image was like a cross between the kind of look you’d expect from a guy who does the juggling at battle reenactments and a bordering-on-racist approximation of the genie from Aladdin. Once again, quite intriguing, and wonderfully naff. Big thumbs up for all of this. Big thumbs down though for the old Japanese imperial flags and the big Stone Island flag in their end. And big question marks for the numerous St George's cross flags and for the flag behind their goal that said 'Three Stripes, Two Soles, One Love'. Your guess is as good as mine. So to distill the various themes in this overly long paragraph into single buzz words, I’d say, team - arseholes,  tactics - shithousery, vibe - enjoyably bonkers, ref - useless, Kuroda absolute total cu

Ran out of characters in that last paragraph. Seem to remember that happened once before too. This was a surprisingly enjoyable game, but maybe just because of my antipathy towards Machida Zelvia who must be closing in on joining that top level of my most hated teams now. 2-2 was probably fair even if the way they went about securing the draw was far from fair. At least as far as I’m concerned. Next up, no time to breathe before another derby, and this time it’s against the forever top tier hated team YFM. It seems like it should be a good time to play them as they are wonderfully shite this year, but I’d say that almost certainly means that they are going to beat us. After that we’re away at Shimizu on Saturday. The schedule is relentless, so please spare a thought for us bloggers who have to come up with a whole new load of insults, (or at least a new way of expressing them), every three or four days. I think the only right thing to do is send me lots of money so I can spend it on booze as this is the way I come up with all of my best snark. Well, drinking or when I’m in the shower. Best not to mix up those two situations unless you’re using a straw and a well sealed cup. Cheers! 

Team

GK 98. YAMAGUCHI Louis
DF 5. SASAKI Asahi
DF 4. JESIEL
DF 35. MARUYAMA Yuichi
DF 13. MIURA Sota
MF 8. TACHIBANADA Kento
MF 19. KAWAHARA So
MF 41. IENAGA Akihiro
MF 14. WAKIZAKA Yasuto
MF 23. MARCINHO
FW 9. ERISON

Subs

GK 1. JUNG Sung-Ryong

MF 6. YAMAMOTO Yuki (on for TACHIBANADA 15')
DF 7. KURUMAYA Shintaro (on for JESIEL 33')

MF 17. ITO Tatsuya (on for IENAGA 70')
FW 18. SEGAWA Yusuke
FW 20. YAMADA Shin (on for ERISON 70')
FW 24. MIYAGI Ten (on for MARCINHO 70')
FW 26. YAMAUCHI Hinata
DF 31. VAN WERMESKERKEN Sai

My Frontale Man Of The Match

The way Machida played made this a difficult game for any of our players to particularly stand out as it’s tough to show what you can do when the other team are just employing spoiling tactics and the ref is useless. However, for the gutsiness and the goal, I’ll give it to…

KAWAHARA So - I really like him.

Goals

ERISON (Frontale) 16' 0-1
OKAMURA (Machida) 34' 1-1
NISHIMURA (Machida) 53' 2-1
KAWAHARA (Frontale) 73' 2-2

Highlights

Vs Shonan Bellmare (home) 2/4/25 J League match 8

 

Kawasaki Frontale 2 - 0 Shonan Bellmare

Two local derbies in a row and two wins in a row! It’s definitely the case that the feeling after this game wasn’t as euphoric as after the win against Chofu though. There are a few things that contribute to this I guess. For a start, away games are always more fun. We scored three times in that game and only twice in this game and both of these goals weren’t exactly the most exciting, one being bundled over the line, (with the inevitable consequent fear that VAR would probably find some reason to rule it out. Thankfully, it didn’t on this occasion), and the other being a late penalty which added a little bit of gloss onto the scoreline. The fact is though that we do tend to stuff up games against Shonan, so getting the win in this one without too much fuss should be a great encouragement to us. As I suggested previously, this wasn’t a great game, but we got the job done and now are in a position that we could top the league if we played and won our game in hand. So whilst no-one will have had their socks knocked off by a 2-0 home win with some slightly iffy goals, we have to be pleased with the way things are going at the moment, don’t we? With Machida away coming up on Sunday, and with almost no notes made during this game, this is going to be brief.

Us -

A little bit of rotation in this game. I probably would have liked to see a bit more as the schedule is nuts at the moment, but I can quite understand Hasebe not wanting to go overboard as the last time he made big changes we lost (Kyoto home). I had thought that maybe Erison would come in for Yamada as that seems to be the way things have been going recently, but I suppose that given that both of then scored at the weekend, it would have been harsh to drop Yamada. One thing we probably need to think about though is the fact that Yamada really doesn’t seem to be able to play the role that Erison does when he’s in the team. Erison is great at winning the ball and laying it off to start attacks. Yamada isn’t. With him doing that job, the best we can really hope for is to get a free kick from a foul on Yamada as the role doesn’t really seem to suit him. It would be great if we could play both of them together but obviously that would mean we need to change the formation and that wouldn’t work for Wakizaka. So I guess Hasebe has a few things to think about in that respect. At the other end of the pitch, we’ve conceded only three times in seven games, which is pretty amazing. It’s fortunate that Takai and Maruyama playing together seems to be working so well, as at the start of the year we didn’t have many other choices. Jesiel was back on the pitch in the second half of this game though so maybe we’ll now have a few more options. I wonder if we could be rotating the full backs a bit more though. Sai is ready and waiting, and whilst I think we’ve looked more solid with Sasaki and Miura playing, it might make sense to occasionally give Miura or Sasaki a rest. Yamaguchi didn’t have much to do in this game thanks to Shonan not having any shots on target, but he’s still looking solid. Long may that continue. I think it’s tough to work out what the relative strengths of teams at the moment. It’s still early in the season and plenty of teams seem to have had good spells and some bad games. But with most of the teams having now played eight games, we’re approaching a quarter of the season finished so perhaps we can be a bit bolder when it comes to suggesting who is good and who isn’t. Machida up next will be a big test as they are a bunch of clogger thugs who are annoyingly effective. Hopefully we can get a result like we did there last year. As there’s not much else to say about the game from my limited memory of it, I’ll finish this section with some more general things I’ve noticed that may or may not be significant. I’m really impressed that with Hasebe in charge we’re not taking the ball into the corner flag to hang on to a lead. It’s never a good look, so I’m happy we’re continuing to try to play and make chances right till the end. I’ll be happy about this right up until we concede after dropping a clanger trying to score a second goal and ending up drawing or losing. I’m also impressed that Hasebe seems to make his changes up front a bit earlier than we have been used to. I never think it’s fair to give a striker ten minutes and expect them to play themselves into form, so I think it’s good that Hasebe gave Erison 30 minutes in this match. Maybe some people might have been surprised to see Miyagi take the penalty at the end of this game, but apparently Hasebe’s system is to give the player who won the penalty first refusal. Makes sense to me, and of course in the case of Miyagi, there was never any way he was going to give it to anyone else. Oh, and one final thing that’s not particularly appropriate for the ‘us’ section, but Yokohama F Marinos second from bottom having scored a wonderful four goals in seven games is something that can warm the hearts of every decent person, isn’t it?

Them and ref -

I have lumped these two things together as there’s not much to say about either. After a good start to the season it seems that Shonan might be reverting to type slightly, which makes it all the more surprising that we were able to beat them at home. It was a little disappointing that after having to pay the price for quite a lot of his overly adventurous cock ups when he was playing for us, we didn’t get any really gifts from Kamifukumoto. But I’m pleased for him that he’s doing well there. In this match it didn’t really ever look like we were in much danger, but I don’t know how much of that is down to our defence and how much is down to Shonan. There was definitely a feeling that we’d end up conceding a late equaliser, but at the same time, I couldn’t really see where that might come from, (apart from us dropping the afforementioned massive clanger). The ref in this match was Imamura who I have despised since the idiotic way he sent off Kozuka at the Saitama Stadium. With this in mind, I was quite surprised to see him have a decent first 15 minutes. He soon reverted to type though and got my goat. But I guess the truth is that he didn’t do that much wrong really. Hmmm. Two games in a row that I’ve said that. Am I going soft in my old age? As I said before, the real test will come when we lose, but perish the thought, are J League refs becoming not quite so useless? Presumably not. This has probably just been a blip. We’ll see I guess.

So a workmanlike win, which didn’t dazzle, but provided a bit of fun during the match, and plenty of satisfaction after the match. I don’t think there’s much to be learnt from this game, so let’s just move on to Sunday away at Machida. If Hasebe can get one over the league’s current most irritating manager, that will be great. I missed this match last year due to sickness, so if we get beaten, you can all blame me. I wonder if we’ll see Oshima back again? If we do, I worry for him against dirty, dirty Machida. Machida are one of two teams that are ahead of us in the league at the moment (both of them have played an extra game though…), so if we can win against them we can guarantee that we’ll finish the week at least one spot higher in the table. Fingers crossed that can happen!

 

Team

GK 98. YAMAGUCHI Louis
DF 5. SASAKI Asahi
DF 2. TAKAI Kota
DF 35. MARUYAMA Yuichi
DF 13. MIURA Sota (Yellow card 17')
MF 8. TACHIBANADA Kento
MF 19. KAWAHARA So
MF 17. ITO Tatsuya
MF 14. WAKIZAKA Yasuto
MF 23. MARCINHO
FW 20. YAMADA Shin

Subs

GK 1. JUNG Sung-Ryong
DF 4. JESIEL (on for TAKAI 61')

MF 6. YAMAMOTO Yuki
FW 9. ERISON (on for YAMADA 61')
MF 16. OZEKI Yuto (on for WAKIZAKA 82')

FW 18. SEGAWA Yusuke
FW 24. MIYAGI Ten (on for MARCINHO 82')
DF 31. VAN WERMESKERKEN Sai
MF 41. IENAGA Akihiro (on for ITO 74')

My Frontale Man Of The Match

In the stadium they gave this to Kawahara which was kind of unusual as usually it goes to a goalscorer. Flashscore gave it to Tachibanada, which is also unusual as they always give it to a goalscorer. (Flashscore also gave our lowest score to Yamaguchi which seems a little harsh given that he had no shots to save). Sofa Score gave it to Miyagi who played only ten minutes of the game. So basically, your guess is as good as mine really. Who knows? Oh, maybe it should go to…

WARUNTA - it was his night in the stadium, (Paint it Purple!), and that meant that we all got a Warunta hooded blanket and given that it was cold and I love freebies, let’s say that Warunta was at least the man of the night, if not the match.

Goals

WAKIZAKA (Frontale) 50' 1-0
MIYAGI (Frontale) 90+2' PEN 2-0

Highlights