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?
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
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')
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
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