Kawasaki Frontale 4 - 3 Fukushima United
After a few home games which ended in draws and which better people than me said were quite exciting, it feels good to be able to finally agree with them. Presumably I can agree with them because we won rather than drew or lost and that always helps me be a bit more positive / realistic. I mean, even the presence of recent disaster ref Yamashita didn’t really impact on me much during this game. Undeniably, it was a bit of a weird game, with plenty of changes from us, (and them too, I think), the absolutely inevitable early goal conceded, (which seems to be something of an Emperor’s Cup habit for us), the storming come back and then finally the late collapse which was thankfully not serious enough to take us to extra time. There was lots to enjoy in this game. Perhaps not much to analyse but then again that has never been the strong point of this blog, has it? As there’s probably not a great deal to say about a game against a J3 team with a massively rotated team, I’ll try to get through this quite quickly.
Us -
With Segawa having left, (good luck to him), Takai away with the national team, Ozeki, Kanda and Tsuchiya away with the U20s and the usual massive amount of injuries the starting line up seemed like it would be quite predictable. But hang on, we suddenly seem to have players coming back from injury! Miura started, Oshima and Miyagi were on the bench. Blimey! And Noda made it into the squad for the first time and even got a few minutes on the pitch. A centre back pairing of Kurumaya and Haydar is obviously not going to be many people’s first choice but they did alright. Well, up until the last five minutes anyway, but let’s ignore that. Actually maybe we shouldn’t, as we’ve conceded a hell of a lot of late goals this year. I don’t really have any general points to make so instead I’ll just make a few comments on some players from the back to the front. I feel a bit sorry for Sung-Ryong as he’s conceded three times again when given a chance. Certainly he wasn’t helped by his defenders and he did make some very good saves near the end of the first half when we were under the cosh. Tanabe had a good game I think, (well, apart from for their first goal perhaps). Just want to say here, Tanabe SHOOT-o. I mean, I know this is a pretty underwhelming… ‘joke’, but he came quite close to scoring on a few occasions which was quite a shock. Haydar seems to have developed a new thing of hooking long laser-guided-missile passes forwards and these were quite exhilarating at times. Tachibanada did really well for our first goal and boy did we need to score at that stage. I thought Yamauchi did pretty well in the Wakizaka role in the first half but it seems that Hasebe disagreed as he replaced him with Wakizaka at half time. Perhaps though this was with a dual purpose in mind of trying to avoid extra time and perhaps giving Wakizaka a chance to play himself back into a bit of form. He seems to have been a bit lost since the ACL. Hopefully the goal will do him good. And then up front, YAMADA SCORED! AND THEN DID IT AGAIN! It’s been a while and you could see the relief when his first one went in. Fair play to plenty of our players who seemed determined to tee up attacking players for easy finishes which hopefully gives them all some confidence. Obviously it was nice to see Kobayashi score as well. So, plenty of goals! But plenty conceded too… But never mind. These kind of games are always a potential banana skin and I feel that in the past we probably wouldn’t have come back so strongly from a goal down. Perhaps though, we might not have almost thrown it away at the end. But the word ‘almost’ is quite important in that sentence as we didn’t completely throw it away. A win is a win, and if it’s an entertaining one, all the better!
Them -
Fukushima gave a pretty good account of themselves, I reckon. All praise for our team probably needs to be tempered by recognising the fact that the opposition were from two leagues below us. Equally, any praise for Fukushima should be amplified for the same reason. Of course plenty of Frontale fans will have a soft spot for Fukushima these days as Terada is their manager and we now have a partnership with them for loaning players. (When Ozeki appeared at the end of the game to greet the Fukushima fans he got an amazing reception. I like these kind of good feeling things). So we can be pleased that we won and they can be pleased that they scored first, scored three and only lost by one goal. They really had us under some pressure at the end of the first half. And it was nice to give them a cheer and clap at the end of the match as seems to happen in Emperor’s Cup games. Not sure if this happens in all teams’ games but I like it. Couple more things, they have an amazingly big-haired striker. I liked that. And I enjoyed their kick off routine, where pretty much everyone is in the centre circle, they play the ball back to the keeper and he thumps it forward. Certainly seemed a bit more effective than some kick offs we’ve done recently.
Ref -
No VAR in this game, which I think is a good thing, but if we had had it, their last goal probably would have been ruled out for handball. When you consider the ref was Yamashita, just the one memorable dodgy decision seems like a bit of a success. I’m being a bit unfair as aside from the things that I always moan about, (any decision going against us in any game), I can’t remember really making any significant comments about her. Wow.
Music -
Of course as this was an Emperor’s Cup game it would be remiss of me to not mention the music, a small part of which was amazing (and nothing to to with the JFL), and the rest of which was predictably shite. The JFL seem to have changed their music policy this year and have decided to go for more of a mid to late twenties women’s clothes shop on Oxford Street kind of feel with the music. Or something like an All Bar One kind of feel. Perhaps both of these references are a bit oblique so just compare it to something shite that you are familiar with. So that was the dodgy part but the good part was a local high school orchestra who played the music for the players’ entry and then went on to do a high energy dancing orchestra (?!) performance at half time including a version of Smoke On The Water. It was great! As it perhaps always is when people are running around with trombones and tubas.
Next up YFC away on Saturday evening. The last time we played them away it was an absolutely shit game and we didn’t exactly cruise past them in the home game so I’m not massively confident. But, hopefully some of our players might have got a bit of their mojo back after this game. And players returning from injury could be very important. Poor old Marcinho hasn’t had a rest for a very long time. After that our next game is at home against the always grotty Kobe the following weekend. Feels a bit strange to have a whole week off after a start to the season where we seemed to have to play every other day but hopefully should do us some good. Keep up the good work Frontale!
Us -
With Segawa having left, (good luck to him), Takai away with the national team, Ozeki, Kanda and Tsuchiya away with the U20s and the usual massive amount of injuries the starting line up seemed like it would be quite predictable. But hang on, we suddenly seem to have players coming back from injury! Miura started, Oshima and Miyagi were on the bench. Blimey! And Noda made it into the squad for the first time and even got a few minutes on the pitch. A centre back pairing of Kurumaya and Haydar is obviously not going to be many people’s first choice but they did alright. Well, up until the last five minutes anyway, but let’s ignore that. Actually maybe we shouldn’t, as we’ve conceded a hell of a lot of late goals this year. I don’t really have any general points to make so instead I’ll just make a few comments on some players from the back to the front. I feel a bit sorry for Sung-Ryong as he’s conceded three times again when given a chance. Certainly he wasn’t helped by his defenders and he did make some very good saves near the end of the first half when we were under the cosh. Tanabe had a good game I think, (well, apart from for their first goal perhaps). Just want to say here, Tanabe SHOOT-o. I mean, I know this is a pretty underwhelming… ‘joke’, but he came quite close to scoring on a few occasions which was quite a shock. Haydar seems to have developed a new thing of hooking long laser-guided-missile passes forwards and these were quite exhilarating at times. Tachibanada did really well for our first goal and boy did we need to score at that stage. I thought Yamauchi did pretty well in the Wakizaka role in the first half but it seems that Hasebe disagreed as he replaced him with Wakizaka at half time. Perhaps though this was with a dual purpose in mind of trying to avoid extra time and perhaps giving Wakizaka a chance to play himself back into a bit of form. He seems to have been a bit lost since the ACL. Hopefully the goal will do him good. And then up front, YAMADA SCORED! AND THEN DID IT AGAIN! It’s been a while and you could see the relief when his first one went in. Fair play to plenty of our players who seemed determined to tee up attacking players for easy finishes which hopefully gives them all some confidence. Obviously it was nice to see Kobayashi score as well. So, plenty of goals! But plenty conceded too… But never mind. These kind of games are always a potential banana skin and I feel that in the past we probably wouldn’t have come back so strongly from a goal down. Perhaps though, we might not have almost thrown it away at the end. But the word ‘almost’ is quite important in that sentence as we didn’t completely throw it away. A win is a win, and if it’s an entertaining one, all the better!
Them -
Fukushima gave a pretty good account of themselves, I reckon. All praise for our team probably needs to be tempered by recognising the fact that the opposition were from two leagues below us. Equally, any praise for Fukushima should be amplified for the same reason. Of course plenty of Frontale fans will have a soft spot for Fukushima these days as Terada is their manager and we now have a partnership with them for loaning players. (When Ozeki appeared at the end of the game to greet the Fukushima fans he got an amazing reception. I like these kind of good feeling things). So we can be pleased that we won and they can be pleased that they scored first, scored three and only lost by one goal. They really had us under some pressure at the end of the first half. And it was nice to give them a cheer and clap at the end of the match as seems to happen in Emperor’s Cup games. Not sure if this happens in all teams’ games but I like it. Couple more things, they have an amazingly big-haired striker. I liked that. And I enjoyed their kick off routine, where pretty much everyone is in the centre circle, they play the ball back to the keeper and he thumps it forward. Certainly seemed a bit more effective than some kick offs we’ve done recently.
Ref -
No VAR in this game, which I think is a good thing, but if we had had it, their last goal probably would have been ruled out for handball. When you consider the ref was Yamashita, just the one memorable dodgy decision seems like a bit of a success. I’m being a bit unfair as aside from the things that I always moan about, (any decision going against us in any game), I can’t remember really making any significant comments about her. Wow.
Music -
Of course as this was an Emperor’s Cup game it would be remiss of me to not mention the music, a small part of which was amazing (and nothing to to with the JFL), and the rest of which was predictably shite. The JFL seem to have changed their music policy this year and have decided to go for more of a mid to late twenties women’s clothes shop on Oxford Street kind of feel with the music. Or something like an All Bar One kind of feel. Perhaps both of these references are a bit oblique so just compare it to something shite that you are familiar with. So that was the dodgy part but the good part was a local high school orchestra who played the music for the players’ entry and then went on to do a high energy dancing orchestra (?!) performance at half time including a version of Smoke On The Water. It was great! As it perhaps always is when people are running around with trombones and tubas.
Next up YFC away on Saturday evening. The last time we played them away it was an absolutely shit game and we didn’t exactly cruise past them in the home game so I’m not massively confident. But, hopefully some of our players might have got a bit of their mojo back after this game. And players returning from injury could be very important. Poor old Marcinho hasn’t had a rest for a very long time. After that our next game is at home against the always grotty Kobe the following weekend. Feels a bit strange to have a whole week off after a start to the season where we seemed to have to play every other day but hopefully should do us some good. Keep up the good work Frontale!
Team
GK 1. JUNG Sung-Ryong
DF 15. TANABE Shuto
DF 44. CESAR HAYDAR
DF 7. KURUMAYA Shintaro
DF 13. MIURA Sota
MF 19. KAWAHARA So
MF 8. TACHIBANADA Kento
MF 26. YAMAUCHI Hinata
FW 41. IENAGA Akihiro
FW 20. YAMADA Shin
FW 23. MARCINHO
Subs
GK 21. ANDO Shunsuke
GK 1. JUNG Sung-Ryong
DF 15. TANABE Shuto
DF 44. CESAR HAYDAR
DF 7. KURUMAYA Shintaro
DF 13. MIURA Sota
MF 19. KAWAHARA So
MF 8. TACHIBANADA Kento
MF 26. YAMAUCHI Hinata
FW 41. IENAGA Akihiro
FW 20. YAMADA Shin
FW 23. MARCINHO
Subs
GK 21. ANDO Shunsuke
DF 5. SASAKI Asahi
MF 10. OSHIMA Ryota
FW 11. KOBAYASHI Yu (on for YAMADA 71')
MF 14. WAKIZAKA Yasuto (on for YAMAUCHI 46')
MF 17. ITO Tatsuya (on for MARCINHO 63')
FW 24. MIYAGI Ten (on for IENAGA 71')
MF 10. OSHIMA Ryota
FW 11. KOBAYASHI Yu (on for YAMADA 71')
MF 14. WAKIZAKA Yasuto (on for YAMAUCHI 46')
MF 17. ITO Tatsuya (on for MARCINHO 63')
FW 24. MIYAGI Ten (on for IENAGA 71')
DF 30. NODA Hiroto (on for MIURA 86')
DF 35. MARUYAMA Yuichi
DF 35. MARUYAMA Yuichi
My Frontale Man Of The Match
No-one is really leaping out to me, so please excuse me, but I'm going to skip it on this occasion.
Goals
MORI (Fukushima) 9' 0-1
YAMADA (Frontale) 29' 1-1
YAMADA (Frontale) 51' 2-1
WAKIZAKA (Frontale) 64' 3-1
KOBAYASHI (Frontale) 84' 4-1
YAJIMA (Fukushima) 89' 4-2
KANO (Fukushima) 90+1' 4-3
Highlights
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