Sanfrecce Hiroshima 1 - 2 Kawasaki Frontale
After a few games where I’ve said halfway through ‘I hope we don’t regret not taking more of these many chances’ and where we’ve gone on to regret taking more of those many chances, it looked once again like history was going to repeat itself in this match. To be honest, maybe I should just stop saying it as it seems to keep coming true. I mean, I know I’m a football genius but I don’t think even my excellent level of insight is enough to actually change the game. But, wonderfully on this occasion we did initially regret it but then went on to make Sanfrecce regret the same thing. This was a bit of a weird game, absolutely not helped by an overseas ref who seemed to have thought he was here on holiday rather than to actually work. With no Wednesday game and no game next weekend, this is perhaps an unfortunate time to get a momentum shift and turn the corner, (add several more cliches here), but I think we really needed the win. And it was really, really fun in the stadium. After we kept squandering leads and missing chances it was becoming a bit difficult to recall why we spend so much time going to matches, but a win like this in an away game in a city that’s fun to visit makes up for all the shittier games we’ve had to watch this year. The highs are apparently very much worth waiting for. Maybe if we could have another four months of similar results that would be lovely.
Us -
I’ve been a bit disheartened recently by our repeated capitulations. To be honest though, perhaps I should have been a bit more upbeat given that we had a lot of players well out of form and we weren’t losing every game. I’m pleased to say that I think we’re getting ourselves in order a bit with this match. The win is obviously the most important thing, but I think large parts of this game also should hopefully have given our players a bit of confidence. Hopefully a late win away at Sanfrecce who were on a five game winning run will give us a more significant morale boost than a boring one-nil win at home against one of the league’s weaker teams. And boy did some of those players need the morale boost. I feel a bit sorry for Yamada who has been pretty bad for most of this season. In this match I thought he did much better. Clearly he still doesn’t seem to be able to play up front by himself this year, but he was passing in this match and quite often doing it well. So fingers crossed that’s going to be a significant step in the right direction for him. I even said that I thought he’d been a bit hard done by to get subbed when he did. Yamaguchi too has been flailing a bit recently, but this game should hopefully get his confidence up again. I don’t want to point the finger solely at him for recent results, but I guess if you remove the howlers from the last two matches we would have won both of them 2-1. So perhaps we normally should win every game 2-1 but occasionally turn the win into a draw by someone having a brain freeze and gift-wrapping a goal for the opposition. Wakizaka, another recent subject of my grumbles, didn’t quite get back to his old form in this match to the same extent that Yamada and Yamaguchi did, but I still feel that he did a bit better than in the last few weeks. His passing was noticeably off again in this match, but hopefully the win will cheer him up a bit. I guess I should bring the mood down slightly by referencing the fact that even though we battered them in the first half we still only had five shots. But who cares, eh? Well, who cares as long as we win? They definitely battered us a bit in the second half but when you consider how thin our squad is getting due to a constantly growing injury list, (latest one out injured seems to be Ito, presumably after the terrible tackle from Gamba’s horrible Yamashita that clown/ref Sendachi thought was only a yellow card. Add to this that Sai went off injured in this match. The injury gods clearly hate us), you’ve got to expect that we won’t have the upper hand when we’re bringing on players in important positions who have hardly played at all this year. There were long period of this game where we’d struggle to thwart one of their attacks, would hack the ball forward and it would come straight back to us. It was seat of the pants stuff at times. Which makes it all the more fun that we won! Wonderful! With all of these injuries in mind, a nice little break is very welcome. Even more so when you consider that the next game will be an Emperor’s Cup game so presumably there will be a lot of rotation for it, (I can say this with a bit more confidence than I would have under the previous guy). I’m not sure we deserved to win, but Sanfrecce didn’t either. And given that we’ve been a bit unlucky turning three points into one on a semi regular basis this year, well, I’ll enjoy the win and Sanfrecce can suck up the loss.
Them -
Much like I probably said last year, the stadium is quite nice. I think the away area is shockingly small though, but that might be part of the design I guess. I suppose they couldn’t get many people interested in schlepping out into the mountains to their old stadium, (we only did it once and that was enough for us), so perhaps have underdone the capacity a bit for the new stadium. The stadium WiFi was excellent though. And you can’t argue with the access. Thought it was lovely of their fans to start booing the first time one of our drummers hit his drum to warm up before the match. Pretty petty stuff which made the win all the more satisfying! They definitely have some irritating players, but of course I’m going to say that. Liked the fact that ‘Japan’s (sometime) number one’ was probably at least partially at fault for both goals, absolutely flapping at the ball. I think for the second he actually flicked the ball on to Sasaki with a bowl cut connection. Of course, one of the main points of these blog posts is to write snarky things about the opposition players who probably aren’t actually bad people. It’s a bit annoying though when they appear to be. When we gave Araki a clap before the game for his 200th appearance, he repaid our kindness by spending most of the game whinging to the ref about non-existent elbows. But I guess that behaviour did seem to run through the team who perhaps for some reason thought the ref should have been on their side. I think he absolutely was, but more on that in the next bit. One final comment about the stadium, and it’s that the music was next level cringy. Unlike other clubs who just play naff music, (we are not immune to this ourselves, when we play the original versions of the players’ songs), Sanfrecce seemed to have employed either a local dogshit rocker or a dogshit AI to record Sanfrecce specific versions of classic songs for ultimate cringability. Even these efforts paled into insignificance though when compared to the ‘gates are open, come on in’ Sanfrecce Hiroshima music where at least three over emoting singers apparently had all been told theirs was the lead vocal and to really finesse it up a bit. It was shocking, and sadly, as it took a while to get into the stadium, we were treated to what seemed like an infinite loop of the musical crime, perhaps intended to hype everyone up, but which instead had me looking for the source of the racket and seeing if I had anything sufficiently heavy and unwanted in my bag that I could chuck at the speakers to arrest the mental breakdown that was approaching. If the bosses at Guantanamo Bay are looking for someone to really level up their mental torture department, I highly recommend they employ the people who commissioned, wrote and performed that song.
Ref -
Once again we were ‘treated to’ an overseas ref. For most of the game I thought he’d forgotten not only his cards but also his whistle as he seemed determined to give nothing at all. All my moaning about Sendachi giving everything one level too low seemed kind of petty in the face of this ref, who just didn’t give anything at all. All he did was wave his arms about in one of three ways. The first was the most common and was a side to side wave signifying that he was not going to give anything. He probably should have constantly done this gesture and things would have been a bit clearer. At the same time it became obvious quite quickly that he was going to do nothing, so maybe he didn’t even need to bother with the arm waving. The second was an up to down wave signifying that the players should calm down, otherwise he’d have to blow his whistle and give a free kick. I’m not sure quite why he was so averse to doing so, but I guess that’s just the way he does things. Or rather doesn’t do things. The third was the out to in wave telling someone to hurry up. There was some top level time wasting from us after we scored our first so perhaps this hand gesture was the most necessary. I haven’t seen it back yet, but I was absolutely furious and absolutely baffled when the ref with his whistle in his mouth pointed to the spot after Kobayashi was hacked down, but then just let the game continue. I think it was an extremely bad decision from where I was standing, but will add an update when I’ve seen it back. (I’ve watched it back and am still confused what he was doing. And unhelpfully, DAZN showed no replays of either this or the next decision I am about to moan about). I was also pretty annoyed with him booking Ienaga for handball after he got hacked down and handled the ball. Seems like the ref had a point to prove and that point was I AM IN CHARGE AND I’M DOING THINGS MY WAY! Will check this on the highlights too. (Yep, no replay here either. Had DAZN been told to not even question anything the ref did? Nice to add another conspiracy to all my others). I guess I can understand the thinking behind the referee exchange scheme. But there do seem to be some drawbacks. (Hmmm. That suggests that there are some benefits from the exchange. The only one I can think is that it means that we don’t have one of the useless refs we already know in charge of one of our games and considering what we get instead, I’m not sure it’s really a benefit). The first major drawback is probably exemplified in what many people say about foreign refs letting the game flow and letting players get away with more physicality than regular J League refs do. I can’t really see the point of having a ref come in and referee the game in a way that doesn’t match what every other ref in the league is doing. You don’t really see this in other kinds of situations. It wouldn’t make sense for a speed metal and a twee indie pop band to swap drummers as part of a percussionist exchange scheme.
Us -
I’ve been a bit disheartened recently by our repeated capitulations. To be honest though, perhaps I should have been a bit more upbeat given that we had a lot of players well out of form and we weren’t losing every game. I’m pleased to say that I think we’re getting ourselves in order a bit with this match. The win is obviously the most important thing, but I think large parts of this game also should hopefully have given our players a bit of confidence. Hopefully a late win away at Sanfrecce who were on a five game winning run will give us a more significant morale boost than a boring one-nil win at home against one of the league’s weaker teams. And boy did some of those players need the morale boost. I feel a bit sorry for Yamada who has been pretty bad for most of this season. In this match I thought he did much better. Clearly he still doesn’t seem to be able to play up front by himself this year, but he was passing in this match and quite often doing it well. So fingers crossed that’s going to be a significant step in the right direction for him. I even said that I thought he’d been a bit hard done by to get subbed when he did. Yamaguchi too has been flailing a bit recently, but this game should hopefully get his confidence up again. I don’t want to point the finger solely at him for recent results, but I guess if you remove the howlers from the last two matches we would have won both of them 2-1. So perhaps we normally should win every game 2-1 but occasionally turn the win into a draw by someone having a brain freeze and gift-wrapping a goal for the opposition. Wakizaka, another recent subject of my grumbles, didn’t quite get back to his old form in this match to the same extent that Yamada and Yamaguchi did, but I still feel that he did a bit better than in the last few weeks. His passing was noticeably off again in this match, but hopefully the win will cheer him up a bit. I guess I should bring the mood down slightly by referencing the fact that even though we battered them in the first half we still only had five shots. But who cares, eh? Well, who cares as long as we win? They definitely battered us a bit in the second half but when you consider how thin our squad is getting due to a constantly growing injury list, (latest one out injured seems to be Ito, presumably after the terrible tackle from Gamba’s horrible Yamashita that clown/ref Sendachi thought was only a yellow card. Add to this that Sai went off injured in this match. The injury gods clearly hate us), you’ve got to expect that we won’t have the upper hand when we’re bringing on players in important positions who have hardly played at all this year. There were long period of this game where we’d struggle to thwart one of their attacks, would hack the ball forward and it would come straight back to us. It was seat of the pants stuff at times. Which makes it all the more fun that we won! Wonderful! With all of these injuries in mind, a nice little break is very welcome. Even more so when you consider that the next game will be an Emperor’s Cup game so presumably there will be a lot of rotation for it, (I can say this with a bit more confidence than I would have under the previous guy). I’m not sure we deserved to win, but Sanfrecce didn’t either. And given that we’ve been a bit unlucky turning three points into one on a semi regular basis this year, well, I’ll enjoy the win and Sanfrecce can suck up the loss.
 |
| Love having our celebrations with their annoying post-match huddle in the background |
Them -
Much like I probably said last year, the stadium is quite nice. I think the away area is shockingly small though, but that might be part of the design I guess. I suppose they couldn’t get many people interested in schlepping out into the mountains to their old stadium, (we only did it once and that was enough for us), so perhaps have underdone the capacity a bit for the new stadium. The stadium WiFi was excellent though. And you can’t argue with the access. Thought it was lovely of their fans to start booing the first time one of our drummers hit his drum to warm up before the match. Pretty petty stuff which made the win all the more satisfying! They definitely have some irritating players, but of course I’m going to say that. Liked the fact that ‘Japan’s (sometime) number one’ was probably at least partially at fault for both goals, absolutely flapping at the ball. I think for the second he actually flicked the ball on to Sasaki with a bowl cut connection. Of course, one of the main points of these blog posts is to write snarky things about the opposition players who probably aren’t actually bad people. It’s a bit annoying though when they appear to be. When we gave Araki a clap before the game for his 200th appearance, he repaid our kindness by spending most of the game whinging to the ref about non-existent elbows. But I guess that behaviour did seem to run through the team who perhaps for some reason thought the ref should have been on their side. I think he absolutely was, but more on that in the next bit. One final comment about the stadium, and it’s that the music was next level cringy. Unlike other clubs who just play naff music, (we are not immune to this ourselves, when we play the original versions of the players’ songs), Sanfrecce seemed to have employed either a local dogshit rocker or a dogshit AI to record Sanfrecce specific versions of classic songs for ultimate cringability. Even these efforts paled into insignificance though when compared to the ‘gates are open, come on in’ Sanfrecce Hiroshima music where at least three over emoting singers apparently had all been told theirs was the lead vocal and to really finesse it up a bit. It was shocking, and sadly, as it took a while to get into the stadium, we were treated to what seemed like an infinite loop of the musical crime, perhaps intended to hype everyone up, but which instead had me looking for the source of the racket and seeing if I had anything sufficiently heavy and unwanted in my bag that I could chuck at the speakers to arrest the mental breakdown that was approaching. If the bosses at Guantanamo Bay are looking for someone to really level up their mental torture department, I highly recommend they employ the people who commissioned, wrote and performed that song.
Ref -
Once again we were ‘treated to’ an overseas ref. For most of the game I thought he’d forgotten not only his cards but also his whistle as he seemed determined to give nothing at all. All my moaning about Sendachi giving everything one level too low seemed kind of petty in the face of this ref, who just didn’t give anything at all. All he did was wave his arms about in one of three ways. The first was the most common and was a side to side wave signifying that he was not going to give anything. He probably should have constantly done this gesture and things would have been a bit clearer. At the same time it became obvious quite quickly that he was going to do nothing, so maybe he didn’t even need to bother with the arm waving. The second was an up to down wave signifying that the players should calm down, otherwise he’d have to blow his whistle and give a free kick. I’m not sure quite why he was so averse to doing so, but I guess that’s just the way he does things. Or rather doesn’t do things. The third was the out to in wave telling someone to hurry up. There was some top level time wasting from us after we scored our first so perhaps this hand gesture was the most necessary. I haven’t seen it back yet, but I was absolutely furious and absolutely baffled when the ref with his whistle in his mouth pointed to the spot after Kobayashi was hacked down, but then just let the game continue. I think it was an extremely bad decision from where I was standing, but will add an update when I’ve seen it back. (I’ve watched it back and am still confused what he was doing. And unhelpfully, DAZN showed no replays of either this or the next decision I am about to moan about). I was also pretty annoyed with him booking Ienaga for handball after he got hacked down and handled the ball. Seems like the ref had a point to prove and that point was I AM IN CHARGE AND I’M DOING THINGS MY WAY! Will check this on the highlights too. (Yep, no replay here either. Had DAZN been told to not even question anything the ref did? Nice to add another conspiracy to all my others). I guess I can understand the thinking behind the referee exchange scheme. But there do seem to be some drawbacks. (Hmmm. That suggests that there are some benefits from the exchange. The only one I can think is that it means that we don’t have one of the useless refs we already know in charge of one of our games and considering what we get instead, I’m not sure it’s really a benefit). The first major drawback is probably exemplified in what many people say about foreign refs letting the game flow and letting players get away with more physicality than regular J League refs do. I can’t really see the point of having a ref come in and referee the game in a way that doesn’t match what every other ref in the league is doing. You don’t really see this in other kinds of situations. It wouldn’t make sense for a speed metal and a twee indie pop band to swap drummers as part of a percussionist exchange scheme.
 |
| Ref getting ready to put in attack breaking tackle, for which he will book our player |
Also, I can’t imagine the language barrier particularly helps matters. We didn’t have any VAR in this match. I suspect there’s a high chance that this was because the ref and the VAR probably couldn’t really communicate particularly clearly, so to avoid any embarrassment, you know, just don’t worry about it, eh? So a ref refereeing in a totally different style to that of the league and possibly not being able to communicate any of his extremely unusual to the J League decisions. Seems kind of pointless, doesn’t it? Guess it takes the focus off the useless bastards who normally are in charge of the matches though, right? I’m sure if there were any communication difficulties the Hiroshima manager would be happy to help via his translator. As there has been plenty of speculation already in this section, let me add to it by saying that I reckon Skibbe almost certainly had a good chat with the ref before the match and told him how grateful he was that a good German ref would be in charge because all these Japanese refs are useless, nicely buttering him up pre-game. As stupid as I think the whole scheme is, with a total of ten games to choose from, you couldn’t really do something more stupid than put a German ref in charge of the game of a team with a German manager, could you? Guess the logic behind this decision matches most of the decisions the J League usually makes, so we probably should’t have been that surprised. Looked a bit suss to me though.
A long ranty post on what was a delightful result. The celebration for the winner will live long in the memory. I almost fell into the row in front on me but was steadied by the guy standing next to me. Thank you sir! Maybe all this time we’ve been worried about trying to play well and sometimes all you need for complete satisfaction is to score a late winner rather than concede late on. As I said above, no games for about ten days, so hopefully the players can keep on enjoying this victory. There was definitely no shortage of big smiles from them at the end of the game. Our next league opponents are YFC. Hopefully we’ll do a bit better there than we did last time. That game was a shocker. Keep the good times rolling!
Team
GK 98. YAMAGUCHI Louis
DF 31. VAN WERMESKERKEN Sai
DF 2. TAKAI Kota
DF 35. MARUYAMA Yuichi
DF 5. SASAKI Asahi
MF 19. KAWAHARA So
MF 6. YAMAMOTO Yuki
MF 41. IENAGA Akihiro (Yellow card 75')
MF 14. WAKIZAKA Yasuto
MF 23. MARCINHO
FW 20. YAMADA Shin
Subs
GK 1. JUNG Sung-Ryong
MF 8. TACHIBANADA Kento (on for YAMAMOTO 79')
FW 11. KOBAYASHI Yu (on for YAMADA 64')
DF 15. TANABE Shuto (on for VAN WERMERSKERKEN 66')
MF 16. OZEKI Yuto (on for WAKIZAKA 79')
FW 18. SEGAWA Yusuke (Yellow card 85') (on for MARCINHO 79')
FW 26. YAMAUCHI Hinata
FW 38. KANDA Soma
DF 44. CESAR HAYDAR
MF 16. OZEKI Yuto (on for WAKIZAKA 79')
FW 18. SEGAWA Yusuke (Yellow card 85') (on for MARCINHO 79')
FW 26. YAMAUCHI Hinata
FW 38. KANDA Soma
DF 44. CESAR HAYDAR
My Frontale Man Of The Match
Somewhat unusually there are plenty of deserving players for this. Somewhat predictably, considering how much of a sentimentalist I am, I’m going to give it to…
THE WHOLE TEAM - yeah, I know not everybody was as good as the best players were, but the result was so important for the team, and it really did feel like they were acting like a real team, waiting a long time after the game for Sasaki to rejoin them before the end of game celebrations. Lovely stuff!
Goals
MARCINHO (Frontale) 50' 0-1
ARAKI (Sanfrecce) 86' 1-1
SASAKI (Frontale) 90+1' 1-2
Highlights
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