Vs Urawa Reds (away) 3/9/25 Levain Cup Quarter Final 1st Leg

Urawa Reds 1 - 1 Kawasaki Frontale  

This week is horrendously busy for me so this is going to be a flying blog post, tossed out on the train home from work the day after the game. That kind of makes sense when you consider we’re only at the halfway point of the tie so anything that happened in this first leg can easily be overturned on Sunday. That was the one bit of positivity I was holding on to with about 20 minutes to go when I thought I’d probably take a 1-0 defeat. It seemed like some of our players were thinking the same way too. When Jesiel left the pitch injured ten minutes later, I was really up for getting away with the 1-0. But somehow we scored and now head in to the second leg with a bizarre and slightly unjustified upper hand. Anyway don’t worry Urawa fans, we’ve done our best to undercut any home advantage we might have by giving Urawa pretty much all of one end of the stadium. It’s not completely out of character though is it? After all we’re a nice guy club and will do our best to be nice to the opposition. I’m not going to follow the usual headings this time because there’s not much to write about under any of them that couldn’t really be summed up in probably one or two words. But as brevity is not my speciality that’s clearly going to be stretched out a bit. So this is not too long, but nowhere near as short as it should be given how bad most of the game was.

Firstly, we were utterly shit in the first half. Recent games might have given us some confidence but if we dwell even a moment on that first half we’ll crash back down into complete depression. Going one step further than in recent games when the midfield was totally absent, on this occasion the midfield and defence had disappeared. I’ll put this down to tiredness and perhaps some lingering effects of the recent ‘illness’ that was going through the squad. I don’t know if the players weren’t up for this game, but it certainly looked like they weren’t. Miyagi, after earning Hasebe’s praise for being available to fill in on the right and then going on to score a goal, did exactly what Miyagi does every time he makes an impression as a sub, ie. massively disappoint as a starter. And it wasn’t just because he was on the right as he had a go on the left after half time and didn’t do anything there either. His main contribution was ballooning a shot high and wide when there maybe three of his teammates in good positions during a rare first half attack. Maybe he could do a job up front, but he certainly didn’t do his chances of playing on either the left or right much good in this game. Was Wakizaka plying this match? He was quite underwhelming against Machida but somehow did even less in thiis match. Well apart from hit every corner at the first defender. Miura has still not recovered from…. something. I don’t know what it is but he’s been pretty bad for most of this season. I’ve been told to not express out loud my opinions about Yamaguchi anymore. Maybe that’s for the best. I’m not disagreeing that he’s our best option right now, but I am strongly disagreeing with the insane amount of adulation he’s getting for, as one auto translated YouTube notification put it ‘making a two-handed save’. Wow! The same notifications refer to Erison as Ellison though, which surely is something the proof readers should have spotted. Presumably there aren’t any. Looks pretty shonky. Anyway, the first half was appalling, we got a bit better in the second until the fatigue really set in. We couldn’t pass for shit and gave the ball away an unbelievable amount of times. Blame the grass! We looked much better when Ito, Yamamoto and Romanic came on, but it’s a bit worrying that without Ito and Erison starting, we’re absolute cack and look like we’ll never score. (Just realised that I should probably mention in case you didn't see the match that Jesiel left the pitch injured. Not sure how serious it is, but it does seem that even when we have plenty of centre backs in the squad, we still are constantly suffering from a lack of options in that area. Fingers crossed he's ok for Sunday).

This was a no alcohol match for me. Not for any other reason than that I have no desire to drink the cack they serve in the stadium and aside from the little UBP stall outside the station, there is absolutely nothing within miles of SaiSta. Thankfully the rain held off and thankfully it was a massively reduced crowd due to it being a Levain Cup game. So the walk back to the station wasn’t the usual stop start snail-paced trudge and unlike last time it wasn’t mostly underwater. There you go! Some positives! Urawa rotated quite a lot I think and maybe because of this looked pretty poor. Admittedly they cut through us with ease, but that’s easy to do when there’s nothing to cut through. And the fact that they only scored once against a defence and keeper that lets goals in for fun should be seriously concerning for them. Lovely! They too seemed to be playing for the 1-0 towards the end of the match, which of course makes more sense for them to go for rather than us, but really showed a lack of ambition, I thought. It was utterly delightful that they fucked it up. Their fans must be bewildered that their booing every time we had the ball didn’t mortally wound us in the way they seemed to think it would. I suspect both teams will play a bit better in the second leg, but I really hope they’ve fucked themselves by conceding late on.

A quick sentence on the ref. He was a bit crap and as the game went on, seemed determined to give them everything. So kind of negative. But when you take into account the fact that it was Mikuriya, ‘a bit crap’ is a massive thumbs up. When your normal level is insanely bad, being even slightly annoying is a real step up. Congratulations!

Next up the second leg. Reading this back before I post it, I’m starting to wonder if there is any point me moaning about players not doing well. I’m fully aware that I am a fat old bastard sitting in the stands with zero talent who somehow thinks he can criticise others who are infinitely better than him. I might try to give the negativity a miss at the next match on Sunday. But it’s a bit tricky when one of our players messes up something so mind-numbingly easy. Repeatedly. Also, if you took out the negativity from these posts there wouldn’t be much left. It’s kind of strange, as the previous two games had some great positives in them, but I still somehow let myself get frustrated by the mistakes we made. Presumably the players are doing their best, (sometimes this is not particularly evident, but I think we have to presume they are), so I should shut up. The thing is though, football is a very emotional thing. Of course we watch it for the great highs, but also sometimes it is good to let out some frustration. I wonder sometimes if some people at the club don’t really like football that much and have instead been hired for their social media skills or something like that. Surely I can’t be the only one who wants to throw my phone at the wall when after a horrific performance we get a Youtube short of a ‘great save’ or of the one shot we had on target apparently oblivious to the fact that the rest of the game was a steaming pile of crap. I suppose though this could just be positivity taken to the max and perhaps should be praised. But I think people who really care about the results of the games might find some of these things as irritating as I do. ‘Happy Birthday! Here’s your birthday cake. I made it from stuff from the compost heap and covered it with shaving foam so it’s completely inedible. But just look at the candles! They’re great!’ Anyway, I’ve gone on too long and have gone so far off-piste now that this post is becoming even more irrelevant than usual. Let’s just hope that all those many Urawa fans who come to the game on Sunday boo themselves inside-out as their side mess up horrifically! There you go, I found some more positivity at the end!

Team

GK 98. YAMAGUCHI Louis
DF 5. SASAKI Asahi
DF 22. Filip UREMOVIC
DF 4. JESIEL

DF 13. MIURA Sota
MF 19. KAWAHARA So
MF 8. TACHIBANADA Kento
MF 24. MIYAGI Ten
MF 14. WAKIZAKA Yasuto
MF 23. MARCINHO
FW 38. KANDA Soma

Subs

GK 1. JUNG Sung-Ryong

MF 6. YAMAMOTO Yuki (on for KANDA 73')

DF 15. TANABE Shuto
MF 17. ITO Tatsuya (on for MARCINHO 46')
DF 27. KAMIHASHI Ryota (on for JESIEL 81')

FW 29. MYOGAN Toya
DF 30. NODA Hiroto 
DF 31. VAN VERMESKERKEN Sai (on for UREMOVIC 73')
FW 91. Lazar ROMANIC (on for MIYAGI 61')

 

My Frontale Man Of The Match 

Definitely not anyone who started the match.

 

Goals

NAKAJIMA (Urawa) 22' 1-0
ITO (Frontale) 90+5' 1-1

Highlights