Kawasaki Frontale 3 - 2 Urawa Reds
Wonderful, wonderful! Football is great! I’ve been saying that all season, right? I know it’s slightly unorthodox of Hasebe to try to lower our expectations as much as possible in order to make the joy of this last minute victory over a despicable rival all the sweeter, but damn it has made me feel very good after what was basically going to be an extremely insignificant match in an extremely insignificant, (as we’re so far off the pace), half season. This match was the second of a run of game against the teams that I consider to make up the most scummy of tiers of J League clubs (in my opinion, naturally). The first against Machida didn’t exactly go as we might have hoped but at the same time didn’t go as badly as we might have expected. This game wasn’t great, but the outcome definitely was, and the manner in which we got to that outcome was quite lovely. Would be fantastic if we could continue with the wins as we go on to face Kashima and YFM. I don’t have a massive amount of confidence that we will, but hopefully this win will have given the squad a bit of a boost. Don’t for a moment imagine that it being a 3-2 win meant that it was a quality game between two good teams. Certainly we were quite evenly matched, but that was because both teams seemed intent on trying to play football at a skill level that was absolutely above their abilities. It was a bit like two pub teams who, whilst getting smashed watched some top quality football on TV in the local on Saturday night and decided to have a go at recreating it hungover on Sunday morning. If someone asked me how we score goals or how we intend to try and score goals I would not be able to tell them because all we usually do is move the ball slowly and patiently up the field and then give it away before getting the chance to have a shot. By contrast, Urawa’s modus operandi seemed to be to grimly hang on in defence before launching the ball forward and sprinting after it. To their credit, this approach at least resulted in them having some chances. The only reason we were even at half time was due to a hilarious own goal that so embarrassed the scorer that he had to get injured and subbed in order to get out of sight and presumably have a little cry. Anyway, I’ve changed the usual headings a little this week for no particular reason. So here we go.
Good day / bad day -
- Good day for people who like seeing scummy sides defeated. Coming into the game both the teams were in a bit of a state. Delighted that Urawa are now in more of a state. There was maybe even a feeling that this match was something of a sack race, with the defeated team getting one step closer to a managerial change. Whether that will happen at Urawa, we’ll see. But it’s now four defeats in a row for them. So a good day for people who like seeing Urawa suffer, mainly due to problems they create for themselves.
Good day / bad day -
- Good day for people who like seeing scummy sides defeated. Coming into the game both the teams were in a bit of a state. Delighted that Urawa are now in more of a state. There was maybe even a feeling that this match was something of a sack race, with the defeated team getting one step closer to a managerial change. Whether that will happen at Urawa, we’ll see. But it’s now four defeats in a row for them. So a good day for people who like seeing Urawa suffer, mainly due to problems they create for themselves.
- A good day for Romanic and Kawahara, who both scored. Hopefully that goal will set Romanic on a little scoring run as I felt he just needed his first goal to get going properly. And good to see Kawahara score as he could justifiably feel quite aggrieved for getting dropped after the Machida game I think. More about that in a minute.
- Bad day for the club behind the scenes. As we’ve toiled a bit this year I’ve got increasingly onboard those who see our travails as having quite a lot to do with the top brass, (obviously as well as the players and manager who clearly also have some responsibility). If you compare the home and away games between us and Urawa it’s always evident that they give us a tiny away allocation and we are happy to give them as many tickets as they want. Of course the club wants to sell tickets to get money, but I think it’s probably more important to try to win games, and intentionally dulling our home advantage by inviting a massive away support is not going to be helpful in that respect. It’s true that the attendance would have been pretty bad with a smaller away allocation, (not Machida vs FC Tokyo bad obviously, but pretty bad), but the reason there were so many tickets available for resale is almost certainly to do with how awful our games have been this year. But maybe the top brass aren't able to make this connection. I will always go to the games, but at times this year the match has definitely been the thing I have to suffer through in order to enjoy the post game activities. I would be quite happy to see changes at the top. I think it’s unlikely, but if we had someone in charge who had any interest in or understanding of football, I think it would help.
- From a player point of view, it wasn’t a great day for Yamamoto and Wakizaka again. As I say every week. Yamamoto’s cross for the winner was great though. I can’t remember us scoring a goal like that for a very long time. So maybe there is a tactical reason why two of our best players aren't doing very well this year. Wakizaka is confusing me. The things he said after the massive defeat against YFM were great. The fact that he said we shouldn't over celebrate penalty wins was good too. But he did recently seem to suggest that the reason we hadn’t won against Machida was at least in part because he wasn’t playing. This seems quite delusional as he’s been playing in the rest of the games this year and the second half against Machida was better than a lot of our other matches. Of course the fact that he was back in the side and we won makes it look like I’m an idiot and he was right, and almost certainly the former is true. But he still isn’t playing very well, and it seems like he isn’t going to be dropped. If he’s playing we don’t seem to be able to break away from the rotten formation we are apparently tied to. Hopefully this win is a fresh start for us and we can forget about everything that's gone on so far this season.
- Hasebe… hmmmm. Good and bad day, I think. Good day for him personally in that he’s probably moved one step back from getting sacked. I don’t think it would have happened, but it definitely should have at least been being considered. Probably not such a good day when you consider that once again his starting line up and tactics proved utterly ineffective and once again it wasn’t until the plan was thrown out the window that we started making things happen. And for us to concede so early in both halves (thankfully the one in the second half was ruled out), doesn’t say a lot about the way he motivates the players at the start of the game and at half time. I was pleased when he changed the formation for the Machida game, but equally disappointed that in this game we went back to the same old thing. Perhaps it was enough for him to be seen to be doing something, and changing back to the same old stuff for the next game was fine. Miyagi, who had one of his best games for us can’t have been too happy to be dropped for the following match. I just wish Hasebe would do something a bit more often instead of just tweaking our old style which clearly doesn’t work any more. But anyway, let’s hope that this game can be a reset for everyone and we can get ourselves together for the rest of the half season.
- Oh, one more good thing, NO PENALTIES!
WOW! -
I mean, the Urawa fans can always at least get a share of this. That could have been said for sure even before the match as it just seems to be inherent in their support. However, two guys wanted to make sure their names were up for this, so put in truly horrific WOW! performances. Or perhaps if they were aiming at taking this title, you might have to say that put in a great performance as without a doubt the ref and the VAR ref absolutely deserved this. First of all, on the pitch Fukushima was just shit. Maybe it’s because we merely whinge after the event rather than angrily getting up in the ref’s face, but it seems that more often than not, in our recent games the ref has been more than wiling to take advice and get guidance from the opposition players. I know I always think J League refs are awful, but when we got to the pub after the match, the first thing the normally rational regulars did was to comment on how bad the ref had been. For the most part the yellow cards went only one way. Wakizaka's yellow was an absolutely clear cut one so he got that right, but similar actions from Urawa players in similar positions and constant hacks and kicks from them apparently weren’t worthy of punishment. Erison’s card was an absolute joke. But what do you expect from the reliably terrible J League ref community? I have long said that Araki hates us, so I was filled with some trepidation when I saw his name down for VAR. Maybe Araki not only hates us, but also hates football as he seemed to want to take every opportunity to slowly make his judgements, ensuring that any enjoyment the crowd might be getting from the game was slowly and relentlessly undermined. As it's something I always say and always seem to have the need to say, I’m going to separate this next bit so it’s easy for me to cut and paste in future blog posts .
VAR is supposed to deal with clear and obvious mistakes, so it doesn’t make sense that it takes five minutes to judge whether a clear or obvious mistake has been made.
VAR overturning the offside decision in the first half took so long that even though the game kicked off at 16:00, I started worrying that I wouldn’t make it in time for last orders. And looking at the replay on DAZN, even when the decision was made after endless procrastination, I still don’t think they have enough evidence to overturn the original decision. VAR’s intervention helping to rule out the goal in the second half was equally ridiculous, but this time for the fact that it was so clear that the goal shouldn’t stand immediately, but still Araki and Fukushima decided they should drag it out so they could make themselves the centre of attention for even longer. Apparently they weren’t sure if a player lying on the floor and tripping over the goal keeper counts as interfering with play. As there is clearly no point me even bothering to write these things, I’ll just finish with a couple more statements for easy cutting and pasting in the future.
Of course it’s a difficult job to be a referee, but it must take some real effort to be as clueless as the J League referees are.
In my opinion, VAR is a blight on football, but I’m sure not everyone agrees. What I would imagine everyone does agree with though is that it’s not good that J League VAR takes an interminably long time, and even after these massive disruptions, due to the apparent idiocy of the officials, you can’t even be sure that they will make the right decision. Even though whilst taking all that time to make the decision they probably would have enough time to read the whole fucking rule book cover to cover.
Aaaaahhhhhh. What a lovely finish to the game that was. And we have something nice to think about for a whole week. Schadenfreude is never particularly nice, but when you’re enjoying the misery of the Urawa Lads, Garçons, Boys, Striplings, Fledglings, Tots, Kiddies, Nippers, Chicos, Ragazzi, Rapazes, Chaps, Males and Tykes, (perhaps they haven’t used some of those for a flag or supporter group yet, but it’s surely only a matter of time), I think it is perfectly acceptable. So let's enjoy it, right up until next week when we come up against Kashima. I can’t remember what their fans call themselves but judging by a recent photo, I would say that ‘shirtless, slightly overweight, middle-aged, should-know-better knuckle-draggers’ might work. This is probably our last chance to do something which might have some effect on the outcome of the league, so hopefully we’ll be charged up to put a dent in someone else’s half season and make the East at least slightly more interesting. Clearly my mood might not be as buoyant next week, but until then, I’m going to enjoy this week to the max.
- Bad day for the club behind the scenes. As we’ve toiled a bit this year I’ve got increasingly onboard those who see our travails as having quite a lot to do with the top brass, (obviously as well as the players and manager who clearly also have some responsibility). If you compare the home and away games between us and Urawa it’s always evident that they give us a tiny away allocation and we are happy to give them as many tickets as they want. Of course the club wants to sell tickets to get money, but I think it’s probably more important to try to win games, and intentionally dulling our home advantage by inviting a massive away support is not going to be helpful in that respect. It’s true that the attendance would have been pretty bad with a smaller away allocation, (not Machida vs FC Tokyo bad obviously, but pretty bad), but the reason there were so many tickets available for resale is almost certainly to do with how awful our games have been this year. But maybe the top brass aren't able to make this connection. I will always go to the games, but at times this year the match has definitely been the thing I have to suffer through in order to enjoy the post game activities. I would be quite happy to see changes at the top. I think it’s unlikely, but if we had someone in charge who had any interest in or understanding of football, I think it would help.
- From a player point of view, it wasn’t a great day for Yamamoto and Wakizaka again. As I say every week. Yamamoto’s cross for the winner was great though. I can’t remember us scoring a goal like that for a very long time. So maybe there is a tactical reason why two of our best players aren't doing very well this year. Wakizaka is confusing me. The things he said after the massive defeat against YFM were great. The fact that he said we shouldn't over celebrate penalty wins was good too. But he did recently seem to suggest that the reason we hadn’t won against Machida was at least in part because he wasn’t playing. This seems quite delusional as he’s been playing in the rest of the games this year and the second half against Machida was better than a lot of our other matches. Of course the fact that he was back in the side and we won makes it look like I’m an idiot and he was right, and almost certainly the former is true. But he still isn’t playing very well, and it seems like he isn’t going to be dropped. If he’s playing we don’t seem to be able to break away from the rotten formation we are apparently tied to. Hopefully this win is a fresh start for us and we can forget about everything that's gone on so far this season.
- Hasebe… hmmmm. Good and bad day, I think. Good day for him personally in that he’s probably moved one step back from getting sacked. I don’t think it would have happened, but it definitely should have at least been being considered. Probably not such a good day when you consider that once again his starting line up and tactics proved utterly ineffective and once again it wasn’t until the plan was thrown out the window that we started making things happen. And for us to concede so early in both halves (thankfully the one in the second half was ruled out), doesn’t say a lot about the way he motivates the players at the start of the game and at half time. I was pleased when he changed the formation for the Machida game, but equally disappointed that in this game we went back to the same old thing. Perhaps it was enough for him to be seen to be doing something, and changing back to the same old stuff for the next game was fine. Miyagi, who had one of his best games for us can’t have been too happy to be dropped for the following match. I just wish Hasebe would do something a bit more often instead of just tweaking our old style which clearly doesn’t work any more. But anyway, let’s hope that this game can be a reset for everyone and we can get ourselves together for the rest of the half season.
- Oh, one more good thing, NO PENALTIES!
WOW! -
I mean, the Urawa fans can always at least get a share of this. That could have been said for sure even before the match as it just seems to be inherent in their support. However, two guys wanted to make sure their names were up for this, so put in truly horrific WOW! performances. Or perhaps if they were aiming at taking this title, you might have to say that put in a great performance as without a doubt the ref and the VAR ref absolutely deserved this. First of all, on the pitch Fukushima was just shit. Maybe it’s because we merely whinge after the event rather than angrily getting up in the ref’s face, but it seems that more often than not, in our recent games the ref has been more than wiling to take advice and get guidance from the opposition players. I know I always think J League refs are awful, but when we got to the pub after the match, the first thing the normally rational regulars did was to comment on how bad the ref had been. For the most part the yellow cards went only one way. Wakizaka's yellow was an absolutely clear cut one so he got that right, but similar actions from Urawa players in similar positions and constant hacks and kicks from them apparently weren’t worthy of punishment. Erison’s card was an absolute joke. But what do you expect from the reliably terrible J League ref community? I have long said that Araki hates us, so I was filled with some trepidation when I saw his name down for VAR. Maybe Araki not only hates us, but also hates football as he seemed to want to take every opportunity to slowly make his judgements, ensuring that any enjoyment the crowd might be getting from the game was slowly and relentlessly undermined. As it's something I always say and always seem to have the need to say, I’m going to separate this next bit so it’s easy for me to cut and paste in future blog posts .
VAR is supposed to deal with clear and obvious mistakes, so it doesn’t make sense that it takes five minutes to judge whether a clear or obvious mistake has been made.
VAR overturning the offside decision in the first half took so long that even though the game kicked off at 16:00, I started worrying that I wouldn’t make it in time for last orders. And looking at the replay on DAZN, even when the decision was made after endless procrastination, I still don’t think they have enough evidence to overturn the original decision. VAR’s intervention helping to rule out the goal in the second half was equally ridiculous, but this time for the fact that it was so clear that the goal shouldn’t stand immediately, but still Araki and Fukushima decided they should drag it out so they could make themselves the centre of attention for even longer. Apparently they weren’t sure if a player lying on the floor and tripping over the goal keeper counts as interfering with play. As there is clearly no point me even bothering to write these things, I’ll just finish with a couple more statements for easy cutting and pasting in the future.
Of course it’s a difficult job to be a referee, but it must take some real effort to be as clueless as the J League referees are.
In my opinion, VAR is a blight on football, but I’m sure not everyone agrees. What I would imagine everyone does agree with though is that it’s not good that J League VAR takes an interminably long time, and even after these massive disruptions, due to the apparent idiocy of the officials, you can’t even be sure that they will make the right decision. Even though whilst taking all that time to make the decision they probably would have enough time to read the whole fucking rule book cover to cover.
Aaaaahhhhhh. What a lovely finish to the game that was. And we have something nice to think about for a whole week. Schadenfreude is never particularly nice, but when you’re enjoying the misery of the Urawa Lads, Garçons, Boys, Striplings, Fledglings, Tots, Kiddies, Nippers, Chicos, Ragazzi, Rapazes, Chaps, Males and Tykes, (perhaps they haven’t used some of those for a flag or supporter group yet, but it’s surely only a matter of time), I think it is perfectly acceptable. So let's enjoy it, right up until next week when we come up against Kashima. I can’t remember what their fans call themselves but judging by a recent photo, I would say that ‘shirtless, slightly overweight, middle-aged, should-know-better knuckle-draggers’ might work. This is probably our last chance to do something which might have some effect on the outcome of the league, so hopefully we’ll be charged up to put a dent in someone else’s half season and make the East at least slightly more interesting. Clearly my mood might not be as buoyant next week, but until then, I’m going to enjoy this week to the max.
Team
GK 49. Svend BRODERSEN
DF 29. YAMAHARA Reon
DF 28. MARUYAMA Yuichi
DF 2. MATSUNAGANE Yuto
DF 13. MIURA Sota
MF 8. TACHIBANADA Kento
MF 6. YAMAMOTO Yuki
MF 17. ITO Tatsuya
MF 14. WAKIZAKA Yasuto (Yellow card 43')
MF 23. MARCINHO
FW 9. ERISON (Yellow card 45+4')
Subs
GK 1. YAMAGUCHI Louis
MF 15. MYOGAN Toya
MF 19. KAWAHARA So (on for YAMAMOTO 89')
MF 24. MIYAGI Ten (on for MARCINHO 69')
MF 26. YUI Kota
DF 27. KAMIHASHI Ryota
DF 32. HAYASHI Shunsuke
DF 32. HAYASHI Shunsuke
FW 38. KANDA Soma (on for ITO 76')
FW 91. Lazar ROMANIC (on for ERISON 69')
Man of the match
Dunno really. No-one particularly stood out. But Miura did well again and as I’ve slagged him off quite a lot recently, I should at least mention him. But in the absence of an obvious stand out winner, let’s give it a miss this week.FW 91. Lazar ROMANIC (on for ERISON 69')
Man of the match
Goals
NEMOTO (Urawa) 2' 0-1
OWN GOAL (Urawa) 9' 1-1
KANEKO (Urawa) 62' 1-2
ROMANIC (Frontale) 77' 2-2
KAWAHARA (Frontale) 90+4' 3-2
NEMOTO (Urawa) 2' 0-1
OWN GOAL (Urawa) 9' 1-1
KANEKO (Urawa) 62' 1-2
ROMANIC (Frontale) 77' 2-2
KAWAHARA (Frontale) 90+4' 3-2
Highlights
