Urawa Reds 2 - 0 Kawasaki Frontale
As predicted in the last post we followed up two wins in a row with a defeat against a team who had lost seven games in a row. Good old Frontale! Always there to help out a team who are in hopeless form by giving them an easy three points! It was a bit sneaky of them to invoke the new manager bounce by sacking their old guy a few days before this match. I’m starting to think that I wouldn’t mind us giving the new manager bounce a go too. Two wins in a row covered up two pretty mediocre-at-best performances, both of which swung our way through late goals. I know it’s tedious to hear people moaning about their team being shit when they’ve won, so I apologise for doing that in the last couple of posts, but I’m sure you’ll forgive me as clearly the shitness that was there in those match in the form of a little tickle in the back of throat and occasional cough has now developed into a full blown flu of cackiness. Golden week has started with possibly our worst performance of the season (so far). And don’t forget this was a season which included us losing 5-0 to YFM. As I have now nice plans for Golden Week, (which are presumably going to be interrupted by a couple more shitty games), I have no desire to prolong this any more than I have to. The next two posts will probably appear in a very rough and unadorned way as I’ll be traveling. I’ll post the moaning but I’ll add all the details at a later date. The thought of this is already pretty off-putting.
Atrocious Frontale -
Seven shots in the whole match! Only one save necessary from their keeper. And we started quite brightly. But it was our old friend ‘attack and pass till you get close to their goal and then don’t bother shooting’ who was very much in evidence again. I should have know the match was going to go badly when our first shot was blocked by one of our own players. That was probably about as close as we came to scoring. Right from the start the ref was awful, and was clearly not going to book anyone unless he really had to, basically clearing the way for a full on Urawa assault on our players. But don’t get me wrong, although the ref was absolutely awful, (equally the linesman, who forgot to do the part of his job that related to watching the line and seeing if the ball crosses it), it wasn’t him that cost us the game. It was Hasebe.
In the past I’ve said Hasebe hasn’t come up with anything new to stake his claim on the team. I now realise this was incorrect. I was wondering why Romanic was starting every game over Erison. Sure, he scored so deserved to keep his spot. But then he didn’t score and still kept his spot. In this game it all became clear to me. Hasebe is actually a tactical innovator extraordinaire. He’s come up with a wild and refreshing plan, (which I incorrectly described as moving the ball forward more quickly in the last post), which involves us hoofing the ball forward to Romanic at every opportunity as quickly as possible. He usually wins the ball, sometimes manages to keep it, sometimes manages to pass it to a team mate, but more often than not, perhaps due to the speed and distance of the hoofing, is unable to do anything with the ball as it’s only him who’s past the half way line, and he’s surround by defenders. This would account for us having only 29% possession and two shots, both off target, in the first half. And don’t forget this was a half we started quite brightly! So a terrible first half when you looked at the 35 minutes that preceded half time. So what did our great leader do at half time? Apparently fuck all other than further demotivate our players. Once again we got nothing going at all until we we’d used most of our subs, had thrown Hasebe’s tactics away and the players were just doing what they wanted. His subs were weird again, Hasebe, as ever, being totally committed to keeping Wakizaka on the pitch, even if it meant playing him on the right wing where he’s not very good or in defensive midfield, where he’s not very good. To be fair to Hasebe though, Wakizaka has also been not very good in his preferred and normal position this year. Hasebe’s response to us going 2-0 down was to bring on Kawahara for Ito. Don’t worry, Wakizaka will cover it! Miyagi didn’t make it onto the pitch till the 83rd minute. Kanda sat on the bench again.
Atrocious Frontale -
Seven shots in the whole match! Only one save necessary from their keeper. And we started quite brightly. But it was our old friend ‘attack and pass till you get close to their goal and then don’t bother shooting’ who was very much in evidence again. I should have know the match was going to go badly when our first shot was blocked by one of our own players. That was probably about as close as we came to scoring. Right from the start the ref was awful, and was clearly not going to book anyone unless he really had to, basically clearing the way for a full on Urawa assault on our players. But don’t get me wrong, although the ref was absolutely awful, (equally the linesman, who forgot to do the part of his job that related to watching the line and seeing if the ball crosses it), it wasn’t him that cost us the game. It was Hasebe.
In the past I’ve said Hasebe hasn’t come up with anything new to stake his claim on the team. I now realise this was incorrect. I was wondering why Romanic was starting every game over Erison. Sure, he scored so deserved to keep his spot. But then he didn’t score and still kept his spot. In this game it all became clear to me. Hasebe is actually a tactical innovator extraordinaire. He’s come up with a wild and refreshing plan, (which I incorrectly described as moving the ball forward more quickly in the last post), which involves us hoofing the ball forward to Romanic at every opportunity as quickly as possible. He usually wins the ball, sometimes manages to keep it, sometimes manages to pass it to a team mate, but more often than not, perhaps due to the speed and distance of the hoofing, is unable to do anything with the ball as it’s only him who’s past the half way line, and he’s surround by defenders. This would account for us having only 29% possession and two shots, both off target, in the first half. And don’t forget this was a half we started quite brightly! So a terrible first half when you looked at the 35 minutes that preceded half time. So what did our great leader do at half time? Apparently fuck all other than further demotivate our players. Once again we got nothing going at all until we we’d used most of our subs, had thrown Hasebe’s tactics away and the players were just doing what they wanted. His subs were weird again, Hasebe, as ever, being totally committed to keeping Wakizaka on the pitch, even if it meant playing him on the right wing where he’s not very good or in defensive midfield, where he’s not very good. To be fair to Hasebe though, Wakizaka has also been not very good in his preferred and normal position this year. Hasebe’s response to us going 2-0 down was to bring on Kawahara for Ito. Don’t worry, Wakizaka will cover it! Miyagi didn’t make it onto the pitch till the 83rd minute. Kanda sat on the bench again.
But Hasebe would probably point to the massive improvement in our stats in the second half, right? We had five shots in the second compared to two in the first. Bravo! We had one shot on target compared to none in the first. Bravo! We had 54% possession compared to 26% in the first. Bravo! We conceded two goals compared to one in the first…. oh. But don’t for a moment think that this defensive frailty was anything to do with us going all out attack. This is just the awful football that is Hasebe Frontale. Occasionally we squeak a result to paper over the cracks. But sooner or later those cracks are gaping again, and Hasebe probably would also think that Wakizaka would be the man for the job if you had an issue with your interior decorating. Every game starts with us having a dodgy half with Hasebe’s first choice players, formation and tactics. Sometimes we scrabble together a result by just flinging everything at the wall late on and hoping something sticks. And then Hasebe takes any positive result as confirmation that he should start the next game in exactly the same way, ignoring the fact that nothing normally happens till he abandons his plans.
Poor old Hasebe. I’m sure he doesn’t want to be this terrible at his job. I’m sure he can’t feel great about being tactically outsmarted by someone who has never managed a professional game before. I’m sure he much rather still be somewhere where people thought he was doing a good job. To be honest I’d much rather he was somewhere where people thought he was doing a good job. Because presumably that would mean he was no longer our manager. It seems pretty clear to me that he’s not going to change anything. Every slight ray of hope where he slightly changes something is immediately extinguished by reverting to the same old shit as soon as possible. Maybe we should experiment in the next game by playing the game in reverse, starting the match with the players and lack of tactics that we finish games with. It would certainly be more interesting and would probably be more effective. Hopefully by half time we might have scored and then he could suck the life and enjoyment out of the match through one of his half time team talks and us reverting to utter dullness in the second half with him bringing on his subs to build his usual starting line up might result in us not conceding so many. Then after the match he can give his pre match motivational team talk which hopefully the players will have forget by the time the next match comes around. Some might say that if we fire him we have no one to replace him with. I’d suggest that right now his influence is purely a negative one and that without him, we’d be doing a lot better. Sorry, Hasebe, but I think your time is up.
Despicable opposition -
It wouldn’t be right for me to post about an Urawa game without taking at least a few potshots at them. Their fans were it seemed VERY VERY UPSET with the club before the game. No big flags, no banners with increasingly weird ways of describing the male youthfulness of their fan groups, (Zut alors, pas de garçons! Bof!), the briefest of chanting when their players came out. They weren’t a happy bunch because they definitely believe they deserve to be at the top of the league and winning every game 15-0. (Sorry guys, you can’t play us every week. Other teams will put up a bit more resistance). So not happy at all, but they were still very happy to boo us. This is because they are oh so very fearsome and a really naughty bunch. As I work in Urawa and speak to a lot of …Urawans (?), I take issue with their ‘Pride of Urawa’ flag. Their team is absolutely not the pride of Urawa. I can guarantee that if I survey my classes the overwhelming winner of the pride of Urawa contest will be Urawa Parco. I reckon there were probably more people in Parco than were in the stadium too. I reckon I might join them when this fixture comes round next time. It’s certainly a lot easier to get to and even if I just emptied the contents of my wallet down the toilet in Parco I think I’d probably have a more satisfying and enjoyable experience than I would going to the Saitama Stadium. At least in a normal season where we’re playing awfully we get to go to some interesting places. This year I’ve spent way too many hours I’ll never get back in stadiums having a horrible time and then only being able to return home through those horrible wastelands that surround those horrible teams stadiums, rather than go out and see something interesting. This year, the trips are shit, the football’s shit, the experience is shit and most of all we are shit.
WOW!
I’ll keep this brief and ever so slightly cryptic. Mikuriya is a turd of a referee so he definitely gets a share of this. He’s not corrupt or crooked or anything, he’s just useless. The other person who takes this is perhaps a lot closer to home. I don’t think there can be any doubt as to why we were so awful, so the person who orchestrated that has to get a share of the spoils.
Next up, who gives a shit? (It’s FC Tokyo away on Saturday). Maybe in that game we might be able to have more than one shot on target if we’re really lucky. I never want us to lose a game, but with Kashima losing on this match day, (whenever they lose we always lose it seems, regardless of whether we are challenging them in any way or are nowhere near them. To be fair though, we are losing quite often recently, so maybe that skews things a little), it’s not going to upset me in the slightest if they wallop us. It might be one step closer to Kashima not coming first in this shitty competition, and it could also move us one step closer to perhaps a managerial change. I will be there, but will be deep in holiday mode. Nothing will be able to bring me down. Well, perhaps apart from another useless ref. But I’m determined not to let another inevitably rotten performance ruin the rest of my Golden Week. This seems to be a much healthier way to approach all of these kind of things. Phew.
Team
GK 49. Svend BRODERSEN
DF 29. YAMAHARA Reon
DF 22. Filip UREMOVIC
DF 2. MATSUNAGANE Yuto
DF 13. MIURA Sota
MF 8. TACHIBANADA Kento
MF 6. YAMAMOTO Yuki
MF 17. ITO Tatsuya
MF 14. WAKIZAKA Yasuto
MF 23. MARCINHO
FW 91. Lazar ROMANIC
Subs
GK 1. YAMAGUCHI Louis
DF 5. SASAKI Asahi (on for UREMOVIC 61')
FW 9. ERISON (on for ROMANIC 61')
MF 19. KAWAHARA So (on for ITO 74')
MF 24. MIYAGI Ten (on for TACHIBANADA 83')
DF 30. NODA Hiroto
DF 32. HAYASHI Shunsuke
DF 30. NODA Hiroto
DF 32. HAYASHI Shunsuke
MF 34. OSA Ryuki (on for MARCINHO 61')
FW 38. KANDA Soma
Man of the match
Not a fucking chance of anyone getting this. Man of the match
Goals
MATHEUS SAVIO (Urawa) 54' 1-0
KOMORI (Urawa) 71' 2-0
MATHEUS SAVIO (Urawa) 54' 1-0
KOMORI (Urawa) 71' 2-0
Highlights
(Maybe for the first time ever, I've put the blog post up before the highlights are, so I'll add these later)
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