Vs Urawa Reds (away) 6/12/25 J League match 38

Urawa Reds 4 - 0 Kawasaki Frontale

What a horrible end to a mixed season. At least I think it was a mixed season. I can’t quite remember the good times right now. I suppose we scored some goals (five more than any other team), but jeez conceding so relentlessly to lose points takes the shine off it a bit. Whilst this was a horrible end to the season it was also an utterly appropriate one in the way that it came about. We’ve clearly gone well off the boil recently and I guess thats to be expected when you consider we had nothing to play for. I was still a bit shocked quite how lacklustre plenty of our players were. I wonder if we will have some people leaving being announced soon. Yamamoto looked like he was doing his best to keep out of the way of everything so maybe he has a transfer lined up. There have been rumours for other players too. I suspect next season will be one of rebuilding. Which you could say we should have been doing this year. Perhaps it will be more of a complete demolition and start again from new foundations kind of thing. Anyway, as I have no desire to prolong this year, let’s get this out of the way.

Us -

There were hardly any positives to be taken from this game. Perhaps we could say that Noda looked good when he came on. Also Myogan got his first J1 minutes and did alright. Elsewhere… hmmm. Wakizaka and Yamamoto were terrible, the former giving the ball away again and again and the latter seemingly to be actively getting out of the way of any action. And neither contributing to any kind of attacking threat. I wonder if Marcinho’s time with us is coming to an end. With our only usual attaching option Ito banned for the game a lot of responsibility fell to Marcinho. But he was pretty ineffective in the way that he can be sometimes. If the ball went to him during a rare attack you could guarantee that would be the end of the attack as he’d either dribble till he lost it or miscue his pass straight to the opposition. I don’t want to blame him too much though as given the anonymity of our midfield the only thing we did was endlessly hoof the ball forward so weren’t ever really that likely to score. There was absolutely no imagination, no inspiration and not a lot of motivation. To be honest though, the scoreline was ridiculously flattering to Urawa. Sure, there was no way we deserved to win and we never looked like scoring so the 0 on our side was absolutely correct. But fuck me, Yamaguchi was awful. It’s interesting but also unwelcome that he is coming up with new ways to concede soft goals. He repeated the tactic from the last game of just sitting down rather than attempting a save in this match. We didn’t get one of his usual flying dive to palm it perfectly to the unmarked striker at the back post performances which was something of a surprise. The second goal was horrific, when as Urawa crossed, Yamaguchi decided to throw himself across his goal parallel but crucially well behind the cross rendering him helpless to even think about making a save as they slotted the ball home. But still somehow people seem to think he’s a good keeper. Maybe it’s because he occasionally flings himself into the air to stop a regulation shot. It seems to me that the only on target shots he normally saves are ones that are hit straight at him. And at the same time, he quite often seems to be trying to get out of the way of the ball rather than in the way to save a shot. If he is our number one next year, we’re fucked. I’d say we’re fucked if he’s even making the bench next year. Of course it’s not all his fault, but you can guarantee that recently it’s usually mostly his fault. I don’t really understand expected goals, but I guess if a team concedes almost double the goals as the xg, the keeper has maybe had a mare? I have nothing against Yamaguchi personally, but the adoration he gets from a surprisingly large amount of people baffles me. And I also hate the way he blames anyone after a goal that is almost certainly his fault. You could probably point the finger a bit at Hasebe again in this match, as his triple change at half time seemed to have a thoroughly negative effect rather than the positive one he might have been hoping for. But the truth is that this game didn’t matter so he definitely could easily give some fringe players a chance. And even with fringe players involved you wouldn’t expect one of your starters to fuck up so massively, repeatedly. Guess we’ll really be able to judge our manager when we see what he does in the off-season. Hopefully we might try a change of system, formation or approach, or any combination of them. Please just try something…

Them (marginally, but actually mainly more moaning about us) -

It’s quite annoying that they beat us so easily as their fans were sulking and doing the whole ‘we won’t sing unless you give us something to sing about’ thing mentioned in their pre-game banner. To be honest, during the game it wasn’t so different from a normal Saitama Stadium experience as most of the time they just boo anyway and apparently they were still allowed to do this when we had the ball. It wast perhaps more baffling that we kept singing as the game continued as we were absolutely shit. I’d still probably rather have it that way though, rather than go down the bad boy supporters route. Their silent treatment really exposed the pointlessness of our ‘don’t sing when we don’t have the ball’ policy though. There were long periods of silence as they played the ball around at the back and we just twiddled our thumbs. After half time I was doing my best to keep supporting, even though the first half had been horrible. And then one shocking Wakizaka pass knocked the stuffing out of me and I was pretty much done for the day apart from singing some of the subs songs. I wanted to make a joke mentioning about how I’d finally worked out the real reason for them always playing East 17 before the game. As it turned out, I’ll have to reflect it back on us instead though, as although Urawa usually follow the Bryan Harvey approach of metaphorically blacking out after eating too many baked potatoes and running themself over in their own car, they’ve finished above us now and if anyone was in a massive stodge coma in this match it was clearly us. As I don’t really have anything else to have a go at them about I’ll leave it here. Well, with just the short postscript that on leaving the station I noticed a political party handing out leaflets. I didn’t recognise the name but a quick google search informed me that the party’s ideology is apparently Japanese ultranationalism, which was utterly predictable given the passing foot traffic and which I imagined was going to form a hilarious part of this blog post presumably provoking an angry response about how all the horrible elements of their fanbase are just a tiny proportion of Urawa fans etc. But as appropriate as the political party’s choice of venue to hand out leaflets may have been, I can’t even be bothered to make a joke about it. Hmmmmph.

Ref -

Koya, who was once known on Flashscore as K. Hut, a fact which I still enjoy, seemed pretty useless and utterly card shy. But even his shiteness was smothered beneath the disastrous performance from Yamaguchi, so I guess Mr. Hut should buy him a beer for taking the heat off of him. Delighted I won’t have to watch another atrocious J League ref for the next three months. 

Fuck all of this. I can’t believe I wrote this much. I guess my irritation about Yamaguchi has propelled me on. Plenty for us to do in the off-season and I think plenty of shocks coming about more departures. As I said, I reckon Yamamoto might be one. There is a small chance that I might do some end of season posts, but right now I feel like I don’t want to waste my time thinking about this season anymore. If there is any demand for it, I might do my survey, but honestly I don’t know if even I can be bothered to answer the questions, let alone compile and post the answers. We’ll see. Anyway, let’s put 2025 behind us and I hope you can enjoy some kind of end of year festive fun. The safest way is do that is probably to get smashed and then hopefully a flashback of a horrible Frontale 2025 moment won’t interrupt your good times. 

 

Team

GK 98. YAMAGUCHI Louis 
DF 31. VAN VERMESKERKEN Sai

DF 4. JESIEL

DF 22. Flip UREMOVIC  (Yellow card 72')
DF 5. SASAKI Asahi
MF 19. KAWAHARA So 
MF 6. YAMAMOTO Yuki
MF 14. WAKIZAKA Yasuto 
FW 41. IENAGA Akihiro
FW 9. ERISON

FW 23. MARCINHO

Subs

GK 21. ANDO Shunsuke

DF 13. MIURA Sota (on for VAN WERMESKERKEN 46')
MF 16. OZEKI Yuto (on for (IENAGA 46')
FW 29. MYOGAN Toya (on for KAWAHARA 76')
DF 30. NODA Hiroto (on for JESIEL 66')
MF 34. YAMAICHI Shuto

FW 38. KANDA Soma
DF 39. TSUCHIYA Kaito
FW 91. Lazar ROMANIC (on for ERISON 46')

Goals

GUSTAFSON (Urawa) 44' 1-0
THIAGO (Urawa) 54' 1-0
NEMOTO (Urawa) 58' 1-0
KIESE (Urawa) 77' 1-0

Highlights  

Vs Sanfrecce Hiroshima (home) 30/11/25 J League match 37

Kawasaki Frontale 1 - 2 Sanfrecce Hiroshima

On this blog I generally try to steer clear of anything too informative and instead focus on the other more... interesting maybe... (maybe not) stuff. With this match that is something of a relief as this was for the most part a pretty tedious encounter with opponents who also had nothing to play for. They did seem to be a bit more up to the job though, as perhaps demonstrated by the relative league positions of the two teams. The most exciting thing from a Frontale point of view was maybe the starting line up. Well, perhaps exciting isn’t the right word. Given that since the previous game we’ve found out that plenty of players are leaving. They are Sung-Ryong, (his choice I believe), Jesiel (no new contract offered), Ando (no new contract offered, and will retire), and Kurumaya (think a new contract was possible but he felt he wasn’t up to it and is retiring). All of these departures are sad for me and I’ll deal with them later. But with this in mind it was nice to see Jesiel and Kurumaya start at centre back. Given that we have nothing to play for, it was great to see Hasebe give them an opportunity to say goodbye to the fans. Not sure why Sung-Ryong didn’t get the same opportunity and instead had to start on the bench. If he’d been able to start we could have brought on Ando for the last few minutes and given them all one last chance to play. I would have thought Hasebe would have been up for it, so maybe it was a decision driven by a player’s wishes perhaps. It’s nice to see Hasebe is an emotional human being. There’s no way Oniki would have done that. I remember countless end of season dead-as-a-doornail rubbers where he continued with exactly the same players as always. I was pleased to see Sung-Ryong get a clean sheet for the time he was on the pitch. Unfortunately we had conceded two really soft goals before he'd made it on to the pitch. I thought Jesiel really looked like he had a point to prove and I think he proved it. Kurumaya did well too, I thought. It was especially nice to see him finish the game playing at left back where I feel he really belongs, Well maybe it’s not so nice because that situation came about due to an injury to Sasaki. Hopefully it’s not serious. But it was satisfying to see Kurumaya’s career come to an end where it started. 

I felt we were kind of lucky to be drawing at half time. It’s a strange thing to say as we were leading up until the 48th minute. We hadn’t done much though and had looked in trouble on a few occasions. At the same time, I think we could have felt disappointed to be drawing at half time and indeed to lose the game, as the goals we conceded were very very soft. I still don’t have much confidence in Yamaguchi. I feel like people think he’s great because he makes some dramatic saves, (perhaps with the drama turned up to transform a regulation save into a dramatic one. There was one occasion in the match when he did a high flying dive and palmed the ball off the pitch even though it was way off target and was going off anyway. It was kind of reminiscent of the goal he seems to concede once a match where he pats the ball to the unmarked attacker at the back post, but on this occasion there was no-one there so instead he put it out for a corner). The fact is though, that it looked like he dived way too late for the first one and for the second goal just sat down rather than trying to save it. Of course it’s not all his fault, but you could tell he felt at least slightly responsible because he didn’t scream and shout too much at his defenders like he usually does. There have been rumours about a possible new keeper coming in who would presumably be the number one for next year. Given that we only have two goalies on the books now, (or maybe three if Hayasaka comes back from his loan) and one of them is Lee, with absolutely zero experience, there will definitely be something happening in that area of the pitch. 

Maybe a quick mention of the ref here. The last time we had Takasaki we won 4-0 but I still said the ref had had a shocker. On this occasion it was amateur hour again I thought. Reckon we might have got a little lucky with Ito's yellow and the card probably contributed to him being subbed at half time. It was a shame as he was our only attacking threat really. Erison was trying his best but the ref seemed to give every challenge he was involved in as a foul against him. The thing that pissed me off the most was when the dozy bastard of a ref totally blocked Kawahara from getting the ball and then gave him a yellow afterwards for complaining. Reckon Sanfrecce could have had their keeper sent off for a handball outside the box in the first half. I thought it was handball and so did Erison, (who was quite a but closer), but maybe the fact that the ball didn’t go out of play for a few minutes afterwards diluted the possibility of it being reviewed. To be honest we'd had more than enough VAR in the match anyway. But it would have been fun to see Osako get sent off. 

What else do I need to say here before I get on to the players leaving? Maybe the fact that it’s pretty bad that we couldn’t really trouble Sanfrecce's creaking Grandads back three. To be honest though, I still don’t think we would have scored yet if we were still playing now. Can’t really blame our players for being on the beach already though. I don’t think they were slacking particularly, but definitely there was a feeling of a bit of pointlessness about our play. Sanfrecce’s long throws were gross, as any long throws are. I guess the occasional one could be excused and is maybe something we should try as I think Sai can do them, but the endless dithering over their stupid little fucking towels was really getting on my nerves. But at least it gave me something to get involved with, as the rest of the match was quite dull. The only thing that is in any way interesting about the one remaining match away at Urawa is the possibility that they will do their silent treatment thing again that they’ve been doing in the last few matches. Hopefully they will all stay after the game and continue the silence all through the end of season ceremony too as then the train will be a lot better. Would be lovely to beat them on the last day of the season.  Looking back, this year has been a mixed bag and I don't think we’ve really actually done the whole season of transition thing that people expected particularly. Maybe we’re saving that for next year, (god help us…). With one game to go, as long as we don’t get hammered and concede four goals in our next game we will have got more points, scored more goals, conceded less goals and finished higher than last year. So even though some points of this season have been deeply disappointing, not losing on the final day will mean that our hosts will be even more disappointed. Again. As they are pretty much every year. In a intensely amusing way. 

With four players leaving, and the end of season ceremony, we actually spent more time in the stadium after the match than we did when the actual game was taking place. I definitely wanted to stay though as I wanted to show my appreciation for the players who were on their way out. Regular readers will know I love Sung-Ryong so obviously I’m gutted about him going. However, perhaps the time has come. I don’t think he deserved to be demoted to second fiddle this year, but at the same time, I’m not sure he would have been the answer to play in every game. Definitely a department that needs attention in the off season. I suspected that Jesiel might go, but I thought he would want to go back to Brazil, given he’s just had a baby. Apparently though he wanted to stay with us and will remain in Japan. It’s still a massive frustration for me that he had his career slightly ruined by Oniki who played him straight back from injury in a totally pointless end of season game away at Sagan Tosu and then he got seriously injured again. Definitely he has been quite injury prone in recent years, but he also has consistently been one of our best defenders. I hope he can stay injury free and show us what we’re missing. Ando seems to have been unceremoniously dumped which is a shame more from an emotional point of view rather than a practical one. There is a certain irony in him not getting a new contract after a season in which he has played a lot more in than in the last five or six years put together. He’s been an amazing servant to the club, so I hope he can be offered a position in the club somewhere. I kind of admire Kurumaya’s decision to retire. He definitely could have continued playing at a lower level, but leaves us having been a one club man. I was never sure about him wanting to move to centre back, but I guess with Nobori, and then Sasaki, and then Miura at the club, he was probably going to get more of a chance in the middle. It would have been interesting if we’d tried him in a back three. I remember him playing there at times near the start of his career. I will always consider him as a left back though. Maybe if Sasaki is inured we might see him play left back away at Urawa! All of the farewell videos were of course tear jerking. I think Jesiel’s speech affected me the most as he was clearly gutted. I mentioned above Hasebe’s compassion in playing most of the players leaving one more time being a very welcome thing. This was in stark contrast to the kind of ruthlessness when it comes to moving people on that maybe people would say is essential for our club to progress. Maybe it is essential, but it’s also quite out of character for us, so it came as a bit of a shock. I don’t know if it was a business decision made by the chairman, who once again in the end of season ceremony made himself appear quite unlikeable. As Sung-Ryong started his farewell speech which he was making in Japanese with “Sung-Ryong desu” Hasebe giggled, apparently with real affection. At the same time the chairman stood stony-faced looking like he was scanning the crowd for dissenters who he could get thrown out of the stadium. 

 

There has been some criticism of him for his lack of understanding of football and some of his decisions and reactions. I still remember him not understanding why Chanathip wanted to play football rather than train and just sit in the stands. I wonder if that signing, and maybe also the signing of Gomis, were his idea, to extend our reach in Asia and raise our profile overseas, with the ultimate aim being to get more MONEY MONEY MONEY! And then there’s also the upheaval amongst the staff which also might have something to do with him. You can’t help feel that we’ve lost our way a bit recently and it just happens to have coincided with his tenure at the top of the club. Basically, I’m still quite suspicious of him. As I’ve probably made abundantly clear. 

Well that all went on a lot longer than you might have expected for such a boring and pointless game. As I said above, hopefully we can finish the season with a bit of excitement away at Urawa. It’s not too much to ask, is it? And then we get a nice break and all the fun of the off-season. There’s definitely some work to be done before we’re back playing again in early February. My regular pre-match drinking establishment is called Progress, and whilst I think that could be said in some ways about 2025, I remain cautiously hopeful that we could see some more forward steps in 2026. Nice to finish on something positive! 

 

Team

GK 98. YAMAGUCHI Louis 
DF 31. VAN VERMESKERKEN Sai

DF 4. JESIEL (Yellow card 84') 

DF 7. KURUMAYA Shintaro
DF 5. SASAKI Asahi
MF 19. KAWAHARA So (Yellow card 72') 
MF 6. YAMAMOTO Yuki
MF 14. WAKIZAKA Yasuto 
FW 17. ITO Tatsuya (Yellow card 33') 
FW 9. ERISON

FW 23. MARCINHO

Subs

GK 1. Sung-Ryong JUNG (on for YAMAGUCHI 81')
GK 21. ANDO Shunsuke

MF 16. OZEKI Yuto (on for MARCINHO 72')
DF 22. Flip UREMOVIC (on for SASAKI 61')
DF 27. KAMIHASHI Ryota
DF 30. NODA Hiroto (on for VAN WERMESKERKEN 81')
MF 34. YAMAICHI Shuto

FW 38. KANDA Soma
FW 41. IENAGA Akihiro (on for ITO 46')

Goals

ITO (Frontale) 12' 1-0
KAWABE (Sanfrecce) 45+4' 1-1
NAKAMURA (Sanfrecce) 56' 1-2

Highlights  

Vs Fagiano Okayama (home) 8/11/25 J League match 36

Kawasaki Frontale 1 - 1 Fagiano Okayama

It’s taken me quite some time to get round to writing this post, mainly due to the poor quality of the game. Even at the end of the match it was quite hard to recall what had happened in the preceding 90 minutes. Four days later, it’s almost impossible. And when you consider that most of my notes were things along the lines of ‘this is utterly dull’ and ‘complete lack of quality’ I’m going to get this out of the way with not much discussion of the actual game events as nothing much happened, and as I also can’t be bothered anymore, with as little effort as possible too.

Us -

Still mainly plugging away with the same players. No excitement of some youngsters getting a run out even though our season is over and done with. It’s hard to imagine what kind of scenario would result in some youngsters getting a chance as in seasons where we’d already sealed the title we haven’t done it, and in seasons like this where we’ve already fucked everything up, we still seem to be approaching every game as a crucial must win contest. When you consider that we might have a few players maybe retiring or leaving us at the end of the season (the first one, Sung-Ryong was announced today in between writing this and posting it), it also might have made sense to give some of them a chance to play. But no, just the same old stuff, dawdling towards a boring end to what has been a real up and down season. It was nice to see Sasaki back at left back. It was nice to see us fairly solid in defence. Well, right up until Hasebe decided to shore things up to hang on to that crucial 1-0 home win against Okayama. Right on cue, as often seems to happen when he tinkers to make us more solid, we conceded. Hasebe has had a tough year in some respects. He seems to have got no end of bad luck. The defensive solidity that people imagined he’d bring hasn’t materialised and instead we’ve become a team scoring goals for fun. Well, sometimes. On other occasions we’ve been absolutely blunt in front of goal as we were on this occasion. If we could have spread out the goals we’ve scored this year a bit better we would really have been in with a chance in the league. Probably likewise, if we hadn’t defended so badly all year. But this is all stuff for an end of season post really, (if I can be bothered to write it). Yamaguchi was very ready to throw blame around in his post match comments. It was quite unedifying, particularly when you consider some of the goals we’ve conceded this year. But I don’t want to start slagging people off. I will say though that I am worried about next season already.

Them -

Not much to say. I thought it was amusing that Broderson’s first name in Katakana is Subendo. I’m not sure why I enjoyed it so much, but I guess I was trying my best to find entertainment where I could in what was a dull, dull game. Aside from their goal, Okayama could only shoot either directly at the keeper or miles off target, which explains why they didn’t score more. To be fair though, the same could be said about us. Actually even worse could be said about us as even our goal was massively deflected. The height of goalkeeping excitement for most of the match was a keeper bending over to pick up a shot that dribbled into their hands. I’m pleased we managed to score against Okayama, as we’d failed to do so in the away game. This means we’ll finish the season by having scored at least once against every team… Oh, apart from the mighty Tokyo Verdy. That really sums up the season I think. Anyway, this is supposed to be the Okayama section. But the truth is there isn’t much else to say.

Ref -

Thankfully the ref Shimizu didn’t send off two of our players on this occasion. He continued in his previous (before he went nuts in the Fukuoka game) form and pretty much didn’t give anything, and was very reluctant to give any cards. He was even reluctant to let the physios onto the pitch, instead favouring the maxim that time is a great healer. I was worried that if someone broke a bone we might still be sitting in the stadium as Shimizu thought that any injury could be cured by just waiting. There definitely wouldn’t have been enough space on the board to show the additional time. How many minutes are there in nine months? I did like the way the ref overruled both of his linesman early on, within a few minutes of each other. The guy in front of us definitely deserved it as he was utterly hopeless. But anyway, this game was so dull for the most part that he didn’t have much to do. And therefore I don’t have much to moan about!

Another lead thrown away! Another late goal conceded! What a thrilling match, absolutely predictable when you consider that in order to let excitement reach an absolutely peak the league decided to play the last four games of the season over the course of a few months. Fever pitch excitement! Both teams played like they hadn’t kicked a ball for a couple of weeks. So just imagine how bad we’re going to be in the next match which is in three weeks time! Clearly it would be more humane if we could euthanise our season now, (or even better, could have done a few games ago). I feel like I should write a brief end of season piece as there probably is something to be said about our year, but please excuse me for not bothering with anything else. Writing this blog seems to have become quite pointless recently so i think I’ll probably have a rethink before next year’s dull half season of only the most boring away games. Next up Hiroshima and Urawa at home and away respectively, some time before the end of the year. Not much to look forward to, apart from a break from the kind of tedium that was on display in this match. Blessed relief! 

 

Team

GK 98. YAMAGUCHI Louis 
DF 31. VAN VERMESKERKEN Sai

DF 4. JESIEL

DF 22. Flip UREMOVIC
DF 5. SASAKI Asahi
MF 19. KAWAHARA So
MF 8. TACHIBANADA Kento
MF 14. WAKIZAKA Yasuto 
FW 17. ITO Tatsuya
FW 9. ERISON (Yellow card 44') 

FW 23. MARCINHO

Subs

GK 21. ANDO Shunsuke
MF 6. YAMAMOTO Yuki (on for TACHIBANADA 77')

DF 7. KURUMAYA Shintaro
FW 11. KOBAYASHI Yu
DF 15. TANABE Shuto (on for ITO 90+3')
MF 16. OZEKI Yuto (on for WAKIZAKA 77')
FW 29. MYOGAN Toya
FW 41. IENAGA Akihiro (on for MARCINHO 66')
FW 91. Lazar ROMANIC (on for ERISON 66')

Goals

YAMAMOTO (Frontale) 84' 1-0
MATSUMOTO (Okayama) 90+5' 1-1

Highlights  

Vs Cerezo Osaka (away) 25/10/25 J League match 35

 

Cerezo Osaka 2 - 0 Kawasaki Frontale

What a horrible game this was. I have nothing interesting or amusing to say about it really so I hope you’re not expecting much. With most of our midfield looking like they were already on the beach and our recently typical suicidal defending and goalkeeping this was always going to be a tough game to win. And that prospect became even tougher after seven minutes by which time we were already two goals down. In the time we’d conceded two we hadn’t even had an attack. I’m
Not proud to say this, but the most enjoyable part of the game for me was probably when Ito’s shot smacked straight into the face of the Cerezo keeper. Slightly in my defence, he had been acting like a twat before it happened so had already pissed me off. Apart from this moment, which I’m pretty sure was our first shot of the game, (in the 19th minute…), there wasn’t much to get excited about. There was one phase in the second half where we looked like we were rattling them and that the momentum might be about to shift, but for that to have happened it would have required us to be at least slightly potent in attack and we weren’t at all. At the start of the second half it seemed like our game plan was to try to hang on to what we had and go for the 2-0 defeat. Miraculously we did. But that was in part due to Cerezo being almost as shit as we were in front of goal. But by that stage the damage had already been done. Naturally one of their goals came from Yamaguchi diving across the goal and delicately delivering the ball to an unmarked striker with a little push of his gloves. I say naturally because we’ve conceded the same goal at least once every game he’s played recently. Either the opposition are always doing their homework or maybe we’re not very good at stopping teams scoring from not that threatening situations. Add to this the fact that the way we were trying to play was by passing it around at the back for a bit, (I say a bit, but the truth is it was much more than a bit. More like an age), and then after the sufficient pass total had been reached, hammering the ball forward to no one for it to be collected by their defence so we could get back to doing some more defending practice. Fucking hell it was a dull game. And then it started raining. And they didn’t have the beer truck there like they have had in recent years. It was all shite really. Even the atmosphere was (unsurprisingly) a bit subdued. We seemed to be singing the same song for ages without changing. But maybe it just seemed that way as time had slowed down because everything was so fucking boring. I said some of the players looked like they’d given up for the season and I think I started to understand their feelings and join them. I usually like singing, but in this match every time I interrupted my singing with important asides like ‘fucking hell that was bad’, ‘wow, that was lucky’ and ‘jesus christ try to get the ball out of our own half’, I went back into the song a little bit quieter until I gradually just became silent and slightly embarrassed. Crap crap crap crap crap.

I don’t have much desire to write anymore but I wanted to mention to that the time wasting from Cerezo was pretty horrific. They could have scored a lot more if they hadn’t wasted so much time. Even the ball boys were at it. And I’m not just saying that. Have a look J League and punish the club. Not that the ref was bothered though. His solution to any time wasting was to angrily blow his whistle and give a final warning that next time he’ll give them a card. And then proceed to do nothing as they continued time wasting. To be fair, it wasn’t a surprise as Tanimoto has a reputation on this blog for blowing his whistle a lot but never actually doing much. Naturally the only player booked was Uremovic, and I’m kind of surprised the speedy as a sloth arsehole on VAR didn’t decide to delay the game further and have a glacial-paced look at it. Aside from the fact that none of the players paid him any attention at all (‘Stop time wasting and leave the pitch behind the goal as you’re being subbed!’ ‘Who me? Oh sorry I didn’t realise you were talking to me, even though I’m clearly the one being subbed and to make up for not hearing properly, I’ll continue dawdling off the pitch via the absolute longest route that you told me not to use.’ ‘Well ok then, as you are. If you do this again in this match I’ll be really upset with you… but still do nothing’), the ref didn’t have a shocker. Not the case for the linesman or the aforementioned VAR clown who absolutely baffling ruled out Marcinho’s goal without ever getting the ref involved. He was absolutely nowhere near offside and how this decision could have gone to VAR and been upheld is an absolute mystery. The only thing I can presume is that they got Erison and Marcinho mixed up. If this is true, it is… well, I don’t really have any words for how that would be, but I’m sure you can imagine. I know I always moan about the referees, but take a look at this decision and you’ll know why. And don’t forget that they took about four minutes to come to this completely erroneous conclusion. But somehow fitting with the luck we’ve had on more than our fair share of occasions this year. Hasebe probably didn’t have his best game, but probably can’t compete against the various forces (mainly in the form of match officials) who seem to be conspiring to mess us up as often as possible. But Hasebe leaving Wakizaka and Yamamoto on and taking off Kawahara, one of the few players who’d looked like he was interested has got to go down as a weird decision. But perhaps not that surprising. Also not sure why he didn’t start with Jesiel and Uremovic at centre back. It’s almost as if even when we have fit defenders we think it’s not the right and proper thing to do to play them. Maybe Hasebe thinks it’s too easy to just pick out best players and it’s more fun and challenging to start every game effectively with one hand tied behind our backs. Maybe it’s all intentional and is done to be practice for next season when presumably we’ll once again have our usual annual defensive injury crisis. I’m still pleased that Hasebe is in charge rather than Oniki, but I’m starting to worry a bit about him. Obviously he’s knows more than I do, but some of the decisions he makes seem pretty strange to me. And he is Oniki’s polar opposite when it comes to being lucky. Oh and finally a quick update on those season comparison stats. No goals scored means we’re still one goal behind last year’s total and now with only three games left. It was the case that we’d have to concede 13 goals in our final five games to have conceded more than last year. In the first two of those games we’ve conceded five. So we’re pretty much on schedule to do exactly that. Fucking hell this game was shit. Did I mention that already? 

Next up, another fucking two week break (this season’s schedule has been ridiculous), and then Okayama at home. Then three weeks till Sanfrecce at home which is the game after that. No wonder the players can’t be bothered! Just let us get this season over and done with. Any hopes of end of season fun and games rotation in the dead rubber games we might have had has now gone out of the window as we played pretty much the same team in this game as we did in the previous one. It would be nice if some of the players who I suspect might be retiring could get a bit more time on the pitch and why not give Sung-Ryong, Ando and Lee a game each in goal. We have nothing to lose. But I’m sure it won’t happen, so maybe there’s nothing left to look forward to. But it’s ok, there’s one more away game so that should be fun! Oh fucking hell scratch that, it’s Urawa...

 

Team

GK 98. YAMAGUCHI Louis 
DF 31. VAN VERMESKERKEN Sai

DF 4. JESIEL

DF 5. SASAKI Asahi
DF 15. TANABE Shuto
MF 19. KAWAHARA So
MF 6. YAMAMOTO Yuki 
MF 14. WAKIZAKA Yasuto 
FW 17. ITO Tatsuya
FW 9. ERISON

FW 23. MARCINHO

Subs

GK 21. ANDO Shunsuke

MF 8. TACHIBANADA Kento

FW 11. KOBAYASHI Yu

MF 16. OZEKI Yuto (on for KAWAHARA 46')
DF 22. Flip UREMOVIC (Yellow card 54') (on for TANABE 46')
FW 24. MIYAGI Ten (on for ITO 75')
DF 27. KAMIHASHI Ryota
FW 41. IENAGA Akihiro (on for MARCINHO 60')
FW 91. Lazar ROMANIC (on for ERISON 78')

Goals

RAFAEL RATAO (Cerezo) 4' 1-0
TANAKA (Cerezo) 7' 2-0

Highlights 

Vs Shimizu S Pulse (home) 18/10/25 J League match 34

 

Kawasaki Frontale 5 - 3 Shimizu S Pulse 

As our season slides towards a slightly disappointing and very much underwhelming end, the only thing we really have to play for, apart from an outside chance of getting an Asian competition place, is seeing how much we can better our final tallies from last year. In the post about the Kyoto game I wrote
‘With five games to go we’ve already exceeded our points total from last year and if we score more than six goals in our remaining five league games we’ll have scored more this year too. And we’d have to concede 13 goals in those last five games to have conceded more this year’. Of course another win means that we’re even further ahead of last year when it comes to points. Scoring five goals in this match means we’re just one behind last year with four games to go, so good progress on that front too. Conceding three wasn’t exactly what we needed if we’re hoping not to give away more goals than last year but hell, that's the way we roll this year. I think we’re well aware that defence has been our problem this year and that problem has been caused at least moderately by our rotten luck with injuries and suspensions. (Alternatively you could say it's because of our always inadequate attempts at having enough decent defenders and our newly awful disciplinary record). There’s no way we’re going to win the fair play award this year. In fact if there was a trophy for most reds, I reckon we’d definitely be in contention. When you discount our chances of winning the league, which I have done for most of the year, the thing I was most interested in was being the highest scoring team. For a while we’ve been fighting it out against (somewhat bizarrely) Kyoto for this title. As I write they are down to ten men, having missed a penalty and are losing 1-0 to Shonan, so I reckon we’ll finish the weekend well ahead of them on goals. Anyway, what a long and pointless intro to what I hope will be a relatively short post.

Us -

Yamaguchi back in goal, Jesiel back in defence. But of course no real changes when it comes to us stopping the other team from scoring. It’s becoming quite amusing in a way. Even at 4-0 up I think most of us weren’t feeling particularly safe and sure of getting the points. Thankfully on this occasion we didn’t collapse to a point dropping extent. There is something quite amusing when you think back to the start of the year when Hasebe was announced as our new manager and everyone said we’d become ultra defensive and boring. The absolute opposite has happened! I feel a bit for Hasebe as for most of the year choosing  our defence has been basically him always having to try to put at least one player out of position where they are least bad. I suspect when it comes to the end of the season the player who will have played the most games at centre back will be Sasaki, our left back who can also play on the right. In this match we saw on a few occasions what we’ve been missing by not having him playing at full back as he charged forward beautifully. I think it’s clear that although Miura hasn’t had a great season, (and on top of that is now injured), us having two good first choice left backs was why Sasaki was on the right. But I just wish he’d been on the left a bit more. Ok, let’s stop waffling and be a bit more succinct. Lovely goal from Kawahara, and it was really important as at that stage we were really wobbling. Well done Yamaguchi for the penalty save. It was also at a crucial stage. It’s great that we won, but given that although we went four goals ahead, at times we looked like we were going to choke again. So it ended up feeling a bit flat afterwards. Any excitement about great attacking is quite easily undercut by calamitous defending and conceding soft goals. I don’t know what the solution is. But all the same, you can’t say that our games aren’t usually full of action. Presumably the next one will now be a stinker.

Them - 

In the first half Shimizu were destroyed by us. Well, by us and also slightly by their own sloppiness. It looked a bit like they thought they were better than they actually were, with them slicing the ball off the pitch on numerous occasions. Whatever their manager said at half time did the trick though as they really came after us in the second half. There were three penalty decisions that went to VAR in this match and they got two of them. I think in all three there was certainly a bit of simulation going on on their part. For the first one you can see the guy move his leg into Tanabe's after he’s already started his dive. Definitely some dark arts brought with them from Shizuoka. And plenty of whinging too. But I say this every week really about every team. What original thing is there to say? Hmmm, their drums and rhythms are good. Not exactly original, but at least a comment that is unique to Shimizu. They brought a lot of fans too, so good for them for doing that. 

Ref - 

Kawamata is a ref that in the past I thought has been pretty decent. And I continued to think so for the first half of this match too. I think he banged his head on the door frame coming out for the second half though. Actually, considering his height that's probably not going to happen. The difference between his decisions in the first and second halves was astonishing. He definitely lost the plot after half time. Of course this could have something to do with my perception of him being influenced by the fact that we were really under the cosh in the second half. Perhaps. But I suspect the truth is something much more unusual in the 2020’s. Consider these effects: 

‘euphoria and exhilaration, then hallucinations develop […] and at a later stage slurred speech, ataxia and drowsiness occur.’

I’ve nailed it, right? Instead of going for the usual half time refreshments, I think Kawamata , shortly after blowing the whistle for the end of the first half, starting sniffing glue. I guess he gave some to Kimura on VAR too as there definitely were some hallucinations on both of their parts when it came to those penalties. After he turned one down for one of their dives at his VAR monitor there was never any doubt he was going to give the next one, which resulted from the corner he gave after changing his mind at the monitor for the previous check. Once again I think we might have been done a bit with this. Much like against Kashiwa where VAR was used to check for a red, which wasn’t given but a yellow was instead, in this match he checked the penalty, didn’t give it but changed his mind about a goal kick. Maybe I’m wrong with my understanding of the rules, but I think I read that you can’t use VAR to correct things that aren’t penalty or red card related. I’ll hate VAR as long as I live, but I’ve no doubt it is here to stay and will continue to give me things to moan about. Kawamata, kick the glue habit and sort things out. I’m prepared to give you the benefit of the doubt for that terrible second half display, but in future, just say no, and then I can go back to giving you faint praise again.

Next up, Cerezo away next Saturday. Considering that it seemed that in our area of the stadium, a lot of season ticket holders resold their tickets for this match, I wonder if the away attendance at Cerezo might be quite low. For some reason that game always seems significantly less well attended than Gamba away, which is strange as the Gamba away experience has always been a bit of a pain in the arse travel wise, and since they moved us into the attic, the game experience has become cack too. But I will be there, hoping for some more goals and hoping that we don’t do as badly as we have done pretty much every season recently there. And then after that, two weeks till the next game, because why not eh? Let’s build up the end of season excitement by making things as stop-start as possible. Lovely!  

 

Team

GK 98. YAMAGUCHI Louis 
DF 31. VAN VERMESKERKEN Sai

DF 4. JESIEL

DF 5. SASAKI Asahi
DF 15. TANABE Shuto
MF 19. KAWAHARA So
MF 6. YAMAMOTO Yuki 
MF 14. WAKIZAKA Yasuto 
FW 17. ITO Tatsuya
FW 9. ERISON (Yellow card 54') 

FW 23. MARCINHO

Subs

GK 1. JUNG Sung-Ryong

MF 8. TACHIBANADA Kento (on for ITO 81')

FW 11. KOBAYASHI Yu (on for ERISON 58')

MF 16. OZEKI Yuto (on for TANABE 90+8')
FW 24. MIYAGI Ten (on for MARCINHO 58')
DF 27. KAMIHASHI Ryota (on for JESIEL 81')
DF 30. NODA Hiroto
DF 39. TSUCHIYA Kaito
FW 41. IENAGA Akihiro 

Goals

WAKIZAKA (Frontale) 4' 1-0
SASAKI (Frontale) 7' 2-0
ITO (Frontale) 13' 3-0
ERISON (Frontale) 37' 4-0
KOZUKA (Shimizu) 45+6' 4-1
TAKAHASHI (Shimizu) 46' 4-2
KAWAHARA (Frontale) 69' 5-2
KITAGAWA (Shimizu) 90+2' PEN 5-3

Highlights