Vs Kashiwa Reysol (away) 12/10/25 Levain Cup Semi Final 2nd Leg

Kashiwa Reysol 3 - 1 Kawasaki Frontale (5 - 4 on agg.) 

We came into this game with one foot in the final. When going ahead after four minutes we could have started making our plans for pre- and post-game activities around the National Stadium on final day. And maybe that’s what our team were doing as after we scored everything fell to pieces. It was a humiliating collapse, definitely helped along by the wanker of a referee. But when your plan after four minutes seems to be not to shut up shop, but something more like as frantically as possible try to hang on to an admittedly massive at the time lead against a team who love attacking, rather than try to score yourself, well, there’s a chance that things won’t work out your way. Thankfully Kashiwa’s shooting was absolutely shit in the first half. As it was in the previous leg actually. Sadly they managed to sort that out in style after half time, all helped along by their friend in the middle. Here are the usual headings in a slightly different order.

Us - 

I’m not sure Hasebe’s changes after the red card worked. Actually, I’m being too diplomatic here. They clearly failed completely. Maybe it made sense at that stage to try to hang on to what we had by putting some more defenders on, leaving us a bit light up front. Not sure it was a good idea to put on two players who between them had exactly 113 minutes of experience playing for us either side of our best full back who’s most recently been our only permanent fixture in the middle of defence. But to be honest, I guess Hasebe didn’t have much choice as at least one of them had to come on. The big problem was that if we conceded, the game got back to a draw and we then had to actually try to score, we’d be in big trouble. This is exactly what happened. I don’t think there is a full replay of the game online for me to check the veracity of the things I thought at the time at the stadium and to be honest, even if there were, I’m not sure I’d be up for spending any more time thinking about this turd of a performance. We absolutely didn’t deserve to win. But we probably should have been able to hang on to a three goal lead, shouldn’t we? Our Jekyll and Hyde season continues. Now there truly is nothing to play for. Which is a bit of luck as we’re totally fucked with injuries and suspensions. Bring on the end of the season. 

Ref - 

I knew we were in trouble as soon as I saw the ref was Imamura. Sorry, I should give him his full title ‘that useless arsehole of a referee with an eternal burning passion for sending off Frontale players Imamura’. I think three of their goals came from ridiculous decisions he’d given against us. We had the play pulled back for a VAR long after the game had restarted. (Rule according to the IFAB - ‘If play has stopped and been restarted, the referee may not undertake a ‘review’ except for a case of mistaken identity or for a potential sending-off offence relating to violent conduct, spitting, biting or extremely offensive, insulting and/or abusive action(s).’). We also had VAR used to give a yellow card. (Rule - ‘Yellow cards and free-kicks cannot be awarded as a result of a VAR check’). Imamura always does things his own way but maybe he’d be less infuriating if he actually followed the fucking rules. Regardless of whether the decision was actually right or not, when you have a ref who doesn’t even know the protocol it’s pretty irritating. We had an official who seemed determined to book anyone on our team who was foreign. He presumably got slightly confused by Sai’s surname. He was less fond of giving out cards the other way. It’s apparently no problem if the whole Kashiwa team chase the ref around the pitch whining, almost pushing him over. (Rule - ‘The players and team officials must not surround the referee or attempt to influence if a decision is reviewed, the review process or the final decision.’). It worked though. He changed his decision after they did it. Also fine is the whole of the bench running into the pitch when they scored. Nothing to see here! I’ve noticed that Imamura is from Aichi which might explain why he apparently hates us so much as most people connected to football from that prefecture seem to. Irregardless of how you feel about the red card and the yellow for Sai, it was the never ending torrent of every fucking decision being given to them which put the nails in the coffin which we were doing our best to build for ourselves. The Romanic yellow was insane! But by that stage it was clear that every time I shouted out disgusted at a foul from Kashiwa it was inevitably going to end up with them being given a free kick. Kashiwa’s attacking and our chaotic defending were responsible for us conceding. But Imamura is a useless arsehole and it was his attitude and incompetence that got us in those positions. In a recent blog post about a game he was in charge of, I said that he wasn’t responsible for us not winning but ‘once again he made mistake after mistake in a game but presumably went home thinking he’d done a great job.’ I think that stands for this game too.

(I’ve now somewhat unwisely watched the highlights and my fury about that twat of a ref has gone into overdrive. Their first goal was down to him to being so close to Erison as he tried to clear it that he was practically tackling him. I wish Erison had just blasted the ball into the ref’s nether regions for the dual purposes of getting a drop ball and to cause as much discomfort to the ref as possible. It’s what he deserved. The highlights video is basically just an Imamura blooper reel. The red card looks ridiculous. Did the ref really think that Uremovic was intentionally rolling into the back of the player. His initial decision of a yellow was right as it clearly was a foul but thanks to the whinging of every member of the Kashiwa team apart from the keeper who were surrounding the ref to the point that he almost fell over, he thought he’d throw them a bone. The winner looks dubious too, with Hosoya absolutely yanking the shirt of Sasaki’s back before he ‘won’ the ball. No surprise Imamura or Okabe on VAR didn’t notice that. Imamura was probably worried about getting surrounded again. If it had gone to extra time it was only a matter of time before we lost anyway, but just fuck off Imamura). 

Them - 

Worthy winners, amply assisted by that twat Imamura. But blimey they are a bunch of divers. But you can’t blame them as almost every dive got them what they were after. Away fans are always treated like shit at their stadium, so recently we’ve done our best to get there as late as possible and leave as soon as possible afterwards, spending absolutely no money there. The music they play in their stadium is the absolute shittiest of shit heavy rock. Their fucking trumpets are really tacky and really annoying. Their tifo was somewhat amusingly made up by their fans holding up yellow bin bags. I can’t quite decide if their diving and play-acting or the referee’s absolute uselessness was more annoying. I think it’s probably the latter. If we’d won this match I would have wished them luck for the league, but in the immediate aftermath of this shit show, I think I somewhat pettily hope that their season ends up as successful as ours has been. But that means I’d be supporting Hiroshima in the final. Hmmmmmm.

Next up, who fucking cares! Actually, it’s Shimizu at home next weekend. As these games are absolutely meaningless now, maybe we can play some of the other players who haven’t had a look in. Although to be honest, it’s probably only a matter of time before everyone will have played due to us having absolutely no options due to injuries and suspensions. The good news is that we’re back to daytime games now, so I can get a decent amount of boozing in after the match and still go to bed at a reasonable time. There you go, I found something positive to finish on.

Team

GK 1. JUNG Sung-Ryong
DF 31. VAN VERMESKERKEN Sai (Yellow card 45+3') 

DF 22. Filip UREMOVIC (Red card 56')

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 (on for YAMAMOTO 74')
FW 11. KOBAYASHI Yu
FW 24. MIYAGI Ten
DF 27. KAMIHASHI Ryota (on for MARCINHO 59')
DF 30. NODA Hiroto
DF 39. TSUCHIYA Kaito (on for ITO 59')
FW 41. IENAGA Akihiro (on for TANABE 83')
FW 91. Lazar ROMANIC (Yellow card 76') (on for ERISON 74')

Goals
WAKIZAKA (Frontale) 4' 0-1
KAKITA (Kashiwa) 26' 1-1
NAKAMA (Kashiwa) 73' 2-1
HOSOYA (Kashiwa) 77' 3-1
HOSOYA (Kashiwa) 90+2' 4-1

Highlights

Vs Kashiwa Reysol (home) 8/10/25 Levain Cup Semi Final 1st Leg

 

Kawasaki Frontale 3 - 1 Kashiwa Reysol 

I really need to have a think about this blog. I’ve been putting off writing this post all day and this was actually a fun game and a good result. If I can’t even be bothered after a 3-1 win, what hope is there for the next absolutely dull 1-0 defeat we suffer? Although I suppose I might have been putting it off because we basically play Kashiwa every few days at the moment so maybe that’s why I’m not overly enthused about writing about them again. The return leg of the tie is coming up soon, I’ve totally wasted today and then tomorrow and Saturday I’ll be working and busy. So this really is going to be thrown together with the absolute minimum of effort.

Us -

I thought we were pretty good. Well, in the first half anyway. Two nice goals, one penalty turned down by VAR for… well actually I have no idea and heard that I would be a bit pissed off when I saw it. I can’t find it, so perhaps the highlights packages are sparing the blushes of the officials. Again. Sung-Ryong continued in goal and did fine again. Definitely can’t be blamed for the goal. It’s a shame we once again failed to get a clean sheet but we were up against it for quite a lot of the second half so conceding just once and scoring three in total is fine by me. I guess the big talking points of the game will be the injuries. Miura off after only a few minutes and Oshima returning from injury and not long afterwards returning back to injury. Apparently both of the injuries are quite serious. Although it didn’t seem like it at the time as Oshima was initially moved up front, maybe to see if he could run it off. We’d used all our subs, but I would have thought that if it was bad we would have just taken him off straightaway. We’ll see, I guess. Well done to Tanabe for coming in and covering for Miura. He did well I thought. That’ll do for the us section.

Them -

Nothing original to say here. Not even going to mention the ‘Kashiwa Stupid’ flag. Guess I should mention one of their other flags though but this joke only works if you have Bob Marley’s ‘Buffalo Soldier’ in mind when you read the flag, which said ‘FOOTBALL SOLDIER’ (from the edge of Chiba). Couldn’t see the part in brackets but I suppose it was covered up by another flag, right? I’d say we were quite fortunate that Kashiwa didn’t have their shooting boots on. But maybe if they had done we would just have saved all of their shots anyway 😸. The stats at the end of the game looked like we’d really done a smash and grab on them, but on I don’t think Kashiwa’s many more shots told the story of the game. At the same time, not sure we deserved to win by two clear goals but I’ll definitely take it. As I said before, I’d be happy for us to win the Levain and they can have the league. Seems reasonable, right?

Ref -

Yamamoto Yudai. Was very irritated by him during the game. Will never know about that VAR for the penalty I guess. But did make a note about a terrible tackle on Tanabe in the second half which we didn’t even get a free kick from, let alone one of their players get a card. Will never know about this either. But as it was new era golden boy Yamamoto in charge we can probably presume he got it wrong. 

Next up, Kashiwa again. Hasebe will probably have to do some shuffling around at the back. I imagine it will be the same defence we finished the game with. He has said that we aren’t prioritising this tournament as we still mathematically have a chance in the league, but presumably this is what we are supposed to say and the truth might be different. So I’d expect pretty much the same players again aside from the injuries. The same result would be nice too!  

 

Team

GK 1. JUNG Sung-Ryong
DF 31. VAN VERMESKERKEN Sai

DF 22. Filip UREMOVIC (Yellow card 32') 

DF 5. SASAKI Asahi
DF 13. MIURA Sota
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 (on for KAWAHARA 75')

MF 10. OSHIMA Ryota (on for YAMAMOTO 75')
FW 11. KOBAYASHI Yu 

DF 15. TANABE Shuto (on for MIURA 6')
FW 24. MIYAGI Ten (on for MARCINHO 75')
DF 27. KAMIHASHI Ryota
FW 41. IENAGA Akihiro
FW 91. Lazar ROMANIC  (on for ERISON 61')

Goals
YAMAMOTO (Frontale) 10' 1-0
VAN WERMERSKERKEN (Frontale) 23' 2-0
KOIZUMI (Kashiwa) 62' 1-1
ITO (Frontale) 85' 3-1

Highlights

Vs Urawa Reds (home) 7/9/25 Levain Cup Quarter Final 2nd Leg

Kawasaki Frontale 3 - 2 Urawa Reds AET (4 - 3 on agg.)

Farewell Urawa, your season lies in tatters much to the delight of most other teams’ fans. First, in a game where they had a great opportunity to get back some ground in the title race, 2-0 up away from home at Kashiwa with only 35 minutes of the game left they went on to implode and lose 4-2. Follow that up by getting dumped out of the Emperor’s Cup by FC Tokyo. And then a week after that throw away a lead in the first leg of the Levain Cup game against us, where we were so bad for most of the game that most fans probably would have settled for the 1-0 loss to avoid any potential embarrassment. That late Ito goal was probably what won the tie for us. Such a shift in the momentum of the game. Even though they managed to come back from behind twice in this game, they were always playing catch up and it was only our very familiar 2025 thing of scoring and then immediately giving away a soft goal that kept them alive. Not saying we were loads better than them, but Urawa just always seemed like they were going to Urawa this game. I’ve said it before that they are one of a select group of teams who whatever they do, however much money they spend, whoever they hire, things always seem to end up going wrong. Presumably their manager won’t be with them for much longer. I think when he left them before it was his choice after a characteristically average season. I don’t know how they convinced him to come back, but I imagine they will be parting ways again soon. They do have a habit of never being satisfied with whatever their manager does. Anyway, this isn’t an Urawa blog so maybe I should write something about the match, right? Don’t worry, I’ll get some more bitching in when it comes to their section.

Us - 

After Wednesday’s pretty dodgy first 70 minutes we were back to something approaching full strength for this match. Of course there is the caveat that we probably can’t really be properly full strength given that however many centre backs we might have in the squad, the majority of them will always be injured or banned. On this occasion we went with Sasaki and Uremovic, which ain’t too bad, right? I think Uremovic is looking better game by game, but suspect he still will improve more in the future. Let’s hope so anyway. I suspect I might have directly caused their first goal as just before they scored, I wrote the word ‘Uremovic’ in my notes, but stopped short of adding ‘has had a really solid game’. Presumably though, just the thought was enough to jinx it. Sorry everyone. Jesiel seemed to be injured on Wednesday and was not in the squad in this game, so I guess we’ve just got to pray that Sasaki and Uremovic can stay fit. Well, either that or pray that we keep on scoring for fun. Again it wasn’t the greatest defensive performance, but once again I’ll say that if we have to sacrifice some defensive solidity for attacking fun, I’m all in favour of that. Yamaguchi had a decent game I thought and made some good saves. I’m not sure there was much he could do for either goal. And perhaps, thinking about it, I might be being a bit harsh when I say we wren’t great at the back as both of their goals were probably quite difficult to prevent. Strangely positive for me, isn’t it? Further forward I don’t have much to moan about either. Wakizaka still looks a bit off it, but at least his corners were a bit better. Erison was toying with their defence for fun. Long may that kind of thing continue. He’s really in good form right now. I was a bit dismissive of Miyagi with regards to Wednesday’s game so I should probably give him some credit in this match. Whilst I don’t think I’d go as far to say that he was great, it certainly took some nerve to step up and score that penalty. And Hasebe has talked about him making some real progress with his game. It’s probably about time to be honest as he’s shown bright moments and failed to follow them up so many times over the last… however many years. Ito, there’s not much I need to say. He’s absolutely on fire right now. It’s really nice that he shoots as we’ve often be very guilty of wanting to walk the ball into the net in recent years. What else is there to say? Tanabe playing left wing at the end of the game. Amazing! The line up was a bit of a mess at the end of 120 minutes but you’d expect that I guess. Full credit to Hasebe for the changes he made and his match plan. It was a bit seat-of-the-pants at times, but we won and that’s all the matters. Oh, and finally in this section, it would be remiss of me to not mention two things that were quite unusual in this match. Firstly, we made seven subs! More on that in the ref section. Also, two players we brought on were later subbed off, and not for injuries, all in a game that we won. I’m going to go out on a limb and say that hasn’t happened before. I’m out on a limb because I can’t be bothered and wouldn’t know how to check it.

Them - 

HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA! Bye bye Urawa. Hopefully these words won’t come back to haunt me at the end of the season. The only way that could be the case though would be if either they secured the title in our final league game of the season away against them. Or if they denied us the title in that game. I think both things are pretty unlikely, so maybe I don’t have to worry about jinxing in this case. Somewhat unusually I don’t have many moans about their players. Although Kaneko seemed to be a fouling shit who got away with everything he wanted to. I guess it’s just the laughable fans that I’ll have to focus on. Firstly, they had one of the most bizarre flags I’ve ever seen. Here is a picture of it. 

Truly baffling how that adjective could be combined with Urawa, which is the place where I work and is a very normal suburban residential area. (Well apart from the absolute wasteland near their stadium). It would be remiss of me to not mention the massive amount of rising sun flags on display. (Very much not only the ones near the flag mentioned above). Actually it’s kind of amusing when you combine their absolute patriotism for Japanese things and their belief that Urawa is exotic, (one common definition of which is ‘originating in or characteristic of a distant foreign country.’). Does this mean that in their apparent desire to remember the old imperial days and celebrate and preserve their racial purity (see the notorious “Japanese Only” banner), that they should actively hate themselves? Would be quite fun to see some of the knuckle-dragger elements of their fan base punching themselves in the face, disgusted by their own exoticism. I mean, even if you give them the benefit of the doubt and say that by exotic they mean ‘attractive or striking because colourful or out of the ordinary’ you still have to perhaps pick some holes in their argument. So, yeah, that flag was funny. Also funny was the fact that for both penalties all their big flag wavers walked across behind the goal and waved their little hearts out, before having to trudge back after the ball hit the back of the net on both occasions. Maybe their ‘fearsome’ support isn’t quite as intimidating as they suspect it is. The thing is, there are plenty of reasons to hate Urawa fans for the numerous acts of fan misconduct. But you could also dislike them for their ridiculous posturing. For extra time the majority of the downstairs section squashed over to one side of the stand to have a little shout together whilst I suspect holding hands and then moved back to their spots afterwards feeling very proud of themselves and extremely tough. One of the best things about the J League is the welcoming atmosphere in the stadiums and the fact that opposing fans can mix without having to worry about any trouble. Many people love this. And then you have many Urawa fans, who seem to think that such actions are presumably too woke for them and instead the thing to do is try to ape the worst aspects of football hooliganism and show how hard they are. As this game went to extra time, (after 21:00), due to the fact that the stadium is in a residential area, we weren’t allowed to use drums for extra time. Of course that didn’t stop the Urawa fans, because they are just very naughty tough guys. Oooooooooooooohhhh!

Ref and 4th official - 

Slight renaming of this section. There wasn’t really anything significant to mention about VAR and given that it was being done by Iida, that is a very surprising thing to be able to say. On the pitch we had Araki… When we last had him it was against Kashima at home and I referred to him as an ‘absolute bottler’. In this match I wrote the note that he was bottling so much that with that kind of skill set he should consider starting his own brewery. I guess we should praise him for being consistent over the past two games we’ve had with him. In both he’s given nothing and let the clogger opposition kick us to bits. I guess we can’t expect consistency when it comes to him giving the same decisions the same way to both teams, but at least he is predictably consistent when it comes to letting the opposition get away with whatever they want without giving any cards. Anyway, he’s always shit, so there’s no point being surprised he was shit again, I guess, The fourth official seemed to have a bit of a moment when we made (I think) our last sub. The poor guy didn’t seem to want to let it happen, presumably being confused by the amount of subs we’d made. The same issue seemed to confuse some Urawa fans online. You could probably confuse those fans with that trick where it looks like you’re removing and replacing the top of your thumb though. Presumably they didn’t know that if you use a concussion sub, the opposition gets an extra sub too. It’s fair enough for them not to know it, it’s pretty unforgivable for the fourth official not to know it though. Especially as it was announced on the screen at the game. To give him a little bit of the benefit of the doubt, maybe this wasn’t what was going on, but Hasebe was getting pretty annoyed with the guy who wouldn’t let us make the change, so I’ll just presume it was that. After all, it would fit in perfectly with my general feelings about the knowledge and skill level of J League refs. They are clearly not very good.

What a lovely win this was. Once again we weren’t exactly doing things the easiest of ways at times and it wasn’t plain sailing at all, but none of that really matters. We now have Kashiwa in the next round so preumably the tickets for that match will be even more difficult to get than they usually are. Next up in the league… YFM as the run of horrible teams we’re playing continues. I would truly love our run of wins to continue too but am fully aware it’s going to come to a halt sooner or later. But please not next weekend, eh? There’s been even less football talk in this post than usual, so I hope you’ve enjoyed my complete lack of insight! I think I quite enjoyed writing it for a change.  

Team

GK 98. YAMAGUCHI Louis
DF 31. VAN VERMESKERKEN Sai

DF 5. SASAKI Asahi
DF 22. Filip UREMOVIC (Yellow card 90+1') 

DF 13. MIURA Sota
MF 19. KAWAHARA So
MF 6. YAMAMOTO Yuki
MF 14. WAKIZAKA Yasuto
MF 17. ITO Tatsuya
MF 23. MARCINHO
FW 9. ERISON

Subs

GK 1. JUNG Sung-Ryong

MF 8. TACHIBANADA Kento (on for KAWAHARA 85')

FW 11. KOBAYASHI Yu (on for OZEKI 119')

DF 15. TANABE Shuto (on for ITO 106')

MF 16. OZEKI Yuto (on for WAKIZAKA 75')
FW 24. MIYAGI Ten (on for MARCINHO 58')
DF 27. KAMIHASHI Ryota (on for MIYAGI 107')
DF 30. NODA Hiroto 
FW 91. Lazar ROMANIC (on for ERISON 75')

 

My Frontale Man Of The Match 

This was a good team performance, but I think I can’t not give it to two guys who can’t stop scoring right now (and next weekend too hopefully…), so it’s going to go to…

ERISON and ITO Tatsuya - I don’t need to explain why, do I?

 

Goals

ERISON (Frontale) 18' PEN 1-0
KIESE (Urawa) 74' 1-1
ITO (Frontale) 88' 2-1
NAKAJIMA (Urawa) 90' 2-2
MIYAGI (Frontale) 96' PEN 3-2

Highlights

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