Vs Sanfrecce Hiroshima (home) 6/6/26 J League enthralling 7th place play off second leg

Kawsaki Frontale 0 - 1 Sanfrecce Hiroshima (1-3 on aggregate)

After 20 games and a few penalty shoot outs we’ve ended our league campaign in magnificent style with a pair of defeats and a final league position of eighth. Exactly where we finished last year. And the year before. And the year before. If you want to go back as far as when we troubled the top third of the league you need to rewind to 2022. A lot has happened since then, but clearly not when it comes to where we finish in the league. To be honest, I think it’s a miracle we even cracked the top half this year. We’ve had some truly awful games. (Im actually considering running my end of season poll but with just one question, ‘Worst game of the season?’). I can’t remember a year when we’ve had so many stinkers. But surely there must have been some exciting games too, right? Ermmm, maybe the first game of the year. Since then, not really. Of course there have been extenuating circumstances. We’re always unlucky with injuries, (maybe every team thinks this…), but this year things seem to have gone to a whole new level in that respect. I don’t think Hasebe has ever been able to pick from a squad with less than five long term injuries to important players. Whether he knows who his best eleven is, is another question. Regardless of this, and perhaps in order to reward him for not finishing in a lower position than in the last the four years he was given a new contract a few days before the game. I remain utterly confused by him. I don’t know if he’s absurdly unlucky or infuriatingly clueless. I really can’t tell if either is true. Without a doubt though, I’m in no hurry for the next season to start. About the only thing of any interest for me is seeing if the new kit is an improvement on this year’s one. (It wouldn’t be that hard for it to be). There are a few talking points on the external kind of things that were going on around this game. I’ll mention them later but I guess I need to at least say something about this absolute turd of a match, which perfectly matches the numerous other absolute turds of matches we’ve been forced to endure this year.

The first leg provided us with a Hiroshima born and based ref who, well I never, gave almost everything to Hiroshima. This time we had Kasahara, who although he doesn’t seem  to have any geographical ties to or bias towards Hiroshima, does absolutely hate us, so I didn’t hold out much hope. Add to this the always discouraging spectacle of us not being able to fill the bench without including multiple goalkeepers. The squad is in bits again. When you consider that this bullshit half season had been created to fill the gap whilst we transition to a season that fits in better with the international football calendar, it’s pretty annoying that for our final game of the season we had numerous players absent due to them going to add some numbers to the National Team’s pre World Cup training. It’s nice that even though the National Team manager, (who, I’m sure I’ve said this before, is a dead ringer for Pob, as far as I’m concerned. I bet Pob doesn’t burst into tears every time he hears the national anthem though…), absolutely has no interest in picking players from the J league as there are plenty of another awesome Japanese players who are making regular five minute cameos from the bench in the second tier of Maltese football, the league has still found a way to fuck up what they were trying to build up as a massively exciting climax to this season. After all, the tension of not knowing whether we’d finish seventh of eighth was absolutely gripping me in the run up to this match. There were some other absences too. There are rumours that Romanic was slightly injured. With Erison the rumours are that he’s leaving, so presumably the chairman wanted him left out in case he got injured and any financial benefits of a potential transfer disappeared.   Not sure what happened to Kanda, but it probably was also one of the two previously mentioned scenarios. So basically we had an awful ref and a real patched together match day squad, so we were probably never going to score twice. Would have been nice if we’d tried though. The first half saw us have one shot and concede. The second half was better. Well, in that we had more shots and didn’t concede. But to be honest the whole game was immensely frustrating. Wakizaka was a disgrace again, perfectly summed up by some early ‘contributions’ where he (maybe) dummied the ball (probably just didn’t notice it), leaving it for a player who was absolutely nowhere near where the ball was going. Maybe he’s got his eye on the all star game that’s coming up which he was unbelievably selected for. (I think if people weren’t judging him on his reputation and instead looked at how he’s played for most of this year, he might struggle to get in a Frontale 2026 half season all star 11 selection. Of course we again went with the same fucking shitty formation and tactics. When it came to shaking things up from the bench we obviously didn’t have many options, so only made three single player changes. They didn’t change much. But how could they be expected to when most of their colleagues were already on the beach. Miura had a stinker. Tachibanada, as has been the case recently, looked tired and a bit off the pace. Marcinho did his recent usual Maricinho things. Mochiyama was constantly coming back into defensive midfield to try to get involved, perhaps because Wakizaka had left a fucking massive hole in the middle whilst he ambled away from any kind of action. Here’s what I wrote at half time:

Only thing worse than this thick as shit ref is our ability to get the ball out of our own box without fucking up. Shocking first half with absolutely nothing from us and lots of peril at the back. Plenty of players on the beach already. Wakizaka strolling around the pitch trying to avoid the ball. Yamaguchi made some saves but then let the ball go straight through him for the goal. Did that thing he always does of starting to dive only after the ball has already passed him. Three goals needed, pretty much no options from the bench and pretty much no threat so far. One shot to their 16! If every shot we took in the first half went in, we’d still be trailing in the tie.

We were absolutely terrible. Hiroshima were awful and if they had even a little bit of shooting ability we could have lost by double figures. 

To slightly detract from the Frontale criticism, Sasaki Sho is just an arsehole isn’t he? Probably don’t need to write anything more about that as it’s totally evident. No wonder he gets on so well with Moriyasu! Let’s turn our attention to the ref. Absolutely useless. Both of our yellow cards were a joke. Maruyama’s was probably for his reaction to the ref giving a free kick for a foul that simply didn’t exist, the honourable Sanfrecce player only getting contact after he’d already started throwing himself towards Maruyama and ultimately to the floor. Ito’s yellow just absolutely wasn’t one. At the same time, nothing for their time wasting, and for kicking the ball away or throwing an extra ball onto the pitch to waste more time, or for injury feigning, or delaying free kicks from being taken, or dithering over every little thing they had to do when the ball wasn’t in play. And the there’s the no penalty decision at the end of the match. Kasahara didn’t give it initially because he seemed to not even notice it. Not a massive surprise because he’s useless. When it got referred to VAR it was clear that it was a penalty. I don’t think you’re allowed to step on another players foot, are you? The prick got called to the monitor, had to watch it numerous times and unbelievably still didn’t give it. I mean, it didn’t matter, but we were basically robbed of a goal in both games by awful VAR decisions. If both had been given correctly we would have had extra time. Oh fuck that, carry on with your shitness Kasahara, extra time was the last thing I wanted. But actually Kasahara, I’ve changed my mind, don’t carry on. Do the league a favour and get yourself a new job as far away from football as possible you utterly clueless shithead.

Ahhhh, and relax. Which is exactly what I’m going to do for the next couple of months. Enjoy life without having to watch our awful matches with the unluckiest man in the world in charge of the team and the most football ignorant and business loving man in the world in charge of the club as a whole. At the final whistle we didn’t hang around for the end of season ceremony. I have no desire to even be present when the chairman opens his mouth. The rumours about Erison leaving for JEF or Nagasaki were a bit of a surprise but certainly explained where he’s gone recently. Considering he was our star striker and top scorer this season and we’re happy to get rid of him, presumably to save some money, you’ve got to worry about where the club is going. Certainly things haven’t been great up front but this is almost certainly more to do with our horrible tactics than anything else. The recent emergence of Mochiyama presumably presented a much cheaper option for Mr. Money at the top of the club. His understanding of football is so deep that he thinks if someone scores three goals in one match, (against the second bottom team in the league), he will continue to do so in every consequent game. I suspect Marcinho will go too as he’s our biggest earner. Miyagi will step in in that position, although he’s never played as well there as he did in the 65 minutes he played in his preferred position. On one occasion, apparently never to be repeated. But yet again, another bargain option! Think of all the money we’re saving! I’m quite concerned where Sasaki has gone recently, and I’m sure there are some other players who I’ve forgotten who might not be up for signing on for another year of the crap we’ve just had. Yoshida is probably coming up with another genius idea as we speak. One in the vein of the Chanathip or Gomis signings, to create a buzz and sell shirts and not really have a chance to do anything on the pitch. Keep that lovely cash rolling in. How about we make a bold bid to sign Taylor Swift? I hear she has a big following. She doesn’t need to get on the pitch so it doesn’t matter if she can’t play football. As long as she’s in the squad we can make the merch and we’ll be able to cash on on the shirt sales! Lovely! Yoshida probably is a big fan of Elon Musk and has decided he is on a mission to Doge Frontale to oblivion, cutting things all over the shop without even an inkling of what might happen. He’ll probably be really surprised when attendances drop if we keep getting progressively shitter. He had no idea people could choose not to buy tickets and come. He thought it was an obligation. To be fair, it has definitely felt like something like that this year. A duty or a compulsion. Definitely a chore. It’s quite good for me that I have so much antipathy towards our chairman. That way I can remain reasonably balanced about Hasebe. I’m not particularly sure he’s very good, but it’s great to have someone else to blame for everything that goes wrong at the club. Sadly as he’s the guy at the top I guess he’s quite hard to get rid of. I wonder if he was useless at Fujitsu too and that was why he got fobbed off onto us. It seems insane that we have someone in charge who knows nothing about football and seemingly has no interest in football. If he resigned that would be the exact thing that is needed to put a spring in the step of everyone at the club. Go on, we’ve suffered a lot this year. Give us just one little thing to get excited about. 

So that’s it for this cursed half season. At least when the proper season starts we’ll have some fun away trips to do. I’m thinking of cutting out some of the more mind numbingly dull Kanto away games too. There are definitely better things for me to do than to go to the absolute shithole wastelands of Kashima and Urawa away. As I said above, I’m toying with the idea of doing an end of season survey. I’m absolutely not going to do the player round up or the season round up posts or the stats. There’s just nothing to say that I haven’t already said. This was a disastrous season where it seems no lessons were learnt because every time we were in an absolute hole we somehow fluked a result and got out of it. We could have used the season to experiment and try new things, but the only thing we really tried was how to plumb new depths. I suppose we saw a few new players, but I'd say this was more because of the lack of options due to the massive and perennial injury crisis rather than for any interesting or progressive purposes. The league seemed very weak this time round. This probably explains how we managed to finish in fourth in the East section. What a joke! We’ve been woeful! And that seems like exactly the right word to sum up this year and end this post, so let’s write it one more time and leave it at that. Woeful.

Team 

GK 1. YAMAGUCHI Louis
DF 29. YAMAHARA Reon
DF 2. MATSUNAGANE Yuto
DF 28. MARUYAMA Yuichi (Yellow card 24')
DF 13. MIURA Sota
MF 19. KAWAHARA So
MF 8. TACHIBANADA Kento
MF 17. ITO Tatsuya (Yellow card 65')
MF 14. WAKIZAKA Yasuto 
MF 23. MARCINHO 
FW 20. MOCHIYAMA Kyosuke

Subs

GK 21. HAYASAKA Yuki
GK 49. Svend BRODERSEN
FW 15. MYOGAN Toya (on for ITO 82')
FW 18. KONNO Kazuya (on for MOCHIYAMA 74')
DF 22. UREMOVIC Filip
FW 24. MIYAGI Ten (on for MARCINHO 64')
MF 26. YUI Kota
DF 27. KAMIHASHI Ryota
DF 30. NODA Hiroto

 

Goals

NAKAMURA (Sanfrecce) 44' 0-1

Highlights
 

Vs Kyoto Sanga (away) 9/11/24 J League match 36

Kyoto Sanga 1 - 1 Kawasaki Frontale

It may surprise some readers to hear me say this, but this was quite an entertaining match. Of course the result wasn’t the best, but a draw against a team who with three games to go in the season still weren’t certain to avoid relegation is in 2024 actually a pretty positive outcome. We’ve been atrocious against teams in the bottom half this year. It was especially positive considering that at the final whistle we also were still not mathematically safe from relegation either. This post is going to be light on detail and content for a few reasons. Firstly, I’m writing this on a bus to Tokushima where I intend to consume a lot of alcohol, so there’s definitely a feeling of getting the witting of this out of the way. Secondly, I spent most of the game ducking and weaving trying to avoid the two massive flags in front of me. These flags made large portions of the pitch and the game completely invisible to me. Your guess is probably better than mine for what went on. But don’t worry, I clearly saw all the idiotic things the ref and linesman did though. Finally, this will be light because this game ultimately wasn’t that important and probably won’t live long in the memory. But for once it’s nice to not have an awful performance casting a long shadow over what was supposed to be a nice weekend away. Ok, so let’s get on with this.

As I said, it was a fun game. Large periods of it were end to end, particularly in the second half. Kyoto have been in decent form recently so a draw against them is perhaps a good result. Whilst the game was quite exciting, it wasn’t really very pretty. We were totally on top in the first half yet only managed our first shot around the 35th minute. A very familiar story. After that and before half time we did come alive, but didn’t manage to actually force a save, so perhaps it was more a case of just waking up than being brought back from the dead and given superpowers. Although it didn’t feel like it, it seems like Kyoto really dominated the chances in the second half. Certainly Sung-Ryong made some great and very important saves. But I felt like we were having good chances of our own, so I was a bit shocked when I saw the stats. As the real story of the game for me is the performance of the officials, maybe I should get the Kyoto bitching part over in this paragraph. They’re definitely a physical team, spending quite a lot of the match trying to kick lumps out of us. They are also definitely a team of whiny little arseholes, moaning about every decision, even the ones that went their way. I imagine they’d only be happy if every attempted Frontale tackle resulted in the execution of the player responsible and them being awarded five bonus goals for having to put up with us trying to get the ball. I also noticed that behind the goal in the home end there was one of those usual nationalist flags. It’s not uncommon for teams to have some kind of knuckle-dragger fans whose whole reason for living is to try to be an edgelord waving them but usually they at least attempt to cover things up a little by having them in their team’s colours. Not on this occasion. And I’m pretty sure I didn’t see it in the first half, so maybe they only decide to wave it if there’s a Korean player nearby. Can’t say for sure but it definitely seemed to be the case to me.

This is all probably quite biased though. However, I think both sets of fans were irritated by the person that I’ll dedicate a whole paragraph to. Kasahara was back again and it seems he’s still useless and he still hates us. Perhaps he was wound up by our stubborn refusal to give him a DOGSO red opportunity. It certainly seemed like he had a bit of a grudge against us when he openly laughed as he waved away what I reckon could have been a penalty for a shove in the back on Ienaga. Reckon this decision could have gone either way really, but it was a bit weird to see the enjoyment he took in making it. I guess the big talking point of the game was the penalty. Or rather I should say penalties. I haven’t yet seen a replay of Sung-Ryong apparently moving off his line for the first one which he saved. To be honest though, I’d say that anytime the taker does one of those stupid run ups the keeper should have the right to not only leave his line but also smack the taker in the face. It’s really annoying and I’m disappointed that I’ve seen some of our players do it this year. I’m not sure how jogging on the spot doesn’t count as stopping halfway through the run up, but it seems that plenty of refs are ok with it. Both of the penalties definitely included clear stops in the run up. Would have been nice to see the officials pay as much attention to that as they did to movement off the line. The most annoying thing though is that it was even given. Kasahara missed it and after VAR drew his attention to his ‘clear and obvious error’ it took him ages and numerous replays to apparently see that it hit Tachibanada’s arm. To be honest, I don’t think that part was even worth debating it was so obvious. The stupid part is the fact that refs are supposed to take into account body position and distance from where the ball was kicked in these cases. Tachibanada was touching the attacker so couldn’t have been closer. Quite how he’s supposed to get his arms out the way as an attacker kicks the ball right at him from point blank range, I don’t know. As soon as he went to the monitor I just knew he was going to give it though, the stupid arsehole. He’d already stiffed us in the first half by not sending Appiah off for a second yellow. Clearly it was a yellow card offence but Kasahara didn’t want to give it in front of the home end. It was particularly galling that he gave Sai a yellow for a very similar incident in almost the same place in the second half. But I guess it’s no surprise we don’t get consistency from these refs as they seem unaware even of the rules of the game, so it’s expecting a bit much for them to apply them on a fair basis. Kasahara should consider a new career. Not just because he’s a hopeless ref, but also because I think he do really well having his own winery as he clearly is excellent at bottling things. To be fair though, he wasn’t helped by his linesman at our end who was also hopeless. But similarly to how I stated above, if the refs are shit, it’s no surprise that the guys who aren’t good enough to be awful refs are also not good at their job. I’m not sure anyone ever dreams as a youngster of being a linesman, do they? But anyway, useless ref, useless linesman, but it probably helped when it came to my enjoyment of the match. I shouted quite a lot. I suspect I might shout more when I watch some replays.

So an enjoyable game and thanks to Gamba beating Jubilo, a point that ensures our safety, so there’s… erm… something to celebrate tonight. Hmmmm. Our matches have seemed kind of pointless for a lot of this year, but now they are officially pointless. Well, apart from the ACL games. Next up, the second half of our match against Urawa. I’m not going to that one as I have much better plans. Going to Saitama Stadium is a pain in the arse even when there are no caveats, so the thought of going there for only 45 minutes is a big ask. And we’re losing at half time. After that it’s Buriram away in the ACL, so I’m not going to be attending a match for a while. Might give me an opportunity to get my voice back properly before presumably ruining it again when the next clown of a ref rolls into town. Oniki lovers will be sad that the Oniki Frontale games are running out fast now. I’m pleased that we don’t have any relegation worries so I can probably have a little truce with him. He’s obviously done a lot for the club and it’s a bit of shame that he didn’t leave in a better circumstances than a hopeless season, but at least he didn’t get us relegated. Come on Oniki and give us something to cheer about by smashing five past Urawa!
 

 

Team

GK 1. JUNG Sung-Ryong

DF 31. VAN WERMESKERKEN Sai (Yellow card 52')

DF 35. MARUYAMA Yuichi
DF 5. SASAKI Asahi
DF 13. MIURA Sota

MF 8. TACHIBANADA Kento

MF 77. YAMAMOTO Yuki
MF 17. TONO Daiya
MF 23. MARCINHO
FW 30. SEGAWA Yusuke
FW 9. ERISON

 

Subs

GK 98. YAMAGUCHI Louis
DF 4. JESIEL (on for VAN WERMESKERKEN 84')

MF 10. OSHIMA Ryota (on for YAMAMOTO 46')
FW 11. KOBAYASHI Yu (on for MARCINHO 84')
MF 19. KAWAHARA So
FW 20. YAMADA Shin (on for ERISON 46')
FW 41. IENAGA Akihiro (on for TONO 46')

My Frontale Man Of The Match

Haven’t done this for ages but given that I made a note that he was single-handedly keeping us alive in the game it has to go to…

JUNG Sung-Ryong - I’m slightly worried that he might be leaving us at the end of the year, presumably to retire. This match showed that there’s no need for him to retire just yet. Great stuff again!

Goals

YAMADA (Frontale) 24' 0-1
RAFAEL ELIAS (Kyoto) 79' PEN 1-1

Highlights

Vs Vissel Kobe (home) 7/8/24 J League match 25

Kawasaki Frontale 3 - 0 Vissel Kobe

This game was delightful. It’s always fun to beat a team who splash the cash and even more so this season considering we are struggling to beat almost anyone. This was the first time this year that we’d managed to win two games in a row. We’ve somehow ended up in 12th after this result. Although the score might suggest otherwise, this wasn’t a magnificent demolition of Kobe by us. Instead it was something more like someone trying to do their washing up by throwing a grenade into the sink by them. Which probably made it even better. Let’s get straight into this in depth and considered post. (Well, actually more like into the pointless rambling bitching).

Don’t believe everything, (hmmm, maybe anything), you read on Twitter. That second red was an absolutely nailed on one. You can’t see it from the single replay everyone has used to add their measured expert opinions after viewing but Thuler was shouting at the linesman to enter the field to take off an extra ball that was in play. The linesman said he couldn’t, to which Thuler responded with a torrent of abuse and then kicked the ball directly at him. The Kobe manager says he doesn’t know why he would even be booked as he was passing the ball to the linesman, perhaps ignoring the fact that the ball didn’t need to go to the linesman and Thuler would have been fine kicking it anywhere in absolutely any other direction other than directly at the official. It was clearly intended to intimidate the linesman so fair play to him for drawing the ref’s attention to it. We constantly hear people talking about players lacking respect for officials and when they are pulled for doing something that exactly demonstrates that kind of thing everyone thinks it’s a disgrace. Wonderful double standards! And even better coming from a point of view of almost complete ignorance about what actually happened in the stadium. If I were a Kobe fan or anyone to do with the club I’d be more angry at a totally dickish bit of petulance from a player whose team was already down to ten man rather than moaning about the officials.

Initially wasn’t as sure about the first red. At the time I couldn’t see what had happened so was relieved to see the card going to them and not us. On replays which apparently have convinced Kobe fans in the absolute opposite direction, I think it’s probably fair enough. From the majority of his first half performance it seemed that Iino was mainly concerned with diving so it was a really pleasant surprise to see him get booked for it. It always annoys me that no one seems to get booked for diving anymore. He was definitely looking for contact and even seemed to stop as he got in front of Ominami, perhaps aiming for the red card rather and a free kick rather than a penalty and a yellow. And he did that really fucking annoying thing of grabbing the ball as he went down. He seemed to be an intensely annoying character and this is even reflected in his name which whenever it is typed in romaji looks like lino, a common shortened form of linesman. See you can’t even tell the difference, can you? I might have just typed the same thing both times. It’s probably a bit of luck that Thuler was the idiot kicking the ball at the linesman rather than Iino otherwise we’d be talking about an interaction between the Iino and lino. It could be even further confused if that situation had taken place on an interior floor surface as them we’d be talking about Iino and the lino on the lino.

As I constantly say that Kasahara is normally a nightmare ref for us due to us always getting DOGSO reds when he’s in charge of our games it would probably cause the irony detector to explode if I were to praise him on this occasion. Put your hard hats on, because he got both decisions right as far as I’m concerned. I’m sure Twitter experts all over the world though will know better though from their one camera angle of the second red, which was coincidentally the exact worst one possible to understand the decision. Everyone knows the best place to truly enjoy football is on a screen thousands of miles from the stadium with a dubiously stained Sorare tshirt on. Even better if you can parade the fact that you are truly of superior intellect by saying something like this would only happen in Japan, right? It doesn’t matter if you only got the tiniest glimpse of something, you can still have an EXPERT OPINION. I’ve seen that picture of the dinosaurs looking slightly perturbed as a massive meteor crashes into the earth and although it is only an artistic rendering of something that may have happened millions of years before I was born I can conclusively say that that kind of thing could only have happened in that particular place, (I have no experience of it and no knowledge about it, but that doesn’t matter because I KNOW). In addition those dinosaurs went down too easily and the linesman missed a clear offside from the meteor. Don’t forget this is not an opinion this is CAST IRON TRUTH. Don’t doubt it, I’ve watched a two second gif of one dinosaur’s eyebrow movement several times so don’t need to see the rest of the picture. Oh, and I have managed a premier league team for over 200 matches on Championship Manager.

Now, let's take a little break and look at some whining at the ref for giving correct decisions Kobe photos!

Red whine - pair with beef dishes.
Particularly good if the beef is misplaced

White whine - pair with roasted official,
sorry, I mean roasted pork

Rosé whine - pair with a green salad
with a very sour citrus dressing

Sparkling whine - pair with something cheesy,
like your chairman's online presence

Dessert whine - pair with bitter
(at decisons) chocolate pudding

This was a thoroughly enjoyable game because of what happened. It’s a bit difficult to say whether we were any good or not. Especially given that for the majority of the first half this was a game that perhaps could be described as one between two great teams who were cancelling each other out. Equally though the same could be true if it were two teams playing mediocre to dogshit level stuff. And seeing as neither team managed to hit the target in the first half this is probably closer to the truth. In spite of this being a wonderfully entertaining victory, it does leave a bit of a bad taste in the mouth when you consider that it has probably done Machida a bit of a favour. I guess a distaste for Machida is one thing we can all agree on. Hopefully they’ll have three people sent off when we play them. On the notoriously tweaky J League forums Vissel fans were talking about it being a league wide conspiracy because ‘THeY dOn’T wAnT Us tO wIn tHe LeAgUe’. I think pretty much everyone would rather they do than Machida do. I don’t think us Frontale fans ever said that when decisions went against us when we weren’t doing absolutely shit like we are this year. Guess Rakuten money can’t buy any relief from paranoia or a persecution complex, eh?

Hmmmm, wasn’t a great deal of actual content in this post was there? Next up, FC Tokyo away and then YFM at home the following weekend. Would be lovely to keep the run going. Actually can you call it a run if it’s only a run of two matches. Guess it’s more of a brisk stroll at this stage. It would be a miracle if either of those games ended up being as amusing and entertaining as this one though. It’s somewhat unfortunate that us finally managing to string two wins together is coinciding with a period for me where I have way too many more important things to do than write these blog posts. So I know I always say this, but they will be a lot shorter in the future, for a while at least. Which is a huge shame after the way this game went and considering that we’re playing two derbies in our next two games. I’ll do my best to leave out the informative bits and leave the snark and insults in though. With this in mind, I’ll finish by briefly resurrecting a recently dormant format point and see you next time for the new ‘don’t have the time or inclination to do this properly’ style Frontale Rabbit blog.


Banner Wisdom

 

‘We shall overcome’

What do they mean by this? Is it the massive amounts of cash that they’ll overcome? Is it the constant interference from their chairman? Perhaps it’s the well known on the internet anti-Vissel conspiracy that runs through the entire league and is especially rife amongst the officials? Or is it the handicap of two of your players being idiots and getting sent off? Ah, actually it’s definitely not that last one, is it? Because that resulted in a 3-0 defeat. 😉

 

 

Team

GK 1. JUNG Sung-Ryong

DF 31. VAN WERMESKERKEN Sai

DF 3. OMINAMI Takuma

DF 5. SASAKI Asahi (Yellow card 20')
DF 13. MIURA Sota
MF 8. TACHIBANADA Kento

MF 10. OSHIMA Ryota

MF 14. WAKIZAKA Yasuto
FW 41. IENAGA Akihiro
FW 20. YAMADA Shin
FW 23. MARCINHO

Subs

GK 22. HAYASAKA Yuki
DF 7. KURUMAYA Shintaro (on for SASAKI 90+1')
FW 11. KOBAYASHI Yu (on for IENAGA 86')
MF 16. SEKO Tatsuki (on for VAN WERMESKERKEN 78')

MF 17. TONO Daiya (on for OSHIMA 78')
FW 26. YAMAUCHI Hinata (on for MARCINHO 78')
FW 30. SEGAWA Yusuke 

 
Goals

IENAGA (Frontale) 57' 1-0
YAMADA (Frontale) 71' 2-0
YAMADA (Frontale) 85' 3-0


My Frontale Man Of The Match

A slightly left field selection on this occasion as they haven’t started any games for us so far this season, but it has to go to…

KARMA - it’s a bitch when you break the rules and get caught, isn’t it? 😉

Highlights

 

Vs Albirex Niigata (away) 22/6/24 J League match 19

Albirex Niigata 2 - 2 Kawasaki Frontale

So, what do you think I’m going to say in this blog post? I suspect that some might expect me to continue with the usual moaning and criticism. After all, we threw away a lead and only just managed to avoid losing to a team sitting below us in the league, (and let’s be honest, there aren’t many teams that are below us in the league…). But no, you’re wrong! I’m in a good mood! Well maybe a good mood is a bit of an exaggeration, but I’m vaguely positive for the first time in ages. Not sure I should be quite as positive as I am, but you know, these kind of situations are recently quite rare so I should probably ride this wave whilst I can. The truth is though that some of the reasons for my positivity were later undercut by cold hard reality, but more on that shortly. A draw isn’t going to particularly help us get clear of the relegation battle, but it’s a draw that comes with some caveats, so let’s go into the reasons to be relatively cheerful and then undermine them as we go along with crushing negativity. Sounds perfect, eh?

Happy clappy

I said after the Kobe game borefest (which I still feel was possibly the worst game of the year so far), that Wakizaka and Tachibanada, (and maybe some others), probably needed ‘a rest’ as they’d not been contributing much recently but still remained undroppable. But blimey, Oniki announced a line up without either of them! However, it turned out that Tachibanada was banned due to accumulated yellow cards and after the game Wakizaka was reported as being ‘sick’, (I know the feeling! I’m getting pretty sick of watching our games so it must be even worse to be playing in them). With our new look midfield we came charging out of the blocks and had a pretty good first half I thought. We’d had more shots by the 15th minute than we’d had in the whole game against Kobe. Tono playing in the Wakizaka role seemed to be a lot more effective than erm… Wakizaka playing in the Wakizaka role. If Tono had had his shooting boots on we could have been cruising very early on. But we were shooting! Even though the formation said we’re playing 4-2-3-1 it felt more like a 4-4-2 to me with Tono playing really far forward. Wonderful! Shots! Excitement! Forwards passes!

But…

As I said above, it seems like the changes were forced and I’m not sure Oniki will notice that without two of his favourites in this game we weren’t as we've been recently and he will probably just retreat to the usual guys as soon as he can. I also wonder if the reason Oniki is digging into the squad a bit more and using some different players is just because of masses of injuries that we haven't been told about yet. We certainly seem to be picking up quite a few knocks this year. And as an extra bonus downer, Takai on the bench and Wakizaka ‘sick’... Perhaps saving them for an already agreed in principle transfer coming soon? Purely speculation on my part here, but the fact that it’s so out of character for Oniki to leave them out makes me think that there could be something else going on. Think it's a lot more likely to be true about Takai though. Oniki turning to Tanabe before Takai seems a bit suspicious to me if we know Oniki as well as we think we do.

A new approach?

I dunno if this was to do with the players selected rather than any tactics, but we seemed a lot more attacking in this game than I had expected. As I said above, the 4-2-3-1 looked more like a 4-4-2 to me for most of the first half. Has Oniki finally taken the handbrake off and told the players to just try and score a goal? I don’t think we looked any shakier at the back than we have done in recent games and I’d definitely trade a bit of excitement going forward for a little bit of defensive jeopardy. Of course I’d rather have the former without the latter, but as recent matches have shown, absolutely zero attacking threat combined with a usually solid but at times disastrously generous defence isn’t working, and I’d much rather have at least a bit of fun in my Frontale life if that’s ok.

The usual old retreat

Yeah, the first half was pleasantly surprising, but still Oniki dithered as players got increasingly knackered and crackered (don’t know if that makes sense, but I like the rhyme). The first sub, which seemed to be predetermined, in spite of Kobayashi going down ‘injured’, (Yamada was already warming up and ready to come on), still probably came too late. It was great to see Kobayashi back from injury, but he definitely went off the boil a bit before he was changed. I guess it’s kind of surprising that we didn’t concede in this game whilst preparing to make subs as we normally do. I can definitely imagine that Kobayashi was struggling a bit due to having not played for ages, but you’d hope that the manager might have noticed this before we did in the stands. The rest of the subs came way too late as well. I’d say we were slightly lucky to go into injury time level as we’d had plenty of players who looked like they were out of energy still on the pitch. We had an exciting bench I thought, but it probably says something that Oniki was desperate to not use what he considers our weaker players until he absolutely had to. Actually, that should have said ‘until a bit after he absolutely should have done’. I don’t blame him too much though, as we were doing better in this game than we had done recently, and he is nothing if not unbelievably conservative in his approach so doesn't like taking what he considers to be risks.

Yes!

We didn’t lose away against Niigata! Forget the league position of the teams, we’re always a bit shite away at Niigata. And we didn’t lose!

But, er… kind of no too

Well, we didn’t lose, but after a promising start the writing seemed to be on the wall and I’m surprised we didn’t lose. We’d wasted so many chances in the first half, and to be honest continued to waste chances throughout the game, that there was always a feeling of ‘we’re going to regret not taking those chances’. And we slowly sunk further and further into desperate defending and stopped making chances due to players being, well, knackered. At the time, I was still buoyed by the fact that he’d changed something, (not realising that those changes were enforced), so kind of ignored the fact that he clearly seemed to be watching a different game to us in the stands. But once again his conservatism, which has grown in leaps and bounds recently, (even though we don't usually have anything to conserve aside from the chance of getting a 0-0 when we start the game), seemed to come to the fore. I guess we'll have a bit more of an idea if any progress is being made in the next few games. I'm guessing he'll return to Tachibanada and Wakizaka next game so will have an opportunity to prove me conclusively wrong. Whether he does or not is another matter.

The opposition baiting bit

Not sure how the bitching about the opposition part fits into this new post layout, so let’s just put it here. Niigata looked even more wedded to the pointless passing thing than we are. I could almost feel the disappointment resonating off the players when they were denied the chance to take a goal kick short. I’ve heard this is their normal game plan, but when it got to 1-1, the ponderous nature of their play seemed to go up a further notch. It really seemed like they were happy with a draw, which when you’re playing 2024 Frontale is a disgraceful position to hold as you always have a chance for a easy win if you just go for it a little. Even when they were a goal down they seemed to remain obsessed with the sideways defensive passing. Most of our fans were booing them at this stage but I took the opposite approach, shouting ‘bravo!’ every time they wasted a bit more time twatting around at the back whilst trailing in the match. I’d like to see us adopt this approach as a fan group actually. Sure, if we’re winning and the opposition is wasting time, get on their backs, but whilst we’re ahead, I think we should applaud their attempts at running the clock down. One other aspect of Niigata that I hadn’t noticed in the past was their incessant whinging. There was barely a decision in the game, including ones which went their way, where they didn’t surround the ref to have a moan. I also quite enjoyed the massive cheers from at least half of the Albirex supporters in the stadium as one of their players clearly, as far as I could see, booted the ball into the side netting, the fans thinking it was a goal. I’d like to bitch about this more but I’ve done it myself in the past and any wisecracks about not being able to see the game because of the running track also look a bit like self-inflicted disses so let’s just move on. Move on but not before enjoying the fact that the Albirex cheerleaders, clearly under instructions to run out and do their thing for every goal or at the final whistle after their team has won, raced out as the Albirex fans cheered the ball hitting the side netting and then had to shuffle back shamefacedly when they noticed it hadn’t gone in, and then proceed to run out to celebrate an offside being given against their forwards as they thought it was the final whistle. It was amusing at the time, but much more amusing when we proceeded to score a late equaliser shortly afterwards. Delightful. I think justice was done to be honest as there was no way Albirex deserved to win the game. I don’t think we particularly did either given the wayward nature of much of our shooting, but you know, we were shooting, so let’s be optimistic about that, eh? On, and when did Michael James become so good? Not only stopping our attacks, but also wandering forward with the ball and assisting for goals. Guess that’s a flaw in us signing so many players who we never really play. Once they leave, they are quite fired up for having a good game when they play against us. Well done to him anyway.

Banner wisdom

‘I’ll always be around ‘

Not sure what it’s supposed to mean, but surely this is the ultimate stalkers’ maxim. If this banner was made by one guy for the attention of one specific other, this is high level stalking indeed. It’s even got me a bit scared. Hopefully there is a more football related explanation. 

The ref bit

It was Kasahara, so I’m shocked we didn’t get a player sent off. Even more shocked that he’d given Seko a yellow when VAR thought that something more might have been appropriate. Thankfully they decided against it as I thought it would have been hugely unfair in a game where he’d done really well. Kasahara was bit flakey though. But I have to… errrr, give him some... praise…. He booked a Niigata player for whinging. Marvelous! If only he’d booked some of them for time wasting. Although to be honest, that backfired on them in the end. Some Niigata fans online have been moaning that the game should have finished long before we scored. I’d say to them that they wasted so much time during the game and particularly when celebrating what they thought was their winner, that an overly late equaliser was perfect justice. So basically I guess I’m saying, Kasahara, usually terrible, but… he did pretty well…? What’s wrong with me? I haven’t moaned about the ref much for a few matches now. I guess it helps when we are so obviously at fault for our own downfall. But… whisper it… are the refs getting better? Probably not and clearly now we’ll have an awful one on Wednesday against Shonan.

Yellow card for moaning incoming!

So yes, next up Shonan at home on Wednesday followed by Sanfrecce at home on Saturday. At half time in this game I thought, wow, is this the start of our season and of a nice winning run? Probably not for the former and as we only drew definitely not the latter. But maybe there are some green shoots of recovery. I suspect Oniki will chop them down with his tactics strimmer on Wednesday though. Before this game I thought we would lose this match, draw against Shonan and then miraculously win against Sanfrecce to somehow keep Oniki in a job. He always seems to get a pressure easing win when he needs one. (Of course he’s going nowhere this year anyway, in case you thought I was saying he'll be fired). But after a slightly positive performance, well, who knows? If it’s back to the usual way of doing things next match, I will of course be disappointed but I won’t be surprised. Here’s hoping Oniki gives me a nice shock on Wednesday.

 

Team

GK 1. JUNG Sung-Ryong
DF 30. SEGAWA Yusuke
DF 3. OMINAMI Takuma

DF 4. JESIEL
DF 5. SASAKI Asahi
MF 16. SEKO Tatsuki (Yellow card 88')
MF 77. YAMAMOTO Yuki
MF 17. TONO Daiya
FW 41. IENAGA Akihiro
FW 11. KOBAYASHI Yu
FW 23. MARCINHO

Subs

GK 99. KAMIFUKUMOTO Naoto
DF 2. TAKAI Kota
MF 6. ZE RICARDO (on for YAMAMOTO 87')
DF 15. TANABE Shuto (on for SEGAWA 87')
FW 24. MIYAGI Ten (on for MARCINHO 79')
FW 28. PATRICK VERHON (on for IENAGA 79')
FW 20. YAMADA Shin (on for KOBAYASHI 66')

 
Goals

MARCINHO (Frontale) 17' 0-1
FUJIWARA (Albirex) 61' 1-1
SUZUKI (Albirex) 90+7' 2-1
YAMADA (Frontale) 90+11' 2-2

My Frontale Man Of The Match

 

I’d really like to give this to Tono who was something of a revelation playing in the Wakizaka role. What a shock that when you play the attacker Tono in a more attacking role he does better! At the same time, in spite of him usually being a reliable goalscorer, he really couldn’t hit the target in this game. But he did well anyway. I’d also like to give it to Marcinho who did a lot better than in recent games, but still isn’t quite back to his best. So with these things in mind I’ll give it jointly to…

SEKO Tatsuki and SASAKI Asahi - maybe it’s a coincidence that I have Seko’s shirt and Sasaki’s towel but I thought both of them had really good games in this match. Long may that continue!

Highlights