Vs Kashima Antlers (home) 27/10/21 Emperor's Cup Quarter Final

Kawasaki Frontale 3 - 1 Kashima Antlers

Another fun night at Todoroki, particularly as we seem to have found our shooting boots again. You could say we were a bit fortunate with some of the goals, but that doesn’t take away from this being a genuinely joyous evening of football, the likes of which I haven’t seen for a while. Of course it always helps if the opposition are unlikeable. In recent times it seems that YFM have probably become most Frontale fans’ most detestable team (if they weren’t already before). But Kashima came and left Todoroki making a big challenge to take that title for themselves. Which lets be honest is the only title they have any chance of taking this year! ZING! Whilst our rivalry with YFM has a local edge topped up by some quite unlikeable individuals, the envy and resentment that came from them stopping our three consecutive league titles and an irritation coming from the fact that they seem to keep pulling some very flukey results out when they least deserve them, it’s nice to get back to hating a team just because they seem like there are scumbags involved in it from top to bottom. Their fans worked themselves up for the match by doing the same funereal hand clap rhythm for about 20 minutes as the players warmed up, as if they had some foresight on what kind of performance their team were going to put in. They took a break for some more spontaneous applause as their players were introduced and then proceeded to restart it as ours were, in an attempt to drown out our applause. As soon as our announcement was finished they stopped so we can be pretty sure it was intentional. I guess this is all another manifestation of the ‘Spirit of Zico’ that they seem so proud of. I noticed a flag that is maybe new that said ‘BELIEVE KENTO’. I don’t know what Kento said and why people might be doubting him, but if he said ‘Kashima are a horrible team from an industry blasted absolute wilderness who will win nothing this year’ I think we can all believe him now. This long preamble to an Emperor’s Cup game blog post is somewhat strange as I’ve already written a lot but haven’t yet mentioned the dogshit music that gets played on these occasions. In order to keep things relevant and exciting it seems that the JFA has selected a panel of besuited middle- to old-aged men locked in a sterile office with a whiteboard and a google search window open on cheap rights-free tunes and no discernible interest in music as their DJs for the occasion. On the white board we have the following YOUTH! DANCE MUSIC! ROCK GUITARS! EPIC! FRESH! and from these starting points they managed to assemble a playlist which swerved erratically from one horrible song to another. Painfully dasai ‘urban’ to horrendous fusion funk, synth pop backing track with a three minute cock rock guitar solo and then an AI approximation of endlessly looping 90’s Euro house which just kept going round and round apparently in an effort to really build the atmosphere. I am a self acknowledged music snob so of course I wasn’t going to like it whatever it was, but the Emperor’s Cup seems to really plumb new depths with its selections. The announcements are weird too. I guess the JFA wants to stamp its authority on the competition, which is why all the normal established conventions are removed and replaced with a new set that never seem to work very well. Who needs QR code tickets when you can use paper ones? Get your own PR announcers in, preferably some who have never heard of any of the players before and hand them the team line ups one kanji at a time just as they are due to be read out for maximum fluffability. Number 10 - Oshima Ryuta! That’s what it sounded like to me anyway. I guess you can’t deny that they really do make these games stand out from the league matches, so if that’s their intention, they’re doing the right thing! Lots of moaning so far which is weird as it was a really fun evening. However, I think this kind of moaning is the type that can only come from having a hell of a lot of fun and deciding to be a bit cheeky. Let’s have a paragraph of non-moaning to talk about us and then go back to some more hopefully humorous negativity about them and the officials!

 

We went with the same starting line up and almost the same bench as last time, which is probably not a surprise. I guess we can say that this is Oniki’s best 11 at the moment. Still missing are Hasegawa who now seems destined to depart, (unless he’s secretly injured. I don’t think he is though), and Joao Schmidt who seems to now be getting the Neto treatment. You can’t deny that Tachibanada has done a great job in the anchor role, but you would have thought Schmidt would at least warrant a place on the bench. He is not injured so the mystery deepens. Perhaps Oniki would love to rotate a bit more, but he has his favourite 11 and never seems to get round to making that many changes as recently he always has an important game or a record points total to chase. I suspect the reliance on the same core of players lead to our mid season slump which to be honest had been coming for a while before it actually reared its head. Perhaps if we’d rotated a bit more we might have won the league already and we might still be in the ACL. Or perhaps we’d be out of the ACL and in a worse situation in the league. The recent little breaks in this year’s packed schedule have clearly done the team good though as we’re on a lovely winning run at the moment. Oniki seems to not be sure what to do when it comes to subbing Damiao though. In this game Chinen replaced him which was something of a shock for Kobayashi fans but probably makes sense from a like for like point of view. But then he seems to feel bad about playing Kobayashi on the right, so after briefly doing that we switched to a 4-4-2, which let’s be honest, never really seems to work and didn’t really again in this match. But by that stage it didn’t really matter anyway. Perhaps Oniki was keen to get Yamamura on, who almost always seems to score against his old team (and doesn’t celebrate, which is something many people hate, but I really like). It wasn’t to be on this occasion, but we’d already put three in by that stage so it didn’t really matter. Once again it seemed like a lot was going through Marcinho, which I guess makes sense as he’s the dribbler in the team and Ienaga on the other side… isn’t usually actually on the other side and instead just wanders where he fancies. Even if it wasn’t a massive success in the first half, the balls down the left to him were giving Kashima all sorts of problems and were a lot of fun to watch. Hopefully as he plays more games Marcinho will become even more integrated in the way we play and the times when an attack peters out going through him will become less frequent. I haven’t seen him really unleash a decent shot yet. I typed this just before he ‘scored’ with a header. At the time it looked like an own goal to me. The replays didn’t make things much clearer but Marcinho got credited with it. This was changed in the second half when it was amended to OWN GOAL, which I’d like to say vindicates my initial thoughts, but to be honest watching replays back I’m still not sure what happened. I just would have thought he would have celebrated a bit more if he’d got his head on it. And also the defender was much bigger than him and had jumped higher. Our second goal was another curious one. After some great work from Marcinho which didn’t peter out he passed the ball to Wakizaka who smashed it home. How we celebrated another Wakizaka goal! And how we giggled as on the third replay it became clear that the shot had bounced off a totally unaware Hatate’s head, wrong-footing the keeper. Very amusing! When Wakizaka smashed home the third I wondered if on the last replay we’d once again see it bounce off some part of Hatate but this time it was just a lovely strike. Nice! In general, I’d say that we were by far the better team for the first hour but couldn’t quite make clear enough chances. When we were three up we were having a lot of fun. Damiao tried an overhead clearance in the middle of the pitch and also one of those flick the ball over your head from behind you things. Neither worked but both were fun. We took a free kick 100% sideways, booting the ball straight across the pitch from one side to the other and Ienaga killed the ball dead without even seeming to pay any attention to what he was doing. He seemed to be really enjoying himself. Well, up until he got booked slightly dubiously and then seemed to get a bit pissed off. Oniki did the right thing by subbing him I think. The last third of the match we took our foot off the gas a bit and ended up hanging on a bit towards the end. The 4-4-2 seemed to trash our tactics slightly and it all got a bit crazy. Thankfully we had Sung-Ryong to calm things down by saving the ball boys some effort and going to collect wayward shots himself and then slowly, very slowly coming back to take his goal kick. I enjoyed that quite a lot, full in the knowledge that if it were the opposition doing it, I would be furious. We had a few decent opportunities in this period, but Kashima did too and actually had quite a few more than us. Whether this was to do with us shutting up shop or them getting better I don’t really know. But certainly we weren’t helped by the ref. I’ll talk about Kashima and the official in this next paragraph which I’ll unofficially title ‘toerags’.

 

This was a real game of two halves. In the first half the linesmen were absolutely awful, miles behind the action and flagging completely randomly. In the second, the ref Murakami, the silver fox Rod Stewart impersonator of J League refs, decided he’d grab back some attention that he thought his hairdo had been denied. FC Tokyo fans will remember Murakami as the ref who didn’t send off Nara when he booted one of their players in the head, a decision which obviously was 100% correct… In this match he was similarly card shy. And actually not only card shy. I think he became quite whistle demure too. (I toyed with ‘whistle wary’ here, which is a lot more satisfying alliteratively, but I felt didn’t quite work). Kashima started the game pretty clueless going forward, which is an unusual tactical game plan, but a very welcome one. Finding themselves three nil down, the plan changed. The new plan involved pulling faces that looked like they were about to burst out grizzling, but pairing this infant demeanour with a rapidly increasing desire to seriously injure our players. I can’t remember seeing a dirtier team recently. It was all petulant kicking and given the fragile nature of some of our guys I think we were seriously lucky to come away with no injuries. But don’t let this fool you into thinking that I dislike them more than the officials. Murakami had readjusted his tolerance so wildly that only the most brutal fouls got even a free kick, let alone a card. Kurumaya was cleaned out on the wing, Marcinho seemed to get elbowed. Kobayashi was clattered and lost the ball which lead to their goal. It’s not often that I say that I wish we had VAR, but I’m pretty sure that goal would have been ruled out for the ref making an obvious mistake missing that foul. And then most bafflingly as Chinen raced through near the end of the game with no one ahead of him and two players chasing and got absolutely clattered before he got to the box Murakami didn’t consider it a DOGSO and just gave a yellow. I don’t think Judge Replay talks about Emperor’s Cup games and I’d say that Murakami must be quite pleased about this as they could probably do a whole episode on his uselessness. But then again I would say that, wouldn’t I? Oniki was also not very happy with Murakami, talking to him for a long time at the end of the game as the officials tried to leave the pitch. The only possible explanation I can come up with for some of his decisions would be that he had ‘3-1 Frontale win’ in the JFA headquarters sweepstake and was determined to get that result in whatever way he could. And here we wrap things up nicely by returning to the dirge rhythm still being beaten out by the Kashima drummers. They had one of those message flags saying something about a title but it seems to be unreadable from my photo. I wonder if after they had written ‘タイトル’ they just had a hissy fit like their players would do in this game and just splattered paint everywhere. Or did it actually say ‘All our hopes of a title this season are gone’? And the slow dull thud of the drums was for the funeral march of their 2021 hopes and expectations, a memento mori of their remaining games being pointless and  just taking us all one step closer to a miserable death. Lovely!

 

Next up Urawa at home next Wednesday lunchtime. We can win the league title if we win and YFM don’t. Basically, four points will secure things even if YFM win all their remaining games. If we don’t get the job done on Wednesday, things will move on to Sagan Tosu away on Sunday. This is always one of my favourite away trips of the season, but we should remember what happened the last time we went to Kyushu hoping to wrap up the league. Oita away… never forget. Hopefully this wonderful carnival of a game and fantastic result against some pantomime villains will give us a nice boost for the rest of the season. Go Frontale!

Team 

 
GK 1. Sung-Ryong JUNG
DF 13. YAMANE Miki

DF 4. JESIEL

DF 5. TANIGUCHI Shogo

DF 2. NOBORIZATO Kyohei

MF 22. TACHIBANADA Kento

MF 47. HATATE Reo

MF 8. WAKIZAKA Yasuto

FW 41. IENAGA Akihiro (Yellow card 62')

FW 9. LEANDRO DAMIAO

FW 23. MARCINHO

Subs

GK 27. TANNO Kenta

DF 7. KURUMAYA Shintaro (on for NOBORIZATO 67')

FW 11. KOBAYASHI Yu (on for IENAGA 75')

MF 10. OSHIMA Ryota (on for MARCINHO 67')

FW 20. CHINEN Kei (on for LEANDRO DAMIAO 67')
FW 19. TONO Daiya

DF 28. YAMAMURA Kazuya (on for WAKIZAKA 78')

 

 

My Frontale Man Of The Match

Last time I went with the usually unheralded by me Taniguchi, and today I’ll perhaps surprise again. Tachibanada once again did a great job and was in the running I thought. Ienaga also had a lot of fun and Hatate was tireless. However, I’m going to give it to…

WAKIZAKA Yasuto - was cruelly denied a goal by Hatate knowing nothing about it but getting his bonce in the way but then managed to smash one home for himself afterwards. Not sure you can call a shot smacking one of your now players in the head an assist, but if you can, one goal and one assist is good enough for me to give it to him on this occasion.

 

 

Goals

 

OWN GOAL (Kashima) 32' 1-0

HATATE (Frontale) 48' 2-0 

WAKIZAKA (Frontale) 51' 3-0 

ARAKI (Kashima) 90' 3-1

 

Highlights

 

Vs Sanfrecce Hiroshima (away) 21/8/21 J League match 25

Sanfrecce Hiroshima 1 - 1 Kawasaki Frontale

Oooof. Well that wasn’t much fun. But at the same time, we can’t say we didn’t see it coming. We’ve been a bit rubbish recently because we’re tired, right?… Oh, maybe not. We’ve been a bit rubbish recently because of the refs, right?… Maybe not. Because we’ve lost our two best players and have done nothing to replace them?.. Probably getting closer, but… One thing we can all agree on, whatever your interpretation of this recent rubbish spell, is that we’ve been rubbish. Given that I delighted in the early Muscat Out hashtags recently, it’s only right that I should give credit to YFM when they play well… Sorry, what was that? I missed what you said. Never mind, can’t have been important. Anyway, moving on to the moaning, here’s what someone might say if they had watched this awful match and then wanted to get the resulting blog post out of the way as soon as possible with as little effort as possible.

Positives -  

We didn’t lose! That’s it!

Negatives -  

We were utterly shite for the majority of the game, were lucky to get a draw, in spite of Hiroshima apparently not wanting to do anything at all in the second half, and look totally clueless with a squad that has gone from one with high quality back up in every position, to one that plays like it is entirely made up of reserves, the kind of which make up J League squads but are lucky to even make the bench in Levain Cup games. If a few players play badly, perhaps you can blame the players. If everyone is shit, perhaps you can blame the manager. I dunno, I don’t have any answers, but we look like we’ll never score again, let alone win recently. Yes, we lost two important players. But even the players who were playing before we lost those players seem to have been transformed into statues by Mitoma and Ao’s departures. Schmidt didn’t have a great game. Ienaga, who knows? He was pretty much anonymous. Hasegawa had a great opportunity with Mitoma gone but seems to be going the way of Chinen recently, ie. I’m sure there’s a player in there, but more often than not, most games seem to take away from his reputation rather than enhance it. Hatate seems to be definite starter, but it seems like Oniki picks the other ten players first and then plays Hatate where there is a gap. People might say it’s a sign of a good team when the starting eleven picks itself. But in our case it seems to be the sign of a team without many options, or rather without many options that could ever possibly be taken due to us being stuck in a relentlessly repetitive rut. We didn't even make all of our subs in a game we were totally underwhelming in. Oniki seems determined to drive this system into the ground, smashing it to pieces and making it totally useless, rather than trying something new. Perhaps earlier this year there was no reason for us to try anything new. But I think we probably need to now. The results paper over the cracks a little and we still haven’t lost. But this is two league draws in a row against pretty ordinary teams. Our nice comfortable margin has almost been erased and confidence must be at an all time low. What joy! And an away double header coming up against Fukuoka, who we often seem to struggle against, and Consadole, who shocked us at our place last year. What could possibly go wrong? I was really looking forward to those games. A lovely round trip with plenty of tourism and plenty of drinking of beers, but now instead, I’ll be at home feasting on my fingernails instead of bar snacks. Can’t say I’m particularly confident, are you? To be honest, in a way, I’m kind of please they are not selling away tickets as it would be shame to have a nice trip ruined by some rotten Frontale performances. Instead, far better to stay at home and wallow in self-pity!

Suggestions - 

I don’t really have any. I’m not a manager. I’m just a whinger. But maybe… change something? Or do something better.

Other stuff -

Aoyama and Jofuku are a pair of wankers. And, I think I got more enjoyment out of the Kashiwa game when I was in bed drifting in and out of a restless sleep with a fever after my second COVID vaccination than I did out of this dire 90 minutes.

Next up Avispa away on Wednesday (1-1), and then Consadole on Saturday (2-2). And that’s me being positive with the predictions. We’ll probably lose both and be in second this time next week. Blimey. Go (do something else if you value your sanity instead of watching) Frontale!

Team

GK 1. Sung-Ryong JUNG
DF 13. YAMANE Miki

DF 4. JESIEL

DF 7. KURUMAYA Shintaro

DF 2. NOBORIZATO Kyohei

MF 6. JOAO SCHMIDT

MF 47. HATATE Reo

MF 8. WAKIZAKA Yasuto

FW 41. IENAGA Akihiro

FW 9. LEANDRO DAMIAO

FW 16. HASEGAWA Tatsuya

Subs

GK 27. TANNO Kenta

FW 11. KOBAYASHI Yu (on for LEANDRO DAMIAO 80')

MF 17. KOZUKA Kazuki

FW 19. TONO Daiya (on for WAKIZAKA 67')

MF 22. TACHIBANADA Kento (on for JOAO SCHMIDT 67')

FW 24. MIYAGI Ten (on for HASEGAWA 46')

MF 28. YAMAMURA Kazuya

 

Goals   

KASHIWA (Hiroshima) 27' 1-0

LEANDRO DAMIAO (Frontale) 73' 1-1

 

Highlights

Vs Nagoya Grampus (home) 4/9/19 - Levain Cup, quarter final 1st leg

Kawasaki Frontale 2 - 0 Nagoya Grampus

I’m going to keep this post relatively brief as the games are coming thick and fast at the moment, and recently I’ve spent too much time whinging. Although there’s not much to whinge about regarding this game. Sure, we weren’t back to our best, and whilst there were periods we were well on top of this game, Nagoya could say the same. I think that neither side had their first choice teams out though, and whilst it seems fine for me to get totally carried away about our bad results, I’m not going to do the same after one cup victory. But it was nice to get a clean sheet, and nice to score a couple of goals, and nice to not go away from a game wanting to smash something up. Here are a couple of notable things about this match

VAR worked well - still hate it -

VAR is here and Chinen had the ‘honour’ of being the first player in Japan to score a VAR assisted goal. I’m not really sure what the rules behind the application of VAR are. I didn’t see a flag when Chinen scored (and looking at the highlights, there wasn't one), so I’m not sure why the decision was referred. Before this decision we had another VAR moment when Hasegawa was through on goal and got fouled by the last man on the edge of the box. I think pretty much everyone thought it was probably outside the box but the decision was checked. I was expecting it to be either a penalty or a red card, but in the end we got neither. I’m sure the free kick was the right decision, but I’m a bit confused as to why the defender escaped with only a yellow. Perhaps my red card knowledge is out of date though. It was a little unsettling to hear that the VAR ref was Tojo as he’s got a bit of a reputation for bad decisions, but perhaps he’s actually a decent ref when he’s watching it on TV rather than actually on the pitch. Sadly, we didn’t get to see the ref run over and have a look himself at the screen at the side of the pitch. However that was probably a blessing, as even with the decision being reviewed by someone already in front of a screen, (hopefully wearing full referee's kit!), it still seemed to take quite a long time. Quite how two VAR referrals, a goal, and a substitution added up to only 2 minutes of injury time, I’m not sure. I will say that during the review period, the atmosphere was pretty weird and understandably flat. I’ve come away from my first VAR experience feeling the same about it as I did before. I don’t like it and I think technology could be far better used in different ways. The biggest worry for me will be the fact that it seems we will never be able to actually enjoy a proper goal celebration again, as the initial excitement is tempered by the VAR review, and only after the wait, celebrations are able to resume. But it all feels a bit weird. Chinen commented on the fact that he and Hasegawa were celebrating, looked round to see everyone else just standing there and felt a bit stupid. It’s a bit of a stretch to compare that to the experience of being in the crowd, but it did feel a bit like that.

The usual point about the team and how they played but a little more positive for once -

I’m going to round up the team selection and performances in one brief point. This was probably a hybrid team selection with some first-teamers and some who are usually subs. But I guess we don’t really know who is a first-teamer recently as there has been so much chopping and changing. We were back to 4-4-2 and the front combination of Chinen and Leandro Damiao which has pretty much always failed in this formation actually worked pretty well. In the first half we were having a lot of fun playing balls in behind the high defensive line of Nagoya and Hasegawa was looking very dangerous. We did go a bit off the boil later on in the half, probably after Kazama adjusted the tactics. Yamamura did a creditable job in the back four, Taniguchi only had a couple of wobbles, the middle two of Shimoda and Morita had a decent game, although Morita is still giving the ball away a bit carelessly sometimes. Wakizaka looked good. He too gave the ball away on occasion, but you could see that he was well up for the game and that with a bit more time he is going to be a very important player for us. I’ve far less problem with him trying a clever through pass that gets cut out compared to us just passing the ball to the opposition under no pressure in the middle of the pitch. Wakizaka's goal was well taken and the pass from Leandro Damiao was fantastic. Damiao was full of running all night and whilst his finishing wasn’t quite in tune, he made a very good contribution to the game, I thought. Let’s see if it’s enough to see him retain his spot on Sunday.  Chinen looked hungry after his long absence and he too was well up for the game, taking his goal well and being a little unlucky on a couple of occasions. Whether this is all a great rebirth for us and our fortunes and a tactical coup from Oniki or just a good performance that we stumbled upon among a load of rubbish, only time will tell I guess. But I’ll take it and enjoy it while it lasts!


Next up Nagoya away on Sunday in the cup again and I guess we'll see where we are. I can’t see any reason to change the team or tactics to be honest but it will interesting to discover if Oniki the Japanese tinkerman will resist the temptation to ‘rotate’. After that, it’s home against Jubilo Iwata the following Saturday. Even though the league is over for us, I’d still say it’s a must win from the point of view of our morale. Fingers crossed.


Team

GK 21. ARAI Shota

DF 17. MAWATARI Kazuaki

MF 34. YAMAMURA Kazuya

DF 5. TANIGUCHI Shogo

DF 7. KURUMAYA Shintaro

MF 6. MORITA Hidemasa

MF 22. SHIMODA Hokuto

MF 16. HASEGAWA Tatsuya

MF 28. WAKIZAKA Yasuto

FW 9. LEANDRO DAMIAO

FW 20. CHINEN Kei

Subs

GK 24. ANDO Shunsuke
DF 4. JESIEL

MF 8. ABE Hiroyuki (on for WAKIZAKA 78')

FW 11. KOBAYASHI Yu (on for CHINEN 78')

DF 26. MAGUINHO

MF 32. MITOMA Kaoru
MF 41. IENAGA Akihiro (on for HASEGAWA 90+2')

Goals

 

CHINEN (Frontale) 15' 1-0
WAKIZAKA (Frontale) 61' 2-0


Highlights

(Three lots of highlights this time, probably pretty much all the same!)

Vs FC Tokyo (home) 23/2/19 - J League match 1

Kawasaki Frontale 0 - 0 FC Tokyo

After the relative high of last week’s Super Cup victory, here we are back to reality with a pretty dodgy league opening game. It always seems to take us a while to get going at the start of the season, but I think some of us thought we’d got that particular monkey off our back last week, along with the ‘not doing well in cups’ monkey. But no, it’s still there. It was a bit of a weird day for results all over the J League. None of the teams I tipped to be fighting it out for the title won, which either shows that the results were crazy or I have no idea what I was talking about. Probably a bit of both. FC Tokyo were a surprise, looking a lot better than Urawa did last week, a lot better than they did last season and a lot better than most people expected. They pressed and hassled us and were better than us in the first half. The windy conditions didn’t help, but you’d imagine it wouldn’t have been so much of a problem for us, given that we usually keep the ball on the ground. The ref didn’t help either, although many people will read this sentence and think I have lost my mind. I’ll go into that more later. We looked shaky and out of sorts for most of the match. Passes went astray, defenders were left flat-footed as ball after ball went either over the top of them or behind them down the wings. Either we had a terrible day or they’d done their homework on us. Once again, probably a bit of both. Anyway, here’s what we have learned from this horror show.

Refs and linesmen are still useless, but sometimes that helps

- FC Tokyo fans were justifiably furious with Murakami for not sending off either or both of Kurumaya and Nara for second yellow card offenses. I have some sympathy for them as if either player hadn’t received their first booking I’m sure they’d have got one for the later challenges. I think, and of course I would say this, that Nara’s foul which is being shared all over the internet looks a lot worse in the gif that it did in the flesh. I think it’s a reflection on how rattled we were that these kind of challenges we’re going in. But I think aside from these two major let-offs for us from the ref, he gave everything else their way. We had a stonewall penalty turned down in the second half when an FC Tokyo defender clearly handballed in the box, preventing a cross making it to our waiting player. Apparently this year the clubs are able to score the refs after the game. Pretty sure he got 0 from FC Tokyo, but I hope we have him a bad score too. FC Tokyo didn’t help matters with a lot of play-acting and diving but neither did we, with some downright clumsy and pretty dodgy tackles. We should probably have ended up with 9 players on the pitch, but that would have required some knowledge of the rules of the game from an official so I guess it was never going to happen.

Oniki probably isn’t sure about who our right back should be

- Once again we started with Maguinho and once again he was replaced by Mawatari after not really doing anything wrong. Certainly there were plenty of players who were playing a lot worse on the pitch. However, Mawatari coming on did seem to really give us a boost. He looked good going forward, much more comfortable on the ball than he did last week and was even taking corners later on. I have a feeling that Oniki might go with him ahead of Maguinho in the next game. His introduction coincided with our best period of the game with us creating chance after chance and really putting the under pressure. But…

We were pretty toothless up front

- Along with the defensive frailties mentioned above and the huge gaps we were leaving at the back, I think perhaps the most decisive factor in this game was our rotten finishing. Apparently we got half of our 14 shots on target, but I can’t really remember us testing their keeper. Kobayashi seems to have replaced his usual three clangers then a goal system with a less fruitful seven or eight near misses or soft shots straight at the keeper with no goal at the end of it. Damiao seemed totally isolated, the ball never really reaching him, a shadow of the player he looked last week. I don’t think we can blame the conditions, but I’d love to, because otherwise, we don’t have much to hang on to. Sure there were a lot of less than average performances, but we really should have troubled their keeper at some stage.

Super new tactics are maybe not so super. Or maybe not new tactics

- In the last post I was excited about what I saw to be our exciting new free flowing liquid midfield tactics. Perhaps it was due to a lot of poor performances, but it seems that the liquid midfield has dried up. It didn’t help that our usual talismen (can I pluralise talisman?), Kengo and Ienaga were both very ordinary for most of the match. Our pushed forward full backs meant that there was loads of space for FC Tokyo to run into. Kubo was giving us plenty of grief in these areas. People have been waxing lyrical about him on twitter, presumably wanting to take a break from Nara-hating, but the main clip I’ve seen of him ‘owning’ Ienaga is of a dribble, beating a few players, resulting in A CORNER! Amazing! He’s clearly a big talent, but I think we should probably remember that FC Tokyo only had six shots in the whole game and only one on target so you can dribble all you like, but it’s all a bit pointless if you don’t score. Yeah, he hit the post with a nice free kick, but the goal only counts if the ball goes in between the posts I believe.
So yeah, were the new tactics actually the old tactics but with a bit of pre-season rustiness? Or was this week the rusty one? Or are FC Tokyo actually pretty good this year? One things for sure, it probably doesn’t matter what tactics you play if there are so many bad performances in one team in the same match.

Diego Oliveira runs funny

- It’s probably a stupid point, but when he wasn’t rolling around on the floor the most noticeable thing about Diego Oliveira was the fact that he looks like he’s always running down a steep hill, arms flailing, just about managing to stay upright. But not as fast as that sounds obviously.

The blue running track

- Looks nice! But also looks a bit like water. And of course, it'd be much better if there was no running track at all, but guess that can't be helped.

This was a weird game. I went away feeling like we’d lost, but instead we’d just stunk the place up and managed to still get a point. Aside from one exhilarating 10-15 minute period in the second half, we were rotten. We really need to avoid another performance like this. I know goals and wins build confidence and that brings good results, but we probably should have had some confidence from last week’s performance and result and it appeared to be lacking. For the second game in a row, we’ve limited the opposition to one shot on target, which shows that we must be doing something right. I think we skirted a bit close to the edge on this occasion though. I know I have a tendency to go from euphoria to despair from moment to moment, but this was another dodgy start to a league campaign. Last year we beat Jubilo in our opening fixture, but if I remember rightly, the scoreline flattered us. This season, instead of the usual Shonan Belmare at home second fixture we’ve had for the last couple of years (possibly not 100% true, but that’s what it feels like), we have Kashima Antlers visiting next Friday, a team who suffered a shock defeat against newly promoted Oita in their first game. Hopefully we can get things sorted and maybe even score a goal! Our team now has an embarrassment of attacking riches on paper. But as we know, football is played on grass, not on paper, so we’d better start performing how we would hope to perform as soon as possible!


Team

GK 1. Sung-Ryong JUNG
DF 26. MAGUINHO
DF 3. NARA Tatsuki (Yellow card 79')
DF 5. TANIGUCHI Shogo
DF 7 KURUMAYA Shintaro (Yellow card 33')
MF 10. OSHIMA Ryota
MF 6. MORITA Hidemasa
MF 11. KOBAYASHI Yu
MF 14. NAKAMURA Kengo (Yellow card 66')
MF 41. IENAGA Akihiro
FW 9. LEANDRO DAMIAO

Subs
GK 21. ARAI Shota
MF 2. NOBORIZATO Kyohei
FW 8. ABE Hiroyuki
DF 17. MAWATARI Kazuaki (on for MAGUINHO 55')
MF 19. SAITO Manabu (on for LEANDRO DAMIAO 73')
FW 20. CHINEN Kei (on for NAKAMURA 81')
MF 25. TANAKA Ao

My Frontale Man Of The Match

If this were a disappointing performance of the match there’d have to be mentions for Nara, Taniguchi, Kurumaya, Morita, Kengo, Ienaga and Kobayashi. So, well over half of the team. Sung-Ryong had very little to do but made one crucial intervention after a potentially calamitous Taniguchi header back to him fell woefully short. Maguinho and Damiao are excused as they’re still settling in. Guess that leaves Oshima, who was quiet but unlike most of his teammates, didn’t do anything stupid. This would be a bit of an underwhelming selection though, so instead of that I’ll give it to…

MAWATARI Kazuaki - Not sure he played the best, but his introduction coincided with our best period. He looked like he was up for it and even took a corner! (Which unfortunately failed to beat the first defender. Must have been practicing with Kengo!) Have a feeling he’ll start the next match, which seems tough on Maguinho, but that’s Oniki’s way I guess. 


Goals 

None


Highlights
 

Vs Cerezo Osaka (away) 10/11/18 - J League match 32

Cerezo Osaka 2 - 1 Kawasaki Frontale

Well that was all a bit weird! In spite of this game resembling all of our recent Cerezo disaster performances and exposing our thankfully not so common, but all the same, slightly predictable weaknesses if the opposition get the conditions and their tactics right, we ended up leaving Osaka with our second successive title, secured with two games to spare. This was a far from vintage performance. In fact I’d say it was more like a corked bottle of supermarket plonk that had been stored on a windowsill for the whole summer. The pitch was shaggy and dry. It’s not unreasonable to think that if we know we struggle on dry pitches with long grass, the opposition will probably work that out too. And let’s be honest, Cerezo are usually a team who are more interested in destroying the beauty in a game of football to annoyingly eke out a positive result, so it was no surprise they used the conditions to their advantage. But anyway, I’m not going to dwell too much on the result and focus more on the fact that we did it! We are champions again, and although the circumstances of the victory were a little strange, it still feels pretty good!

Unsurprisingly given what we could achieve, this was a game that was very well attended by Frontale fans. We filled the away section and spilled over down the sides of the ground. We were making plenty of noise and seemed to be up for it, both on the pitch and in the stands. Cerezo started the game the way a team whose coach is soon to leave and who have nothing much to play for would. They seemed to be already on the beach, although I guess that cliche doesn’t resonate quite so well given the J League season finishes in December, rather than May. I suppose that their general lethargy, with everyone behind the ball with the occasional hoof forward counter attack is how they normally play though. The middle of the pitch in this game was horrendously congested. We couldn’t get through it, and although it felt like we’d eventually get a break, we were a bit sloppy with our passing, particularly when clearing after one of their infrequent attacks. It was by no means a great first half. We’d dominated on possession, but they’d had by far the clearest and best chances. The stats say we had four shots in the first half, but this seems generous to be honest. I was pleased to see Abe up front in place of the injured Kobayashi. Apparently, the Kashiwa player who smashed his face in with his elbow apologised after the game last week, but it must have been a bit of a bummer for our captain to miss another opportunity to lift the trophy, after having to make do with a cardboard version of it last year. Kurumaya being available again meant that Nobori was able to move forward into the usual Abe position. It’s a shame for Hasegawa and Saito that they didn’t get an opportunity, but it’s probably fair enough given that Nobori’s been doing well recently. He didn’t last that long though, leaving the pitch midway through the first half, when he was replaced with Chinen, Abe moving out to the left. Perhaps this disrupted our game plan a little, but to be honest we weren’t exactly shining before the enforced change anyway.

We started the second half with the bit between our teeth though, and came out firing. Suddenly we were starting to look more dangerous, but still we were overplaying things a little, no one seeming willing to have a shot. However, this momentum we were building resulted in us conceding. It was from a quick Cerezo break and the defending once again looked a bit dodgy. We huffed and puffed our way through the half and were putting them under some pressure but still not really enough pressure. Saito and Suzuki came on with around 20 minutes to go. I was a little surprised to see Elsinho subbed. There has been talk that it has something to do with him leaving us at the end of the season which would be a real shame. Perhaps Oniki is auditioning Suzuki for the job. In the 90th minute we were handed a real gift of a penalty. I think it was the right decision but have no idea why the keeper felt he needed to make the challenge. Glad he did though! Ienaga stepped up and put it away comfortably. If only he’d done that with a couple of our previous penalties we might have had the title in the bag earlier! We were back in the game, and in spite of us presumably knowing Hiroshima were losing we still seemed to push on for the win. Instead it turned out we were pushing on for the loss, and we got it in the 94th minute. The goal came from another quick break, this one started with a Cerezo handball, not noticed by the ref, and finished with an easy pass to a totally unmarked player and a big deflection off a sliding defender. We were then left with the slightly bizarre situation of Cerezo celebrating the win along with pockets of uncertain excitement in our end and amongst the players as we searched for an update from the Hiroshima game. There were no announcements or updates on the screen. I guess Cerezo were not that bothered to be honest, and in spite of us being fairly confident of the score in the other game, we only came to fully realise we’d won when the players began to celebrate and they starred carting on the parts of the stage for the presentation. It was a really weird feeling to be honest and a bit of a shame that we couldn’t have won the title with at least a draw. But the main thing is, we won it, and I guess there it is kind of appropriate when considering recent results, that the title was confirmed with a Hiroshima loss. They really have stuffed it up. I can’t imagine how bad it feels to be a Sanfrecce fan or player at the moment. Full credit to the numerous Cerezo fans who waited for the presentation and generously congratulated our players. Now the title is won, we can probably forget about individual results, but this game was another Cerezo stinker. It would be nice if we could beat them other than at Todoroki some time. Their bogey team status endures and we should probably try to put this performance behind us with a good finish to the season. We are now certain to end up with less points than last year. It would be nice though if we could preserve or even extend our lead, and I also would like us to outscore our neighbours in Yokohama if that is possible. Our next game is against FC Tokyo, so there’s something at stake there, even if the title is already decided.  Fingers crossed for a strong finish and a couple more wins! Go Frontale!

Team

GK 1. Sung-Ryong JUNG
DF 18. ELSINHO
DF 3. NARA Tatsuki
DF 5. TANIGUCHI Shogo
DF 7 KURUMAYA Shintaro
MF 10. OSHIMA Ryota
MF 25. MORITA Hidemasa
MF 14. NAKAMURA Kengo
MF 41. IENAGA Akihiro
MF 2. NOBORIZATO Kyohei
FW 8. ABE Hiroyuki

Subs
GK 30. ARAI Shota
MF 16. HASEGAWA Tatsuya
FW 20. CHINEN Kei (on for NOBORIZATO 37')
MF 22. SHIMODA Hokuto
MF 27. SUZUKI Yuto (on for ELSINHO 76')
DF 29. MICHAEL JAMES
MF 37. SAITO Manabu (on for ABE 76')


My Frontale Man Of The Match

This isn’t sour grapes after a loss, but there weren’t really any good performances in this game. Perhaps it was the tension of the situation, maybe the conditions, maybe we just had an off day. So, in the interests of doing something corny, and not for the first or probably last time, let’s give it to...

THE SUPPORTERS - big turn out, lots of noise and deserve to get something after a very limp performance from the team.


Goals

SUGIMOTO (Cerezo) 55' 1-0
IENAGA (Frontale) 90' PEN 1-1
YAMAMURA (Cerezo) 90+4' 2-1


Highlights

The Frontale youtube channel usually has longer highlights provided by DAZN, but given that a previous year's highlights got wiped when the broadcaster got changed, I'm going to stick with the official J League ones. But you can watch the longer highlights here if you want. And we have that extra footage video again at the bottom.

 

Vs Kashima Antlers (away) 7/10/18 - J League match 29

Kashima Antlers 0 - 0 Kawasaki Frontale

As the end of the season approaches, things are getting serious. It’s a tense time. We are leading the league for the first time this year. Some people have put as down as nailed on champions but I wish I had the same confidence. I think I said a few games ago, that I thought that there was no way Hiroshima would win all their remaining games and it looks like their form is disintegrating. Likewise, I didn’t think we would win all of our games, and we didn’t won this one. But it was a decent point to pick up in a tough game against rapidly improving opposition. I was hoping that they would play the kids, given that they are still involved in four competitions. Sadly they didn’t, and this was a battle. In keeping somehow with the increasing tension, these blog posts seem to be getting more jumbled and lighter on detail. I’d be delighted if the season finished now (unsurprisingly, given that we’re top). This tension is affecting the way I’m watching games. And I think perhaps there was an element of the pressure being on us rather than Hiroshima and this adversely affected our performance. I guess we’ll see if this manifests in the next game too. This was a frustrating, irritating, yet somehow satisfying afternoon. I think, looking back in a positive way, we’ve come through what looked like being, and turned out to be a challenging fixture. Obviously, three points would have been lovely, but I think on balance, we should be satisfied with one.

The most notable thing about this game was the insane weather. It’s October, but it was very hot. We were totally exposed to the sun in the stand behind the goal, so much so that most people spent the majority of the three hours before kick off, hiding in the concourse area. I had left a sandwich in my bag on my seat and when I returned to eat it, it seemed that it had been slightly toasted. These conditions may have contributed to the general lack of quality in the game. There was a lot more grit than style in this match. Kashima were a very dirty team, (of course I’d say that...), and Leo Silva and Jung were both lucky to have not been sent off. Jung in particular, as he spent the majority of the match kicking lumps out of Kobayashi and gave away the penalty which he can have no complaints about. His only yellow though was for a push at a corner. Again, no surprise for me to say this, but Kashima are a very unlikeable team. And their fans aren’t much better, spending the majority of the first half booing our possession. We started pretty well, hitting the post early on and with plenty of the ball. Sadly though we were lacking a cutting edge up front. I think Oniki made a mistake putting Abe on the right and Kobayashi up front. The opposite would surely have made more sense, but like with his undroppable favourite players, Oniki also seems set on playing Kobayashi up front at all costs, in spite of the evidence that Abe up front and Kobayashi on the right always works better. It wasn’t really Kobayashi’s day. The penalty miss was another rotter. If you’re going to put it low into the corner, you’ve got to find the corner and he made it far too easy for the keeper. Admittedly not as easy as last time when he kicked it straight at the Shonan keeper who didn’t even have to move, but still it wasn’t exactly a tough save if the keeper guessed the right way. There was a ridiculous amount of interference and mind games from Kashima as Kobayashi was waiting to take the penalty which can’t have helped. The keeper in particular was really taking the piss but the ref did nothing. Perhaps, however these misses can be blamed on me. I’m never confident when we win a penalty and always hope that someone else will take it rather than Kobayashi. Surely there must be another option? Fair play to him for stepping up after the last miss, but I’m not sure where we go from here. Do we keep letting him step up until he scores one? Personally, I’d rather someone else took them. It would be fair to say that his penalty misses have cost us four points in the last month. Kashima felt cheated that they didn’t get a penalty for a Taniguchi handball. It was at the other end of the pitch so I’ve only seen it on replays and I’ve seen them given and not given. I think the ref was right on this occasion, as his hand is in front of his body and the ball is blasted straight at him. Kashima disagreed though and at the end of the game booed the ref off. I laughed as I thought he had given pretty much everything else their way. It was another rotten refereeing performance to be honest. He lost control of the game early on and if he was consistent with his decisions Kashima would have been down to nine men for a significant portion of the game. Instead it was us who had a player sent off, (that notorious bad boy Abe...), and although it was pretty late on, it made for a nervy end to the game. Can’t argue with either of the yellow cards. The first was a bit silly and for the second, he took one for the team, stopping a potentially dangerous break with a foul. Unfortunately, this means he won’t be available for the next game. Neither will Morita, who picked up his fourth yellow, so we’ll have some changes again. Ienaga will be back though.

Briefly returning to my old ‘positives and negatives’, with positives first. We took a point from a tough game and one in which we were really under pressure in the second half. And Hiroshima lost again. Negatives, the penalty miss, the lack of chances and some weird subs. Given the booking and the fact he was playing out of position, Oniki should have probably have taken Abe off when Suzuki came on. I guess though his hand was forced a little by the two previous subs given that both Morita and Kobayashi had to leave the pitch due to injury. Hopefully neither of them are serious and Morita will at least have some time to recover given that he’ll miss the next game due to suspension. I feel for Abe though. He can play either on the left or up front, but he spent almost the whole game on the right out of position and then when he finally made it onto the left, got sent off chasing back to cover from one of our own corners which we’d fluffed. It seems like I’m moaning a lot again, but I was fairly satisfied with the result, if not the manner in which it came about. Guess it’s just that I really don’t like Kashima!

Next up, Kobe at home but it’s not for a couple of weeks so hopefully we can all have a bit of a rest! Whether a certain Mr. Iniesta will play, I’m not sure. I hope so, for Kengo’s sake, as he is apparently a big fan of him, but I’d rather he didn’t and they continue their fantastic run of six defeats in their last seven matches. That game is a must win. They are a club in some turmoil and we need to get back to winning ways. Hopefully the two weeks will do us good and we can turn in a good performance. Go Frontale!

 

 

Team

GK 1. Sung-Ryong JUNG
DF 18. ELSINHO
DF 3. NARA Tatsuki
DF 5. TANIGUCHI Shogo
DF 7. KURUMAYA Shintaro (Yellow card 89')
MF 10. OSHIMA Ryota
MF 25. MORITA Hidemasa (Yellow card 52')
MF 8. ABE Hiroyuki (Yellow card 28', second yellow/red card 90+1')
MF 14. NAKAMURA Kengo
MF 2. NOBORIZATO Kyohei
FW 11. KOBAYASHI Yu

Subs
GK 30. ARAI Shota
MF 16. HASEGAWA Tatsuya (on for KOBAYASHI 82')
FW 20. CHINEN Kei (on for MORITA 66')
MF 22. SHIMODA Hokuto
MF 27. SUZUKI Yuto (on for NOBORIZATO 85')
DF 29. MICHAEL JAMES
MF 37. SAITO Manabu


My Frontale Man Of The Match

This wasn’t the most dynamic of attacking performances so I’m looking at the other end of the pitch for this. Taniguchi didn’t have the best of games again, and I think he’s being carried by Nara at the moment. Perhaps he’s tired. I’d love to give it to Nara, but everyone would think I’m biased so it will go to….

OSHIMA Ryota - did a great job in the middle of the pitch, winning the ball fairly and not having to resort to the dirty tactics Kashima’s midfield used. Shows much more strength than you’d imagine he has and his control was perfect in this game. Bravo!


Goals

None


Highlights

The Frontale youtube channel usually has longer highlights provided by DAZN, but given that a previous year's highlights got wiped when the broadcaster got changed, I'm going to stick with the official J League ones. But you can watch the longer highlights here if you want.