Vs Urawa Reds (away) 29/4/26 J League East match 13

Urawa Reds 2 - 0 Kawasaki Frontale 

As predicted in the last post we followed up two wins in a row with a defeat against a team who had lost seven games in a row. Good old Frontale! Always there to help out a team who are in hopeless form by giving them an easy three points! It was a bit sneaky of them to invoke the new manager bounce by sacking their old guy a few days before this match. I’m starting to think that I wouldn’t mind us giving the new manager bounce a go too. Two wins in a row covered up two pretty mediocre-at-best performances, both of which swung our way through late goals. I know it’s tedious to hear people moaning about their team being shit when they’ve won, so I apologise for doing that in the last couple of posts, but I’m sure you’ll forgive me as clearly the shitness that was there in those match in the form of a little tickle in the back of throat and occasional cough has now developed into a full blown flu of cackiness. Golden week has started with possibly our worst performance of the season (so far). And don’t forget this was a season which included us losing 5-0 to YFM. As I have now nice plans for Golden Week, (which are presumably going to be interrupted by a couple more shitty games), I have no desire to prolong this any more than I have to. The next two posts will probably appear in a very rough and unadorned way as I’ll be traveling. I’ll post the moaning but I’ll add all the details at a later date. The thought of this is already pretty off-putting.

Atrocious Frontale -

Seven shots in the whole match! Only one save necessary from their keeper. And we started quite brightly. But it was our old friend ‘attack and pass till you get close to their goal and then don’t bother shooting’ who was very much in evidence again. I should have know the match was going to go badly when our first shot was blocked by one of our own players. That was probably about as close as we came to scoring. Right from the start the ref was awful, and was clearly not going to book anyone unless he really had to, basically clearing the way for a full on Urawa assault on our players. But don’t get me wrong, although the ref was absolutely awful, (equally the linesman, who forgot to do the part of his job that related to watching the line and seeing if the ball crosses it), it wasn’t him that cost us the game. It was Hasebe. 

In the past I’ve said Hasebe hasn’t come up with anything new to stake his claim on the team. I now realise this was incorrect. I was wondering why Romanic was starting every game over Erison. Sure, he scored so deserved to keep his spot. But then he didn’t score and still kept his spot. In this game it all became clear to me. Hasebe is actually a tactical innovator extraordinaire. He’s come up with a wild and refreshing plan, (which I incorrectly described as moving the ball forward more quickly in the last post), which involves us hoofing the ball forward to Romanic at every opportunity as quickly as possible. He usually wins the ball, sometimes manages to keep it, sometimes manages to pass it to a team mate, but more often than not, perhaps due to the speed and distance of the hoofing, is unable to do anything with the ball as it’s only him who’s past the half way line, and he’s surround by defenders. This would account for us having only 29% possession and two shots, both off target, in the first half. And don’t forget this was a half we started quite brightly! So a terrible first half when you looked at the 35 minutes that preceded half time. So what did our great leader do at half time? Apparently fuck all other than further demotivate our players. Once again we got nothing going at all until we we’d used most of our subs, had thrown Hasebe’s tactics away and the players were just doing what they wanted. His subs were weird again, Hasebe, as ever, being totally committed to keeping Wakizaka on the pitch, even if it meant playing him on the right wing where he’s not very good or in defensive midfield, where he’s not very good. To be fair to Hasebe though, Wakizaka has also been not very good in his preferred and normal position this year. Hasebe’s response to us going 2-0 down was to bring on Kawahara for Ito. Don’t worry, Wakizaka will cover it! Miyagi didn’t make it onto the pitch till the 83rd minute. Kanda sat on the bench again. 

 

But Hasebe would probably point to the massive improvement in our stats in the second half, right? We had five shots in the second compared to two in the first. Bravo! We had one shot on target compared to none in the first. Bravo! We had 54% possession compared to 26% in the first. Bravo! We conceded two goals compared to one in the first…. oh. But don’t for a moment think that this defensive frailty was anything to do with us going all out attack. This is just the awful football that is Hasebe Frontale. Occasionally we squeak a result to paper over the cracks. But sooner or later those cracks are gaping again, and Hasebe probably would also think that Wakizaka would be the man for the job if you had an issue with your interior decorating. Every game starts with us having a dodgy half with Hasebe’s first choice players, formation and tactics. Sometimes we scrabble together a result by just flinging everything at the wall late on and hoping something sticks. And then Hasebe takes any positive result as confirmation that he should start the next game in exactly the same way, ignoring the fact that nothing normally happens till he abandons his plans. 

 

Poor old Hasebe. I’m sure he doesn’t want to be this terrible at his job. I’m sure he can’t feel great about being tactically outsmarted by someone who has never managed a professional game before. I’m sure he much rather still be somewhere where people thought he was doing a good job. To be honest I’d much rather he was somewhere where people thought he was doing a good job. Because presumably that would mean he was no longer our manager. It seems pretty clear to me that he’s not going to change anything. Every slight ray of hope where he slightly changes something is immediately extinguished by reverting to the same old shit as soon as possible. Maybe we should experiment in the next game by playing the game in reverse, starting the match with the players and lack of tactics that we finish games with. It would certainly be more interesting and would probably be more effective. Hopefully by half time we might have scored and then he could suck the life and enjoyment out of the match through one of his half time team talks and us reverting to utter dullness in the second half with him bringing on his subs to build his usual starting line up might result in us not conceding so many. Then after the match he can give his pre match motivational team talk which hopefully the players will have forget by the time the next match comes around. Some might say that if we fire him we have no one to replace him with. I’d suggest that right now his influence is purely a negative one and that without him, we’d be doing a lot better. Sorry, Hasebe, but I think your time is up.

Despicable opposition - 

It wouldn’t be right for me to post about an Urawa game without taking at least a few potshots at them. Their fans were it seemed VERY VERY UPSET with the club before the game. No big flags, no banners with increasingly weird ways of describing the male youthfulness of their fan groups, (Zut alors, pas de garçons! Bof!), the briefest of chanting when their players came out. They weren’t a happy bunch because they definitely believe they deserve to be at the top of the league and winning every game 15-0. (Sorry guys, you can’t play us every week. Other teams will put up a bit more resistance). So not happy at all, but they were still very happy to boo us. This is because they are oh so very fearsome and a really naughty bunch. As I work in Urawa and speak to a lot of …Urawans (?), I take issue with their ‘Pride of Urawa’ flag. Their team is absolutely not the pride of Urawa. I can guarantee that if I survey my classes the overwhelming winner of the pride of Urawa contest will be Urawa Parco. I reckon there were probably more people in Parco than were in the stadium too. I reckon I might join them when this fixture comes round next time. It’s certainly a lot easier to get to and even if I just emptied the contents of my wallet down the toilet in Parco I think I’d probably have a more satisfying and enjoyable experience than I would going to the Saitama Stadium. At least in a normal season where we’re playing awfully we get to go to some interesting places. This year I’ve spent way too many hours I’ll never get back in stadiums having a horrible time and then only being able to return home through those horrible wastelands that surround those horrible teams stadiums, rather than go out and see something interesting. This year, the trips are shit, the football’s shit, the experience is shit and most of all we are shit. 

WOW!

I’ll keep this brief and ever so slightly cryptic. Mikuriya is a turd of a referee so he definitely gets a share of this. He’s not corrupt or crooked or anything, he’s just useless. The other person who takes this is perhaps a lot closer to home. I don’t think there can be any doubt as to why we were so awful, so the person who orchestrated that has to get a share of the spoils.


Next up, who gives a shit? (It’s FC Tokyo away on Saturday). Maybe in that game we might be able to have more than one shot on target if we’re really lucky. I never want us to lose a game, but with Kashima losing on this match day, (whenever they lose we always lose it seems, regardless of whether we are challenging them in any way or are nowhere near them. To be fair though, we are losing quite often recently, so maybe that skews things a little), it’s not going to upset me in the slightest if they wallop us. It might be one step closer to Kashima not coming first in this shitty competition, and it could also move us one step closer to perhaps a managerial change. I will be there, but will be deep in holiday mode. Nothing will be able to bring me down. Well, perhaps apart from another useless ref. But I’m determined not to let another inevitably rotten performance ruin the rest of my Golden Week. This seems to be a much healthier way to approach all of these kind of things. Phew. 

 

Team 

GK 49. Svend BRODERSEN
DF 29. YAMAHARA Reon
DF 22. Filip UREMOVIC
DF 2. MATSUNAGANE Yuto
DF 13. MIURA Sota
MF 8. TACHIBANADA Kento 
MF 6. YAMAMOTO Yuki
MF 17. ITO Tatsuya
MF 14. WAKIZAKA Yasuto
MF 23. MARCINHO
FW 91. Lazar ROMANIC

Subs

GK 1. YAMAGUCHI Louis
DF 5. SASAKI Asahi (on for UREMOVIC 61')
FW 9. ERISON (on for ROMANIC 61')
MF 19. KAWAHARA So (on for ITO 74')

MF 24. MIYAGI Ten (on for TACHIBANADA 83')
DF 30. NODA Hiroto
DF 32. HAYASHI Shunsuke

MF 34. OSA Ryuki (on for MARCINHO 61')

FW 38. KANDA Soma

Man of the match

Not a fucking chance of anyone getting this. 

 

Goals

MATHEUS SAVIO (Urawa) 54' 1-0
KOMORI (Urawa) 71' 2-0

Highlights

Vs Urawa Reds (home) 5/4/26 J League East match 9

Kawasaki Frontale 3 - 2 Urawa Reds 

Wonderful, wonderful! Football is great! I’ve been saying that all season, right? I know it’s slightly unorthodox of Hasebe to try to lower our expectations as much as possible in order to make the joy of this last minute victory over a despicable rival all the sweeter, but damn it has made me feel very good after what was basically going to be an extremely insignificant match in an extremely insignificant, (as we’re so far off the pace), half season. This match was the second of a run of game against the teams that I consider to make up the most scummy of tiers of J League clubs (in my opinion, naturally). The first against Machida didn’t exactly go as we might have hoped but at the same time didn’t go as badly as we might have expected. This game wasn’t great, but the outcome definitely was, and the manner in which we got to that outcome was quite lovely. Would be fantastic if we could continue with the wins as we go on to face Kashima and YFM. I don’t have a massive amount of confidence that we will, but hopefully this win will have given the squad a bit of a boost. Don’t for a moment imagine that it being a 3-2 win meant that it was a quality game between two good teams. Certainly we were quite evenly matched, but that was because both teams seemed intent on trying to play football at a skill level that was absolutely above their abilities. It was a bit like two pub teams who, whilst getting smashed watched some top quality football on TV in the local on Saturday night and decided to have a go at recreating it hungover on Sunday morning. If someone asked me how we score goals or how we intend to try and score goals I would not be able to tell them because all we usually do is move the ball slowly and patiently up the field and then give it away before getting the chance to have a shot. By contrast, Urawa’s modus operandi seemed to be to grimly hang on in defence before launching the ball forward and sprinting after it. To their credit, this approach at least resulted in them having some chances. The only reason we were even at half time was due to a hilarious own goal that so embarrassed the scorer that he had to get injured and subbed in order to get out of sight and presumably have a little cry. Anyway, I’ve changed the usual headings a little this week for no particular reason. So here we go.

Good day / bad day -

- Good day for people who like seeing scummy sides defeated. Coming into the game both the teams were in a bit of a state. Delighted that Urawa are now in more of a state. There was maybe even a feeling that this match was something of a sack race, with the defeated team getting one step closer to a managerial change. Whether that will happen at Urawa, we’ll see. But it’s now four defeats in a row for them. So a good day for people who like seeing Urawa suffer, mainly due to problems they create for themselves.
 

- A good day for Romanic and Kawahara, who both scored. Hopefully that goal will set Romanic on a little scoring run as I felt he just needed his first goal to get going properly. And good to see Kawahara score as he could justifiably feel quite aggrieved for getting dropped after the Machida game I think. More about that in a minute. 

- Bad day for the club behind the scenes. As we’ve toiled a bit this year I’ve got increasingly onboard those who see our travails as having quite a lot to do with the top brass, (obviously as well as the players and manager who clearly also have some responsibility). If you compare the home and away games between us and Urawa it’s always evident that they give us a tiny away allocation and we are happy to give them as many tickets as they want. Of course the club wants to sell tickets to get money, but I think it’s probably more important to try to win games, and intentionally dulling our home advantage by inviting a massive away support is not going to be helpful in that respect. It’s true that the attendance would have been pretty bad with a smaller away allocation, (not Machida vs FC Tokyo bad obviously, but pretty bad), but the reason there were so many tickets available for resale is almost certainly to do with how awful our games have been this year. But maybe the top brass aren't able to make this connection. I will always go to the games, but at times this year the match has definitely been the thing I have to suffer through in order to enjoy the post game activities. I would be quite happy to see changes at the top. I think it’s unlikely, but if we had someone in charge who had any interest in or understanding of football, I think it would help.

- From a player point of view, it wasn’t a great day for Yamamoto and Wakizaka again. As I say every week. Yamamoto’s cross for the winner was great though. I can’t remember us scoring a goal like that for a very long time. So maybe there is a tactical reason why two of our best players aren't doing very well this year. Wakizaka is confusing me. The things he said after the massive defeat against YFM were great. The fact that he said we shouldn't over celebrate penalty wins was good too. But he did recently seem to suggest that the reason we hadn’t won against Machida was at least in part because he wasn’t playing. This seems quite delusional as he’s been playing in the rest of the games this year and the second half against Machida was better than a lot of our other matches. Of course the fact that he was back in the side and we won makes it look like I’m an idiot and he was right, and almost certainly the former is true. But he still isn’t playing very well, and it seems like he isn’t going to be dropped. If he’s playing we don’t seem to be able to break away from the rotten formation we are apparently tied to. Hopefully this win is a fresh start for us and we can forget about everything that's gone on so far this season.

- Hasebe… hmmmm. Good and bad day, I think. Good day for him personally in that he’s probably moved one step back from getting sacked. I don’t think it would have happened, but it definitely should have at least been being considered. Probably not such a good day when you consider that once again his starting line up and tactics proved utterly ineffective and once again it wasn’t until the plan was thrown out the window that we started making things happen. And for us to concede so early in both halves (thankfully the one in the second half was ruled out), doesn’t say a lot about the way he motivates the players at the start of the game and at half time. I was pleased when he changed the formation for the Machida game, but equally disappointed that in this game we went back to the same old thing. Perhaps it was enough for him to be seen to be doing something, and changing back to the same old stuff for the next game was fine. Miyagi, who had one of his best games for us can’t have been too happy to be dropped for the following match. I just wish Hasebe would do something a bit more often instead of just tweaking our old style which clearly doesn’t work any more. But anyway, let’s hope that this game can be a reset for everyone and we can get ourselves together for the rest of the half season.

- Oh, one more good thing, NO PENALTIES!

WOW! - 

I mean, the Urawa fans can always at least get a share of this. That could have been said for sure even before the match as it just seems to be inherent in their support. However, two guys wanted to make sure their names were up for this, so put in truly horrific WOW! performances. Or perhaps if they were aiming at taking this title, you might have to say that put in a great performance as without a doubt the ref and the VAR ref absolutely deserved this. First of all, on the pitch Fukushima was just shit. Maybe it’s because we merely whinge after the event rather than angrily getting up in the ref’s face, but it seems that more often than not, in our recent games the ref has been more than wiling to take advice and get guidance from the opposition players. I know I always think J League refs are awful, but when we got to the pub after the match, the first thing the normally rational regulars did was to comment on how bad the ref had been. For the most part the yellow cards went only one way.  Wakizaka's yellow was an absolutely clear cut one so he got that right, but similar actions from Urawa players in similar positions and constant hacks and kicks from them apparently weren’t worthy of punishment. Erison’s card was an absolute joke. But what do you expect from the reliably terrible J League ref community? I have long said that Araki hates us, so I was filled with some trepidation when I saw his name down for VAR. Maybe Araki not only hates us, but also hates football as he seemed to want to take every opportunity to slowly make his judgements, ensuring that any enjoyment the crowd might be getting from the game was slowly and relentlessly undermined. As it's something I always say and always seem to have the need to say, I’m going to separate this next bit so it’s easy for me to cut and paste in future blog posts

.

VAR is supposed to deal with clear and obvious mistakes, so it doesn’t make sense that it takes five minutes to judge whether a clear or obvious mistake has been made. 

VAR overturning the offside decision in the first half took so long that even though the game kicked off at 16:00, I started worrying that I wouldn’t make it in time for last orders. And looking at the replay on DAZN, even when the decision was made after endless procrastination, I  still don’t think they have enough evidence to overturn the original decision. VAR’s intervention helping to rule out the goal in the second half was equally ridiculous, but this time for the fact that it was so clear that the goal shouldn’t stand immediately, but still Araki and Fukushima decided they should drag it out so they could make themselves the centre of attention for even longer. Apparently they weren’t sure if a player lying on the floor and tripping over the goal keeper counts as interfering with play. As there is clearly no point me even bothering to write these things, I’ll just finish with a couple more statements for easy cutting and pasting in the future. 



Of course it’s a difficult job to be a referee, but it must take some real effort to be as clueless as the J League referees are.

In my opinion, VAR is a blight on football, but I’m sure not everyone agrees. What I would imagine everyone does agree with though is that it’s not good that J League VAR takes an interminably long time, and even after these massive disruptions, due to the apparent idiocy of the officials, you can’t even be sure that they will make the right decision. Even though whilst taking all that time to make the decision they probably would have enough time to read the whole fucking rule book cover to cover.

Aaaaahhhhhh. What a lovely finish to the game that was. And we have something nice to think about for a whole week. Schadenfreude is never particularly nice, but when you’re enjoying the misery of the Urawa Lads, Garçons, Boys, Striplings, Fledglings, Tots, Kiddies, Nippers, Chicos, Ragazzi, Rapazes, Chaps, Males and Tykes, (perhaps they haven’t used some of those for a flag or supporter group yet, but it’s surely only a matter of time), I think it is perfectly acceptable. So let's enjoy it, right up until next week when we come up against Kashima. I can’t remember what their fans call themselves but judging by a recent photo, I would say that ‘shirtless, slightly overweight, middle-aged, should-know-better knuckle-draggers’ might work. This is probably our last chance to do something which might have some effect on the outcome of the league, so hopefully we’ll be charged up to put a dent in someone else’s half season and make the East at least slightly more interesting. Clearly my mood might not be as buoyant next week, but until then, I’m going to enjoy this week to the max.  

 

Team 

GK 49. Svend BRODERSEN
DF 29. YAMAHARA Reon
DF 28. MARUYAMA Yuichi
DF 2. MATSUNAGANE Yuto
DF 13. MIURA Sota
MF 8. TACHIBANADA Kento 
MF 6. YAMAMOTO Yuki
MF 17. ITO Tatsuya
MF 14. WAKIZAKA Yasuto (Yellow card 43') 
MF 23. MARCINHO
FW 9. ERISON (Yellow card 45+4')

Subs

GK 1. YAMAGUCHI Louis
MF 15. MYOGAN Toya
MF 19. KAWAHARA So (on for YAMAMOTO 89')
MF 24. MIYAGI Ten (on for MARCINHO 69')
MF 26. YUI Kota

DF 27. KAMIHASHI Ryota
DF 32. HAYASHI Shunsuke

FW 38. KANDA Soma (on for ITO 76')
FW 91. Lazar ROMANIC (on for ERISON 69')

Man of the match

Dunno really. No-one particularly stood out. But Miura did well again and as I’ve slagged him off quite a lot recently, I should at least mention him. But in the absence of an obvious stand out winner, let’s give it a miss this week.

 

Goals

NEMOTO (Urawa) 2' 0-1
OWN GOAL (Urawa) 9' 1-1
KANEKO (Urawa) 62' 1-2
ROMANIC (Frontale) 77' 2-2
KAWAHARA (Frontale) 90+4' 3-2

Highlights

 

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

Urawa Reds 4 - 0 Kawasaki Frontale

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

Us -

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

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

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

Ref -

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

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

 

Team

GK 98. YAMAGUCHI Louis 
DF 31. VAN VERMESKERKEN Sai

DF 4. JESIEL

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

FW 23. MARCINHO

Subs

GK 21. ANDO Shunsuke

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

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

Goals

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

Highlights  

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

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

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

Us - 

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

Them - 

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

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

Ref and 4th official - 

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

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

Team

GK 98. YAMAGUCHI Louis
DF 31. VAN VERMESKERKEN Sai

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

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

Subs

GK 1. JUNG Sung-Ryong

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

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

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

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

 

My Frontale Man Of The Match 

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

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

 

Goals

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

Highlights

Vs Urawa Reds (away) 3/9/25 Levain Cup Quarter Final 1st Leg

Urawa Reds 1 - 1 Kawasaki Frontale  

This week is horrendously busy for me so this is going to be a flying blog post, tossed out on the train home from work the day after the game. That kind of makes sense when you consider we’re only at the halfway point of the tie so anything that happened in this first leg can easily be overturned on Sunday. That was the one bit of positivity I was holding on to with about 20 minutes to go when I thought I’d probably take a 1-0 defeat. It seemed like some of our players were thinking the same way too. When Jesiel left the pitch injured ten minutes later, I was really up for getting away with the 1-0. But somehow we scored and now head in to the second leg with a bizarre and slightly unjustified upper hand. Anyway don’t worry Urawa fans, we’ve done our best to undercut any home advantage we might have by giving Urawa pretty much all of one end of the stadium. It’s not completely out of character though is it? After all we’re a nice guy club and will do our best to be nice to the opposition. I’m not going to follow the usual headings this time because there’s not much to write about under any of them that couldn’t really be summed up in probably one or two words. But as brevity is not my speciality that’s clearly going to be stretched out a bit. So this is not too long, but nowhere near as short as it should be given how bad most of the game was.

Firstly, we were utterly shit in the first half. Recent games might have given us some confidence but if we dwell even a moment on that first half we’ll crash back down into complete depression. Going one step further than in recent games when the midfield was totally absent, on this occasion the midfield and defence had disappeared. I’ll put this down to tiredness and perhaps some lingering effects of the recent ‘illness’ that was going through the squad. I don’t know if the players weren’t up for this game, but it certainly looked like they weren’t. Miyagi, after earning Hasebe’s praise for being available to fill in on the right and then going on to score a goal, did exactly what Miyagi does every time he makes an impression as a sub, ie. massively disappoint as a starter. And it wasn’t just because he was on the right as he had a go on the left after half time and didn’t do anything there either. His main contribution was ballooning a shot high and wide when there maybe three of his teammates in good positions during a rare first half attack. Maybe he could do a job up front, but he certainly didn’t do his chances of playing on either the left or right much good in this game. Was Wakizaka plying this match? He was quite underwhelming against Machida but somehow did even less in thiis match. Well apart from hit every corner at the first defender. Miura has still not recovered from…. something. I don’t know what it is but he’s been pretty bad for most of this season. I’ve been told to not express out loud my opinions about Yamaguchi anymore. Maybe that’s for the best. I’m not disagreeing that he’s our best option right now, but I am strongly disagreeing with the insane amount of adulation he’s getting for, as one auto translated YouTube notification put it ‘making a two-handed save’. Wow! The same notifications refer to Erison as Ellison though, which surely is something the proof readers should have spotted. Presumably there aren’t any. Looks pretty shonky. Anyway, the first half was appalling, we got a bit better in the second until the fatigue really set in. We couldn’t pass for shit and gave the ball away an unbelievable amount of times. Blame the grass! We looked much better when Ito, Yamamoto and Romanic came on, but it’s a bit worrying that without Ito and Erison starting, we’re absolute cack and look like we’ll never score. (Just realised that I should probably mention in case you didn't see the match that Jesiel left the pitch injured. Not sure how serious it is, but it does seem that even when we have plenty of centre backs in the squad, we still are constantly suffering from a lack of options in that area. Fingers crossed he's ok for Sunday).

This was a no alcohol match for me. Not for any other reason than that I have no desire to drink the cack they serve in the stadium and aside from the little UBP stall outside the station, there is absolutely nothing within miles of SaiSta. Thankfully the rain held off and thankfully it was a massively reduced crowd due to it being a Levain Cup game. So the walk back to the station wasn’t the usual stop start snail-paced trudge and unlike last time it wasn’t mostly underwater. There you go! Some positives! Urawa rotated quite a lot I think and maybe because of this looked pretty poor. Admittedly they cut through us with ease, but that’s easy to do when there’s nothing to cut through. And the fact that they only scored once against a defence and keeper that lets goals in for fun should be seriously concerning for them. Lovely! They too seemed to be playing for the 1-0 towards the end of the match, which of course makes more sense for them to go for rather than us, but really showed a lack of ambition, I thought. It was utterly delightful that they fucked it up. Their fans must be bewildered that their booing every time we had the ball didn’t mortally wound us in the way they seemed to think it would. I suspect both teams will play a bit better in the second leg, but I really hope they’ve fucked themselves by conceding late on.

A quick sentence on the ref. He was a bit crap and as the game went on, seemed determined to give them everything. So kind of negative. But when you take into account the fact that it was Mikuriya, ‘a bit crap’ is a massive thumbs up. When your normal level is insanely bad, being even slightly annoying is a real step up. Congratulations!

Next up the second leg. Reading this back before I post it, I’m starting to wonder if there is any point me moaning about players not doing well. I’m fully aware that I am a fat old bastard sitting in the stands with zero talent who somehow thinks he can criticise others who are infinitely better than him. I might try to give the negativity a miss at the next match on Sunday. But it’s a bit tricky when one of our players messes up something so mind-numbingly easy. Repeatedly. Also, if you took out the negativity from these posts there wouldn’t be much left. It’s kind of strange, as the previous two games had some great positives in them, but I still somehow let myself get frustrated by the mistakes we made. Presumably the players are doing their best, (sometimes this is not particularly evident, but I think we have to presume they are), so I should shut up. The thing is though, football is a very emotional thing. Of course we watch it for the great highs, but also sometimes it is good to let out some frustration. I wonder sometimes if some people at the club don’t really like football that much and have instead been hired for their social media skills or something like that. Surely I can’t be the only one who wants to throw my phone at the wall when after a horrific performance we get a Youtube short of a ‘great save’ or of the one shot we had on target apparently oblivious to the fact that the rest of the game was a steaming pile of crap. I suppose though this could just be positivity taken to the max and perhaps should be praised. But I think people who really care about the results of the games might find some of these things as irritating as I do. ‘Happy Birthday! Here’s your birthday cake. I made it from stuff from the compost heap and covered it with shaving foam so it’s completely inedible. But just look at the candles! They’re great!’ Anyway, I’ve gone on too long and have gone so far off-piste now that this post is becoming even more irrelevant than usual. Let’s just hope that all those many Urawa fans who come to the game on Sunday boo themselves inside-out as their side mess up horrifically! There you go, I found some more positivity at the end!

Team

GK 98. YAMAGUCHI Louis
DF 5. SASAKI Asahi
DF 22. Filip UREMOVIC
DF 4. JESIEL

DF 13. MIURA Sota
MF 19. KAWAHARA So
MF 8. TACHIBANADA Kento
MF 24. MIYAGI Ten
MF 14. WAKIZAKA Yasuto
MF 23. MARCINHO
FW 38. KANDA Soma

Subs

GK 1. JUNG Sung-Ryong

MF 6. YAMAMOTO Yuki (on for KANDA 73')

DF 15. TANABE Shuto
MF 17. ITO Tatsuya (on for MARCINHO 46')
DF 27. KAMIHASHI Ryota (on for JESIEL 81')

FW 29. MYOGAN Toya
DF 30. NODA Hiroto 
DF 31. VAN VERMESKERKEN Sai (on for UREMOVIC 73')
FW 91. Lazar ROMANIC (on for MIYAGI 61')

 

My Frontale Man Of The Match 

Definitely not anyone who started the match.

 

Goals

NAKAJIMA (Urawa) 22' 1-0
ITO (Frontale) 90+5' 1-1

Highlights

Vs Urawa Reds (home) 21/5/25 J League match 13

Kawasaki Frontale 2 - 2 Urawa Reds

God damn that was a disappointing ending. I really would have loved to have won this game but I guess that’s how it goes sometimes. Despite the disappointment, it was at least an entertaining game and a draw was probably the right result. Which makes it all the more annoying that we were so close to getting a win as there’s no more delicious win than one which isn’t really 100% deserved, particularly when it comes against despicable opponents. To be fair though, I suppose I don’t have that much against Urawa the club. In fact I quite like their apparent inability to turn big money managerial appointments and signings into repeated mediocrity. To continue with this enjoyment of other teams’ possible misfortunes, let’s just check last night’s results again… Ah! YFM lost again! Lovely! Schadenfreude isn’t very grown up and clever, but it does help a bit when your own team has conceded late on. Again…

Us -

The injury to Erison was a significant blow to us in this match. It seemed unbelievable when he was ok to come back on the pitch after lengthy treatment and then seemed all too predictable when he immediately collapsed almost immediately. I can only presume he won’t be playing at the weekend as surely it was a head injury. Hope he’s ok. [After seeing the highlights I am now slightly embarrassed about my poor eyesight and more worried about his injury. It absolutely wasn’t a head injury so I was completely wrong about that. But when you see how upset he looked I can only presume it’s a reoccurrence of a past injury. He looked so unhappy that I can only presume he won’t be playing for quite a while]. All of this meant that Yamada was going to play for most of the match. He’s not having a good year. I think he showed some signs of improvement in this match, but he’s still well off the pace for some unknown reason. Add to this the fact that Wakizaka still isn’t playing particularly well and that means we’ve got a significant part of the team who are supposed to be making and scoring the goals who are playing nowhere near their best. With this in mind it’s something of a miracle that we managed to score twice I guess. Whilst we’re on the negative stuff, that first goal was horribly soft wasn’t it? We basically let a cross roll into the net. Urawa only had four shots on target in the whole game and we let two of them in. Don’t know if it’s because we’re still knackered (the schedule eases up slightly next week thankfully, so I won’t be able to keep making this exact same point). Maybe it’s because the injuries are piling up. Our only alternative options at centre back are Haydar or maybe Tanabe or Sasaki. Of course Kamihashi and Tsuchiya are in the squad but judging by the fact that recent match day squads have been identical and neither of those two have even made the bench recently, I guess they’re not really in the frame for playing any time soon. And then up front we now seem to only have Yamada who looks like he’ll never score again, or Kanda, who looks like he’ll never get on the pitch again. I know it sounds slightly bizarre to suggest changing to a 4-4-2 when I’ve just said we have no strikers, but the fact is that Yamada can’t do the one up front thing this year, so why not play someone alongside him and see if that helps. I’d go with Yamamoto and Kawahara in the middle, Ito on the right, Marcinho on the left and then Yamada up front with maybe Kanda or Segawa. But this is all a bit stupid isn’t it? The problems are clearly at the back at the moment. But anyway, we did alright, but that’s a seventh draw in 16 games which isn’t great, especially when you consider two of those draws came thanks to very late equalisers against scumbag teams. I started that new marks out of ten thing for us in the YFC game, and then promptly forgot about it for the Cerezo game. Well, it’s back! It feels a bit harsh to give us a five as we were close to winning, but the fact is that we didn’t. Six seems too high though, but maybe it’s deserved as the move for Segawa’s goal was great, wasn’t it? Ok then I compromise. Five and a half it is.

Them -

Not that much to say about Urawa really. Laughable behaviour from their centre back when he thought he shouldn’t have been booked in the first half. Some quite irritating players but no-one anywhere as annoying as my previous Urawa most hated player Ito. Really annoying that their first goal was so pissy. But then it does match a the character of a lot of their fans who were once again out in numbers to mainly boo and whistle. Of course our team announcements was greeted by a chorus of boos and whistles but their commitment even to negativity was so flimsy that they couldn’t even make the booing last till the end of the intro video. Maybe they were saving it for later in the match, After all there might be an opposition player with an obvious serious injury that needs to be booed, right? I don’t know why I always feel the need to say that obviously it’s not all of their fans who are like this. But it was plenty of them. I don’t know if it was the ‘Garcons’ the ‘Dandys’ or ‘Urawa Boys’ or perhaps some other ridiculously named group of wannabe hooligan little shitheads. There’s a reason one of their flags says ‘Pride of Urawa’ and that’s because not even all of their city are proud of them. One flag on the far right seemed to say ‘Wancars’. Maybe I read it wrong, but it certainly wouldn’t be out of place, even if the spelling could do with some work.

Ref -

Iida on the pitch and Kimura on VAR seems like a match made in hell. But can’t really complain about anything. Well actually one thing really pissed me off. Iida stopped the game as an Urawa defender was on the floor, (watch out mate, you’ll have your own fans booing you if you’re not careful, but only if you’re properly injured), and when he restarted the game with a drop ball Iida decided to give the ball to their keeper in the box instead of return it to us, even though we had it and had been attacking in on the left in the final third, I think we probably should have moaned a bit more about that. Probably wouldn’t have changed anything, but seemed a pretty weird decision for Iida to make. Anyway, aside from that, I’m astonished to say I have nothing else to write in this section.

Next up Gamba at home on Sunday. Hopefully we won’t concede another late equaliser. However I guess it would be nice  to be in the position where that is possible, rather than losing. I’m guessing it will be Yamada up front. Will he finally remember where the goal is? I hope so. We urgently need him back in form. It will be the last of a little run of home fixtures, in which we have won two and drawn one so far. It would be nice to make that three and one, and if we are harbouring any realistic hopes of doing anything in the league we’ll have to win. YFM are playing Kashima. Hmmmm, a bit of a conundrum… I think I’d like a 0-0 with plenty of red cards and lengthy season long bans for the key players of each team. Not too much to ask for, is it?

 

Team

GK 98. YAMAGUCHI Louis
DF 31. VAN WERMESKERKEN Sai
DF 2. TAKAI Kota
DF 35. MARUYAMA Yuichi (Yellow card 53')
DF 5. SASAKI Asahi
MF 19. KAWAHARA So
MF 8. TACHIBANADA Kento
MF 17. ITO Tatsuya
MF 14. WAKIZAKA Yasuto
MF 23. MARCINHO
FW 9. ERISON

Subs

GK 1. JUNG Sung-Ryong
MF 6. YAMAMOTO Yuki (on for KAWAHARA 70')
DF 15. TANABE Shuto
MF 16. OZEKI Yuto (on for TACHIBANADA 85')
FW 18. SEGAWA Yusuke (on for ITO 46')
FW 20. YAMADA Shin (on for ERISON 32')
FW 38. KANDA Soma
MF 41. IENAGA Akihiro (on for MARCINHO 70')
DF 44. CESAR HAYDAR

My Frontale Man Of The Match

There are probably candidates but I’m still in a bit of a grump about that late goal so I’m going to skip right past this.

Goals

NAKAJIMA (Urawa) 42' 0-1
MARCINHO (Frontale) 45+2' 1-1
SEGAWA (Frontale) 86' 2-1
OKUBO (Urawa) 90+4' 2-2

Highlights