Vs Gamba Osaka (home) 3/11/16 - 2nd Stage match 17

Kawasaki Frontale 2 - 3 Gamba Osaka

So, the second stage is finished and as far as I’m concerned, good riddance to it. It’s been a topsy-turvy few months with us veering between half decent performances and displays that are so abject that is was a miracle we managed to finish third in the second stage and second overall. We finished up with the visit of Gamba and it was somehow appropriate that we played a game that perfectly encapsulated our season as a whole. It was a true game of two halves with us playing some of the best stuff I’ve seen us manage for a long time in the first half before shooting ourselves in the foot in the second. Our chances in the Championship don’t look great judging on how we finished the second stage to be honest. Sorry the photos are terrible again, but I guess that's kind of appropriate for this game to be honest.

Once again we had been hit with the injury stick so had to juggle the team. Edu was absent, still no Oshima, Kobayashi out for 6 weeks and therefore missing the rest of the season pretty much. Kazama shuffled things up considerably with a front four of Okubo, Miyoshi, fresh from his Asian U19 triumph, Elsinho and Hasegawa. It was pretty surprising to be honest, especially the fact that it was Hasegawa in the middle and furthest forward. Tasaka played right back and Noborizato left. Kurumaya moved into central defence. Still no sign of Sung-Ryong so Arai continued in goal after his great performance against Kashima. We made an amazing start, wiping away all lingering memories of our last two woeful first halves against Hiroshima and Kashima. We were playing with drive, pace and enthusiasm and they were having real trouble dealing with the running of Miyoshi, Hasegawa and Elsinho. Okubo was sitting back a little in more of a playmaker role, playing pretty well and he seemed to be up for it for a change. Gamba were quite physical (seems everyone is against us recently. Maybe they worked out we don’t deal with that kind of thing very well) and there were loads of little fouls being committed. The ref kept his cards in his pocket though, as they seem to have been doing recently. Instead of being swamped by attacks as we were in the last two games we were winning the ball much further up the pitch and breaking fast. We were totally destroying them down our left hand side, Miyoshi doing a great job. Our first goal was very pleasing. It’s great to see young players scoring, especially when they could be very useful in the near future. On six minutes, Nobori swung a ball across which was nudged on by a sliding Gamba player. Okubo shot from close range, it was blocked by the keeper, but dropped to Hasegawa who smashed it into the roof of the net. His first J League goal. Well done him! Not long later the lead was doubled when Okubo floated a nice ball through for Elsinho who turned and laid it off to Miyoshi who cracked it into the corner. We were playing well and everything was great. A little while after,  Hasegawa played a great ball across for Okubo whose overhead went just wide. We had lots of chances. We really probably should have scored a few more. If only we had.

The second half started fairly well for us with Miyoshi hitting the post and Okubo hitting the bar. Then everything fell apart. Gamba broke and Shota couldn’t quite stop the cross/shot and it dribbled into the net. The defence were caught flat-footed. A minute later they were level. Okubo possibly played the ball a little too far ahead of himself deep in his own half and was flattened by a Gamba player. Gamba grabbed the loose ball, passed it to a rapidly advancing Kurata who ran straight past several defenders and hit a shot at goal. Shota stopped it but basically just laid it off for the Gamba player to pass the ball into the net. Have to say, Shota probably should have done better for both of these goals but don’t want to blame him too much. I would say so, as I am clearly biased towards Frontale, but I’m not sure the challenge on Okubo was anywhere near fair. It was hard and with no intention of winning the ball and I think the ref could easily have given us a free kick. We still should have defended better though. There weren’t any challenges for either of these goals really. Hasegawa was taken off the equaliser for Moriya, who to be honest, didn’t have a great game but didn’t exactly have much to work with. Another substitution followed shortly afterwards with Tasaka being taken off and replaced by Nakano, which could have worked, but didn’t. It gave us a bit more going forward, but we were still shaky at the back. The third goal came ten minutes after the second. Ademilson was given plenty of time on the edge of the box to shoot and he scored. No challenges again. For all three goals, we had plenty of defenders around but there was so much time and space for them to be able to easily shoot and score. Just not good enough. Miyoshi was replaced for Morimoto after we went behind but it was too little too late. The rest of the game was played out with us lumping the ball forward and losing it, repeatedly for about 15 minutes. There was a total lack of ideas and inspiration.

Of course the real punch in the guts came when we found out that Yokohama had done us a favor and held Urawa to a draw. If we had held on to our lead we would have gone straight to the Championship final as overall league winners and had the moral high-ground. As it is, if we are to get anything from this season it will be with a bit of a bad taste in the mouth as it will have to be through the ridiculous Championship play offs. Even if we win this year which judging by recent performances will be extremely unlikely, I’m still glad that next year the whole first and second stage nonsense will be gone. We deserve to finish second and no higher, because we just haven’t been able to do it when it counted. The thing that hurts about this performance is that it was so predictable. We have rarely been able to play two good halves of football in the same game this season, particularly in the second stage. We either get hit early before we get going and then manage to salvage something or start great and end up hanging on desperately. If I have to look for what went wrong in this game, I’d have to say that the substitutions didn’t work, although the score was level by that time anyway. Although if we’re removing Hasegawa, why not put Morimoto on to add a bit of muscle up front? By the time he came on it was a pretty much lost cause. I guess we can complain about injuries this season and it does feel like we get an inordinate amount of them, but most of them are coming from training. How unlucky are we really? Definitely, yesterday’s starting eleven would have been different if everyone was fit, but the fact is we played really well with that eleven for 60 minutes, but just couldn’t shore things up when we needed to. Do any of us really believe that we are going to beat Kashima and then Urawa over two games? It would be great if we did, but I think it’s more likely that we won’t even make it to the final. We were very lucky to beat Kashima last week and I’m sure they are going to want to make a point when they play us in what is now a much more important game.

So positives and negatives. Positives first. A great first half performance (although we should have scored more). Great to see Hasegawa and Miyoshi on the score sheet. Yoshito playing a bit better for periods of the game. Negatives, total capitulation through non-existent defending in the second half. Another two goals conceded in rapid succession, I guess due to total lack of concentration. Having the chance to win the league overall and throwing it away. Confidence and moral taking a beating with another crushingly bad performance, even if we were good for 60 of the 90 minutes. Not taking the chances we had. To be honest, it seems like I’m writing the same things most weeks recently.

So, next we have Urawa at home in the Emperor’s Cup. We beat them last time at their place so they'll be up for revenge and they have just taken advantage of our huge slip-up so I can’t see us having much confidence compared to them. But who knows, if we can play like we did in the first half, we can do them some damage. Gamba and Urawa both looked pretty bad in the Levain cup final and we proved yesterday that we could destroy a team playing like Gamba did. Unfortunately we also proved that we can destroy our own chances with some suicidal play. I have no idea which way it will go, but will be there supporting and hoping for the best as usual.  We really need to sort things out though if the early promise we showed this season and some of the great performances we put in early on are not going to count for nothing. A nice win against Urawa in the cup would certainly help to bring back a bit of sunshine for the team and the supporters into what has recently become a very cloudy sky.

Team

GK 30. ARAI Shota

DF 6. TASAKA Yusuke

DF 5. TANIGUCHI Shogo

DF 20. KURUMAYA Shintaro

DF 2. NOBORIZATO Kyohei

MF 14. NAKAMURA Kengo

MF 21. EDUARDO NETO (Yellow card 77')

MF 18. ELSINHO 
MF 26. MIYOSHI Koji

FW 13. OKUBO Yoshito
FW 16. HASEGAWA Tatsuya

Subs
GK 24. ANDO Shunske

MF 7. HASHIMOTO Koji

FW 9. MORIMOTO Takayuki (on for MIYOSHI 78')
MF 19. MORIYA Kentaro (on for HASEGAWA 67')

MF 22. NAKANO Yoshihiro (Yellow card 79') (on for TASAKA 71')
MF 25. KANO Kenta
DF 28. ITAKURA Ko

Goals  

HASEGAWA (Frontale) 6'  1-0
MIYOSHI (Frontale) 18' 2-0
FUJIHARU (Gamba) 65'  2-1
IDEGUCHI (Gamba) 66'  2-2
ADEMILSON (Gamba) 76'  2-3

Highlights

Vs Kashima Antlers (away) 29/10/16 - 2nd Stage match 16

Kashima Antlers 0 - 1 Kawasaki Frontale

Firstly, apologies it has taken me so long to write this post. Saturday saw us make the relatively short but particularly arduous journey to Kashima. On the map it doesn’t look so far but the transport connections to Kashima and in particular their stadium make the journey a bit of a pain. The game was a 14:00 kick off but the gates opened three hours before so we aimed to get there around that time. On arriving at Tokyo station to get the bus (pretty much the only way to get there unless you drive yourself) we found that there were a huge amount of people doing the same thing. This big crowd was mainly made up of football fans, but there was also a contingent of people traveling to Kashima for other reasons who probably were wishing that they were going on a different day. After queuing for an hour we managed to get on a bus, but there was still a huge amount of people behind us. Maybe this congestion was the reason they open the stadium so early, to give people a chance to arrive late, but still on time, if you know what I mean. One thing that really surprised me was the large number of Kashima fans, who presumably make this horrible journey every home game. The bus arrived promptly in Kashima city after about 1h40m, but then we had to weave round the city stopping at various places before finally arriving at the stadium about two and a half hours after we left. The journey back was worse. We didn’t have to stop anywhere as we were on a direct bus, but due to everyone leaving the stadium at the same time the heavy traffic made the journey take around three and a half hours. Bit of an ordeal all in all, and I think if we had lost and I had to make that journey back I would probably have never watched another football game or ridden on another bus. But anyway, this blog isn’t supposed to be about traffic and transport so I guess I’d better talk about the game a bit. 

This game was kind of a must win, but at the same time, one which we didn’t actually have to win. This post is full of contradictory statements, isn’t it? If we wanted to go into the last game with any hope of being top of the table overall, we had to win it. But given that we need Urawa to slip up and that we are already qualified for the championship, it didn’t actually matter. It was nice again to be in a stadium with no running track and the view was pretty good. It was unfortunate that I had to remove all the caps of my water bottles before entering, meaning that I had to rapidly drink a liter of water as I was worried I was going to spill it otherwise. I’m used to this kind of thing in the UK but I think this is the first time I’ve seen it in Japan. Maybe they thought I looked a bit dodgy. There was one change to the team from the last game, the injured Oshima being replaced by Moriya. Hashimoto was back on the bench. The team lined up in pretty much the same way as Hiroshima. This time Tasaka was announced as a striker instead of a midfielder but took his usual position as one of three centre backs. Glad we are still doing that bluff though. We took a lot of fans, I think around 3000 and we were in good voice and competently waving our big flag. The same can’t be said for Kashima who were having an upper-tier nightmare, wrestling with two huge twisted and backwards flags whilst singing a pre-game song that had about five verses and definitely went on too long. Apparently the Kashima fans' main gripe after the game was this song and flag display and they were very complimentary about our abilities in both respects. Thanks!

Their team though weren’t having the same problems. The first half was very similar to the Hiroshima game with us not being able to do much and losing the ball a lot and spending a lot of time penned into our own half. Kashima were a bit better than Sanfrecce though and they hit the bar a couple times. We were definitely living dangerously. Their front two of Kanazaki and Suzuki were causing us problems. Suzuki was a particularly unpleasant individual, tripping, kicking, shirt pulling and constantly diving. Definitely a new hate figure for me. The referee once again was the hopeless Nishimura, making completely random decisions, letting lots go and punishing non-existent infringements. How he is still allowed to officiate, I don’t know. Arai was having a very good game in goal. He made several very important saves and one of the times they hit the bar was because he had got just enough on it to stop it going in to the net. I’m really pleased he’s playing and that he’s playing well. He kept us in the game. One big bummer about the first half was Kobayashi being stretchered off. He pulled up when racing through on goal in one of our rare chances. I hope it’s not serious and that he can play soon, if not against Gamba on Thursday, then when the Championship games start.

The second half wasn’t so different. We seemed to switch to something more like a 4-4-2 with Tasaka in the midfield, but he was also at the back too so all in all I was a bit confused. The play wasn’t so different though. Nishimura was still hopeless. He seemed to have forgotten his cards as there were some dubious challenges that warranted cards going unpunished. I have a feeling that we will have to deal with him again this season before it’s finished. We were winning the ball from Kashima quite well but then pretty much immediately giving it back to them. Our passing wasn’t working and Okubo was still playing like he has been recently. Plenty of anger towards his teammates and not much else. On 55 minutes Nakano came on for Moriya and his running started to get us out of our own half and start threatening a little. Our goal though came down the other side of the pitch on 65 minutes. Taniguchi played a lovely pass out to Elsinho who drove into the box and shot towards the far corner of the goal. The keeper saved it but could only parry the ball to Morimoto who tapped it home and celebrated like crazy. Really pleased for him! The goal might not have been completely against the run of play but did feel a bit lucky considering how we had been battered in the first half. 25 minutes to hang on… After the goal Kashima started to commit a few more players forward and we had a few chances on the counter attack. Kashima hit the bar again and things were pretty tense. As you can see from the video below, Kashima pretty much dominated the game and we did a bit of a smash and grab on them. There’s not much in the way of Frontale highlights on there, although we did almost manage to double our lead near the end of the game but Morimoto’s shot was saved well. Noborizato made a late appearance replacing Nakano, which can't felt good for him, but was probably intended to give us a bit more defensively. So, we held on and got the three points but sadly Urawa won too so we’re still in second place overall. One last chance on Thursday as we pay Gamba at home and Urawa go to Yokohama. Can our neighbours do us a big favour I wonder? I hope so.

Positives and negatives. Positives first as we can do those a lot quicker. Great game from Arai, and we managed to get three points we really didn’t deserve. A Morimoto goal has got to be a good thing too as we really need a striker who is scoring. Which brings me on to the negatives. Okubo had no shots in the whole game. He clearly seems to be out of form and all out of enthusiasm. Why people will say nothing bad about him but slag off Nakano for misplacing a pass is baffling to me. At least one of those two players is trying. Okubo has been a great player for Frontale, but he should not be playing at the moment. We are effectively starting every game with ten men when he is one of our eleven. There seem to be a few teams interested in him and I’d say it’s almost certain he’ll be leaving in the summer as he apparently can’t be bothered any more. Good luck to him, but I think we’ll do better without him now, and I mean the end of this season as well as next season. Bet he won’t be dropped though. I hope he proves me wrong and scores a load of goals in the championship. Aside from singling him out, our attacking was not up to scratch in this game. Too much sideways and backwards movement, but more crucially, too much giving the ball away. We need to improve fast. The two players who had the most shots were Elsinho and Morimoto (who only played half the game), but both of them only had three, so not exactly setting the world on fire up front. And our defensive performance was another negative. Apart from Shota, we had a bit of a nightmare. That also needs to be sorted fast. And possibly the final big negative, the injury to Kobayashi. Hope it’s not too serious. [Apparently, it is, six weeks...]

So, next we close off the second stage with Gamba at Todoroki. Another one of these potentially must win/potentially meaningless games. What happens at Yokohama will be more significant. It would be classic Frontale I guess if Yokohama did us a favor and we lost to Gamba. But anyway, we’ll know soon and then we can start thinking about the Emperor’s Cup against Urawa and the championship game(s). Miyoshi and Itakura might be back from the U19 Asian championship (which they won! Congratulations!) but I heard Miyoshi has an injury so probably won’t play. It’s a shame, as it would be nice, if Kobayashi is still injured to see a front two of Miyoshi and Morimoto. But I guess it will probably be Okubo and Morimoto. Come on Yoshito, make me look like an idiot (please! please!) and score a load of goals. I’d be happy to eat my words. So, come on Frontale! And come on Yokohama too!

Team

GK 30. ARAI Shota
DF 5. TANIGUCHI Shogo

DF 23. EDUARDO

DF 6. TASAKA Yusuke

MF 14. NAKAMURA Kengo

MF 21. EDUARDO NETO

MF 18. ELSINHO 
MF 19. MORIYA Kentaro

MF 20. KURUMAYA Shintaro

FW 11. KOBAYASHI Yu
FW 13. OKUBO Yoshito

Subs
GK 24. ANDO Shunske

DF 2. NOBORIZATO Kyohei (on for NAKANO 90+1')

MF 7. HASHIMOTO Koji

FW 9. MORIMOTO Takayuki (Yellow card 90+3') (on for KOBAYASHI 37')
MF 16. HASEGAWA Tatsuya

MF 22. NAKANO Yoshihiro (on for MORIYA 55')
MF 25. KANO Kenta

Goals  

MORIMOTO (Frontale) 65'  0-1

  

Highlights

Vs Sanfrecce Hiroshima (home) 22/10/16 - 2nd Stage match 15

Kawasaki Frontale 2 - 0 Sanfrecce Hiroshima

Football’s back! And to be honest, the break was welcome. After a fairly long and expensive journey to Kobe to see us put in a clueless performance and get hammered, I think plenty of us welcomed the few weeks off. But as tends to be the case, I was itching to get back to a game about half way through that break. Our visitors this time were Sanfrecce Hiroshima, who in spite of having a fairly mediocre season are probably a team we should always be wary off. As usual we are pretty much in the dark with regards to injuries as there never seems to be much information released about them. We can presume that Sung-Ryong is still injured, but Shota was back! Seems that Nara has broken a bone again (poor him! What do we do in training? Kick boxing. Sorry, I think I always make that joke). Other absentees were Miyoshi and Itakura who were away with the Japanese under 19s (great goal Miyoshi, by the way!). The starting line-up was pretty similar to the one against Kobe a few weeks ago, the major difference being the change of keeper. Hasegawa, Nakano and Noborizato all appeared on the bench. Good to see them back! And also funny to see that we are still doing that kind of trick, where we announce Tasaka as a striker and then have him play as one of the three centre backs. Surely no-one is being tricked by this, but I quite enjoy it all the same, so long may it continue.

The first half. we started where we had left off against Kobe a few weeks ago with some suicidal passing out of defence, gifting Sanfrecce a few early shots.  Things really weren’t clicking early on and it was thanks to good performances from Taniguchi and Shota that we didn’t concede. The defence looked a lot more solid than at Kobe though, but Oshima and Neto just in front of them were giving them plenty to deal with, misplacing quite a few passes. We kept getting caught dwelling on the ball. I guess it was the Sanfrecce game plan to get in our faces and not give us any time on the ball. They were pretty physical and we didn’t seem to be able to deal with it very well. To be honest, most of the first half was pretty uneventful from a Frontale point of view. I don’t think we really made any real chances, but Hiroshima weren’t much better. They had chances but their finishing was horrible. The game felt a little like a dead rubber. Think it was the season before last where this fixture was the final home game of the season and both teams were just going through the motions with nothing to play for.  And this felt the same, although arguably, we still could clinch the league overall and go straight to the final of the championship. But we need Urawa to slip up again and sadly they haven’t yet. The stats on the Frontale website say we had two shots in the first half, but I’m not sure I’d really have called them shots. So far, so scrappy and so mediocre.

The second half started with no changes in personnel but we seemed like a different team. Hiroshima were still pushing us around a bit but we seemed to be creating a bit more. Oshima seemed to be the midfielder pushing further forward with Kengo sitting back a bit and we had a few early shots! We were still not quite there though. We looked a bit shaky at the back and the ref was letting quite a lot go on the pitch which I don’t think was helping us. Sanfrecce had a great chance to go ahead but Shota just managed to push their shot on to the post. We were making chances but unfortunately they weren’t falling to our strikers. Guess this is the point where I make my usual moan about Okubo. He still seems off the pace and his moaning to younger players about passes going astray can’t help the team. I think his game was summed up when collecting the rebound from a stinging Oshima shot he crossed/shot the ball straight off the pitch. On 72 minutes Oshima was replaced by Moriya who seemed to immediately make an impact. Okubo gave him a mouthful though when he didn’t pass back to him outside the area (even though the original pass from Okubo was horrible and barely made it to Moriya). We were still making more chances. Elsinho, whose hair is getting increasingly epic week by week, smashed one towards goal and the ball bounced agonisingly wide from the keepers save. But things were encouraging. We looked to have regained some of our old style. Nakano came on for Edu (who himself had a few good shots on goal), Kurumaya dropping back into defence. Think they’d both played alright though, so maybe it was just an excuse to get Nakano on and have him run at Hiroshima a bit. On 82 minutes we finally took the lead. A couple of shots were blocked in the box, Kobayashi laid the ball off for Moriya, who took a touch past a defender and sent a lovely dipping shot in from outside the box. It was the dip that did it, as the Hiroshima keeper seemed to be watching it sail over the bar as it dropped over his head into the net. It was a cracking goal. Let’s hope Moriya has a few more of them up his sleeve to score this season. Then a nervy last ten minutes with a surprising five minutes of injury time. Noborizato came on for Okubo, presumably to waste some time. We were defending deep and not getting much of the ball, but we were doing a decent enough job it seemed. With a minute to go, Hiroshima sent their keeper up for a corner. This kind of thing rarely seems to work, but at the same time it rarely seems to go as wrong as it could. But today was the day it did. We broke with the ball sending the Hiroshima keeper scurrying back to his goal. Elsinho had the opportunity to have a shot from his own half but maybe sensibly he squared it as we were advancing in numbers. Noborizato totally scuffed his pass but it fell to Kobayashi who passed it on to Kengo (nice stamina for an old man!). By now the keeper was back, but presumably a bit flustered and Kengo was able to pass it under him into the corner of the net. Possibly a bit harsh on Hiroshima but it felt pretty good at the time.

So, a win. It feels like it has been a while. Positives and negatives. First the positives. Good performances from the defence, particularly Taniguchi and from Shota in goal. Great goal from Moriya and us playing in the way that we were earlier in the season for some of the second half. Kobe losing takes us back to second in the second stage but… Negatives, Urawa won with a 90th minute goal so we remain in second overall. Okubo wasn’t good again. I like him as a player, or at least I did till this year. I don’t think he’s adding anything at the moment and if Gamba are interested in him, I don’t think it would be a great loss to have him leave at the end of the season. Would certainly much rather keep hold of Kobayashi (who Gamba are also sniffing around apparently). Final negative has to be the shaky first half performance, especially in midfield. We can’t afford to play like that when we get to the final stage.

Up next, Kashiwa away. A game in a place that is so unreachable by train that despite being in the next prefecture to Tokyo, apparently takes something like seven hours to get to. Thankfully they have a direct bus to the ground from Tokyo station, but guess we’re going to have an early start next week as that bus still takes two and a half hours. Depending on the Urawa result again, the game could be kind of pointless, but as long as we have a chance, we have to keep winning. Let’s hope that my fellow Brit, Jay at Jubilo Iwata can do a job on Urawa for us. If Urawa do finish top overall, we are likely to be playing Kashima again very soon in the play offs. So this game could be an interesting glimpse at what could happen later. Anyway, all we can do is keep winning, so let’s hope that is exactly what we do. Oh, and finally, apologies for the photos in this post. They are worse than usual, and that's saying something!

Team

GK 30. ARAI Shota
DF 5. TANIGUCHI Shogo

DF 23. EDUARDO

DF 6. TASAKA Yusuke

MF 10. OSHIMA Ryota

MF 21. EDUARDO NETO

MF 18. ELSINHO  (Yellow card 69')
MF 14. NAKAMURA Kengo

MF 20. KURUMAYA Shintaro

FW 11. KOBAYASHI Yu
FW 13. OKUBO Yoshito

Subs
GK 24. ANDO Shunske

DF 2. NOBORIZATO Kyohei (on for OKUBO 90+4')

FW 9. MORIMOTO Takayuki
MF 16. HASEGAWA Tatsuya

MF 19. MORIYA Kentaro (on for OSHIMA 72')
MF 22. NAKANO Yoshihiro (on for EDUARDO 82')
MF 25. KANO Kenta

Goals  

MORIYA (Frontale) 84'  1-0
NAKAMURA (Frontale) 90+5'  2-0

  

Highlights

Vs Vissel Kobe (away) 1/10/16 - 2nd Stage match 14

 

Vissel Kobe 3 - 0 Kawasaki Frontale

For the second post in a row, where to start with this game? Because we were playing in the evening we were aware of Urawa’s smashing of Gamba earlier in the day, so it was crucial that we put in a good performance in order to keep ahead of them overall. Unfortunately, that’s not exactly what we did. In fact, it’s the opposite of what we did. This game was a shambles and we were woeful. The second stage is gone, being first over the whole season looks pretty much finished too and on current form I am seriously doubtful that we will be able to do anything of note in the championship play off. So far, so depressing. I think I am going to struggle to pick anything positive out of the burnt remains of this game and of our season’s hopes.
 

Vissel Kobe’s ground was a new one for me and I was pretty impressed with it. Probably due to the fact that there isn’t a running track which always makes the match experience a lot better. Maybe on Saturday a running track might have helped shield us from the terrible football we were playing. It wasn’t the biggest, but it was quite impressive, as you’d expect a 2002 World Cup stadium to be, I guess. There was a nice echo from our early chants off the back wall at the other end of the stadium. Didn’t hear it later, probably because the Vissel fans seemed to be in a bit of a good mood and good voice. We started the game with almost a full strength line up. The only difference being the goalies selected, due to injuries, Takagi starting and the still slightly injured Ando on the bench. But we didn’t really have much reason to worry as Takagi had done a decent enough job against Yokohama when he had to come on. But our fourth choice keeper was starting and our injured third choice keeper was on the bench. So definitely not full strength in that department. Whether Sung-Ryong or Shota could have made much a difference, we’ll never know. There seemed to be a feeling that they might have on twitter after the game, but I think the real problem was with the outfield players. Tasaka was again playing in a back three as he has done in the last few games. Neto and Yoshito were back, recharged (possibly) after the break enforced by their suspensions. I recall that in the past that Yoshito always seems to get a good reception from the Kobe fans (his former team), but on Saturday there were definitely a few boos mixed in with the applause. And definitely some jeers when he fired his shots wide or high or dribbled them towards the keeper.

The start of the game could have been perfect for us. Almost straight from kick off we broke through the middle of the Kobe team and Kobayashi’s shot was well saved by the keeper. Maybe this was the game changing moment, 30 seconds in. Shockingly, this first shot on target was pretty much our only shot on target until a late second half flurry where we ‘hit’ the target with a series of back-passes to the Kobe keeper, taking our match total up to five shots on target. Not championship winning performance levels. Not long afterwards, Kobe hit the post after cutting through our defence with ease. We had plenty of players back but somehow they still managed to find a totally unmarked player at the far post. A let-off, certainly, but only postponing the inevitable. Kobe were playing very tight on us, always pressuring our players on the ball and we weren’t coping with it. Presumably aware of his inexperience, they were really targeting Takagi and giving him a quite a few bumps and shoves. Not sure if this is what lead to what happened with their first goal, but a huge hoofed long ball from their defence caught our static defence out, meaning Takagi had to come out and clear the ball way outside his box. Instead of just hammering it back to them with his right foot he switched it on to what is presumably his stronger left, but due to pressure from the Kobe forward his pass to Kurumaya didn’t make it, possibly Kurumaya’s fault too as he seemed to be just waiting for it to arrive. An advancing Kobe player stole the ball and they easily cut through our immobile defenders and beat Takagi at his near post. We made a few chances in the first half but they were all off target. We seemed to be suffering from a lack of communication and struggling with controlling the ball and passing the ball. So, nothing too serious… Oshima was having a bit of a bad game, losing the ball a lot. Kobe started time wasting, pretty unbelievable in the first half, but their game plan was working. They were getting in our face, forcing errors and then breaking fast. They were also pretty physical, which I guess is something we sometimes struggle to deal with. They picked up four yellow cards and were certainly fouling a lot (18 free kicks for us in the game compared to four for them). We were not doing much right, but were still in the game.

The second half saw us push Tasaka up into the midfield and revert to a back four. Although Elsinho and Kurumaya were still pushing forward so I guess the thinking was that it was a change to give us a bit more bite in the midfield. It didn’t work though. We were blighted by the same problems we had in the first half, mainly that we couldn’t play football, which is a bit of a bummer when you are playing a football match. Our usual slow build ups were curtailed by us giving the ball away. Oshima was having a bit of a nightmare still, the ball seemed to be bouncing off Yoshito, who always needed a touch too many and all of our attacks and shots were getting blocked by Kobe players getting in the way and putting their bodies on the line. Quite why we weren’t doing the same thing is beyond me as we really had something to play for. Their second goal came from us having all our defenders clustered together in the middle and them simply passing the ball out wide. Neto, appealing for offside from the pass, missed the opportunity to get tight on Leandro and he curled the ball quite nicely into the corner of the goal past Takagi. We made our first sub, replacing Tasaka with Miyoshi who normally can help us out in situations like this. But it was more of the same really. They kept nicking the ball off us and hitting us on the break. We were the architects of our own demise really. On 74 minutes we made our second change, Neto off and Morimoto on. Given how he was playing, I thought Oshima would have been more likely to be replaced, but it was Neto who gave way. It didn’t change much though. We kept huffing and puffing and getting nowhere. Shot after shot drifted wide. They scored their third on 76 minutes. We had four players surrounding Leandro but none were able to put a challenge in and he was able to lift the ball over Takagi who didn’t do so well this time. Quite how they were able to make the chance though has much more to do with our defence than our keeper. We were hopeless and they were ruthless. Kobe kept time wasting and fouling, perhaps worried that we would stage another Yokohama game style come back but I think we all knew we were going to get nothing from the game. Our final substitution was another slightly strange one. Itakura came on for Taniguchi. Not sure if it was an injury or tactical. Certainly we had been terrible at the back, but I think it was a little late to shore things up if that was the thinking behind it. The rest of the game was played out with successive substitutions from Kobe, running the clock down, Morimoto passing the ball to the Kobe keeper and me wishing the ref would just blow up and put us out of our misery.

It’s impossible to single out one thing that went wrong in this game, because pretty much everything did. We looked tired, out of form and not really interested. We made chances but seemed to have no power or accuracy behind our shots. None of players played well really. Some of our players played terribly. Our substitutions were perhaps a bit confusing. The statistics for the game (and bear in mind that I have no idea how accurate these are, but they seem to correspond with how I perceived things being), speak volumes. We had 58% possession! 18 shots, but only five on target (three of which were in the last ten minutes I think). Kobe did a job on us, but we made a total mess of putting up any kind of opposition. This was a season killing performance. Thankfully we have a couple of weeks off now as we need to sort a few things out very soon. I’m not going to talk about positives and negatives as I don’t think there was a single positive to come out of this game. Three games left and none of them look easy, home to Hiroshima, away to Kashima and then home to Gamba. Urawa have Albirex, Jubilo and Yokohama. We’re down to third and six points behind Urawa in the second stage, so that’s pretty much gone. Overall, down to second and one point behind Urawa, so that’s still possible, but I have less confidence in us winning our final three games than I have in Urawa dropping any points. Still possible though I guess. Barring something dramatic happening it looks like the final play offs/championship/whatever you want to call it, will be a three way contest with us playing Kashima at Todoroki in a one off game to decide who meets Urawa over two legs home and away. All season I’ve been moaning about this play off system, but now it seems that it’s our only chance of getting something, even if that chance is pretty slim. That would be a strange turn around as we were griping previously about it being unfair, imagining that we might top the table overall but lose in the playoffs. There would be a certain irony about the situation being reversed, but it would now be quite welcome!

Now, a couple of weeks off to regroup and a chance for some players to get fit again. We need some monumental performances to get anything from this season now, so let’s be hopeful and imagine that we can do it. It would be a shame to continue our run of being ‘silver collectors’, although there’s also the chance that we’ll be taking bronze of course. Given how we were playing at the start of the season, anything less than the title would be a disappointment, but one which is probably deserved judging by our recent collapse and our inability to get results against bad teams when it really matters. After today’s Emperor’s Cup draw [we got Urawa, probably the worst possible draw…], I’m going to try to not think about football for a bit. It’s become a bit painful to be a Frontale fan recently! Let’s hope that all of us, players and fans alike, are back with plenty of enthusiasm when we resume on the 22nd against Hiroshima.  

Team

GK 29. TAKAGI Shun
DF 5. TANIGUCHI Shogo

DF 23. EDUARDO

DF 6. TASAKA Yusuke

MF 10. OSHIMA Ryota

MF 21. EDUARDO NETO

MF 18. ELSINHO 
MF 14. NAKAMURA Kengo

MF 20. KURUMAYA Shintaro

FW 11. KOBAYASHI Yu
FW 13. OKUBO Yoshito

Subs
GK 24. ANDO Shunske

DF 8. KOMIYAMA Takanobu

FW 9. MORIMOTO Takayuki (on for EDUARDO NETO 74')
MF 19. MORIYA Kentaro

MF 25. KANO Kenta
MF 26. MIYOSHI Koji (on for TASAKA 59')
DF 28. ITAKURA Ko (on for TANIGUCHI 79')

Goals  
WATANABE (Kobe) 27'  1-0
LEANDRO (Kobe) 59'  2-0

LEANDRO (Kobe) 76'  3-0

  

Highlights

Vs Yokohama F Marinos (home) 25/9/16 - 2nd Stage match 13

 Kawasaki Frontale 3 - 2 Yokohama F Marinos

I don’t really know where to start with this game. As it’s taken me a while to put this post up I imagine everyone already knows the score and has seen the video. I’ve certainly watched it a few times since Sunday too and I still feel pretty amazing when I recall what happened. Not sure I will be able to convey this feeling in words, but I’ll give it a go. Sorry for the blurred photos. Everything was a bit too exciting.

So, going in to the game we had no Yoshito and no Neto. It was a bit of a surprise a couple of days before the game when it seemed that Kano Kenta was going to be one of their replacements. He seems to have been out of favour recently, many times not even making the bench but maybe he was injured and not dropped. He did make it to the bench a few times and then disappeared again. But the whole team injury situation this year has been quite confusing I guess. It seems that we’ve had a huge amount of injuries and it also seems that we don’t really get much information about them. Every time we’ve talked about a player having disappeared from the squad, a few games later we’ll hear that he’s coming back from an injury we never even knew he had. I don’t know if this is a tactical lack of information or just the way we do things. In any case it has sometimes created some surprising team selections. Not least Kano back in the starting line up for a game against his old side. Perhaps we were looking for the classic 'score against your old team thing'…

The formation on the night was a little difficult to detect but it seemed that we were playing three at the back (one of whom was Tasaka). This confusion was not helped by the team announcement which seemed to suggest four at the back and Tasaka up front. I wonder if this is a tactical thing too. Although I suppose the confusion it might create won’t last too long till people work it out. Certainly makes it fun to guess though. The ‘kazoku’ were absent again. During the week three people (presumably members of the 'kazoku') received bans from attending Frontale games. One person got a five game ban and two people a one game ban. The one game bans will have been served by now, but maybe they are all waiting till the five game ban is done before they come back. This could be interpreted as them equally sharing responsibility for what happened, or could be seen as them being angry about the five game ban and withdrawing their support during this time. What little communication from them has come out suggests that it is the former. They will be disappointed though to have missed a very exciting Todoroki night. And I have another referee to add to my list of bizarre and useless officials. The announcement of Iemoto as ref caused a few boos around the ground before the game had started and it seems that he is another notorious official (who was actually struck off once and also had a ‘cooling off period’ after a bizarre performance) who I now have a grudge against. This is probably something to be talked about somewhere else at another time, but it does seem that the standard of refereeing in the J League is, generally speaking, pretty bad.

The first half was pretty good for us. We didn’t seem to be struggling too much with the absence of a couple of starting members. Possibly we were losing the ball a bit more often than we usually do, but when we had the ball we were really pushing forward and making chances. Maybe our play recently has got a bit too ponderous with too many passes going sideways or backwards. I like the way we play, keeping possession well and waiting for an opportunity, but against Yokohama we looked very exciting. Right from the off Kano Kenta looked well up for it against his old team and Miyoshi was doing what Miyoshi always does, running at the opposition and causing them problems. There was an amazing amount of shirt-pulling coming from Yokohama, all going unpunished by the useless ref, who instead seemed to want to concentrate on making himself the centre of attention. I’m not sure where he learnt how to officiate, but he seemed to be so confident that he was playing with his own set of football rules which neither team ever really got used to. Oshima seemed for the most part to be playing the Neto role, sitting in front of the defence and he was doing a good job of it. The opening goal came from Kano Kenta (who else) and was a lovely half-diving header from an Kobayashi cross. Kano celebrated like crazy which suggests he doesn’t have so many fond memories of his time at Yokohama. His passion and enthusiasm was a constant feature of his time on the pitch. Him playing like this could be very useful for the rest of our season. We totally dominated the first half with nine shots to Yokohama’s two. I haven’t seen us play like this for a while and given that this a potentially tricky local derby with Yokohama having moved up to fourth place in the second stage it was a very impressive opening 45 minutes. They had a few chances but we were in total control.

My notes for the second half are a little limited as my phone battery was dying and it all got a bit too exciting. One of the most notable moments was the injury to Arai. From a Yokohama corner Shota took an elbow in the face (from Taniguchi!) as he was jumping to punch clear. He spent a considerable time on the ground getting treatment and being booed by a section of the Marinos fans. Lovely lot, aren’t they? It’s funny as before the game I was saying how in general it’s wrong to dislike fans of other teams as often you can’t really help how you ended up supporting the team you do. Obviously I would make an exception for Urawa, as there is always a reason to dislike everything about them! However, the actions of some of the Yokohama fans was pretty low. I don’t understand why they would think we wanted to waste time when we were well on top. After getting an initial lengthy treatment, Shota was able to continue, but shortly afterwards he went down again (cue more booing from the Marinos fans) and was stretchered off with a broken cheek and concussion. Keep it classy Marinos! He was replaced by Shun Takagi, one of the few squad members I haven’t seen play so far this season, who I guess has to be considered our fourth choice keeper. Sung-Ryong and Shunsuke Ando are both injured and so is Shota now. Let’s hope someone can get at least half fit for Saturday otherwise we might be promoting another youth team player. Or maybe Tasaka can fill in there too! I guess Yokohama were aware of Takagi’s lack of match experience as they immediately started firing shots at him from distance and bumping him in challenges. He made a couple of great saves though and I was very impressed with him given the circumstances. Around 80 minutes Kano left the pitch to be replaced by Komiyama, who went in to the back three and Tasaka moved up to play on the left side of our attack. A couple of minutes later he played a beautifully weighted ball through for Miysohi who chipped the ball over the outrushing Yokohama keeper. Lovely pass and lovely finish and great for both Tasaka and Miyoshi who had both played very well. So we were coasting towards three points. What could possibly go wrong?

Reaching 90 minutes, the fourth official signaled nine minutes of injury time, which was about right. Shota was down for a long time with his injury. Somehow the proximity to victory caused us to lose concentration a little. We gave away a free kick (or maybe an offside) around the edge of the Yokohama penalty area. They pushed the ball towards the half way before taking it, stealing quite a lot of ground. The referee seemed to whistle to say take it from the right place but then changed his mind and waved play on and this is where the first Yokohama goal came from. Disappointing that Iemoto, who had been so horribly picky about everything for the whole of the 90 minutes decided to not be picky this time. But can’t really blame the goal on this. We just went to sleep at the back. We gave them plenty of space to put a cross in, the initial header from an unmarked Yokohama player was pushed onto the bar by Takagi and then they managed to bundle the rebound in. The defenders (apart from Komiyama) were static. Obviously now, nerves were shredded. We had been in almost complete control for the whole 90 minutes but the deficit had been halved and things were tense. This first Yokohama goal was on 90+6 minutes, so we only had to hold on for three minutes more. On 90+8 minutes they drew level. There was some confusion in Miyoshi’s pass to Oshima and a Yokohama player stole the ball, rounded the keeper and then passed the ball to a totally unmarked teammate who lifted the ball into the top of the net. Lack of concentration again and totally deflating. I sat with my head in my hands whilst the Yokohama fans went crazy. One thing seeing the replay that really pissed me off is the huge push from Martinus on Miyoshi after he passes the ball. Surely a foul. I know the ball had gone and it didn’t really affect what happened but can you really get away with this in the professional game? Particularly annoying as Martinus was a constant fouling lump the whole game, shoving, hacking and shirt-pulling. Would have liked to see him get a yellow at some stage for at least one of these. So, we had thrown it away, the season was over, there was no way our morale would be able to recover from this, especially given that it was our neighbours who’d done it to us.

Morimoto was thrown on for Miyoshi for the final couple of minutes. I guess a last throw of the dice to put someone big up front. There was a surprisingly great response from the crowd to us conceding. We were singing louder than ever and desperately trying to get one more attack out of the tiring players. And we had one last chance on 90+9 minutes, a corner taken right in front of us. Kengo’s delivery was headed to the other side of the box where it was picked up by Tasaka, who turned and floated a ball in to the back post where it was met by Kobayashi’s head and drifted (unbearably slowly, it seemed at the time) into the corner of the net past the struggling keeper. Everyone went wild. My voice was pretty much ruined through too much screaming. It was absolutely amazing. To go from the despair of conceding the equaliser to the joy of scoring a winner nine minutes into stoppage time was unreal. The players celebrations were great. There is a great video online of the last few minutes of the game in the video below. Keep an eye on Edu around 2:43. I love his reaction.

    

There obviously wasn’t much time left to play after that and the ref blew up shortly after the restart. Most of the Frontale players fell to the ground at the final whistle. Huge celebrations were going on in the stands and the result was totally justified given the whole ninety minutes but it really felt like a massive win against the odds after coming back from conceding the two goals. I don’t think I have ever gone through anything like that at a football game. It’s kind of tough on the Yokohama players and fans to lose in such a way, but over the course of the game, justice had probably been done.

Looking back, the margins between this game signalling the end of our season and being a huge confidence boost are tiny. If we hadn’t managed to get the winner I can’t imagine we would be able to pick ourselves up for the remaining games and would have faded away getting nothing from our 2016 campaign. Getting that winner will give us a lot of confidence and hopefully also has made us realise that we need to concentrate for the whole length of the game. We’ve been giving way some stupid goals recently and we’ll need to stop doing this as we can’t always rely on an insane end to every game. Positives and negatives. Negatives first, sloppy defending and lack of concentration to concede twice in injury time and potentially throw the game away, and of course, the injury to Shota. Positives, mainly the fact that we threw the game away but we managed to grab it back. Our attacking desire persists for the entire length of the match but we need to work on our defensive efforts matching that. Great performances from Tasaka, Miyoshi, Kano and Takagi. Although it seems unfair not to mention all of the team. You have to remember we did this without two big names. Our performance was good (ignoring the first part of injury time) and we were creating plenty of chances. Just a shame that we couldn’t put them away. I’m pretty sure we will bring Yoshito and Neto back into the starting line up on Saturday against Kobe, but there could be a case for leaving the team as it is, as they did a good job and we looked a lot more positive than usual. Although given that Kobe is Yoshito’s old team though it would seem foolish not to put him in and let the 'scoring against your previous team' thing carry on.

On to Kobe, a new ground for me and a team that will probably be pretty tough opponents. They have a free scoring striker Leandro who will be keen to keep ahead of Yoshito and Kobayashi (who are now level) in the goal scoring charts. All of these players though are still behind Hiroshima’s Utaka. Kobe have replaced Yokohama in fourth place so they are a team that are doing well in the second stage and are in some good form. Let’s hope we can come back with three points and that we can get a nice result in the Urawa vs Gamba game taking place five hours before our game starts. Fingers crossed!

[Can't believe I forgot to mention it, but this win has secured our place in the end of season championship. If we can remain top of the league over the course of the whole season we'll go straight to the final, so that has to be our aim. But at least we know we'll be there at some stage now].

Team

GK 30. ARAI Shota
DF 5. TANIGUCHI Shogo

DF 23. EDUARDO

DF 6. TASAKA Yusuke (Yellow card 78')

MF 10. OSHIMA Ryota

MF 14. NAKAMURA Kengo

MF 18. ELSINHO 

MF 25. KANO Kenta

MF 26. MIYOSHI Koji

MF 20. KURUMAYA Shintaro
FW 11. KOBAYASHI Yu

Subs
GK 29. TAKAGI Shun (on for ARAI 69')

DF 3. NARA Tatsuki
DF 8. KOMIYAMA Takanobu (on for KANO 82')

FW 9. MORIMOTO Takayuki (on for MIYOSHI 90+9')
MF 19. MORIYA Kentaro

FW 27. OTSUKA Shohei 
DF 28. ITAKURA Ko

Goals  

KANO (Frontale) 14'  1-0

MIYOSHI (Frontale) 84'  2-0

NAKAMACHI (Yokohama) 90+6'  2-1
ITO (Yokohama) 90+8'  2-2

KOBAYASHI (Frontale) 90+10'  3-1

  

Highlights

Vs JEF United (home) 22/9/16 - Emperor's Cup 3rd round

Kawasaki Frontale 4 - 1 JEF United (AET)

Less than a week on from the Omiya disaster we’re back in action again and back at Todoroki. Given that this was an Emperor’s Cup game we might have expected a few changes, but given that we’re playing again on Sunday (vs. Yokohama, at home again) it was more like a whole new team than just a few changes. Yoshito and Neto both started though as they are banned for Sunday’s game. The wholesale changes were not just restricted to on the pitch though. Because of the pathetic argy-bargy after the Omiya game the ‘kazoku’, the guys who wear the blue t-shirts, lead all the chants, try to get people singing and on occasion surround the opposition team bus after a defeat (the latter only once as far as I know), didn’t turn up. Presumably, this was to show their contrition for what happened last Saturday. I have no idea how many of them were involved and what actually happened, but there were apparently no arrests or charges. Possibly, things have been blown up out of proportion, but at the same time, it takes 20 years to build an image of being nice fans and one evening to ruin it. I’m still pretty peed off at what happened, but imagine things will be back to normal on Sunday with them in attendance. One of my fellow locals in my favourite pub who happens to be an Urawa fan thought the whole thing was negligible anyway. Urawa get up to far worse he said, which is almost certainly true, but why would we want to get associated with that kind of thing at all?

So, back to the matter in hand, a third round Emperor’s Cup tie against JEF United, a team lying almost slap-bang in the middle of J2. On paper a fairly easy tie I guess, but as we know, football isn’t played on paper and things don’t often work out how you might think they would. The game saw the return to Kawasaki of Takayuki Funayama, who left us at the end of last season. Always a 100% effort player, but one who never managed to find the net in the whole time he was with us, he inevitably scored against us… There were other returns too. Komiyama, Nara and Morimoto all started their first games for quite a while and the number of players being rested for Sunday meant that we saw quite a few players starting a game for the first time in a while (Harakawa, Hasegawa and Itakura). So, quite a few changes and it seemed like quite a few people playing in unfamiliar positions. Hashimoto was used as a kind of defensive central midfielder but seemed to be popping up all over the pitch, apart from on the wings where he normally plays best. Consequently, with the changes in personnel and positions, we weren’t exactly firing on all cylinders in the first half. JEF were defending in numbers and doing a decent job of it. We were passing the ball around as usual, but mainly sideways and backwards. It seemed that we didn’t quite have anyone who was starting dangerous moves. It was just lots of possession and not really going anywhere. That is until we gave the ball away, which we did quite a few times, creating problems for ourselves. Neto seems a little out of sorts recently even before the Omiya game. Maybe he needs a bit of a rest, but something’s not quite clicking at the moment and he's losing the ball a bit. The highlight of the first half was naturally Morimoto’s first goal for quite a while (since the home game against Shonan in March!). It was a decent goal, as far as I can remember without seeing the highlights and with it being at the other end of the pitch, it was a shot into the corner from around the edge of the box. [Having now seen the highlights, it was an absolute cracker from quite a way outside the box. Great goal!]. So far so good, but a bit unspectacular on the whole. We didn’t really threaten much.

The second half started with no changes for either team. The ref (Nishimura, complete idiot as far as I’m concerned) was being ultra fussy about everything making himself the centre of attention. Before I encountered Ogiya last week, Nishimura was the ref whose name I most feared seeing before one of our games. Totally obsessed with making himself the centre of attention and demanding free kicks being taken from the exact centimetre of turf where the infringement happened especially if it doesn’t make any difference to either team. There was a certain irony to this later in the half… On 51 minutes, we conceded the inevitable goal to Funayama. A JEF corner was punched clear by Shota but they worked the ball out to the wing again and the cross found Funayama who diverted it into the net. Having seen a replay filmed by someone in the crowd, I’d say there’s a hint of offside about it, but no-one seemed to complain too much. It was probably a fair enough score as neither team had exactly set the game alight. But it was a bit of a wake up call for us. After another ten minutes or so of us flapping around Kazama decided it was time to try and play a bit better and in short succession brought on Miyoshi and Elsinho for Hashimoto and Morimoto. And it kind of worked. Miyoshi and Elsinho were both really running at them and causing some problems. We started creating chances but sadly not putting them away. Yoshito was looking very out of sorts again, kind of sleepwalking his way through the match. On 79 minutes he woke up a bit though. A through pass found him racing clear of the JEF defence at the edge of the box and he was bundled to the ground. He felt it was inside the box and therefore a penalty, but the ref disagreed. Personally, I couldn’t tell. It was very much borderline. Nishimura though felt that it was definitely a metre outside the box which I find hard to believe, but wonder if he was just trying to erase any doubts people might have had if he gave it right on the edge. For a while it looked like we might have a repeat of the Omiya situation where we lose a player to a red card from a free kick we won. Yoshito wouldn’t shut up and kept berating the ref, even after he had been booked for his initial complaints. I’m kind of surprised that he didn’t get another yellow. Nishimura sent him off at the end of last season for a dive I think. But thankfully he calmed down in time. The remaining ten minutes was played out with some action and anxiety as both teams seemed to be looking for the win. Shota made a great save right at the death to keep us in the match. So, on to extra time. 

In the first period of extra time the game was being played at almost walking pace. I know we like a slow and patient build up, but it seemed that the majority of the players were totally knackered! I guess most of them haven’t been regularly playing 90 minutes, so 120 was a bit of a stretch. Possibly because of this or possibly unconnected, Hasegawa pulled up with some kind of muscle strain and had to be stretchered off. Cue Kurumaya, who maybe might have hoped to get the evening off as he’ll almost certainly be playing 90 minutes on Sunday. He helped us step up another gear and actually scored the goal that put us ahead. It was down the other end of the pitch so I can’t remember much but it was a very nicely placed header from a right wing cross. He was really causing JEF some trouble too with his pace and energy. The second half of extra time was where poor JEF, who had done a good job on us got what they definitely didn’t deserve. Yoshito curled one in past the keeper from just inside the box (see the aftermath in the picture below) and then immediately started playing like a man possessed. Wish he’d done that a little earlier and then we would have been spared extra time. He followed this up with a tap in after a goal-bound Miyoshi shot was somehow blocked. I would have liked to see Miyoshi get another goal but maybe considering the remaining games this season, Yoshito needs all the goals and confidence he can get. Although that won’t be much use this Sunday when he’s watching from the stands. Like I said, a final score that was very tough on JEF, but we deserved to go through to the next round. It’s not often that you can call a 4-1 win unconvincing, but this was probably the best way to describe it.

So, positives and negatives. Let’s start negative. A J2 side took us to extra time, almost knocked us out in the last few minutes of the 90 and it was an unconvincing performance from us. Another injury, let’s hope it’s not too serious for Hasegawa. Yoshito would have again been a big negative but his transformation after his first goal changed my mind. He has to keep that going for the remaining games he plays if we want to get anything from this season. Positives, a few. Lots of players back from injury, an important goal from Morimoto who we are going to need playing well on Sunday, Komiyama and Nara playing 120 minutes, the late in the game transformation of Yoshito, a decent performance from both Hasegawa and Itakura. Oh, and we’re through. And finally I should mention the great job done by the guy who lead the singing in the kazoku's absence and the stand-in drummers. The timing between them and us was a bit shaky at times, but I can't imagine any of them really expected to be in that situation, so well done to them!

Now, three days rest and then back to the league on Sunday. The next cup game won’t be for a while as the draw isn’t even made until October 4th. Yokohama will want to try to mess up our season after we did the same to them a few years ago so it definitely won’t be an easy one. As I probably keep saying, it will be a season defining game as we’ll have a couple of notable absences and we are now playing catch up (second stage) or grimly trying to hang on to our dwindling advantage (overall). Let’s hope we can get back to winning ways in the league and give Urawa (at home to Sanfrecce) and Gamba (at home to FC Tokyo) something to think about.

Team

GK 30. ARAI Shota
DF 16. HASEGAWA Tatsuya
DF 3. NARA Tatsuki
DF 28. ITAKURA Ko
DF 8. KOMIYAMA Takanobu

MF 7. HASHIMOTO Koji

MF 21. EDUARDO NETO

MF 19. MORIYA Kentaro

MF 15. HARAKAWA Riki

FW 9. MORIMOTO Takayuki

FW 13. OKUBO Yoshito (Yellow card 79')

Subs
GK 29. TAKAGI Shun

DF 18. ELSINHO (on for MORIMOTO 67')
DF 20. KURUMAYA Shintaro (on for HASEGAWA 96')

MF 25. KANO Kenta
MF 26. MIYOSHI Koji (on for HASHIMOTO 61')

FW 27. OTSUKA Shohei 
MF 32. DUKE Carlos

Goals  

MORIMOTO (Frontale) 20'  1-0

FUNAYAMA (JEF) 51'  1-1

KURUMAYA (Frontale) 105'  2-1
OKUBO (Frontale) 108'  3-1

OKUBO (Frontale) 115'  4-1

  

Highlights