Vs FC Tokyo (away) 29/3/25 J League match 7

 

FC Tokyo 0 - 3 Kawasaki Frontale

Another Tamagawa Classico and it was another fun game for Frontale fans. As I’ve left it a bit since the game to start writing this, and as I spent the night of the game over-imbibing in the company of home and away fans, the details are all a bit hazy now. But hopefully I have just enough memory of the day left to be able to at least give you some kind of insight that you wouldn’t have got from watching the match online. Probably most of it will be poking fun at Nakagawa though. Let the poking begin!

Us -

We perhaps seem to have gone back to the early season thing of having a very average first half and then taking the brakes off in the second. Have to say, I don’t mind if that kind of thing continues. The first half of this match was quite unremarkable for us. Those with a better view than us right down the other end of the pitch might point to Takai’s ruled out goal as being something at least slightly remarkable. But from where we were, we weren’t even aware that the ball had gone in as there didn’t seem to be much in the way of celebration, complaint or VAR. Recent line ups have probably made Hasebe’s first choice preferences a little clearer. And… they are pretty similar to Oniki’s. On this occasion we got to see Oshima start again. Maybe Hasebe is using him in a little bit of a different way to Oniki. In the past, we’d wait ages for Oshima to recover from his latest injury, he’d be back in the team for a few games and then out again. Maybe Hasebe is using him more sparingly. We saw him against Shanghai Shenhua, he was absent for the trip to Okayama, and then back in for this game. If managing his minutes helps him stay more injury free, that will be great. He had a pretty good game again, so I guess the real challenge facing Hasebe is to work out how to make the midfield work when Oshima is not playing, as it was a total mess away against Okayama. (But so were the attack, and the defence too…). I think this back four represents what Hasebe considers our best back four and you can’t really argue with that at the moment. Jesiel back on the bench was a nice surprise, but Maruyama and Takai seem to be working well together. Kawahara didn’t start this game which I guess means he’ll start against Shonan. Ienaga was on the right, did well again and isn’t showing any signs of slowing down like he did at times last year. I’m very happy with the rotation that Hasebe is doing from match to match right now. I think this would be what he'd say he thinks is our best eleven. The only position where I think he might have a dilemma is choosing between Yamada and Erison, as both have been doing…ok. They haven't been bad, but neither has been doing amazingly well so it's quite hard to choose between them right now. But rotation works for me and I hope it works for them. I never liked the whole thing of sticking with the same players forever until they break down, one by one. I don’t have much else to say about us in this game. It was nice to us crank it up a bit in the second half. I enjoyed the goals a lot. The first was quite hilarious in the way that it just dribbled over the line. In the ensuing celebratory melee, someone high-fived me in the eye. It was a small price to pay and I’m pretty sure it wasn’t intentional. If it was, I got the upper hand as with the subsequent two goals I managed to not get high-fived in the face by the same person. High-five me in the face once, shame on you. High-five me in the face twice, shame on me. Ito seemed very pleased to have scored and is fast becoming a fan favourite for his passion. He also was apparently irritated by what was perhaps the worst foul throw I have ever seen. Like the tired old git that I am, I often find myself bleating in a whingy voice ’foul throw referee! I can’t believe they didn’t notice it…’. On this occasion the throw was so appallingly bad there was no way anyone could miss it, and the natural reaction was to burst out laughing. Apparently Yamada complained to the ref about the decision which is some prize winning brass balls behaviour. It was around 12 minutes into the second half if you missed it and want to check. It was also quite amusing when about ten minutes later, two of our players tried to take the throw in simultaneously from different positions with different balls. I like the fact that as we were clearly on the up at that stage we wanted to keep things moving. Let’s hope for more throw in giggles caused by our team being relentlessly up for attacking in the future. Oh, and one last word to say that Yamaguchi’s save with his face was pretty brutal. Can’t believe he got up immediately and was ready for the following shot. Well done to him!

Them -

At one stage last year, when the Oniki to Kashima rumours seemed to be being denied, I wondered if maybe we’d be seeing Oniki in charge of FC Tokyo this year. Although that didn’t happen, there was a hint of Oniki in the fact that Tokyo dominated possession but for the most part didn’t seem to threaten that much. Don’t get me wrong, I thought they were well in it in the first half, but a lot of the time they were on the ball was accompanied by Oniki style sideways passing. They had a decent amount of chances, but aside from the face save one, I can’t remember any that came that close. Perhaps this was in part due to them playing my perennial hate figure Nakagawa up front. There was something extremely amusing about seeing Nakagawa standing next to Takai. Takai is 192cm, so I suppose that is almost double the height of FC Tokyo’s Donald Trump-alike. It looked a bit like a heartwarming father and son scene, the ‘father’, who in this case was much younger, towering over the ‘son’, and occasionally letting him have the ball briefly before teaching him a life ain’t easy kind of lesson and taking it off of him. The image was further enhanced by the fact that Nakagawa seemed to be waddling looking like he was a toddler that had recently filled his nappy. Ironically, [Please add your own joke about Nakagawa being 70 years old here. I’m writing this in a bit of a hurry]. I know it’s not very becoming to just be mean about someone on the internet so I should probably stop doing it. But he did do that sliding on the knees goal celebration in front of our fans, when scoring against the club he played for as a youth player. And those kind of things are quite hard to forget. So with that in mind, I’ll make a joke about his hair, which just keeps on getting more ridiculous year by year. When he first came on to warm up it looked like someone had a glued a freshly washed and pressed white handkerchief onto the middle of a totally bald head. I don’t know if he actually is balding, but when you see that whiff of hair that looks like the top curl of a soft serve ice cream you’ve got to think that something funny is going on. As this is all a bit like a personal bullying campaign, let’s spread the net further and make some wisecracks about the stadium music instead. I was trying to put my finger on the ‘vibe’ that was being created by the techno version of ‘The Final Countdown’ and was still pondering it when we moved into the house version of ‘Can’t Take My Eyes Off You’. It wasn’t until Abba’s ‘Gimme! Gimme! Gimme! (A Man After Midnight)’ came on, that I realised, when my wife said that it felt like a hen night DJ’s playlist. Good to see that Tony from the local Eikaiwa has another string to his bow so now doesn’t have to solely rely on the income from his ‘Laydeez and Jennelmen’ announcing duties. This wouldn’t be a Tamagawa Classico post if I didn’t mention ‘You’ll Never…’. The lack of gusto in their fans' rendition always amuses, but the absolutely suicidal decision to fade out the karaoke backing track halfway though the first verse, presumably imagining that the crowd would be belting it out by that stage, resulted in a complete silence, which initially bewildered, then became very amusing. I presume that was why the music stopped, but it ended up appearing more like a technical error. Also somewhat surprising was that after the game Tony introduced the day's highlights video. Fair play to them for showing our goals, but given that they didn't score, this basically meant that our fans delightedly cheered every highlight, given that they were all either our goals, or FC Toyko missing chances. With the fact that this is supposed to be a football blog in mind, maybe I should write something about their football? They didn’t deserve to lose 3-0. That’ll do.

Ref -

So here you are, the section where the real bitching comes out! Fukushima was the ref in this game. When we had him for the Kashiwa away game I was quite irritated by his refusal to book anyone and his general awfulness. In this game he again didn’t book anyone and… I thought he had a really good game. I’ve got no complaints really. Of course I moaned at the time about plenty of things, but that’s the point of going to the game, isn’t it? I was really impressed with the way he dealt with a bit of handbags from Ienaga and a Tokyo player. Wasn’t sure about the decision that he didn’t give previous to the incident, but that’s because it didn’t go our way. He seemed to easily diffuse what could have become a bit of a boiling point. And after that decision Ienaga was very charged up and that worked out well for us. So yeah, kind of unusual to praise the ref for doing the same thing that I criticised him for doing in a recent post, but it just felt like I didn’t have much to moan about, and that is a very rare thing. I guess we did win though, so maybe if we didn’t I might be moaning a bit more. You will know that I have reached the stage of true enlightenment when I can accept that a ref had a decent game even after we’ve lost.

Next up, Shonan at home on Wednesday and then Machida away on Sunday. It’s a busy schedule so hopefully we’ll see some rotation but hopefully the same kind of result that we got in this game. We have four games in between Shonan at home on the 2nd and Verdy at home on the 20th. So a game every three days, roughly. I’m already peed off about having to write so many blog posts. But they’re a bit easier to write after wins, so please let’s keep that up as long as possible! 

Team

GK 98. YAMAGUCHI Louis
DF 5. SASAKI Asahi
DF 2. TAKAI Kota
DF 35. MARUYAMA Yuichi
DF 13. MIURA Sota
MF 10. OSHIMA Ryota
MF 6. YAMAMOTO Yuki
MF 41. IENAGA Akihiro
MF 14. WAKIZAKA Yasuto
MF 23. MARCINHO
FW 20. YAMADA Shin

Subs

GK 1. JUNG Sung-Ryong
DF 4. JESIEL

MF 8. TACHIBANADA Kento (on for OSHIMA 78')
FW 9. ERISON (on for YAMADA 78')
MF 17. ITO Tatsuya (on for MARCINHO 71')
FW 18. SEGAWA Yusuke (on for IENAGA 86')
MF 19. KAWAHARA So (on for YAMAMOTO 86')
FW 24. MIYAGI Ten
DF 31. VAN WERMESKERKEN Sai

My Frontale Man Of The Match

Hmmm, I’ve realised I’ve given this no thought whatsoever till this moment and no-one is jumping out to me, so I guess it was an all round decent performance. Would do the usual cop-out thing and give it to the whole team, but instead, let’s go a little left-field and give it to…

HASEBE Shigetoshi - Brought on Ito and three minutes later he scored. Brought on Erison and five minutes later he scored. We’ve all heard of super-subs, but maybe Hasebe could be a super-subber.

Goals

YAMADA (Frontale) 55' 0-1
ITO (Frontale) 73' 0-2
ERISON (Frontale) 83' 0-3

Highlights

Vs Fagiano Okayama (away) 16/3/25 J League match 6

Fagiano Okayama 0 - 0 Kawasaki Frontale

Well I guess you could never say that 2025 Frontale is dull and predictable. Although perhaps our football has at times been like that. After walloping Shanghai Shenhua and progressing in the ACL, I guess some people might have thought this would be an easy victory. But of course that wasn’t the case. At the same time, the reputation of Okayama being dull cloggers, extremely defensive and really physical might also have been a common prediction. So maybe this game might have been more like Kyoto at home part 2. Well, that didn’t quite pan out either, did it? Okayama would have been worthy winners, so coming away with a point is a big positive for us. As I write this I’m desperately trying not to fall asleep on a train to Matsuyama. The fact that I’m on a train to a new city is however helping matters when I think about how I feel about this game. Had it come at home and I had to go to work tomorrow, I might have been a bit peed off. But with the holiday only just starting it’s hard to get angry about what was admittedly quite a poor performance. As I’m still quite busy this month, this post is once again kind of brief. But that is also in part due to there not being many positive things to write about in this match.

Us -

A similar team to the one against Shanghai but with no Oshima, which makes complete sense. Yamamoto came in for him and to be honest didn’t do that well. But exactly the same can be said about pretty much everyone. Marcinho had a bad day, and just couldn’t really get going. Wakizaka was pretty much non-existent. Every one of our players was giving the ball away for fun. Normally I’d moan about it being a terrible pitch or a different type of ball here, and whilst some players’ comments seems to be suggesting there was something a bit weird about the pitch, Okayama didn’t seem to have any trouble with it. And maybe a weird pitch doesn’t explain why we often just kicked the ball straight off the side of it. We were definitely having an off day, almost to a man. Our passing was horrible. Time after time we lost the ball under not much pressure whilst trying to build from the back. Nothing stuck up front either. The defence, from the point of view of the result, stood firm, but it was very much a surprise it did, and this was perhaps more due to the opposition than us. The first half we were out possessed 60-40% and were out shot 12 to 2 and didn’t get either of ours on target. In the second half we rallied slightly shooting eight times but still Okayama out shot us 10 to 8, our 64% possession contributing to our improved shot count but also perhaps contributing to the fact that we let them shoot ten times. We did finally get that magical first shot on target though. It came in the 82nd minute and sadly was also our last shot on target. Clearly this wasn’t a great day for us, and it does seem that we’re going to have an up and down 2025. Don’t think I’m pinning it on Hasebe though as in this match the players clearly weren’t up to it. If it wasn’t for an amazing save from Yamaguchi we could easily have lost. And probably would have deserved to. So with that in mind, coming away with a point is a very good thing, I think.

Them -

At the station there was a sign welcoming people getting off the Shinkansen to Okayama, the sunniest city in Japan. Naturally it pissed it down almost constantly from when we arrived till late on in the second half. Okayama were always going to be dull, right? Except they weren’t. They were really good and nothing like the bores I’d been told they might be. Perhaps really good is over-egging the pudding slightly as thankfully, they were as bad at shooting as we were at retaining the ball and getting out of our own half. But full credit to Okayama. If you told someone who knew nothing about the J League that one of these teams came up last year and the other was the champions a few years ago they’d almost certainly get the teams the wrong way round. Also, as Okayama are unbeaten at home this year, maybe a draw’s a good result? At the same time they’ve lost to YFC, and also to Urawa who seem to be a bit shite so perhaps a draw isn’t a good result? One thing’s for sure, the league is all over the place this year. Seems like there are plenty of teams winning and losing games they shouldn’t, so maybe that bodes well for it being an exciting season. And somewhat strangely, I thought this was a kind of exciting game. Perhaps not for the right reasons, but at least an exciting 0-0 draw when we play shit is better than some of the other more likely and considerably more depressing outcomes.

Ref -

In spite of having some preconceptions of the ref, I can’t say he got that much wrong in this game. I thought the yellow cards he gave us were a bit harsh, but when again I would, wouldn’t I? He and his linesman did appear to miss Lucao booting Maruyama in the head, but I haven’t watched it back so I might be wrong about that. This point should probably have been in the ‘them’ section , but Lucao seemed like a player who when he was a youngster always practiced ball skills and weight training but never had any friends to practice passing with or enough space to set up a goal to practice shooting. He was a beast and we couldn’t really deal with him, but thankfully he couldn’t pass or shoot for toffee, (at least in this match). Maybe it was the pitch... Anyway, shockingly no real complaints or comments about the ref apart from a weird gesture he did a few times, both arms aloft and opening and closing his hands as if he was performing an air puppet show. Kind of weird, but if I can’t complain about his reffing that’s got to be a good thing.

So a point gained in what was an entertaining game of extremely low quality. I must say, it’s nice to visit a new stadium and once again go complete when it comes to visiting all the stadiums in J1. It’s also good when you can walk to the stadium from the station. The ground wasn’t as bad as I might have expected. There’s a running track but the views were decent enough. The away section did wobble quite a bit when fans were jumping though which was slightly disconcerting. As was the rhythmic squeaking sound you could hear under the stand when that was happening. But presumably as Japan is somewhat earthquake ready country, the wobble is ok as it means it’s not going to fall to pieces and fall down. I had a fun time. And now we all get a nice break! No games for almost two weeks. The next match will be the Tamagawa Classico away version on the 29th. I think we need a rest so the break is welcome. Perhaps it will also give Hasebe some time to work with the players and tweak things a little further. There have been highs already this year, but an at least equal amount of treading-water-just-as-bad-and-dull-as-last-year games too. Fingers crossed our new manager can tip the balance a little further towards the former over the coming months!

 

Team

GK 98. YAMAGUCHI Louis
DF 5. SASAKI Asahi
DF 2. TAKAI Kota
DF 35. MARUYAMA Yuichi
DF 13. MIURA Sota
MF 19. KAWAHARA So
MF 6. YAMAMOTO Yuki
MF 17. ITO Tatsuya (Yellow card 43')
MF 14. WAKIZAKA Yasuto
MF 23. MARCINHO
FW 9. ERISON (Yellow card 41')

Subs

GK 1. JUNG Sung-Ryong
MF 8. TACHIBANADA Kento
MF 16. OZEKI Yuto (on for YAMAMOTO 62')
FW 18. SEGAWA Yusuke (on for KAWAHARA 84')
FW 20. YAMADA Shin (on for ERISON 62')
FW 24. MIYAGI Ten (on for MARCINHO 75')
DF 31. VAN WERMESKERKEN Sai
FW 41. IENAGA Akihiro (on for ITO 62')
DF 44. CESAR HAYDAR

My Frontale Man Of The Match

 

Pretty much crap all round in this match but given that without his intervention we would have lost, it goes to…

YAMAGUCHI Louis - one amazing save, clawing the ball back with his right hand just as it was about to cross the line. Bravo!

Goals

Not today... (actually, considering the way the game went, that's probably a good thing)

Highlights

Vs Shanghai Shenhua (home) 12/3/25 ACL 2024/25 last sixteen, second leg

Kawasaki Frontale 4 - 0 Shanghai Shenhua

Now that’s more like it! After what were probably the two worst games of Hasebe Frontale, (well, that probably goes without saying as they were the only two defeats, but I feel that the awfulness of Kyoto at home and Shanghai away needs to be emphasised a bit), we’re back to 4-0 wins again. Of course our first Hasebe game was a 4-0 win in the ACL which we followed up with a 4-0 win in the league. So logically our next result will be… hmmm, I doubt we’ll be winning 4-0 away in Okayama. But it’s nice to dream, isn’t it? Everything points to the Okayama game being more reminiscent of the Kyoto game sadly. But let’s not let any realism get in the way of what is another positive post! It’s going to be a short one as this month is pretty hectic for me. So let’s get this done and out of the way in the usual style.

Us -

A greatly improved performance with lots of stand-outs. Oshima being back in the team was a big surprise and you’ve got to say that it probably contributed to our victory. In my usual way, I didn’t notice Oshima that much, but I’ve come to associate this with him having an excellent game. I do quite often notice when our midfielders play badly, so Oshima just smoothly doing the job ends up passing me by. This probably singles me out as being a footballing imbecile, but if that’s the price to pay for great performances I’ll happily go along with it. I feel like with Oshima in the team, nominally alongside Kawahara, we didn’t suffer from the thing we have when Kawahara plays with Tachibanada, where both players are aiming to play in the same position. The interchange between the two of them was a lot smoother, with Oshima usually being a bit further forward, but the two swapping position a bit more fluidly when necessary. I think the same could be said about those first two 4-0's where Tachibanada or Kawahara played alongside Yamamoto. I think much like was the case with Tachibanada and Joao Schmidt, it should be one or the other of Tachibanada or Kawahara and not both of them. Hopefully Hasebe feels the same way. You can’t really argue with Erison coming back in ahead of Yamada too. Yamada is not having the best of seasons so far. And with Erison there, the attack seems a lot more varied. Erison was constantly winning the ball and laying it off for others. Yamada isn’t as good at winning the ball and doesn’t usually pass it. At least not recently. So although it may be an unpopular opinion amongst Frontale fans, I think Erison is better up front right now. Although you wouldn’t know it from looking at the player scores on Flashscore, which I feel are getting increasingly ridiculous week on week. Erison had a great game. As did Sasaki, who scored an amazing goal to ease the tension early on. It was slightly reminiscent of his first goal for us against Kashima. Not particularly in the way he scored it, but more in the ‘what the fuck happened there?’ delight that followed it. He also put in an amazing pass for Erison's goal, which was another lovely finish. Finally, I feel I should praise Yamaguchi a bit as he finally had something to do in this game and he did it well. I was quite surprised how good he is at catching the ball. I know this sounds ridiculous but there were definitely times when I think a lot of keepers would have punched or parried but the ball ended up sticking to his gloves. Well done Yamaguchi! To be honest, I could probably praise every player individually for one reason or another, so let’s just round up this part by saying well done everyone. A really good performance which will hopefully put a spring in our step for the next few games, away at Okayama and then… damn it, we have an international break. Not really sure why it’s necessary for the league to stop when there are international games as Moriyasu has clearly demonstrated that even if you’re playing semi-pro in the Maltese third tier you are more likely to get a call up than if you’re playing in the J League. I guess we could maybe do with a break, so that could be one positive, but if we do manage to get the job done away at Okayama it would be a shame to let some good form dwindle away.

Them -

Shanghai brought quite a lot of fans with them so fair play to them for that. Frontale Cafe and the club shop was full of them before the game which suggests that they are nice folks too. I thought they gave us a bit of a tough game early on but their threat decreased as the game went on. I feel a bit sorry for the two players who were brought as their first changes as we immediately scored after their introduction and then went on to get another a few minutes later. I feel considerably less sorry for Teixeira and Saulo Mineiro who whinged their way through the game. It was particularly amusing to see the former complaining to the ref after we scored our fourth as it was clearly him who’d given the ball away to us to facilitate the goal. I guess that’s what you’re told to do when you’re young. If you make a mistake, own up to it. Oh sorry, I mistyped. If you make a mistake, immediately moan and complain about everything other than your own actions. In terms of karma being served, it reminded me a bit of when that little shithead Oscar faked injury to get Ienaga sent off but then had to have a little cry as his team had lost the game. I guess the comparison doesn’t quite work, but I just wanted to call him a shit just one more time as I think he’s retired now.

Ref etc. -

I initially thought the ref was doing pretty well in this match. And to be honest, I’m not going to moan about decisions as I don’t think we got stiffed in this game like we possibly were in the first leg. (I still haven’t watched a replay of our disallowed goal and still don’t intend to). Our disallowed goal in this game was disappointing, but then again, we did have two others confirmed by VAR, so I’m not going to complain. It was particularly good to see Ito’s goal given the thumbs up as he’s already had one ruled out by VAR this year. My one slight whinge might be that once again in the ACL, the ref blew up early. Normally a couple of seconds doesn’t really make that much difference I guess, but I remember the announcements in my Orient season ticket days when the tannoy would always say something like ‘the fourth official has signaled that there will be a minimum of three minutes of additional time’.  Perhaps instead it’s a maximum in the ACL. In the previous leg, cutting even five seconds of the game off was a blessed relief, but it was a bit annoying to see the ref blow up just as Erison raced clear, and even more annoying when I watched the replay and found that he did it early. Oh well, eh? One final official comment, I loved the linesman down in front of us. I didn’t love him for decisions, but instead loved him for the fact that he looked constantly bewildered, as if he was that guy from Quantum Leap who’d moments before been dropped into the situation and was still trying to work out when, where and who he was. My favourite part was when the ball left the pitch and he just held his flag directly above his head with both hands for an interminably long time, waiting for the ref to decide which way he should give it. I quite like imagining it as something like when that taxi driver ended up being interviewed on the panel of a BBC news program because he had the same first name as the guest they were expecting. The ‘linesman’ turned up hoping to buy a ticket on the door, went to the wrong place, got let in and was handed a flag. More power to him! I think that I too would probably also have been too embarrassed to say anything and would have just given it a go.

Next up, as mentioned before, a potentially spirit squashing visit to Okayama. At least if it does end up being a game like the Kyoto one was, we have the consolation that we’re doing an away trip. To get another pair of 4-0’s would be lovely, but I think I’d probably settle for it not being quite as mind-numbingly dull as the Kyoto game. What a way to finish this post. Bravo!

Team

GK 98. YAMAGUCHI Louis
DF 5. SASAKI Asahi
DF 2. TAKAI Kota
DF 35. MARUYAMA Yuichi
DF 13. MIURA Sota
MF 19. KAWAHARA So
MF 10. OSHIMA Ryota
MF 37. ITO Tatsuya
MF 14. WAKIZAKA Yasuto (Yellow card 42')
MF 23. MARCINHO
FW 9. ERISON

Subs

GK 1. JUNG Sung-Ryong
GK 21. ANDO Shunsuke
DF 7. KURUMAYA Shintaro
MF 8. TACHIBANADA Kento (on for KAWAHARA 85')
MF 16. OZEKI Yuto
FW 20. YAMADA Shin (on for ERISON 78')
FW 24. MIYAGI Ten
FW 30. SEGAWA Yusuke (on for WAKIZAKA 85')
DF 31. VAN WERMESKERKEN Sai
FW 32. KANDA Soma
FW 41. IENAGA Akihiro (on for ITO 78')
MF 77. YAMAMOTO Yuki (on for OSHIMA 72')

My Frontale Man Of The Match

No shortage of candidates to give it to and also the possibility of wussing out and giving it to the whole team as we’ve qualified for the bizarre next stage which will be held in Saudi Arabia (naturally). But to keep things simple, I’ll give it to…

SASAKI Asahi - amazing goal and great assist too.

Goals

SASAKI (Frontale) 35' 1-0
ERISON (Frontale) 64' 2-0
ITO (Frontale) 68' 3-0
MARCINHO (Frontale) 90+1' 4-0

Highlights

Vs Shanghai Shenhua (away) 5/3/25 ACL 2024/25 last sixteen, first leg

Shanghai Shenhua 1 - 0 Kawasaki Frontale

Well that was pretty shit, wasn’t it? I missed the first half as I was at work and just about made it home for the start of the second and… nothing happened. Well, apart from us gifting the opposition a goal and handed ourselves a defeat for the second time in five days. Apparently we had a shot. I can’t remember it. We had no shots on target in the whole game. But a lovely title winning 64% possession. I never like to comment much after watching a game online as I don’t think I have anything worth adding, This is probably even more true when you consider I missed the first half. It seems that I’ve cursed Miura by saying he’s been great this season. I don’t think a single one of his crosses made it past the first defender. I’m not very confident about the second leg. Actually, how do you dial that down one notch? What’s one level lower than ‘not very confident’? Maybe, ‘we’re fucked’? Let’s end with two statements of contrasting levels of optimism. Seeing as our first choice team and second choice team have both been shite for the last week, let’s be optimistic and say that the perfect mix of the two will be the one that works well and can win us the second leg. Guess Hasebe just has to find that mix but doesn’t have  a lot of time to do it. And then on the other side of the optimism coin, let’s point to the fact that we had less shots in this game than we did in the one against the same opposition when we played for 85 minutes with 10 men. So choose which way you fancy going when it comes to optimism, and I’ll see you back here after the second leg next Wednesday.

(Oh, are you wondering about our goal that VAR ruled out? I haven't even bothered watching a replay and can't imagine I will).

Team

GK 98. YAMAGUCHI Louis
DF 31. VAN WERMESKERKEN Sai
DF 2. TAKAI Kota
DF 35. MARUYAMA Yuichi
DF 13. MIURA Sota
MF 19. KAWAHARA So
MF 77. YAMAMOTO Yuki
MF 37. ITO Tatsuya
MF 14. WAKIZAKA Yasuto
MF 23. MARCINHO (Yellow card 43')
FW 20. YAMADA Shin

Subs

GK 1. JUNG Sung-Ryong
GK 21. ANDO Shunsuke
DF 5. SASAKI Asahi (Yellow card 90+3') (on for VAN WERMESKERKEN 59')
DF 7. KURUMAYA Shintaro
MF 8. TACHIBANADA Kento
FW 9. ERISON (on for YAMADA 80')
DF 15. TANABE Shuto
MF 16. OZEKI Yuto (on for YAMAMOTO 85')
FW 24. MIYAGI Ten
FW 30. SEGAWA Yusuke (on for ITO 80')
FW 32. KANDA Soma
FW 41. IENAGA Akihiro (on for MARCINHO 46')

Goals

TAKAI (Frontale) 76' OWN GOAL 1-0

Highlights

Vs Kyoto Sanga (home) 2/3/25 J League match 4

Kawasaki Frontale 0 - 1 Kyoto Sanga

Oh blimey. Back to Earth with a bang after the highs… ermmm…. after the excitement… ermmm… after the relief (that’ll do) of Wednesday’s game. This was an awful match ruined by a useless referee which should have been a 0-0 with both teams being docked points for being shit. Maybe the absolute worst preparation possible for Wednesday’s ACL away game. Or perhaps it will prove to be the kick up the backside we need. After a promising start to the season we’re back to being pretty dodgy. Some things never change. Whoever the manager is, whoever the players are, we always struggle against Kyoto. If the poor game wasn’t bad enough, there were also some absolutely idiotic comments on the Frontale J League forum to irritate me. But I’ll try to spare everyone’s discomfort and get this out of the way with as little pain and effort as possible.

Us -

First of all credit to Hasebe for the rotation. I think it was the right thing to do and definitely shows a break from the past. With a big game coming up on Wednesday and six games in the first 19 days of the season, (I knew the schedule was bad, but when I counted the days I realised quite how stupid it was), it’s clear that we shouldn’t be using the same players for all the matches. (I would mention what Oniki would have done here but I think we should probably move on and stop talking about him). Even disregarding the upcoming game I thought we still should rotate a bit as people are clearly dipping from their best already. Also I thought that Erison deserved a start up front after scoring the winner against Avispa. So, so far this is quite positive isn’t it? Probably though the player who is most out of sorts this year is Tachibanada, and for some reason he was kept in the team. Poor Tachibanada. Ever since he was made captain a few years ago, (presumably to try to stop him from leaving), his performances have dived off a cliff. And in this game he made another awful mistake, basically playing a perfect through ball for a Kyoto attack. Apparently he was trying to pass the ball back to Sung-Ryong. It was nowhere near getting there. I feel really bad for SR as he hasn’t played any games this year and then his potential clean sheet was lost due to circumstances completely out of his control. He’d made some good saves in the game but had no chance with the goal. Fair play to Hasebe for not taking the psychopath path and removing Tachibanada in the next set of subs, but it’s probably a good thing he took him off later. I don’t think he should be starting as long as he’s in the terrible form he is. He hadn’t had a very good game before his clanger anyway. It seems again that Tachibanada plus one other defensive midfielder approach is not a good idea. I don’t think two defensive midfielders work for us at all to be honest, and we played best this year when we had one player there with two in front, where the player staying back occasionally went forward and one of his teammates stepped in to cover. I’m thinking of Kawahara there with Yamamoto in front. In this match the midfield was a bit of a waste of time. Nothing happened there. Two players sitting next to each other doesn’t help us attack. And Yamauchi ahead doesn’t really seem the answer there either. I know I keep saying it, but I’d like to see Ienaga there if we’re not using Wakizaka. But anyway, there’s not much else to mention about us in this game as we were a bit rubbish. Even though we had 14 shots I don’t think we’d have scored yet if we were still playing. Erison did a good job up front winning the ball but had no support really. Verhon and Ito (on the left in his preferred position) didn’t do much. The fact is we never looked like getting anything other than a 0-0 out of this game. And in that way, not much has changed since last year. Some final conclusions for this part regarding Hasebe’s first choice players. I think it’s now clear he prefers Yamaguchi over SR. I think both have been let down by their teammates so can’t really say who should be there. I think it’s also becoming apparent that Hasebe probably favours Ienaga when fit on the right and Yamada up front. So some might say that he didn’t take this game seriously enough with his rotation. Presumably the same people would also criticise him for his team selections in the ACL saying he’s not taking that seriously either. I think the pecking order is becoming clear, but the fact is even when the first choice players were brought on in this match, we didn’t look any better. It was exactly the same really. So I think we have other more pressing issues to sort out. It’s still early on in what most of us probably thought would be a season of transition. And Hasebe has had a stupidly busy fixture list since he got his feet under the managers desk. The players left for the airport directly after this game so the intensity continues. Perhaps changes will come when he has a bit more time. I think the disappointing thing is that we’ve dropped off so far from the first few games of the year. However, maybe they were false dawns and we need to wait a while. I hope something is coming though, as the last three matches have been extremely reminiscent of last year.

Them -

Ah, Kyoto! When you hear the word Kyoto, what do you think of? Beautiful temples? Geisha? Tea ceremonies? Zen gardens? Bamboo forests? Or dull clogging anti-football? For me it’s becoming the latter. Kyoto came into this game with one plan and that was to boot us all over the pitch in an emulation of their managers legendary power harassment training style. Actually trivia fans, this was our second match in a row where we came up against teams managed by people who’d previously been dismissed for power harassment. Lovely! It’s a bit unfair to say they only had one game plan though as they rolled out a second one later on in the match after we’d gifted them a goal. That second plan was to relentlessly time waste, rolling around on the floor, dwelling endlessly on goal kicks and particularly annoyingly, changing a sub at the last minute after the player initially chosen to be subbed had dawdled, (hang on, dawdling isn’t right. It sounds much too fast and purposeful), to the edge of the pitch before the sub was switched to the player who was standing at the exact spot on the pitch that was as far as possible from any sideline. In Raphael Elias, it’s kind of strange to see a player with such a distinctively soulful moustache taking part in such clogger tactics. Almost as if you went to a Lionel Richie concert expecting some smooth pop and found out that he is now doing a side project that blends the dumbest mosh pit hardcore with power electronics. This is all just sour grapes anyway. They had the game plan that we knew they would have and once again we couldn’t deal with it. Their fans had traveled in numbers to support them. Double digit numbers admittedly, but in numbers all the same. And when the final whistle came all 57 of those away fans were justifiably proud of the battling (mainly kicking…) performance they’d put in. If we hadn’t gifted them a goal, perhaps they still would have won as they had as many shots on target as we did. But blimey, this was an ugly game where the real winner absolutely fundamentally was not football.

Ref -

It seems that the pool of golden boy refs is getting smaller every year due to retirements, but the J League’s current chosen one Yamamoto Yudai was back in town. Here are some words from previous posts on games he’s had with us:

‘Yamamoto is a useless attention seeking waste of space of a ref’

‘myriad of mistakes [from] my most disliked ref of the season so far’

‘Yamamoto, whose every action managed to irritate me in this game.’

‘keeps the game flowing, by always dishing out one level less of punishment than is deserved’

‘My game notes are mainly his name and ‘absolute…’, ’total…’, 'unbelievable...' or 'absolute total unbelievable...' followed by four letter expletives’

And you can pretty much just copy those for this game. You could say Tachibanada cost us the game, but I’d say Yamamoto should take at least 50% of the blame. When one team is coming to foul, a referee wanting to let the game flow whatever happens will obviously favour them. There was an absurd lack of yellow cards in this game. I know it’s a new directive from the J League to not give them out so easily but it’s clearly going to lead to teams fouling incessantly. It wasn’t only Yamamoto who was to blame though. His linesmen were equally useless. How the ref and the linesman could come to completely different decisions for something that had happened directly in front of both of them, I don’t know. I suppose the silver lining in that situation is that perhaps at least one of them was right. But wild inconsistency in decisions again. What some refs will give as a red, others don’t even think is a foul. Elbow in the back to Erison with no attempt to get the ball, not even a foul. And then as the attack continues the slightest touch from Erison on a Kyoto defender who is apparently mortally wounded by the contact, well of course, blow the whistle and give them a free kick. There definitely seems to be a tendency in the J League for refs to treat foreign players differently when it comes to physicality. If a bulky Brazilian is fouled, well clearly it must be a dive as they are so big and strong. If the same player makes a challenge, clearly it’s a foul as they are too big and strong. An offside was given against Erison who was clearly in an offside position but had stopped before the attack started and was walking back away from the goal as the attack continued on the other side of the pitch, nowhere near him. Erison was never going to get anything from Yamamoto in this game. I don’t know if it would have been the same if Yamada was playing. I presume so, given that Yamamoto likes to ‘let the game flow’. He even likes to let half time flow. When Erison was fouled at the end of the first half, he refused to let the physios on, (as I think he did in the whole of the game actually. Little did we know that Yamamoto is actually a qualified doctor who can diagnose from just a quick look), and instead blew up for half time. By the time Erison was back on his feet Yamamoto was already back inside the stand presumably high-fiving his colleagues on another classic Yamamoto performance. As much as I moaned about Kyoto’s physical anti-football style, it’s a legitimate tactic, so if they want to do that, fair enough I guess, and it was effective on this occasion (and many previous ones against us too). But the referee went so far as to not only enable it but actually actively seem to encourage it. Good riddance Yamamoto. Hope we don’t see you again this season.

So yeah, a pretty grim game. As I said above, we didn’t deserve to win. We probably didn’t deserve to draw, but equally Kyoto didn’t deserve either of those outcomes either. It was an ugly and pointless 90 minutes. We’ve had a bit of luck so far this season so maybe this was where karma came in and luck went against us. But I’m not sure we can say we were unlucky. If you never look like scoring it’s unlikely you’re going to win. It’s still early days and I think everyone would agree that we have a more important game coming on Wednesday. So if we’re not useless for that game, I guess we’d all accept the lessons we learned in this match (if indeed there were any lessons to be learnt. Maybe don’t pass the ball to their striker with your defence pushing forward? Don’t let the ref Yamamoto near a football pitch ever again? Maybe that one’s out of our hands…). It’s easy to point fingers at the opposition and the ref but the fact is we weren’t up to it in this match. Next up, two ACL games, first away and then at home against Shanghai Shenhua. Then after that we are away at Okayama. Of course the first two games are crucial, but I think the third is also pretty important as we’re starting to stutter in the league. At least it will be a new stadium to tick off! And maybe we might have got our act together a bit by then. Fingers crossed.

Team

GK 1. JUNG Sung-Ryong
DF 5. SASAKI Asahi
DF 44. CESAR HAYDAR

DF 7. KURUMAYA Shintaro
DF 15. TANABE Shuto
MF 19. KAWAHARA So

MF 8. TACHIBANADA Kento
MF 28. PATRICK VERHON
MF 26. YAMAUCHI Hinata
MF 17. ITO Tatsuya
FW 9. ERISON

Subs

GK 98. YAMAGUCHI Louis
DF 2. TAKAI Kota (on for CESAR HAYDAR 46')
MF 14. WAKIZAKA Yasuto (on for YAMAUCHI 57')
FW 20. YAMADA Shin (on for TACHIBANADA 77')
FW 23. MARCINHO (on for ITO 57')
FW 24. MIYAGI Ten

DF 31. VAN WERMESKERKEN Sai
FW 41. IENAGA Akihiro (on for PATRICK VERHON 57')
MF 6. YAMAMOTO Yuki 

My Frontale Man Of The Match

Despite this game being a massive steaming turd of a match, I feel I have to recognise a couple of players.

ERISON & TANABE Shuto - the former did a very different job up front that we get from Yamada, winning the ball and looking to lay it off to others. Sadly this didn’t work in this game but maybe we could try playing both of them together as that seems to be the screamingly obvious option right now. And Tanabe, who was insanely criticised online had a really solid game I thought. Of course he’s going to struggle to get past Miura who’s been perhaps our best player so far this year, but I’m really happy Tanabe seems to be progressing.


Goals

OKUGAWA (Kyoto) 49' 0-1

Highlights

Vs Avispa Fukuoka (away) 26/2/25 J League match 3

Avispa Fukuoka 1 - 2 Kawasaki Frontale 

 

Another win! Maybe we don’t want to go into too much detail about the game though as it wasn’t the most exciting or uplifting match. One thing that was kind of interesting though was the proof of the power of my reverse jinxing. Before the game I posited that recently we seem to have reverted back into Oniki like line ups, tactics and performances. To prove me wrong we came out firing in this match and I felt a bit stupid. Right up until I wrote ‘we’ve had a good positive start’ and then we proceeded to do nothing at all positive for the next 30 mins. I am also taking credit for Erison’s goal. Literally 10 seconds before he scored I said perhaps factually inaccurately to my wife, ‘Erison hasn’t even had a touch yet’ and then he scored a cracker. I’d love to say I’m using these reverse jinxes as a way to make us do well, but the amount of times I moaned about certain players being pretty average in this match resulting in them continuing to do exactly that suggests otherwise. Clearly this was never going to be as easy a game as it perhaps looked like it might be on paper. Avispa were winless and had lost a few important players since we last played them. Also we now have their old manager who presumably knows all of their secrets. (Apparently this is why we changed ends when given the option, Hasebe saying that he knew that they are more likely to score in the second half when shooting towards their own supporters if the atmosphere is good). But at the same time there was probably a feeling in the club that they might want to get one over on their old manager so previous results and form, (if you can even talk about form so early on in the season), go out the window. And of course, we have a reputation for not doing particularly well in Kyushu. But we managed to get the job done. As I’m currently on a train, not due home for hours and I have to work tomorrow and then we have a game on Saturday, let’s not go into too much detail and get this done.

As I said above, far from a convincing win or performance, so excuse me for being slightly negative. Tachibanada had another game to forget, Wakizaka did some nice touches but made more horrible mistakes, both of the centre backs lived very dangerously at times and the Avispa goal looked extremely soft with our defenders turning off completely. Yamada passed occasionally but in general dribbled and dribbled till he lost the ball or blasted over. I feel like I’m being a bit harsh on him, but I don’t think he deserves to be an automatic selection on this form. This is perhaps my big point in this post. I’ll be very encouraged if Hasebe rotates this weekend as certain definite starters either need a rest, or need a bit of a kick up the backside to let them know they won’t necessarily always play. Oniki never did this, so I hope that Hasebe will. I think Erison should start at the weekend, particularly as he scored. No one is ever going to play themselves into form by just getting only eight minutes at the end of each match. Therefore it was nice to see Erison come on a bit earlier and score. I think if Yamada scored he'd keep his spot, (unless we’re playing much weaker opposition and might do wholesale rotation), so in theory Erison should start on Saturday. It’s still early in the season so talking about resting players might seem premature, but we have had a fairly intense schedule so far. I’d say Wakizaka needs a rest too. And given that Ienaga did pretty well in this game, why not give him a go in that position? I think it might suit him better. Although in this match he did seem to be under instructions to not wander as much and did stay on the right more than I would have expected. But in that spot on the right we have Ito, Verhon and maybe even Yamauchi, so why not give one of them a go? Whilst we’re being positive, I think one good change from Oniki Frontale to Hasebe Frontale is the fact that we’re crossing the ball a lot more. We had two headed goals in this match from great deliveries by Miura and Ito. This is one aspect of 2025 Frontale that we can definitely be pleased with. Also we seem to be a bit more direct, or at least we’ve cut out about 50% of the intensely pointless pissing / passing around. On occasion during a potentially promising attack we revert to Oniki style passing back to the centre back, but I think we might be moving slightly beyond passing for passing's sake. Praise the lord! I still think it’s too early to draw any strong conclusions, particularly as many opposition teams are slightly unknown quantities at this stage, but considering we’re a work in progress, seven points out of nine is a pretty positive return so far. So as much as I’m moaning, (you would have been particularly aware of this if you were anywhere near me in the stands), you’ve got to be at least a little pleased with how things are going so far. As no one likes too much positivity on here, I should say that whilst it is also too early to judge players too, I’m still not convinced by Yamaguchi as first choice goalkeeper. Of course I’m a big Sung-Ryong fan so this makes me biased, but I don’t feel completely sure about Yamaguchi in goal right now. I’m not saying he should be dropped, but I don’t think I’ve seen anything that gives me a great deal of confidence in him yet. Sure, he’s made a few good saves, but the goal in this game looked soft, (but admittedly it was mainly the defence’s fault), so I’m hoping we’re not repeating the same mistakes as last year and that Yamaguchi isn’t the new Kamifukumoto. But take this as more of a fingers crossed comment than a criticism as he’s not ‘done a Kami’ up till this point, so I should probably just shut up.

Hmmm, feels like we’re approaching the end of this post and no mention of the ref or opposition. Let’s just say that Nago is a diving wanker but just about managed to stop himself leaving the field of play as he twizzled his way back and forth like some kind of slightly chubby Catherine Wheel that hadn’t been anchored quite right after a challenge that he thought deserved an immediate prison sentence for our player. And Ben Khalifa similarly was strongly appealing for a red card for a challenge that didn’t even warrant a free kick. Nago is ex-Kashima so I guess that’s where his wankerness comes from. As for Ben Khalifa, well people normally associate the Swiss with measured neutrality, but maybe this needs to be reassessed. I think it’s probably not a coincidence that he was taken off at half time shortly afterwards as he seemed to be doing his nut. The ref was Kimura and gave out cards pretty easily as I think he usually does. Was a bit worried when Marcinho did a classic Marcinho tackle in the second half. Thankfully it didn’t have the usual red card result though. I don’t have much of a beef with Kimura otherwise. Don’t often say that I guess, so I’ll put it down to him being merely not very good, as opposed to the usual refs who operate more on the disastrous level.

So that’s it. I know this is detail light but what were you expecting? I feel bad moaning at all given that we’re winning games. But I get the feeling that we’ve been a bit lucky in a few of our matches. Hopefully we’ll see some rotation in the next match and a decent performance. Competition for places is always a good thing and it’s something that hasn’t been paid much attention to in the past. Fingers crossed for another win against Kyoto on Saturday.

 

Team

GK 98. YAMAGUCHI Louis
DF 31. VAN WERMESKERKEN Sai
DF 2. TAKAI Kota (Yellow card 24')
DF 35. MARUYAMA Yuichi
DF 13. MIURA Sota
MF 8. TACHIBANADA Kento (Yellow card 33')
MF 6. YAMAMOTO Yuki
MF 14. WAKIZAKA Yasuto
FW 41. IENAGA Akihiro
FW 20. YAMADA Shin
FW 23. MARCINHO (Yellow card 78')

Subs

GK 1. JUNG Sung-Ryong
DF 5. SASAKI Asahi (on for VAN WERMESKERKEN 69')
DF 7. KURUMAYA Shintaro
FW 9. ERISON (on for YAMADA 69')
FW 17. ITO Tatsuya (on for IENAGA 69')
MF 19. KAWAHARA So (on for TACHIBANADA 58')
FW 24. MIYAGI Ten (on for MARCINHO 81')
MF 26. YAMAUCHI Hinata
FW 28. PATRICK VERHON

My Frontale Man Of The Match

There aren’t that many people to chose from for this but given that I thought his inclusion might have been a mistake and then he proved me wrong, let’s give it to…

IENAGA Akihiro - broadly stuck to the right hand side, showed plenty of energy, scored a nice goal and got peed off in the way that I like to see him do.

Goals

BEN KHALIFA (Avispa) 15' 1-0
IENAGA (Frontale) 42' 1-1
ERISON (Frontale) 85' 1-2

Highlights

 

Vs Kashiwa Reysol (away) 22/2/25 J League match 2

Kashiwa Reysol 1 - 1 Kawasaki Frontale

Hmmmm. Well that’s complicated things a little bit hasn’t it? Although there were some seeds of doubt sewn after the last slightly lacklustre match against Central Coast Mariners, we could say that the reason we were a bit rubbish was to do with us playing the reserves. We can’t say the same about this match though. We were back to almost full strength but our play was absolutely nowhere near any kind of concept of strength. Of course it’s still early days, so much too early to jump to any conclusions, but this match was quite reminiscent of mid to late period Oniki Frontale when it came to pointless passing at the back. The only twist being that instead of the passing being safe pointless passing, in this match every pointless pass came with a high level of danger. But I’m going to be slightly positive and say that this was in part due to Kashiwa being a fair bit better than in recent years. Thankfully they weren’t better enough to take all of their chances though. As there’s a not a great deal to say, (particularly when it comes to things other than “we were a bit crap”), let’s rattle through this.

What have we learnt from this game then? I’d say we can be sure that Yamaguchi is now definitely Hasebe’s first choice. Whether that is a good thing or not, well, I guess we’ll see when we face a more clinical team. Kashiwa had three shots on target in this game, so we finally had a chance to see what Yamaguchi can do. The two saves from the move in the first half that represented the first two of these were pretty good. There probably wasn’t much he could have done about their goal too as if they hadn’t scored after being given so much free space it would have been a crime against football. So, yeah, perhaps the jury is still out on him. I’m a bit confused about Ito and Ienaga, as I suspected both had been injured because they weren’t being included but then both were available today. Perhaps both were just minor injuries. With both involved today I’d say it’s clear that Ito is ahead of Ienaga for that starting spot. However, Patrick Verhon, whose position in the pecking order is also still a mystery was missing today so who knows what we can read into that. Still too early to work out if it’s just the fact that Hasebe rotates more, (and to be honest, everyone rotates more than recent Oniki). The problem today was just that we were so dull and lifeless. Of course at the start of this season we’ve come to expect a boring first half  and then a stepping up of our level, but on this occasion us being boring coincided with the opposition trying to batter the door down, so a goalless and dull on our side first half looked like a real bonus. We struggled to even get out of our own half for most of it. Sadly the second half gear change didn’t really happen again. Well I guess we changed a little, maybe from neutral to first gear for a little while but then on occasions accidentally slipped into reverse. The second half was an improvement but that sounds a bit grand when you consider that the only possible way was up from the terrible (but fortunate) first half. I haven’t seen replays of what from my pretty bad angle looked like a certain penalty we were denied in the first half and our offside goal on the second half, but when I try to think of anything else of note in the game, all I can think of is the frustrating sight of our players trying to walk the ball directly though defenders and into the net. Yamada did not have a good game. Recently he never passes if he’s anywhere in the final third. We gave the ball away a lot and when we had it, more often than not did nothing with it. So not the most positive of performances. I was a bit confused by the subs. Kasahara wasn’t having a great game but Tachibanada had a dodgy one on Tuesday. And Ienaga on for Ito seemed like it would be a step backwards when it came to positive attacking (to be fair to him though, he did alright when he came on).

The problem was that nothing really worked at all, so maybe I should give some credit to Kashiwa, who I would say frustrated and nullified us, but to be honest I think a decent amount of nullification was self-inflicted. But it’s a great shame for us that they seem to have got their act together and no longer want to gift us goals. So a little praise for them here before I go on to make fun of the ridiculous music they played for their team announcement, an unusual and close to unlistenable mix of spaghetti western trumpets and Teutonic techno, all the time threatening to break into some classic J League style shit-rock, a style that is characterised by pounding electronic drum beats, weak trebly riffing and truly horrible fret-wanking. Aside from this ‘hilarious’ banter about their choice of music, all I have to say is that they defended stoutly, pissed around with the ball for an apparently random amount of time to lull us into a false sense of security and then attacked quickly and in numbers. We were lucky not to concede more. They were much better than us in the first half and I’m not sure I could say that we were sufficiently better than them in the second to deserve a draw. So with that in mind, let’s be kind of slightly positive. I don’t think they’ll finish near the bottom of the league this year, so maybe this will turn out to have been a pretty good result after all.

A few words on the ref. Without having seen replays of what I considered to be the two major dubious decisions in the match I’ll have to go with my gut on the large amount of other terrible decisions he made and say he was shit. I know there has been a rule change so that yellow cards don’t get handed out so often. However, on checking previous blog posts I’ve seen that Fukushima was always a ref that didn’t like to book players, so I guess it’s no surprise that he was even more reluctant this year. I can understand that maybe players getting bans from excessive yellows all the time is a drag, but I’m not sure the solution is to basically abandon the rules of the game. Yamada though on goal and hauled down by a defender, not even a yellow. Was delighted when the ref thwarted a promising Kashiwa attack by bringing play back for a Kashiwa free kick though. Great work Fukushima! In a way I guess I should just stop writing the ref section as we know they will be crap, and they are pretty much always crap, but you know, they are all crap in slightly different ways though. And they deserve having their feet held to the fire a little otherwise they might get even worse. Bring back Judge Replay on DAZN! Although I suppose that part of the reason it ended was because they were having to expose the incompetence of the refs on a weekly basis, so perhaps it wasn’t fulfilling the brief of educating the viewing public as to why decisions were made. After all, there are only so many ways you can say ‘the ref messed up’ before it all gets a bit repetitive. As I was in the front row of what is a pretty small stand, naturally my view wasn’t the best. But I’m pretty sure some of these moans are right. Hopefully… [A quick update, I’ve now checked the two ‘dubious’ decisions that went against us. The offside goal looks marginal and it seems that they only had one angle, (at least only one angle was shown on the replay),  and looks a bit too close to have been checked so quickly but I do always say that VAR should be used for clear and obvious errors and this wasn’t really clear. Wouldn’t have minded a bit of a deeper check though, as with my Frontale cap on, I don’t think Marcinho is offside, particularly when you consider the linesman wasn’t level with the play and the replay isn’t properly side on either. But never mind, these things happen. The other major incident in the first half which I thought should be a penalty is a bit more confusing. Sure, the defender doesn’t know that Ito is about to appear in front of him when he swings his leg back to hoof the ball, but the fact that he does get between the defender and the ball and gets booted in the back of the leg but the ref gives a free kick to Kashiwa, seems a bit dubious. Actually, it seems baffling to me. Sure there was no intention but if a player accidentally handled in the box, I’m pretty sure it would be a penalty, so I don’t get what the difference is here. Perhaps it has a lot to do with the ref being pretty bad, but the VAR guy having an even lower profile. Basically the decision seems to have been that Ito fouled their defender either by hurting the defender’s foot by placing his leg in the way, or by unfairly surprising the poor delicate soul. The fact that Kashiwa fans behind the goal seem to be disgusted by Ito’s ‘foul’ is more than a little surprising. So, I reckon we were definitely robbed in at least one way, but you know, as we weren’t great, I’m not going to get too upset about it.]

I don’t know why I’m devoting a paragraph of its own to this, but what’s with the new goal kick thing that lots of teams are doing, where the centre back takes it and passes it to the keeper to start the usual interminable extremely slow build? I don’t think there’s been a rule change that has made this a desirable thing to do. I can’t work out why it is a desirable thing to do to be honest, as more often than not in this match it resulted in either a centre back or the keeper slice-hoofing the ball clear to an opposition midfielder. Maybe all J League managers saw a big foreign team doing it and thought that it had to immediately be implemented in the J League. I was initially kind of irritated that we’d come up with a new way to waste set pieces but then noticed that we were not alone and everyone was doing it. Anyway, I haven’t described it very clearly, but if you know what’s going on, please let me know as I’m a bit baffled.

Next up Avispa away on Wednesday for the Hasebe derby, (can we call it that? Perhaps…). They haven’t had a good start to the season and whilst we’d had a pretty good one, (at least until today), these kind of games where a team faces their recently departed manager do tend to go the way of revenge sometimes, so I’m not massively optimistic about it. But at the same time when you consider how much didn’t work in this game, you’ve got to think it’s good to get back in the saddle quickly and sort things out. There you go! It took me until right at the end, but I’ve found just a touch of that recently discovered Frontale Rabbit optimism again.
 

Team

GK 98. YAMAGUCHI Louis
DF 31. VAN WERMESKERKEN Sai
DF 2. TAKAI Kota
DF 35. MARUYAMA Yuichi
DF 13. MIURA Sota
MF 19. KAWAHARA So
MF 77. YAMAMOTO Yuki
MF 14. WAKIZAKA Yasuto
FW 17. ITO Tatsuya
FW 20. YAMADA Shin
FW 23. MARCINHO

Subs

GK 1. JUNG Sung-Ryong
DF 7. KURUMAYA Shintaro
MF 8. TACHIBANADA Kento (on for KAWAHARA 62')
FW 9. ERISON (on for YAMADA 82')
DF 15. TANABE Shuto (on for MIURA 82')
FW 24. MIYAGI Ten (on for MARCINHO 82')
MF 26. YAMAUCHI Hinata
MF 41. IENAGA Akihiro (on for ITO 72')
DF 44. CESAR HAYDAR

My Frontale Man Of The Match

Hmmm not a massive amount of options here, but I’ll give it out in the interest of saying something positive. If his goal had been allowed, Ito might have got this for sentimental reasons, but as aside from that well taken finish he didn’t do that much, I’ll give it to…

MARUYAMA Yuichi and MIURA Sota - the former seems to have really come on recently and is a crucial part in Takai doing reasonably well I think. He also seemed to be giving advice and encouragement to lots of players so I think his influence is a lot greater than we might think. Miura’s crossing is great and he can really take a set piece well. Great assist for the goal. I suspect he is going to have a stand out season this year. Hopefully that doesn’t mean we’ll lose him to the Belgium second division too soon.

Goals

WAKIZAKA (Frontale) 50' 0-1
KOIZUMI (Kashiwa) 57' 1-1

Highlights