Kashiwa Reysol 5 - 4 Kawasaki Frontale (7-5 on agg.)
Once again, what for some people might have started out as a potentially fun and exciting day has ended in absolute despondency and humiliation. Fucking hell we’re shit. And it rained as it invariably seems to do at least two times out of every three when we go to Kashiwa away. Quite why some people might have thought it could be a nice day, I don’t understand. I had this down as a nailed-on defeat and so it turned out to be. To be honest I hadn’t anticipated us going two goals ahead in the tie and three goals ahead on the day. But obviously that was all too good to be true. And now, on reflection, I think we can all be relieved that we only conceded five goals. So the same old shit again. Actually, that’s not fair on Hasebe. In this match he came up with a new way for us to lose in a humiliating fashion, and the whole thing of taking a healthy lead and then utterly capitulating definitely upped the masochism stakes. I have to say, I’m pretty fed up with watching this team at the moment. So I can look forward to my upcoming holiday where I won’t be able to attend matches and if I’m lucky I might even be able to avoid seeing any of them online too. But enough of this wishful thinking and back to getting this blog post out the way as soon as possible.
The line up for this match looked like it was going to be the same old shit again. But Hasebe had a surprise up his sleeve. Yamahara finally got the chance to play in his preferred position on the left. Sasaki moved into the middle and Pedro Romano played at right back. This was all initially quite exciting and it was a lot of fun to see Romano’s throw in technique again. Derik was back up front and he initially did really well I thought. And then absolutely ran out of energy. Quite why he remained on the pitch for the whole match I don’t know. After an initial absolutely chaotic period at the back where I wrote down that Kashiwa had probably had more shots in the first few minutes than we’d manage all game, we started to play quite well. And scored. And scored again. And again. Of course this was all too much to ask for and we started to fade as the half went on. But it was genuinely exciting for a while. Conceding immediately before half time turned out to be the death blow. As soon as we did I said ‘we’re fucked now’ but could never have anticipated quite how fucked we’d turn out to be. I can’t remember such a humiliating capitulation since… last year at the same ground in the same competition. I’m kind of surprised we haven’t had one more recently, but I suppose in order to have a humiliating capitulation you need to have something to capitulate humiliatingly. Three nil and absolutely coasting. It was quite fun to wipe some of the complacency off the Kashiwa fans’ faces. I definitely felt it from some of the supporters on the way to the ground. And let’s be honest, they had every right to be complacent as there was no way we were going to beat them. And we didn’t.
The defence is an absolute mess. I don’t know why. Hasebe clearly doesn’t know why. I really thought he might have cracked it in the first half. But I guess our effective attacking was just the result of us absolutely going for it from the start and then running out of steam. But I don’t know if running out of steam by itself can lead to conceding five goals. And we knew the game was going to be at least 90 mins long, so maybe going hell for leather for the first thirty minutes and then hoping to hang on for the rest of the game might not have been the best idea, (if indeed that was the idea). Particularly because we couldn’t even hang on to our gloves right now, even though our mum has attached them to our coat with a bit of elastic. So let’s start slinging the blame around. The defence were absolutely cack, but that’s no surprise because completely predictably the absolute worst midfield three combination we have were back together again and decided to go absolutely missing every time Kashiwa attacked. Yamaguchi in goal made some good saves but also let a shitload of goals in and seemed keen to blame anyone other than himself on every occasion it happened. He must be gutted than Tanabe has left the club as he was one of his favourite people to blame. But once again, I think the main blame needs to be slung at Hasebe. To be fair he did finally change something. But after making that change it apparently rendered him incapable of making any other changes or even noticing what was happening in the match. He still has hardly anyone to choose from when it comes to assembling a match day squad. But things went well in the first half. I imagine though that I was not the only person in the stadium who, when their first goal went in, thought that we were about to fall apart. He had half time to sort things out and convince the players that it was only a minor set back and to keep on going as we were. Maybe. Or maybe he decided to tell them to shut up shop, not take chances and to hang on to the lead. Whatever he told them, it ended up in disaster. Judging from what we did in the second half, I can only guess that his instructions were to sit back, let them have the ball and have some shots and then if the ball runs loose (don’t even think about actually trying to tackle and get the ball back), hoof it clear, but make sure it doesn’t get out of our half and absolutely doesn’t go anywhere near our striker.
I’ve just checked Hasebe’s post match comments and it’s the usual shit, but I did particularly enjoy these lines translated by google.
‘I’m not sure if everyone was aware of our defensive positioning, but we had prepared specifically to avoid conceding goals in the manner that we did. Many of the goals we conceded today occurred in situations we had explicitly aimed to prevent. While perhaps not every single instance, that is ultimately how it played out. We were prepared, yet we were caught out several times in the exact scenarios we wanted to avoid.’
This is kind of terrifying. Seems like he’s basically saying we can’t even carry out the plan for what we’ve prepared for. God forbid a team try something different. We’d get even more humiliated. I suspect in a few games time he’ll be saying something like ‘we discussed that it was important to not boot the ball into our own goal repeatedly. Sadly when the game started that is exactly what we did.’ He didn’t mention the midfield in his comments, and I still think this is where the real problems are, but he did say this…
‘When we find ourselves facing around 20 shots per match—as has been the case over this recent stretch of three games—it becomes very difficult to secure a win.’
No shit. If only those naughty opposition players wouldn’t keep attacking and shooting we’d be fine! And perhaps this is all connected to the lack of midfield and the lack of tactics other than hoof it and hope.
After our five wins in a row we’ve now had four losses in a row. Presumably it would cost Yoshida money to fire Hasebe so I don’t think that’s going to happen. Maybe he could try another crowd funder to raise money for Hasebe’s dismissal payoff. Yoshida probably looked at today’s result and thought ‘Wow! Lot’s of goals! That will definitely keep the fans happy! Let’s quickly launch a series of gold lettering replica shirts with GOALS GALORE written on the front and a big number 13 on the back with ‘conceded in the last four games’ in smaller print below it and sell them for double the normal price. NICE!’ There was a little booing at the end of the game and that ridiculous thing where the players had to line up especially close to the fans so that some gammon wanker from the supporters group could shout at them. Utterly depressing to watch. Much like most things that have gone on on the pitch recently.
A few words about Kashiwa and the ref. First of all, I should mention that a Kashiwa fan got on the train in front of me on the way home, didn’t take off his wet poncho and sat down on the seats. Maybe that’s the way those bad boy Kashiwa fans roll. Ooooh… a vigilante rebel without a cause! I’ve long said I don’t rate the Kashiwa stadium experience particularly because of the way they treat the away fans. In this match it seemed that quite a few home fans also didn’t rate the Kashiwa stadium experience much as there were loads of empty seats. Much like in the league game, they could easily have battered us if they’d concentrated on playing football rather than diving and moaning so much. A new arsehole to add to my list is Kubo, who on watching the highlights seems to constantly be puling the pouting facial expression of a little rich indie kid who’s been told that their mum didn’t manage to get the limited edition tshirt option with the tickets for their next concert and is absolutely seething, but at the same time trying not to cry. Every time something didn’t go his way he looked like he was moments away from screaming I HATE YOU! and running upstairs and slamming his bedroom door. His claim that Yamamoto had stamped on him and should get a red card was just bizarre. All the other players I said were wankers in the previous match, still are, as far as I’m concerned. Even the ones who weren’t at all involved in this match.
Kamimura the ref is legendarily shite and has received many a slagging on this blog. I was surprised to discover though that he seems to have improved slightly on his general shitness, but has unfortunately developed a new strain to his incompetence. I don’t know if he is a racist, but he certainly referees like he is one. Any decision involving a non-Japanese player went against them. I’d predict that if a Brazilian player was decapitated by a Japanese opponent the Brazilian would get a yellow from Kamimura for time wasting. When we scored our third, (ah… remember that glorious time…), he booked someone from our bench for entering the field of play during the celebration. It was a massive surprise to me to see that it wasn’t Kayke who was booked given that he was the Brazilian on the bench. But don’t worry, he booked Uremovic instead, so don’t go thinking that his apparent anti-foreigner thing is limited to people from Brazil Uremovic was going crazy after the decision, which suggests to me that he did nothing. I wonder if it might have actually been the fitness coach as he does tend to get involved in celebrations. Easy mistake for the ref to make though, right? After all the fitness coach is bald and bearded and Uremovic is neither of those things. They are both foreign though, so maybe you can’t blame Kamimura as he maybe thinks all foreigners look the same. Once again, we can’t blame the ref for us being atrocious, but when you combine a ref whose judgement appears to be coloured by who is involved and then you add to this the constant diving and whinging of Kashiwa, it almost certainly has an impact. I really wish we weren’t so shit, obviously, but partly because then my ‘analysis’ of these absolutely useless specimens of referees wouldn’t seem so much like sour grapes. I can assure you, I can find things to moan about when it comes to refs even when we win. Although that situation seems like it won’t come around for a long while now…
Next up… actually who gives a shit? Certainly not me right now. This is pure masochism at the moment. Actually I do know who is next up and it’s make or break time for Hasebe as we face his old team Avispa Fukuoka at home. Can he achieve complete symmetry and follow five wins in a row with five losses? Only time will tell. Last year we lost this fixture 5-2. Jeeeezzz. Right now they are bottom of the table, so many would consider them ideal next opponents. But we all know what happens in those kind of situations, don’t we? Somewhat amusingly, even though we’re in 8th and they’re in 20th they’ve only conceded one more goal than we have this year. And commenting on how terrible we are at defending seems like the right place to finish. Perfect symmetry! Absolute misery.
The line up for this match looked like it was going to be the same old shit again. But Hasebe had a surprise up his sleeve. Yamahara finally got the chance to play in his preferred position on the left. Sasaki moved into the middle and Pedro Romano played at right back. This was all initially quite exciting and it was a lot of fun to see Romano’s throw in technique again. Derik was back up front and he initially did really well I thought. And then absolutely ran out of energy. Quite why he remained on the pitch for the whole match I don’t know. After an initial absolutely chaotic period at the back where I wrote down that Kashiwa had probably had more shots in the first few minutes than we’d manage all game, we started to play quite well. And scored. And scored again. And again. Of course this was all too much to ask for and we started to fade as the half went on. But it was genuinely exciting for a while. Conceding immediately before half time turned out to be the death blow. As soon as we did I said ‘we’re fucked now’ but could never have anticipated quite how fucked we’d turn out to be. I can’t remember such a humiliating capitulation since… last year at the same ground in the same competition. I’m kind of surprised we haven’t had one more recently, but I suppose in order to have a humiliating capitulation you need to have something to capitulate humiliatingly. Three nil and absolutely coasting. It was quite fun to wipe some of the complacency off the Kashiwa fans’ faces. I definitely felt it from some of the supporters on the way to the ground. And let’s be honest, they had every right to be complacent as there was no way we were going to beat them. And we didn’t.
The defence is an absolute mess. I don’t know why. Hasebe clearly doesn’t know why. I really thought he might have cracked it in the first half. But I guess our effective attacking was just the result of us absolutely going for it from the start and then running out of steam. But I don’t know if running out of steam by itself can lead to conceding five goals. And we knew the game was going to be at least 90 mins long, so maybe going hell for leather for the first thirty minutes and then hoping to hang on for the rest of the game might not have been the best idea, (if indeed that was the idea). Particularly because we couldn’t even hang on to our gloves right now, even though our mum has attached them to our coat with a bit of elastic. So let’s start slinging the blame around. The defence were absolutely cack, but that’s no surprise because completely predictably the absolute worst midfield three combination we have were back together again and decided to go absolutely missing every time Kashiwa attacked. Yamaguchi in goal made some good saves but also let a shitload of goals in and seemed keen to blame anyone other than himself on every occasion it happened. He must be gutted than Tanabe has left the club as he was one of his favourite people to blame. But once again, I think the main blame needs to be slung at Hasebe. To be fair he did finally change something. But after making that change it apparently rendered him incapable of making any other changes or even noticing what was happening in the match. He still has hardly anyone to choose from when it comes to assembling a match day squad. But things went well in the first half. I imagine though that I was not the only person in the stadium who, when their first goal went in, thought that we were about to fall apart. He had half time to sort things out and convince the players that it was only a minor set back and to keep on going as we were. Maybe. Or maybe he decided to tell them to shut up shop, not take chances and to hang on to the lead. Whatever he told them, it ended up in disaster. Judging from what we did in the second half, I can only guess that his instructions were to sit back, let them have the ball and have some shots and then if the ball runs loose (don’t even think about actually trying to tackle and get the ball back), hoof it clear, but make sure it doesn’t get out of our half and absolutely doesn’t go anywhere near our striker.
I’ve just checked Hasebe’s post match comments and it’s the usual shit, but I did particularly enjoy these lines translated by google.
‘I’m not sure if everyone was aware of our defensive positioning, but we had prepared specifically to avoid conceding goals in the manner that we did. Many of the goals we conceded today occurred in situations we had explicitly aimed to prevent. While perhaps not every single instance, that is ultimately how it played out. We were prepared, yet we were caught out several times in the exact scenarios we wanted to avoid.’
This is kind of terrifying. Seems like he’s basically saying we can’t even carry out the plan for what we’ve prepared for. God forbid a team try something different. We’d get even more humiliated. I suspect in a few games time he’ll be saying something like ‘we discussed that it was important to not boot the ball into our own goal repeatedly. Sadly when the game started that is exactly what we did.’ He didn’t mention the midfield in his comments, and I still think this is where the real problems are, but he did say this…
‘When we find ourselves facing around 20 shots per match—as has been the case over this recent stretch of three games—it becomes very difficult to secure a win.’
No shit. If only those naughty opposition players wouldn’t keep attacking and shooting we’d be fine! And perhaps this is all connected to the lack of midfield and the lack of tactics other than hoof it and hope.
After our five wins in a row we’ve now had four losses in a row. Presumably it would cost Yoshida money to fire Hasebe so I don’t think that’s going to happen. Maybe he could try another crowd funder to raise money for Hasebe’s dismissal payoff. Yoshida probably looked at today’s result and thought ‘Wow! Lot’s of goals! That will definitely keep the fans happy! Let’s quickly launch a series of gold lettering replica shirts with GOALS GALORE written on the front and a big number 13 on the back with ‘conceded in the last four games’ in smaller print below it and sell them for double the normal price. NICE!’ There was a little booing at the end of the game and that ridiculous thing where the players had to line up especially close to the fans so that some gammon wanker from the supporters group could shout at them. Utterly depressing to watch. Much like most things that have gone on on the pitch recently.
A few words about Kashiwa and the ref. First of all, I should mention that a Kashiwa fan got on the train in front of me on the way home, didn’t take off his wet poncho and sat down on the seats. Maybe that’s the way those bad boy Kashiwa fans roll. Ooooh… a vigilante rebel without a cause! I’ve long said I don’t rate the Kashiwa stadium experience particularly because of the way they treat the away fans. In this match it seemed that quite a few home fans also didn’t rate the Kashiwa stadium experience much as there were loads of empty seats. Much like in the league game, they could easily have battered us if they’d concentrated on playing football rather than diving and moaning so much. A new arsehole to add to my list is Kubo, who on watching the highlights seems to constantly be puling the pouting facial expression of a little rich indie kid who’s been told that their mum didn’t manage to get the limited edition tshirt option with the tickets for their next concert and is absolutely seething, but at the same time trying not to cry. Every time something didn’t go his way he looked like he was moments away from screaming I HATE YOU! and running upstairs and slamming his bedroom door. His claim that Yamamoto had stamped on him and should get a red card was just bizarre. All the other players I said were wankers in the previous match, still are, as far as I’m concerned. Even the ones who weren’t at all involved in this match.
Kamimura the ref is legendarily shite and has received many a slagging on this blog. I was surprised to discover though that he seems to have improved slightly on his general shitness, but has unfortunately developed a new strain to his incompetence. I don’t know if he is a racist, but he certainly referees like he is one. Any decision involving a non-Japanese player went against them. I’d predict that if a Brazilian player was decapitated by a Japanese opponent the Brazilian would get a yellow from Kamimura for time wasting. When we scored our third, (ah… remember that glorious time…), he booked someone from our bench for entering the field of play during the celebration. It was a massive surprise to me to see that it wasn’t Kayke who was booked given that he was the Brazilian on the bench. But don’t worry, he booked Uremovic instead, so don’t go thinking that his apparent anti-foreigner thing is limited to people from Brazil Uremovic was going crazy after the decision, which suggests to me that he did nothing. I wonder if it might have actually been the fitness coach as he does tend to get involved in celebrations. Easy mistake for the ref to make though, right? After all the fitness coach is bald and bearded and Uremovic is neither of those things. They are both foreign though, so maybe you can’t blame Kamimura as he maybe thinks all foreigners look the same. Once again, we can’t blame the ref for us being atrocious, but when you combine a ref whose judgement appears to be coloured by who is involved and then you add to this the constant diving and whinging of Kashiwa, it almost certainly has an impact. I really wish we weren’t so shit, obviously, but partly because then my ‘analysis’ of these absolutely useless specimens of referees wouldn’t seem so much like sour grapes. I can assure you, I can find things to moan about when it comes to refs even when we win. Although that situation seems like it won’t come around for a long while now…
Next up… actually who gives a shit? Certainly not me right now. This is pure masochism at the moment. Actually I do know who is next up and it’s make or break time for Hasebe as we face his old team Avispa Fukuoka at home. Can he achieve complete symmetry and follow five wins in a row with five losses? Only time will tell. Last year we lost this fixture 5-2. Jeeeezzz. Right now they are bottom of the table, so many would consider them ideal next opponents. But we all know what happens in those kind of situations, don’t we? Somewhat amusingly, even though we’re in 8th and they’re in 20th they’ve only conceded one more goal than we have this year. And commenting on how terrible we are at defending seems like the right place to finish. Perfect symmetry! Absolute misery.
Team
GK 1. YAMAGUCHI Louis
DF 4. PEDRO ROMANO
DF 3. TANIGUCHI Hiroto
DF 5. SASAKI Asahi (Yellow card 90+1')
DF 29. YAMAHARA Reon
MF 8. TACHIBANADA Kento
MF 6. YAMAMOTO Yuki (Yellow card 35')
MF 17. ITO Tatsuya
MF 14. WAKIZAKA Yasuto
MF 23. MARCINHO
FW 97. DERIK LACERDA
Subs
GK 21. HAYASAKA Yuki
DF 2. MATSUNAGANE Yuto
FW 11. KOBAYASHI Yu (on for WAKIZAKA 80')
DF 13. MIURA Sota (Yellow card 89') (on for PEDRO ROMANO 74')
MF 19. KAWAHARA So (Yellow card 63') (on for YAMAMOTO 58')
DF 22. Filip UREMOVIC (Yellow card 26')
DF 28. MARUYAMA Yuichi
MF 25. YAMAICHI Shuto (on for MARCINHO 46')
FW 93. KAYKE QUEIROZ (on for ITO 74')
Man of the match
No man of the match for some reason today, but definitely the highlight of the day was when we needed two goals to force extra time and had five minutes left and decided to play it around at the back for a little while. Get that pass count up!
MF 23. MARCINHO
FW 97. DERIK LACERDA
Subs
GK 21. HAYASAKA Yuki
DF 2. MATSUNAGANE Yuto
FW 11. KOBAYASHI Yu (on for WAKIZAKA 80')
DF 13. MIURA Sota (Yellow card 89') (on for PEDRO ROMANO 74')
MF 19. KAWAHARA So (Yellow card 63') (on for YAMAMOTO 58')
DF 22. Filip UREMOVIC (Yellow card 26')
DF 28. MARUYAMA Yuichi
MF 25. YAMAICHI Shuto (on for MARCINHO 46')
FW 93. KAYKE QUEIROZ (on for ITO 74')
Man of the match
No man of the match for some reason today, but definitely the highlight of the day was when we needed two goals to force extra time and had five minutes left and decided to play it around at the back for a little while. Get that pass count up!
Goals
TANIGUCHI (Frontale) 9' 0-1
ITO (Frontale) 25' 0-2
WAKIZAKA (Frontale) 30' 0-3
KUSO (Kashiwa) 45+2' 1-3
FUJIO (Kashiwa) 54' 2-3
YAMAUCHI (Kashiwa) 60' 3-3
KUSO (Kashiwa) 64' 4-3
SEGAWA (Kashiwa) 72' 5-3
YAMAICHI (Frontale) 81' 5-4
Highlights
