Kashima Antlers 1 - 0 Kawasaki Frontale
Ah, absolutely gutted. I guess I was expecting disappointment but I hadn’t banked on it coming in this way. I’m sure plenty of people will disagree, but I think Kashima absolutely stole the three points in this game. I guess this is a bit one-eyed though as we didn’t come very close to taking any of our limited chances. But fucking hell Kashima are a bit rubbish and fluked a goal and with it the win. As I sit here on the bus in the car park after the game at the designated departure time, I am fully aware that me writing this blog post will probably take less time than it takes us to get out of the car park here. At least it's something to keep me occupied whilst we go absolutely nowhere. As the reception is so poor in the rural industrial wasteland, (perhaps a slight contradiction there, but anyone who’s been here will probably understand), that the Kashima stadium is in I can’t really check any incidents from the match, and can’t even see the stats. With that in mind, expect some inaccuracies but I’m sure you’d expect nothing else. I also suspect that the WOW! section might be longer than the rest of the post this week. But maybe that’s what some of you come here for anyway. Let the vitriol begin!
First half -
They seemed scared of us for some reason. And maybe if we’d been playing with 11 players they would have had reason to be. Have a guess who the two below par players were on our side this week? Yep that’s right Miura and Wakizaka. Although that’s extremely unfair on Wakizaka who was just a bit below par, in contrast to Miura who did absolutely nothing other than give the ball away and stand around pointing whilst the game went on around him. No, come on, that’s a little unfair. At one point he also left the field to change his shorts. There weren’t many chances for either team but Broderson had to make one good save. 0-0 was absolutely the right scoreline. Thankfully we managed to squeeze in our first shot on target just before half time. We were mostly in control but failed to trouble their keeper. Hang on, I feel like maybe we’ve heard that one before, haven’t we?
Second half -
We really had them rattled. They looked extremely dodgy at the back and in midfield. We had some good chances which we blasted either high or wide. Miura was still shit. Well up until the final ten minutes when it seemed like he remembered it wasn’t a training session. Their goal was fluky, completely against the run of play and utterly undeserved. Although our failure to trouble their keeper probably suggests that we didn’t deserve much either. But damn it, we really had them wobbling but couldn’t score. Which makes the defeat all the more frustrating. At least we didn’t go to penalties I suppose. That could have caused issues with the buses which were ‘leaving’ at 17:30. Although it is now 17:48 and the wheels of the bus haven’t even gone round once, let alone been able to ‘go round and round’. There are a few things I’d like to look at when I can as I was quite irritated on a number of occasions by the officials. Will add a little ‘In the cold light of day’ section when I’ve done that.
Good day -
Good day for fans of certain players. Oshima and Maruyama were unexpectedly back in the side. Apparently Hasebe rewarded the players who’d done well in the training match we played last week. (Bit more on that in the bad day section). On the pitch, Maruyama and Tachibanada stood out for good reasons. Oshima too. He did plenty of things for people to clip up and post as short videos. (I haven’t checked but I suspect the club has probably done this, apparently unaware that we lost the game. Perhaps creating social media content and getting ‘impressions’ is more important to them than us actually winning games). I really hope he can stay fit as he’ll be very important if he can. But I’m totally aware that we’ve said this many times before. Good day for people who like to watch a real battle of a game. And for people who like to watch build ups that never reach the having-a-shot stage. Good day for people who want to scream as there was plenty to get angry about. Good day for whoever apparently bribed the ref as he did exactly what they wanted.
Bad day -
Bad day for fans of correct decisions. Bad day for Miura (obviously). Not a great day for Hasebe as we still seem to be stuck in the toothless attack doldrums. It’s good that he rewarded those players who’d done well in training, but it’s a massive black mark against his name for not removing Miura from the team. I know I always moan about this and I know I moan more than most people, but there definitely seemed to be some frustration from others around me in the stand with Miura. Also a bad day for Yamaguchi who once again wasn’t in the match day squad. Apparently in the training match he was the goalkeeper who absolutely gifted the university team opposition their two goals. It doesn’t look good for him.
First half -
They seemed scared of us for some reason. And maybe if we’d been playing with 11 players they would have had reason to be. Have a guess who the two below par players were on our side this week? Yep that’s right Miura and Wakizaka. Although that’s extremely unfair on Wakizaka who was just a bit below par, in contrast to Miura who did absolutely nothing other than give the ball away and stand around pointing whilst the game went on around him. No, come on, that’s a little unfair. At one point he also left the field to change his shorts. There weren’t many chances for either team but Broderson had to make one good save. 0-0 was absolutely the right scoreline. Thankfully we managed to squeeze in our first shot on target just before half time. We were mostly in control but failed to trouble their keeper. Hang on, I feel like maybe we’ve heard that one before, haven’t we?
Second half -
We really had them rattled. They looked extremely dodgy at the back and in midfield. We had some good chances which we blasted either high or wide. Miura was still shit. Well up until the final ten minutes when it seemed like he remembered it wasn’t a training session. Their goal was fluky, completely against the run of play and utterly undeserved. Although our failure to trouble their keeper probably suggests that we didn’t deserve much either. But damn it, we really had them wobbling but couldn’t score. Which makes the defeat all the more frustrating. At least we didn’t go to penalties I suppose. That could have caused issues with the buses which were ‘leaving’ at 17:30. Although it is now 17:48 and the wheels of the bus haven’t even gone round once, let alone been able to ‘go round and round’. There are a few things I’d like to look at when I can as I was quite irritated on a number of occasions by the officials. Will add a little ‘In the cold light of day’ section when I’ve done that.
Good day -
Good day for fans of certain players. Oshima and Maruyama were unexpectedly back in the side. Apparently Hasebe rewarded the players who’d done well in the training match we played last week. (Bit more on that in the bad day section). On the pitch, Maruyama and Tachibanada stood out for good reasons. Oshima too. He did plenty of things for people to clip up and post as short videos. (I haven’t checked but I suspect the club has probably done this, apparently unaware that we lost the game. Perhaps creating social media content and getting ‘impressions’ is more important to them than us actually winning games). I really hope he can stay fit as he’ll be very important if he can. But I’m totally aware that we’ve said this many times before. Good day for people who like to watch a real battle of a game. And for people who like to watch build ups that never reach the having-a-shot stage. Good day for people who want to scream as there was plenty to get angry about. Good day for whoever apparently bribed the ref as he did exactly what they wanted.
Bad day -
Bad day for fans of correct decisions. Bad day for Miura (obviously). Not a great day for Hasebe as we still seem to be stuck in the toothless attack doldrums. It’s good that he rewarded those players who’d done well in training, but it’s a massive black mark against his name for not removing Miura from the team. I know I always moan about this and I know I moan more than most people, but there definitely seemed to be some frustration from others around me in the stand with Miura. Also a bad day for Yamaguchi who once again wasn’t in the match day squad. Apparently in the training match he was the goalkeeper who absolutely gifted the university team opposition their two goals. It doesn’t look good for him.
Any other business -
Let’s just go straight to the WOW! Section.
WOW! -
The first WOW is a quite all encompassing one. All the Kashima players, staff, fans, ball boys, everyone connected with the club in any way definitely slots into this category perfectly. They’re such a scummy club from top to bottom. Things that irritated me about the team in this match included their fucking infuriating gamesmanship, clogger play, constant whinging to the referee, extreme time wasting, injury feigning, dirty fouling, and most of all spawny luck. Three points for them from this game is an absolute injustice. The ball boys were clearly under instruction from the club to not give us the ball for throw ins under anything except for the most extreme circumstances, just let that time ebb away, even when they were drawing. Don’t think that the fans are going to escape from this. It was an appallingly low attendance for what they seemed to think was an important and tricky game. If it hadn’t been for the Frontale fans I think they would have struggled to get over 15000. Presumably it’s a bit easier for their fans to get to the stadium so they can’t even blame the horrific bus journey. Actually though, the coaches from Tokyo are probably at least 50% full with ‘home’ fans. My contention that Ota-ku, Setagaya-ku and Shibuya-ku are fair game for being Frontale territory is intended mainly to wind up FC Tokyo fans. But I think it takes a bit of a leap though for someone living in Tokyo to choose Kashima over a closer team particularly given that everything about the club is so scummy. Imagine doing that bus journey for every home game. Blimey. These wonderful fans also broke off a song midway before the game in order to boo our goalkeepers coming out. And they’re not even as good at booing as Urawa are.
Let’s not leave the stadium experience out of this slagging. Now they allow you to retain your PET bottle lid when entering the stadium. Amazing! There’s no longer any re-entry though, so I guess they’ve worked out that any revenue lost from people no longer having to replace spilt soft drink bottles is more than made up for by the fact that none of that food stalls outside the ground will be getting any custom from away fans who are scrambling for the unreserved seats once the ground is open. To be honest, I probably wouldn’t have gone out anyway, as I don’t enjoy wandering around rural industrial wastelands, but their commitment to stamping out any kind of enjoyment or fan mingling from the match day experience is impressive. I guess the mantra is to just keep the experience aggy, like it is on the pitch. And maybe in an attempt to further increase the irritation, the in stadium music was horrendous. The choice of songs was awful but the fact that they even went further and chose cover versions that efficiently stripped away anything that was interesting about the originals shows a real commitment to the cause. Oniki famously had never been to a concert before one of our fan events, and this music selection really had the whiff of being chosen by someone who hates music. Maybe they don’t need to spend as much on royalties for those versions. At least Urawa fully commit to having the original versions of their pre-game gay anthems soundtrack. The Saitama stadium experience wouldn’t be the same without them! (Are you impressed that I am somehow managing to slag off both Kashima and Urawa in the same post and hopefully the fact that I am comparing them will hopefully further irritate fans of both teams).
So, awful club, awful people, awful experience. Surely we can’t go any lower? Somewhat surprisingly all of these things may have been eclipsed by the ref. We’ve now had a couple of dodgy games with him but this one really took the biscuit. He gave us absolutely nothing, showed an almost Jesus like approach when it came to forgiving the sins of multiple Kashima players who pulled and fouled constantly but for the most part avoided cards. When Tagawa attempted to break Ozeki’s ankle, he got away with a yellow. He hassled us for dilly-dallying over a goal kick in the first ten minutes of the game but let Kashima take as long as they wanted to do anything after they’d gone ahead. After a coming together where we won the ball he let play continue till the ball went out and then took it back for a Kashima free kick, apparently playing the advantage for us, but then giving the decision the other way. Maybe he's just a bit simple and it takes his brain a little while to catch up. The linesman at our end was equally bad. But basically, a fucking absolutely useless arsehole of a referee who was terrified of giving any decisions against those scary Kashima guys. I don’t know if the ref has a vineyard, brewery or dairy farm, but he definitely showed that he is an excellent bottler. So not a completely useless human being I suppose. Just completely useless when it comes to football. We didn’t lose because of him because he wasn’t the one who couldn’t hit the target more than once a half, but he definitely affected the way the game played out.
In the cold light of day -
So this part has been written at home and not on the bus and I’ve now watched a few things back so can give you the low down about things you probably already know. I didn’t go as far as watching long sections of the game though, (life’s too short, and I don’t want to get the resentment boiling up again), so I’m going to just presume my feelings at the time were correct when it comes to thinking that the ref was generally intimated by the Kashima players. One thing I didn’t notice at the time but irritated me intensely when I saw a replay was Ito being blocked by the ref. Absolutely sums up how bad Kamimura is, body checking a player who’s trying to get to the ball. Ito’s face said a lot. I think the ref’s lack of a backbone and Kashima’s dirty tricks is really displayed when the ref gives Tagawa a yellow. It looked like a dodgy tackle at the time but was a bit too far from me to be able to really see it properly. The replay is damning though, both players sliding in, Ozeki pulls out and puts his boot down as it clearly is going to be a dangerous collision and Tagawa slides right into his ankle, boot off the ground, no intention of stopping himself. The ref gives a yellow, but I have no idea why VAR didn’t suggest he have another look at it. To be honest, we should be thankful for the yellow. As soon as the ankle-break attempt is complete Kashima players surround the ref, suggesting he’s given the foul the wrong way and that Ozeki should be sent off. Even the prick Tagawa seems to be suggesting that Ozeki has made a grievous attempt to injure him by attacking the sole of his boot with his ankle. That one small incident sums up the whole game really. The ref making a mistake in favour of Kashima who were intensely irritated that the mistake doing go even more in their favour. It wouldn’t have made a difference if he’d sent him off as it was probably too late anyway. It might have made a difference though if he hadn’t let them get away with their shittiness for the whole match.
Looking for the yellow card incident in the highlights I’ve inadvertently stumbled across one of the absolutely mind-numbingly bad decisions from the ref. It’s around 89 minutes and the defender has his arms completely round Erison and pulls him to the floor and the ref isn’t interested at all. It says a lot that our players didn’t complain more. They presumably knew by this stage that we weren’t getting anything from the ref. After all, the same thing happened throughout the game and he wasn’t interested on any of the other occasions. Maybe he also officiates in Judo matches so thinks that throwing opponents to the floor is all part of the game. I think it’s not an accident too that Oniki walks out of his technical area and almost directly in front of us taking the throw. Anyone who is still of the opinion that Oniki is a nice guy probably needs to rethink. It seems that anyone that is touched by Kashima turns to the dark side.
So, in the cold light of day, my thoughts that the ref was useless and that Kashima are a despicable bunch of pricks was exactly right. Bravo to me!
What a crappy end to what at some stages looked like it could be a good day. If we want to take some positives it must be that we really had them wobbling on a lot of occasions. If we want to undermine those positives, well, two shots on target in 90 minutes and we lost. It’s now 66 minutes since our buses departure and we still haven’t made it to the expressway. But to be honest, I think we’re a bit ahead of schedule compared to previous years. I’m intending to have a few drinks when we get back to civilisation so that should soften the blow a bit I think. It’s a shame the season is so totally over so early. But equally, it’s a relief that we’re farting around like this in an utterly meaningless season. I think it’s time for the club to admit we’re not going to win the league and start trying some new things. It seems that there has always been a reason why the time wasn’t right to try something new. Clearly now there’s nothing to lose. Please let us see some new faces and maybe, shock horror, some new tactics…. Lot’s of people are talking about how Miura and Ito don’t play well together but still Hasebe is still persisting with it. Personally I think that this year Miura and no-one plays well together and that is mostly because Miura is in horrific form. For god’s sake change something Hasebe! Bet he won’t. Well, aside from the normal tiny changes of the midfielders and attackers who dropped out of the team for this match coming back in for the next match. There have been a few minor changes but he basically seems to go from line up A, who don't do the job and are dropped, to line up B, who don't do the job, so are dropped for line up A, who... you get the message here I'm sure. He has experimented with line up AB at times, but to be honest, that just seems to be a way of him demonstrating he's doing something. And given that whoever plays we have the same shittiness problems, is it not clear that there it's a bigger problem than personnel? Next up Tokyo Verdy away on Wednesday. I’ve just seen that they’ve beaten Urawa today. LOLZ! They’ve had some good results and fun so far this year, so maybe they’ll be good neighbours and let us have some. We’ve now played five games, over a quarter of this mini season, and in a normal season we’d be sitting here with just five points, having failed to win since the first fluky game of the season. It’s not massively encouraging, is it? But somehow I don’t feel massively disheartened. Might be feeling that way soon though. I feel like every week I’m coming away with the impression that we just need to make a little change and we’ll be off and flying. But every time the following game comes round, the little change we need to make hasn’t been made. I’d love to sign off here with some kind of optimistic flourish. Clearly we’re not rubbish and there are plenty of teams in a worse position than us. At the start of the year on the J Talk Podcast I said that we could have a great season as all the pieces of the puzzle were there but Hasebe just needed to put them together. Sadly, it seems like he just can’t stop using the instructions Oniki left behind instead of doing what he knows best. If things carry on like this, I don’t think it will ruin us, but I can’t see it’s going to help Hasebe get another job after he leaves us, (which presumably will happen after the next full season unless there is a massive change in fortunes). There is a certain irony that in looking for something positive to finish this post on, I’ve ended up making things even more depressing. The feeling straight after the match was that we’d been unlucky, but a little reflection made me think that the best we could have hoped for was a 0-0 anyway. So given that even when I felt like we’d done quite well it was basically a backhanded way of displaying we’re not very good, perhaps keeping things depressing at the end is exactly the right way to finish.
What a crappy end to what at some stages looked like it could be a good day. If we want to take some positives it must be that we really had them wobbling on a lot of occasions. If we want to undermine those positives, well, two shots on target in 90 minutes and we lost. It’s now 66 minutes since our buses departure and we still haven’t made it to the expressway. But to be honest, I think we’re a bit ahead of schedule compared to previous years. I’m intending to have a few drinks when we get back to civilisation so that should soften the blow a bit I think. It’s a shame the season is so totally over so early. But equally, it’s a relief that we’re farting around like this in an utterly meaningless season. I think it’s time for the club to admit we’re not going to win the league and start trying some new things. It seems that there has always been a reason why the time wasn’t right to try something new. Clearly now there’s nothing to lose. Please let us see some new faces and maybe, shock horror, some new tactics…. Lot’s of people are talking about how Miura and Ito don’t play well together but still Hasebe is still persisting with it. Personally I think that this year Miura and no-one plays well together and that is mostly because Miura is in horrific form. For god’s sake change something Hasebe! Bet he won’t. Well, aside from the normal tiny changes of the midfielders and attackers who dropped out of the team for this match coming back in for the next match. There have been a few minor changes but he basically seems to go from line up A, who don't do the job and are dropped, to line up B, who don't do the job, so are dropped for line up A, who... you get the message here I'm sure. He has experimented with line up AB at times, but to be honest, that just seems to be a way of him demonstrating he's doing something. And given that whoever plays we have the same shittiness problems, is it not clear that there it's a bigger problem than personnel? Next up Tokyo Verdy away on Wednesday. I’ve just seen that they’ve beaten Urawa today. LOLZ! They’ve had some good results and fun so far this year, so maybe they’ll be good neighbours and let us have some. We’ve now played five games, over a quarter of this mini season, and in a normal season we’d be sitting here with just five points, having failed to win since the first fluky game of the season. It’s not massively encouraging, is it? But somehow I don’t feel massively disheartened. Might be feeling that way soon though. I feel like every week I’m coming away with the impression that we just need to make a little change and we’ll be off and flying. But every time the following game comes round, the little change we need to make hasn’t been made. I’d love to sign off here with some kind of optimistic flourish. Clearly we’re not rubbish and there are plenty of teams in a worse position than us. At the start of the year on the J Talk Podcast I said that we could have a great season as all the pieces of the puzzle were there but Hasebe just needed to put them together. Sadly, it seems like he just can’t stop using the instructions Oniki left behind instead of doing what he knows best. If things carry on like this, I don’t think it will ruin us, but I can’t see it’s going to help Hasebe get another job after he leaves us, (which presumably will happen after the next full season unless there is a massive change in fortunes). There is a certain irony that in looking for something positive to finish this post on, I’ve ended up making things even more depressing. The feeling straight after the match was that we’d been unlucky, but a little reflection made me think that the best we could have hoped for was a 0-0 anyway. So given that even when I felt like we’d done quite well it was basically a backhanded way of displaying we’re not very good, perhaps keeping things depressing at the end is exactly the right way to finish.
Team
GK 49. Svend BRODERSEN
DF 29. YAMAHARA Reon
DF 3. TANIGUCHI Hiroto
DF 28. MARUYAMA Yoichi
DF 13. MIURA Sota
MF 8. TACHIBANADA Kento
MF 10. OSHIMA Ryota
MF 41. IENAGA Akihiro
MF 14. WAKIZAKA Yasuto
MF 17. ITO Tatsuya
FW 91. Lazar ROMANIC
Subs
GK 21. HAYASAKA Yuki
DF 2. MATSUNAGANE Yuto
MF 6. YAMAMOTO Yuki (on for OSHIMA 66')
FW 9. ERISON (on for ROMANIC 83')
MF 16. OZEKI Yuto (on for TACHIBANADA 83')
MF 18. KONNO Kazuya (on for ITO 83')
MF 19. KAWAHARA So
DF 22. Filip UREMOVIC
FW 23. MARCINHO (on for IENAGA 60')
Man of the match
MARUYAMA Yoichi and TACHIBANADA Kento - probably neither of these players would be in most people’s preferred starting lineup, but both put in full effort and showed some of their underperforming team mates the way to go. Extra props to Tachibanada as he was not only playing in midfield but also left back in the first half whilst Miura strolled around doing nothing.
Goals
LEO CEARA (Kashima) 79' 1-0
LEO CEARA (Kashima) 79' 1-0
Highlights
