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

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

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

Us - 

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

Them - 

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

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

Ref and 4th official - 

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

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

Team

GK 98. YAMAGUCHI Louis
DF 31. VAN VERMESKERKEN Sai

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

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

Subs

GK 1. JUNG Sung-Ryong

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

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

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

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

 

My Frontale Man Of The Match 

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

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

 

Goals

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

Highlights

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

Urawa Reds 1 - 1 Kawasaki Frontale  

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

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

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

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

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

Team

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

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

Subs

GK 1. JUNG Sung-Ryong

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

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

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

 

My Frontale Man Of The Match 

Definitely not anyone who started the match.

 

Goals

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

Highlights

Vs Machida Zelvia (home) 31/8/25 J League match 28

Kawasaki Frontale 5 - 3 Machida Zelvia 

We’re gonna win the league! We’re unstoppable. Even ‘illness’ and injury can’t stop us. We can put two goalies on the bench for fun as we only need three or four subs per game. 4-3 then 5-3, so presumably next we’ll win 6-3. Everything is marvelous. Regular readers of this blog will probably realise that I’m not being entirely serious here. But all the same this was a joyfully exciting win against a real shitbag team. To introduce an element of reality to this, it would be wrong to not mention the fact in the last two games the opposition goalies have made one save in total. Whether you want to interpret that as our shooting being so amazing that all but one of our shots were unsavable, or that we’ve come up against two very dodgy keepers, well that's up to you. To add a further dose of reality, you’ve got to think that even if we won the remainder of our league games, the gap to the top is already too large for us to get anywhere near the teams up there without some very weird results. But let’s not be too negative. This is fun football again, slightly reminiscent of the old Kazama glory days. (Hmmm, those glory days when we never won anything, but you know what I mean, right?). It’s difficult for me to type this blog post as, much like happens to a certain orange president with his handshaking, the sheer amount of high fives I’ve done in the last two games is enough to make even someone in perfect health, (like the orange bastard and I both clearly are) end up with significant bruising. (Presumably on a part of the hand that is not involved in the handshake or high fives). Immediately after the game, whilst enjoying the highs of handsomely beating a bunch of terrible wankers, I perhaps complained a little about the standard of our goalkeeping, (their third goal was irritating me quite a bit). But in the cold light of day, I don’t think we need any negativity here, do we? Yeah, we look like we’ll concede a goal with every opposition attack, but as long as we keep scoring on most of our attacks and keep making chances, let’s be positive!

Us -

It was delightful to see just two goalkeepers in the match day squad. But I don’t think we’re really out of the woods on the illness front yet. Ienaga is now nowhere to be seen. Which confirms my suspicions that he wasn’t fit anyway. Still no sign of Romanic either. But it was nice to see Uremovic back after his… cameo. Marcinho was back from his ban but started on the bench which I thought was probably fair enough as Tachibanada had done a good job there against Nagoya. It did make a difference when Marcinho came on though so it’s good to see him back and hopefully banging. Slightly amusing that he celebrated his comeback goal after accumulated yellow cards by getting another one for taking off his shirt. Wakizaka was back and I guess we don’t know if he was ill or injured. He didn’t have a great game, (looked a bit off the pace which I guess doesn’t get us closer to knowing why he was out), and I would have thought Ozeki would have continued in that spot but now he has gone missing. Your guess is as good as mine. But I guess he’s either injured or ill. And Jesiel and Miyagi were back too! So it’s great yeah, all our worries are over? But Ozeki… and Maruyama is injured as we knew from the Nagoya game and out for 6 months apparently. But anyway, we attacked, we shot and we scored. Perhaps Machida might say they'd had a tougher schedule as they played midweek, (save your moans Machida. Did you see our early season schedule?) and I think Kuroda was saying that they had players missing, (yeah, and we didn’t?!). But the fact is they’ve spent a lot of money assembling a team of rotters, had come off a long unbeaten record and we smacked them. Well kind of. We gave them a couple of goals due to our own shortcomings so perhaps we could say that they got lucky when it came to the scoreline. It certainly wasn’t a great display of defending or goalkeeping from either team. But anyway, I’m trying to be reasonably positive here. But yeah, let’s not get carried away as the last two goalies we’ve faced have been very generous and the fact that even on a sweltering day we only made four subs instead of five suggests that even if we’re not down to the bare bones anymore, we're still not exactly blessed with options. Fingers crossed for no more disasters. But a really enjoyable win, mainly because Machida are so grotty.

Them - 

Grotty. Do I need to say any more? Kuroda was rocking his summer look. Basically the same horrible tshirt and suit combo with those brighter than the sun white trainers, but without the jacket. His beard annoys me too. Not sure it’s a very sensible choice for a man of his age. Or actually for anyone of any age. But at least on a younger person you could at least blame it on exuberance and naivety. Soma remains an absolute arsehole, the epitome of the type of player who rolls around mortally injured and on every revolution makes sure he checks if the ref has got his cards out yet to check if he needs to continue rotating. The transformation of Soma from a kind of semi-likeable, bit cheeky little player at Nagoya to the shithead beast of a cheat he is now is truly breathtaking. There are plenty more objectionable players on their team but it was a little disappointing to not see Tani in goal because he totally would have shit the bed again and I would have really enjoyed barracking him. Oh well. 

blokes! 😂

It’s not just the players who are arseholes though. It seems that some of their fans are trying to get in on the act. There was a truly horrific selection of flags on display with more than a nod to Urawa style wannabe hooliganism with the massive Stone Island flag and one that somewhat amusingly said ‘blokes’ (Urawa had already taken ‘lads’, ‘boys’ and ‘garcons’). They also have gone down the loads-of-nationalist flags route that Gamba, Sanfrecce and Kashima do (and actually thinking about it Urawa too). I wonder if there’s any aspect of their support that they haven’t stolen from another club. Certainly some of their songs sounded quite familiar. As I always feel I need to say though, it’s obviously only an element of their fan base. At the same time they do seem to be getting a bit of a reputation for having a part of their fan base who seem to be absolute pricks. Anyway, grotty manager, grotty players, grotty clogger tactics and some grotty fans. Oh and don’t forget the grotty long throws too. Poor Shimoda for having to play there for so long. 

Ref - 

Unusually, as I said last time we had Fukushima, surprisingly little to complain about here. Of course I moaned a lot during the game, but can’t say he got anything particularly wrong. He’s notoriously card shy so obviously I would have preferred a few more to be dished out to an unsurprisingly dirty Machida team. But at least he seemed fairly consistent. I quite enjoyed the female linesperson in front of us when she managed to slightly disguise a throw in signal she’d incorrectly given which was overruled by the ref by signalling to the left with her flag in her left arm and then circling it round to end up signaling to the right with her arm across her face. It’s an action that is surprisingly enjoyable to recreate. I did it a few times in the pub after the game and have done it again now as I’m typing this. 

Lovely wins against horrible teams. Who’s next? Oh! Urawa! So the horrible teams run continues and hopefully the winning run can continue too. I still wonder what might happen when we come up against better opposition, but at the same time, maybe we’re… playing reasonably well. Who knows really? Wednesday were away in Saitama and then back home on Sunday in a two-legged Levain Cup quarter final. I guess there’s no point speculating who might play. We don’t have enough players to rotate really, so we should just hope that we only have the one goalie on the bench, I suppose. I never enjoy going to the Saitama stadium. Some might think this is because of the white hot intimidating atmosphere, but it’s more the absolutely dull walk from the station and the packed trains afterwards. And of course the fact that there is nothing to do in the absolute wilderness area that the stadium is in. Hopefully we'll get the full booing treatment that they give out when their team soils themselves after a couple of minutes of the game. Nobody cares about the Levain Cup until they’ve got nothing else to care about and as we’re in that situation now, I suspect this is a priority for us. Well, along with the league which obviously we’re going to win, eh?

Team

GK 98. YAMAGUCHI Louis
DF 31. VAN VERMESKERKEN Sai
DF 5. SASAKI Asahi
DF 22. Filip UREMOVIC
DF 13. MIURA Sota
MF 19. KAWAHARA So
MF 6. YAMAMOTO Yuki
MF 17. ITO Tatsuya
MF 14. WAKIZAKA Yasuto
MF 8. TACHIBANADA Kento
FW 9. ERISON


Subs

GK 1. JUNG Sung-Ryong

DF 4. JESIEL (on for UREMOVIC 75')
FW 23. MARCINHO  (Yellow card 90+11') (on for TACHIBANADA 46')
FW 24. MIYAGI Ten (on for ITO 61')
DF 27. KAMIHASHI Ryota

FW 29. MYOGAN Toya
DF 30. NODA Hiroto 

FW 38. KANDA Soma (on for ERISON 80')

DF 39. TSUCHIYA Kaito 

 

My Frontale Man Of The Match 

Predictable as it is to give it to him, I think it has to go to...

ERISON - two goals, one assist, a very funny bit of side to side shuffling to try to trick a Machida defender who he then just barged over instead and some tears in the hero interview afterwards. Please let him stay fit. Please!!!!

 

Goals

ITO (Frontale) 20' 1-0
NA (Machida) 28' 1-1
SHIMODA (Machida) 36' 1-2
ERISON (Frontale) 45+4' 2-2
MIYAGI (Frontale) 65' 3-2
FUJIO (Machida) 71' 3-3
ERISON (Frontale) 78' 4-3
MARCINHO (Frontale) 90+10' 5-3

Highlights

Vs Nagoya Grampus (away) 23/8/25 J League match 27

 

Nagoya Grampus 3 - 4 Kawasaki Frontale 

Well that was without question an entertaining game. Lots of goals and plenty to moan about. I guess in an easy and simple victory you don’t get the latter, but this was far from that. Once again, probably what was going on off the pitch is more significant than what happened on it. Anyone who thought we were in a dire state last week will have realised that throwing around words like dire when it comes to our 2025 fortunes is a fool’s errand. Compared to the Niigata match day squad we had… zero more options. Actually maybe minus two more options as Wakizaka and Jesiel disappeared from the match day squad for unknown reasons and Marcinho was absent due to accumulated yellow cards. But at least Sai was back after his ban, so once again, somehow we were able to field a stating lineup that looked… alright. Best not look too closely at the bench though as once again we had the two goalkeepers, the two untried centre backs, the apparently unavailable Ienaga, a player we recalled from his loan at Vegalta Sendai who had hardly got a look in this year (Myogan) and a player recently promoted to the first team on one of those ‘we won’t use you, so don’t worry about any other commitments or homework you might have’ contracts (Mochiyama). Somewhat surprisingly the latter was used as one of our changes, but the fact that in the game after the game where we were almost without options and therefore only made four subs, we only made three subs. With this is mind it’s no surprise that by the end of the game, there were quite a few players who looked absolutely knackered. But thankfully we have a full week until we have to play again. And in addition to the small break, we also have the morale boost of being able to win a game despite being on a horrible run, and of being able to score a lot of goals, even whilst being down to the absolute bare bones. Whether this turns out or be a real turning point of the season or rather more likely just a nice distraction from a terrible run of games, we’ll see. Of course I hope it’s the former. I believe Uremovic will be availabe for the next game and who knows, perhaps some of the players suffering from the never named ‘illness’ might also be available. Anyway, here is a very biased summing up of what was a really fun rollercoaster of a game. (Probably something the winners always say after a 4-3 and which the losers absolutely don’t say).

Us - 

We did alright, didn’t we. Recently every time I put on my ‘Fun Football’ Frontale t-shirt I take a moment to enjoy the delicious irony of the message. But this was fun! Lots of attacking and some chaotic defending. If we weren’t so bad at shooting we could have got double figures I reckon, (more on that in the ‘them’ section). But thankfully Erison and Ito had their shooting boots on and both got a brace. I’m
not sure Grampus going down to 10 men particularly helped us, (also more on that later), but thankfully we prevailed and took home three points from Toyota, which in recent years has been something that never happens. It was so weird to leave this stadium in a good mood. So very weird, but so very welcome. Looking at recent matches, I think we can write off the Albirex game as a very tricky situation where we managed against the odds to get a draw in a stadium we are always hopeless in. The Fukuoka game was a ridiculous match ruined by an absolutely one-eyed wanker of a ref. The Gamba and Verdy games, well, they were all our own fault and blimey were we terrible. But this game was fun. Although I obviously didn’t enjoy the multiple times that they cut through us, at least I could hang on to the fact that we seemed to want to score again. Anyway, this is all quite focused on my opinion, so let’s get on to slightly more concrete things. Of course I’ve mentioned the absolute lack of options above and this was worsened further when Maruayama went off injured in this match after only 12 minutes. It was a really weird injury as it seemed innocuous at the time and he even got up and was freely pacing around afterwards as if he was trying to walk it off. But you could see things weren’t good when he almost immediately took off the captain’s armband. At the moment, I think the word from the club is that it’s not good… Replacing him was Kamihashi, a player with zero first team minutes and only two appearances on the bench as an unused sub. He’d have to play at least 80 minutes. And there were previously rumours of him being quite off the pace in training sessions. But he did… alright. Perhaps if it had been Sasaki going off injured Hasebe might have picked Tsuchiya, but, given the opposition, I totally understand replacing Maruyama with him instead as we needed a big lump to try to deal with the big lumps Nagoya had up front. Maybe Kamihashi’s major involvement in the game, (although apparently he did get an assist, but I don’t remember that), was in getting Kasper Junker sent off by daring to try to head a ball which angered Junker to the extent that he decided to kick Kamihashi in the head. I’m pleased he was able to continue afterwards so he was able to soak up the adoration at the end of the game. Although I might be a bit nervous to see him start the next game, I’m really pleased he’s been able to take his next step on the way to becoming, (hopefully), a useful member of our squad. Let’s keep being positive. Tachibanada playing on the left wing probably wouldn’t have been many people’s selection, but in a crisis, there’s probably not many better people to call on to give a new position a go. I thought he did really well and perhaps this is a position he can be considered for in the future. I’m not sure he’d be a preferred starter over Marcinho, but let’s be honest, in spite of a decent goal return, Marcinho hasn’t had the best of seasons so far. Tachibanada looked much more difficult to knock off the ball. It definitely hasn’t been Marcinho’s year, (although when you consider how many goals he’s scored, that seems a weird thing to say), and perhaps that has partly been due to the travails of the rest of the team. But bravo Tachibanada, you did a great job. 

 

I should also give some credit to Yamaguchi as I’ve given him some stick in the past. Just to clarify, I have nothing against him, and I’d probably agree that he’s our best choice right now, but I just get put off and confused by the adoration that seems to constantly flow his way from both the club and fans. In this match, I can’t really remember the goals he conceded, but I do remember a great save which was then followed up by a great block from Yamamoto on the line. And I really want to praise Yamaguchi for his support and direction of Kamihashi. It definitely helped him settle in. Other than these little bits of praise that I’ve deigned to dispense, well maybe I should just praise everyone in the team as we were really up against it when it came to even being able to start this game. To get three points away in one of our bogey grounds with so few players available is great. Well done everyone! Jesiel and Wakizaka dropped out of the squad for this match. It’s difficult to say whether that was due to illness or injury. you can’t say for sure that the reason our midfield didn’t look awful this time was because Wakizaka wasn’t playing, but Ozeki certainly added something. Definitely his passes went awry at times but much like Seko before him, he was prepared to try something a bit different which is an absolute godsend right now. And I think Kawahara should be a first choice starter. He also makes some mistakes but I think we looked a lot more solid with him there. As far as I can remember, most of their chances came from long balls over the midfield. Unlike against Albirex where the midfield was almost anonymous and could be walked straight through, in this game I think we forced the opposition to try to bypass it as they were having no luck there. There are definitely some players who started this and the last game, perhaps not in great condition, so well done everyone for getting four points out of six in two bogey grounds with a real lack of resources. This is all way too positive right? At least I haven’t said this is the start of a title challenge. It definitely is the type of against the odds victory that could prompt a good run, but surely we’ve left it too late. Let’s enjoy the fact that we didn’t seem scared of shooting! Lovely! If only we’d got a few more shots on target. But after scoring four, it seems a bit rich to complain about that. In case you were wondering about Ienaga, he had a lot of strapping on his left (I think) knee, so I suspect that he is a bit injured and was maybe put into the squad to confuse the opposition or to provide guidance to the younger players. Only three subs in such hot conditions suggested that there weren’t many viable options for Hasebe. Mochiyama looked…. Let’s be honest we absolutely didn’t see enough of him, but he seemed willing to put himself about a bit which is nice. Not sure where he was playing, (maybe left wing), but at the moment I don’t think we can confidently say where any player might be playing next week. Our bad luck continued (when you consider the Maruyama injury and the difficulty we had naming a full bench), but hopefully we’ve turned a corner with this game. Hopefully…

Them -

Ah… Grampus. A team that used to not really mean that much to us but after their very suspicious COVID-era game cancellation which just happened to work out very nicely for them when it came to players coming back from injury, they have now become mortal enemies. There is more than a little irony about that fact that we turned up to this game with almost not enough players to fill the bench. I’m sure in the same situation they would have faked something to get a postponement. So I’m very happy to potentially fuck them up as they are now dangerously close to the drop zone. Of course I could put all the usual stuff in here about how terrible the stadium access is, (I can’t imagine being a home fan and having to do that every other game), and how woeful the amenities were inside the stadium, (would have been nice to be able to easily get some kind of water type soft drink without a massive line at the one stadium shop. I don’t think the other little stall with a couple of ice buckets had anything). But the thing that I want to moan most about in this section is the numerous arseholes they have in their squad. Inagaki is always a whingy little shit (who normally scores against us), but there are so many others who are following their brave captain’s example. Quite how Junker thought he shouldn’t be sent off after booting Kamihashi in the side of the head is baffling. After the red, they just sat back with everyone behind the ball and obviously scored on the counter attack, because well… just because. Even before the red their game plan was just to try to kick the shit out of us, which seems to be something everyone tries to do recently, so clearly it is an easy and obvious way to get at us. Maybe they have some good footballers, but they certainly have a lot of good moaners, divers and well, just arseholes. I was astounded how bad the well-hyped Pisano was. He only made one save in the whole game. I admit this also doesn’t reflect well on our shooting, but whatever. He was the absolute epitome of a dodgy keeper and I’m shocked that he is getting some kind of national team recognition. I laughed when someone said Yamaguchi should be considered for future Japan games, but Pisano made Yamaguchi look like a national team shoo-in. I guess it’s not good form to pick on a 19 year old though, so apologies for that. Don’t take it personally, we all just hate Grampus now. There’s not much else to say about them really,  (awful stadium access mentioned, clogger tactics mentioned), but it would be remiss of me to not at least slightly attempt to provoke their fans. Very classy of them to boo their ex-player Maruyama as he was on the floor clearly seriously injured and unable to carry on. Perhaps the kind of behaviour you might expect from a team that had absolutely shitloads of those racist flags behind their goal. We did hear someone complaining about the red card on the way back to the station, but delightfully they were complaining about what a stupid thing it was that Junker did. As some people never tire of saying, obviously not all of a team’s supporters are knuckle-dragging nationalists, but it did seem that Grampus had a lot of them with their shitty little flags behind the goal. So basically, hate the players (in a humorous way), hate the nationalist fans, (in an absolutely rational way), but most of all hate the people upstairs for that COVID postponement. WE WILL NEVER FORGET IT, YOU CHEATING BASTARDS!

Ref and VAR - 

Perhaps this is the most fun and most frustrating section to write. We were blessed with a new ref in charge of his first J1 game. At just 27 years of age you’ve got to think he must be a pretty good ref to be promoted this far so early, right? No he was as bad as the rest of them. Actually, he was worse than most of the rest of them. He started the game with a give nothing at all attitude which obviously was going to favour the clogger team. He really drew my ire though by booking Erison for a dive instead of giving us a penalty. Perhaps VAR should have asked him to check this decision, but VAR was being done by the more senior but equally useless Araki. Obviously I think it was a penalty, but at the same time could see it not being given, given that the ref was absolutely hopeless. But to book Erison for simulation was absolute nonsense as the defender was trying to rip the shirt off of him. Perhaps this is where VAR should have intervened, but of course they can’t do anything about yellow cards. They can about penalties though. You might have thought though that in a situation where a player is clearly being fouled and the ref ignores that and instead takes the unusual decision in the J League to book him for faking, the VAR guy should at least ask the ref to check it. But yeah, Araki is crap too. In the ref’s defence, I think he got two cards in the game correct. The one for Ito when he took off his shirt after scoring. And the one for Mikuni for petulantly slamming the ball into the ground after his teammate gave away a foul for an elbow. Good to see Mikuni wants to see the rules applied even if it is against his teammate. That was what was going on, wasn’t it? He was angry with the ref for not even booking his teammate for what was clearly a yellow card and maybe even a red card offence. Pretty much the rest of what he did was dubious, but as I mentioned before, he wasn’t really helped by VAR. But I dunno, I just get the feeing that he was way out of his depth but at the same time wanted to make a name for himself. And as often happens when refs like that come along, they certainly are remembered. Anyway, all you need to know from this section is that I can get angry about refs even when we win, and that the future for J League refs on this evidence is far from bright. In fact maybe it’s extremely unilluminated. If that is a word.

In conclusion, shit ref, fun game. I’m pleased we got the win (obviously) because it feels like we’ve had a lot of bad luck recently and to get a win in tough circumstances like this might be a big confidence boost for us. Of course, again we won’t have a full squad to choose from for the next game. I suspect we might even have some more ‘ill’ players and some more injuries. But if we play like this we can at least feel satisfied. Uremovic will be back from his suspension which will help us. If we could get some of the ill players back it would be nice. But on the evidence of this game, I’m not sure Marcinho or Wakizaka should walk back into the team if they are available. That next game is against the eternally scummy Machida at home next weekend. I’d like to see Soma get what he deserves after having completed his full transformation into a total shithead (see the away game at Machida and… well probably any game the little shit is involved in). I’d also like to see Kuroda cry. Is that too much to ask? I hope not. Maybe would be nice if his shitty bright white trainers got scuffed up a bit too. I mean after all of this, presumably we’re going to lose, but it would be lovey to put together a couple of wins in a row, wouldn’t it? Fingers crossed. 

 

Team

GK 98. YAMAGUCHI Louis
DF 31. VAN VERMESKERKEN Sai
DF 5. SASAKI Asahi
DF 35. MARUYAMA Yuichi
DF 13. MIURA Sota
MF 19. KAWAHARA So (Yellow card 89')
MF 6. YAMAMOTO Yuki
MF 17. ITO Tatsuya (Yellow card 90+6')
MF 16. OZEKI Yuto
MF 8. TACHIBANADA Kento
FW 9. ERISON (Yellow card 45+4')


Subs

GK 1. JUNG Sung-Ryong

GK 21. ANDO Shunsuke
DF 27. KAMIHASHI Ryota (on for MARUYAMA 12')

FW 29. MYOGAN Toya
DF 30. NODA Hiroto 

FW 36. MOCHIYAMA Kyosuke (on for TACHIBANADA 90+5')

FW 38. KANDA Soma (on for OZEKI 77')

DF 39. TSUCHIYA Kaito 
FW 41. IENAGA Akihiro

 

My Frontale Man Of The Match 

When two players score two goals, it’s quite hard to look past them. Unusually for recent times, we had way more players playing well than not so well in this match so there are other options. As I don’t really like to go too obvious when it comes to these awards, I’ll try to make things at least a little interesting and give it jointly to…

ERISON (obviously), ITO Tatsuya (obviously) and TACHIBANADA Kento (ooooh) - The first two did the things that won us the game. But Tachibanada stepping up to play left wing, another new position for him, and doing it in style, was a massive surprise. He hasn’t had a great season, like many others, so it was really good to see him playing a really important part again.  

 

Goals

ITO (Frontale) 7' 0-1
ERISON (Frontale) 17' 0-2
MORI (Nagoya) 32' 1-2
HARA (Nagoya) 45+3' 2-2
ERISON (Frontale) 80' 3-2
IZUMI (Nagoya) 81' 3-3
ITO (Frontale) 90+5' 3-4

Highlights

Vs Albirex Niigata (away) 16/8/25 J League match 26

 

Albirex Niigata 1 - 1 Kawasaki Frontale

 How utterly predictable! Of course we were never going to win an away game in Niigata. We hardly ever do. And this time, in addition to the usual we-play-awfully curse that seems to be on us at the Big Swan, we also had to deal with some (more) bad luck and some self inflicted chickens coming home to roost. Hmmm, that mixed metaphor doesn’t really work, but hopefully you’ll get what I mean later on. A 1-1 draw wasn’t something that either team wanted. As I say every week, any faint hopes of us getting anything from this season are surely now gone. (Although the teams who actually have a chance to do so keep cocking up). For Albirex, perhaps one point is better than no points, but considering the position they are in, the start they made in this match, and the condition our team was in, not getting three is a massive missed opportunity. In the section about us, there will be more talk about what happened around the game than what happened in the game. Basically because the background to the match dictated a lot of how we played. Anyway, let’s get on with this.

Us - 

So after the Fukuoka game referee-created debacle we had two players missing due to suspensions. Could have been tricky, but surely we’d have enough players in the squad to deal with this, right? And then the starting line up was announced and we had three goalies in the match day squad. I wonder if Lee had been fit it might even have been four. Kobayashi, Miyagi, Tanabe and Romanic were all nowhere to be seen. So three goalies on the bench. Oh and Kamihashi and Tsuchiya, two centre backs who have hardly played at all. There must be others on there though, right? Yeah! Noda. Hmmm, another hardly used defender. But we had Kawahara, Kanda, Ozeki and Ienaga, so all good, right? Well, Ienaga wasn’t brought on, even though we only used four subs and instead of him we played a 19 year old right back with five minutes of professional football experience in the Emperor’s Cup against a J3 team. Either this was an extremely left field selection from a manager who loves taking chances and doing wild things, or Ienaga was also unable to take part. Before the game after seeing the lineup I could only suspect that there must be an illness running through the squad and in his post match comments Hasebe said some players were unwell. Watching highlights I noticed that there were no high fives when the players arrived at the stadium with fist bumping instead. Don’t know if this is significant. So basically, I don’t think Hasebe had any choice with either the squad, or even the starting lineup. Well perhaps apart from Tachibanada or Kawahara. 

 

So many goalies on the bench that one of them 
has to warm up by the side of the pitch

With thoughts of sickness in mind, the first 20 minutes of the game further emphasised this as we were absolutely awful. For the majority of the first half the midfield was completely absent, but for the first 20 minutes, most of the defence were too. We really could have been 4-0 down in the first quarter of the game, but thanks to Albirex’s appalling shooting we escaped relatively unscathed. Time after time they swept through the midfield and defence, which basically ran out of their way to make room for them (more illness echoes here. Perhaps we were trying to social distance. Very noble of us, but not a great idea when playing football). In a similar way, our shots mostly seemed to be applying a policy of social distancing, keeping very far away from the goal. Marcinho’s basically open goal miss was horrendous. He’s not having his best period at the moment. And likewise most of his teammates, who seemed like they wouldn’t be able to hit a barn door even if they were inches away from touching it. Only Erison seemed to be able to shoot on target. Well actually not on target I guess as he hit the bar twice. But he had shots blocked too. Thankfully Ito managed to score at the end of what must have been one of our worst first halves of the year. (How many times have I said that now?!). We were much better in the second half. Well, apart from when it came to shooting sadly. And at the end of the day, if you can’t hit the fucking target, you’re not going to score are you? Strangely enough though, I felt like this was a decent performance even though we were actually pretty shit. I say decent because clearly there was more going on behind the scenes than we know about. It will be interesting to see where we stand next week away at Nagoya. Sai will be back but now Marcinho is banned for accumulated yellow cards. One in and one out. Hopefully some of the ‘sick’ players will have recovered. Hopefully the ones who aren’t sick will have practiced shooting a bit. As much as I am being positive about a semi-decent result considering the circumstances, (as I perceive them), you’ve got to ask some questions about the club’s transfer dealings. In this window we have had six players leave us and only replaced them with two. Some might say our squad was a bit bloated but the reason teams have big squads is to deal with situations like this. And when we needed those extra players, we’d already shipped them out. I don’t know if we’ll get any more players in. I don’t even know if the window has closed. It seems that our run of bad luck is continuing, but the bad luck was partially self-inflicted. Still, it’s a shame we decided to use the smashing of mirrors as a training exercise. Given how bad our shooting is, perhaps the aim of the training exercise was to hit the ball between two mirrors and instead every time we cannoned the shots off the first mirror onto the second, ensuring the absolute maximum of bad luck from every single shot. You would have thought someone might have heard of the superstition and said maybe it wasn’t a good idea. At least we’re trying new things, eh? I’d say though that the club should probably send someone down to Kawasaki Daishi pretty quickly to pick up a box of Omamori to break this horrible run.

Them -

Albirex showed in this game why they are in so much trouble. They attacked beautifully at times but couldn’t shoot for shit. And their keeper is very dodgy, (still not dodgy enough to deflect one of our miles-off-target shots into his own net sadly). Probably the most worrying thing for them though is that they spent most of the match time-wasting. One goal up, maybe do it, but when you’re a goal up after six minutes, it doesn’t seem like it’s going to work for the rest of the game. When we finally got a goal back, it seemed like they were still time wasting, now playing for the draw. I suspect if we’d gone ahead they would have continued time wasting looking to hang on to the one goal defeat. This was somewhat undermined by their fans booing Yamaguchi every time he got the ball, apparently not having noticed that their players were trying to run the clock down at every opportunity. Their fans though wanted our keeper to hurry up with his kicks and for us not to play it around aimlessly at the back for some reason. I think in the past I have made comments on their fans on here so I won’t say any more but they seemed to be a bit… confused on this occasion. The general feeling in the city seems to be that they’re going down from the people we spoke to. It will be a shame as it’s a nice away trip and they have a big, (if somewhat confused), fan base. Also, the shuttle buses on this occasion were very smooth and efficient and you don’t often get me saying that. I will say though that they could do with their local breweries upping their game a bit. But that’s just my pint of view. (I’ll leave that typo there as it seems quite appropriate).

Ref and VAR -

Hmmmm. The ref was a relative unknown and I thought on the whole he did a decent job. Would have been nice if he’d given their goalie a second yellow card for time wasting but of course no one is going to do this apart from either a very strict ref who has full command of the rules of the game, (don’t think this person exists in the J League), or is a total attention seeker. (Hmmm, definitely some of those refs around). Kamimura doesn’t fit in the latter category as a relatively unknown ref, and it seems like he doesn’t fit the first category either as he let their keeper claim the ball, dither for a bit, put the ball down, and then pick it up again when we pressed him, much to the shock and disgust of our players, Hasebe and at least me in the stand. (I suspect I shouted quite a lot when this happened so anyone else complaining got drowned out). I wanted to check the replay to see what had really happened and it seems it was exactly what I thought had happened. You can see the ref put his finger on his ear, presumably to ask the linesman or VAR, but presumably VAR can’t get involved in this and the linesman at that end was absolutely useless. But basically, aside from this major clanger, I thought the ref had a decent game. The linesman can do one though. Neither of them affected the outcome of the game though, which is a very welcome thing to be able to say!

This was a game where my general feelings seemed to be a bit at odds with other people’s. Yeah, we were quite shit, but I think there were extenuating circumstances. With so many players absent it was actually a surprise that we could start with a pretty decent lineup. Yeah, they were pretty bad, particularly in the first half, but I think they weren’t all in perfect condition maybe. Apparently the pitch didn’t suit us, (it never does, we’re delicate young flowers when we don’t play at home, aren’t we?), but I was quite pleased to see that Hasebe didn’t use this as an excuse. Our current form is pretty shit, but I’m still not getting angry with Hasebe or our players. I’m not too pleased with the club though for our transfer activity or for the people who seem to think it’s necessary to post up Instagram videos of ‘great’ play when we labour to a 1-1 draw against the team who are bottom of the league or get smashed 5-2 at home. But maybe other fans don’t feel the same way as I do. I think the general quality of this game could be guessed from the highlight video of Yamaguchi making two absolutely regulation saves which was greeted with the usual adoration and adulation from our fans. Quite strange! I’m hoping my boss posts a video of me on the school’s social media doing something equally run of the mill like maybe handing out some print outs, or writing down what page of the text book we’re doing next on my spreadsheet. Exhilarating stuff! And maybe that one commenter I saw on Instagram might suggest that I should represent the national team like they thought Yamaguchi should. Next up Nagoya away, another game that recently we always do terribly in. Since we had that COVID-times beef with them cancelling and rescheduling a game for less than honest reasons I think we’ve failed to beat them in Nagoya. Actually we’ve been unable to beat them in Nagoya since the Mizuho stadium closed as the Toyota stadium is very much not in, or anywhere near Nagoya, but you get my point, I’m sure. I remember in recent years turning up to Nagoya away extremely refreshed and that game was horrific as far as I can remember. Hopefully I can arrive only slightly refreshed this time and we can buck the trend and get a result. But we’ll probably have to have some youth team players and coaches in the squad and will have at least a couple of goalies in the starting lineup. I guess at least we have a week till the game, so hopefully some players can recover. Much like with this game, I’m not very confident, but also like with this game, we have some fun things to do lined up either side of the game, so at least we’ll be able to get some enjoyment out of the weekend. After 26 games last year we were in 11th with 34 points and a +6 goal difference. This year we’re in 8th with 39 points and a +9 goal difference. So Hasebe is definitely an improvement on 2024 Oniki. But the one thing Oniki always had was good luck and it seems that he’s taken that with him to Kashima. If it’s somehow possible for Hasebe to get rid of this terrible luck we have right now, we might be able to win a match. In the last five games we’ve taken four points from a possible 15, which is pretty bad and during this run also got knocked out of the Emperor’s Cup at home against a J3 team. Clearly this is not all down to bad luck, but jeez, it would be nice if we got a break sooner or later. Maybe a penalty, perhaps? We’ve still only had one in 26 games. Some teams get one every 26 minutes. But yeah, I guess I was surprisingly positive about this game, which might make a nice change for people reading this. Lovely! But please, by some small chance, could we actually have a game next week where I don't have to write about shocking refs and lack of options? It would be lovely to be able to get back to moaning about our football rather than all these other things. 

Team

GK 98. YAMAGUCHI Louis
DF 5. SASAKI Asahi
DF 4. JESIEL
DF 35. MARUYAMA Yuichi
DF 13. MIURA Sota
MF 8. TACHIBANADA Kento
MF 6. YAMAMOTO Yuki (Yellow card 85')
MF 14. WAKIZAKA Yasuto
MF 17. ITO Tatsuya
FW 9. ERISON
FW 23. MARCINHO (Yellow card 45+4')

Subs

GK 1. JUNG Sung-Ryong

GK 21. ANDO Shunsuke
MF 16. OZEKI Yuto (on for MARCINHO 63')
MF 19. KAWAHARA So (on for TACHIBANADA 77')
DF 27. KAMIHASHI Ryota

DF 30. NODA Hiroto (on for ITO 87')

FW 38. KANDA Soma (on for ERISON 87')

DF 39. TSUCHIYA Kaito 
FW 41. IENAGA Akihiro

 

My Frontale Man Of The Match 

Not sure anyone particularly deserves this. Maybe Ito was the player who did the most best things and the least bad things. Or maybe Erison who seemed quite unlucky. But I’m going to leave it unawarded again. 

 

Goals

SHIRAI (Albirex) 6' 1-0
ITO (Frontale) 45+1' 1-1

Highlights