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

Avispa Fukuoka 1 - 2 Kawasaki Frontale 

 

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

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

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

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

 

Team

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

Subs

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

My Frontale Man Of The Match

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

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

Goals

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

Highlights

 

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

Kashiwa Reysol 1 - 1 Kawasaki Frontale

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

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

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

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

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

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

Team

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

Subs

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

My Frontale Man Of The Match

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

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

Goals

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

Highlights

Vs Central Coast Mariners (home) 18/2/25 ACL 2024/25 game 8

Kawasaki Frontale 2 - 0 Central Coast Mariners

Obviously this was an absolute disaster. We are going to be relegated. The world will end soon. Everybody should be fired, including the supporters. Football should be outlawed. Many might be expecting me to revert back to my usual pessimism sooner or later after we opened the season with back to back 4-0 wins. People hoping for this to happen today will be slightly disappointed by this post, as although this was a pretty shitty game, it’s definitely not worth getting too worried about it. Looking from the outside, people might think I’m being entitled when I say that though we won, this was a crap game, but to be honest, in spite of the good result, I don’t think anything will live in the memory for long from this match. With our progress to the next stage already confirmed, and Central Coast’s elimination already confirmed, all that was left to play for were kind of meaningless league positions. Of course finishing in the top four would benefit us as then we would have the second leg of the next stage at home. And in theory the higher up we finished, the more chance we would have of getting an easier draw. The fact is though, that this group stage has been a bit of a weird one, with plenty of teams who you’d expect to do well being pretty bad and some teams who might usually be known for dominating their domestic league but then failing to do much in the ACL, actually getting some good results. Looking at the table after the match, it’s hard to say who we’d like to play. My personal feeling is that I’d like to avoid anyone we’ve beaten already as that might spell a revenge spanking. Perhaps Shanghai Shenhua could be a good team to play as we lost to them, albeit mostly due to going down to ten men within the first five minutes. There is only one team who can overtake us at the top of the table, so we’ll be playing a team who finishes either 7th or 8th. This means it will be Shanghai Shenhua, Shandong Taishan or Shanghai Port, depending on the outcome of this evening’s games. Perhaps by the time you read this, you’ll already know. So with that in mind and given that the next round will most likely be a free for all again, let’s not bother thinking any more about it and get on with some game chat.

Hmmmmm, now I understand why I extended the opening paragraph so much. There’s not much to say about his game. Under Hasebe we’ve so far played pretty boringly in the first half of games before going gangbusters in the second half. Sadly on this occasion, the pretty dull first half continued until about the 98th minute. It’s no surprise neither team were up for having a blood and thunder slug fest and consequently we got a pretty timid match. Also, Hasebe made PLENTY of changes. I still think it’s too early to make any pronouncements on his preferred players, but the reappearance of the until now absent Ienaga gave us something to think about. As a lot of this game felt like peak 2024 Oniki Frontale with plenty of possession and not much going on, instead of talking about our play, I’ll instead look a bit at how some players did. I’ll preface that though by saying that I don’t think anyone did themselves any favours when it comes to forcing their way into contention for a starting spot. Ando in goal was a shock, but came mainly due to Sung-Ryong getting a one match ban by the club for a minor traffic offence revealing that he’d forgotten to renew his driving license. I don’t think it’s particularly serious, but I think without the ban, I’m sure he would have started. Instead we got Ando, playing his first game in nine years for the club. Until this match, I think most Frontale fans had spent more time watching Ando play the drums than play football. I’m delighted he got a clean sheet, but once again, our tightness at the back had more to do with the opposition not doing very well, rather than any imperious defending or goal keeping. It’s now been three matches and in total, the opposition has had one shot on target. Neither Yamaguchi or Ando has done anything wrong, but that’s mainly due to them not having anything to do really, so, I’m still not sure who should be playing in goal. In defence Hasebe went with a centre back pairing of Kurumaya and Haydar, both of whom are pretty left footed. I was shocked to see quite how left footed Haydar was. There were a few dicey moments, and Maruyama coming on definitely shored things up a bit, but the feeling that the opposition would score soon definitely came more from my pessimism than anything I saw on the pitch. At full back we had Sai on the right, who with Sasaki’s injury, I guess is now back to first choice and Tanabe on the left. I thought Tanabe had a pretty good game. Unfortunately for him, he’s got Miura in front of him who has been one of our best players so far this year. But well done Tanabe.

Ahead of them things get a bit more complicated. Tachibanada was a regular last year but it seems that Hasebe might prefer Kawahara. On this showing I’d probably agree. He didn’t have a bad game but it seems to me that plying Kawahara and Tachibanada together is a bit like playing the same player twice and neither of them really benefits from it. This has long been a Frontale problem, trying to play two defensive midfielders together doesn’t really work. It’s notable that in recent games I feel we’ve been playing just the one player in the defensive spot with the other midfielders ahead of him and we’ve been doing better. There wasn’t much going on in our midfield in this game. What the formation was seems to be a bit debatable with the pregame lineup on the big screen not really corresponding with what was on the pitch. This is a common Frontale thing, but on this occasion, I thought a third approach might have been better. The screen said 4-4-2 with Miyagi up front with Erison and Ienaga on the right and Yamauchi on the left. It seemed to me to be more like Miyagi on the left, Ienaga on the right and Yamauchi in the Wakizaka spot in the middle. I don’t think Ienaga had a very good game. I think I said this in the previous post, but if Ienaga is going to play, I’d much rather see him in the Wakizaka spot rather than nominally on the right as when he plays on the right, well… he doesn’t really play on the right much. I think it makes more sense to give him some freedom in the middle. But that didn’t happen in this match. Presumably Hasebe noticed this too, but I don’t know what this might mean going forward as there’s a lot of competition for that Wakizaka spot. Yamauchi and Miyagi did ok, but I think they both did better as subs in the previous game. Poor old Erison up front huffed and puffed but seemed unable to get anything on target. It’s a shame as I think he really needs to play himself into some form to challenge Yamada, but even against our weakest ACL opposition he couldn’t get going really. So, I guess we’ll know more when we play Kashiwa this weekend, but I’m starting to think I slightly understand who Hasebe favours. Ito seems to be injured. Whether Ienaga was injured and now isn’t, I’m not sure. I suspect, (and hope), Hasebe will be more open to rotation than Oniki, but I guess we can’t be sure about that till things have settled down a bit. But even though this was a pretty dull game, in pretty cold conditions and I was delighted when the final whistle came, this is now three wins out of three, with no goals conceded, 10 scored and with eight different goal scorers, so plenty to be pleased about. But only time will tell if the fact that there has only been one opposition shot on target in three games is anything to do with the quality of our defence or of the opposition.

A couple of things to add as I wrap this up. Central Coast had a 16 year old playing and he looked pretty good! Sign him up! We also had a youngster in the squad with our U18 goalkeeper Izawa making it onto the bench due I imagine to certain discretions mentioned above. And Patrick Verhon’s assist and Marcinho’s finish for the second goal were class. Thankfully they both happened, otherwise this would have felt like a really boring game. As I’ve said above, we can deal with the boring first half to feel out the opponents, but when we’re still feeling them out at 90 minutes with only a single goal lead from a penalty, it doesn’t feel so much fun. There are numerous over reactions we could make to our record so far. Equally there are numerous qualifications we could make to undermine any positivity. Time will tell and that might be as soon as this weekend when we’re away to Kashiwa on Saturday. It always seems to piss it down when we go there. At the moment it says a 1% chance of rain, but I’ll probably still take my poncho. After that we’re away to Fukuoka in midweek and then back home against Kyoto the following weekend. Hope we can keep this nice run going and would be delighted if the next few games went on to show that we needn’t really bother playing a goalie, as our defending is so good that the opposition won’t get any shots.

Team

GK 21. ANDO Shunsuke
DF 31. VAN WERMESKERKEN Sai
DF 44. CESAR HAYDAR
DF 7. KURUMAYA Shintaro
DF 15. TANABE Shuto
MF 8. TACHIBANADA Kento
MF 19. KAWAHARA So
MF 41. IENAGA Akihiro
MF 26. YAMAUCHI Hinata
MF 24. MIYAGI Ten
FW 9. ERISON

Subs

GK 98. YAMAGUCHI Louis
GK 50. IZAWA Haruki
DF 2. TAKAI Kota
DF 13. MIURA Sota
MF 14. WAKIZAKA Yasuto (on for YAMAUCHI 66')
FW 20. YAMADA Shin (on for ERISON 85')
MF 23. MARCINHO (on for MIYAGI 66')
FW 28. PATRICK VERHON (on for IENAGA 85')
DF 35. MARUYAMA Yuichi (on for KURUMAYA 75')
DF 36. NODA Hiroto
MF 77. YAMAMOTO Yuki 

My Frontale Man Of The Match

Like I said, no-one particularly shone in this match so with that in mind I’m going to go slightly left-field and give it jointly to…

ANDO Shunsuke & TANABE Shuto - The former had nothing much to do and did it peerlessly. The latter avoided his usual immediate booking and went on to do pretty well I thought, particularly one spin and run into the box in the first half.

Goals

ERISON (Frontale) 36' PEN 1-0
MARCINHO (Frontale) 90+8' 2-0

Highlights

Vs Nagoya Grampus (home) 15/2/25 J League match 1

Kawasaki Frontale 4 - 0 Nagoya Grampus

Hmmm, what is this strange feeling? Perhaps some kind of optimism? It’s been a while. Even at the end of last year when we were getting some good results I still don’t think we could say we were that optimistic. But now… well, we can start to dream a little. I should add to this that there should be a massive caveat to all of this. We have only played two games and the quality of the opposition in both is perhaps a bit of a mystery at this time of year. But, well, eight goals scored and none conceded in two games is not to be sniffed at. Seven different goal scorers too. In this game we had four goals all scored by products of our academy. But, yes, it’s still early days, so whilst we can enjoy these two wins, let’s not get too carried away. With the next game fast approaching, I’m getting this post out with the usual lack of detail and plenty of snark that you’d expect.

First, let’s deal with some stuff about us. It was a bit of a bummer to lose Sasaki to injury so early on in the game, but maybe not a surprise when you consider the way Nagoya seemed to have come prepared to play. He picked up his injury after being booted in the waist/guts by a flying Nagoya player. Naturally, we didn’t get a free kick. The injury is a bit of a mystery as he walked off the pitch quite freely but it seemed clear quite quickly that he couldn’t continue. Maybe a rib or something. Not sure, but I hope it’s not serious. Ito not being anywhere near the squad suggests that he’s injured. Likewise the fact that we haven’t seen anything of Ienaga yet. But as I apparently never tire of saying recently, it’s a bit difficult to judge these things from just two games. And it probably won’t get any easier after our next dead rubber match in the ACL on Tuesday. I guess it will be interesting to see if we get rotation in that match. We almost lost Sai to injury too after he got elbowed in the face whilst jumping for a header. The ref thought it was only a yellow card worthy physical assault though. More about him later. Aside from commenting that it was great to see Yamauchi score and assist for a goal that perhaps only Miyagi or Erison would have had the nerve to try and score, I guess I should praise some players and zoom out a bit and say something about the game as a whole. There are plenty of people I can praise. Patrick Verhon did well I thought. Kawahara also had a really good game. And Miura is now really showing what he can do. I would praise Yamaguchi for his second consecutive clean sheet, but the fact is that in those two games the opposition have only had one shot on target so he hasn’t been very busy. Perhaps that’s due to Takai and Maruyama looking good and solid in front of him. I wonder if Maruyama left Nagoya in bad circumstances. I say this because he looked very happy to have beaten them. 

 

Unlike against Pohang where we went with a 4-4-2 with Wakizaka up front alongside, (or perhaps slightly behind Yamada), in this match we were back to 4-3-3. But it differed a bit from late Oniki’s 4-2-3-1 and looked more like a 4-1-2-3 or maybe a 4-1-2-2-1, with one defensive midfielder, two attacking midfielders in front, two wide players and one central striker. Other people seem to disagree and say that we played with two defensive midfielders, but I think it was more a case of either Kawahara or Yamamoto staying back whilst the other surged forward. They seemed to be swapping positions quite smoothly. I always think that formations are kind of in the eye of the beholder anyway, but it definitely felt like there were always two midfielders ahead of one who was staying further back. (I realise that this sentence would be true in every situation except for when two or more of them are standing in a perfectly straight line, but you know what I mean, don’t you?). With no Ienaga in the team the wide players did stay a lot more in their positions too, which I think also really helps. I think maybe if Ienaga comes back into the team it should be more in a Wakizaka type spot so that we can preserve our width. This is all starting to sound a little too informed so let’s knock that on the head right now. To add a note of negativity to this overly positive post, once again, we were pretty average in the first half before coming into the game in the second, this match going very similarly to the one against Pohang. But if that is the way we play now and we keep getting these kind of results, I’m sure we’ll all be happy. 45 minutes to feel out the opposition before accelerating and taking advantage of what we’ve learned from the first half, smashing in goals for fun. Presumably this will all come crashing down soon, but it’s been fun while it has lasted.

I think there’s still a bit of bad feeling between us and Nagoya after their dubious match postponing antics a few seasons ago. Since then, we’ve struggled to do well against them, in spite of our intensified urge to beat them, Nagoya normally coming out on top. So this was a nice bit of revenge. And the physical approach they came with getting bested by our attacking is the perfect type of revenge. They were pretty dirty in the first half I thought, but we weren’t really getting much protection from the ref. The return of Mateus to their team looked like being something to worry about. I was surprised to see that his hair seems to have turned white. I guess that is due to the very real worry of going to Saudi Arabia for a big payday and discovering that you have so much money that you don’t know what to spend it on. Must be a terribly anxiety inducing situation. Along with their aim of booting us around the pitch, in the first half they did come quite close to troubling us. Thankfully their shooting wasn’t up to scratch. Right now we are probably getting a bit of luck go our way. Long may that continue! Mateus seemed to have a bit of a strop when he got subbed, walking straight down the tunnel. Lovely! Little was he to know that we were going to score from the free kick he ridiculously gifted us by catching the ball before it had left the pitch. Also lovely! Some Nagoya fans online seem to think the goal should have been ruled out for offside, one keyboard warrior saying that it was clearly offside, but wasn’t disallowed because VAR didn’t have the correct angle, somewhat undermining his conviction that there was any clarity there. Perhaps DAZN has angles that the VAR people don’t get, eh? It did look close though, so maybe we got a bit of luck go our way again. But then again, the whole VAR thing is supposed to be ruling out clear and obvious errors. I always think that this makes lengthy checks slightly less credible. We had to check over and over for literally minutes to have enough evidence that the mistake was so clear that it didn’t need lengthy checking… oh.

Whilst we’re on officiating, It would be remiss of me not to say that the ref Takasaki had another disaster of a game. We haven’t encountered him since 2023 and when writing about that game I said he was ‘by far the worst ref we’ve had for absolutely years!’. The intervening 18 months apparently haven’t changed him or my opinion of him. He was a disaster in the first half, making decisions apparently at random. I wondered if in search of the refereeing holy grail of consistency he thought his best chance of fulfilling the brief was to consistently give every decision to Nagoya. Consistent! Then maybe I thought that perhaps his attempt at consistency was to consistently get every decision wrong. But that wasn’t the case. It was just a big old mess of randomness. It seems he’s still only 32, so in theory he has plenty of time to improve, but given that everything I wrote about him in 2023 is still glaringly present in 2025, I suspect that however long you polish this turd of a ref, he’ll still be incompetent. It would be nice if the referees got even just a little bit better, but one thing that remains an absolute constant through every passing year is that the officials are useless and in the case of Takasaki, you could probably get more accurate results by rolling a dice to make the decisions rather than having someone who’s supposed to know what he is doing in charge. Never looks good to moan when you’ve won 4-0, but for refs, I think we all need to keep expressing how utterly terrible they are. It’s a tough job for sure, but it would be nice if they weren’t quite so shit at it, wouldn’t it?

Next up Central Coast Mariners at home in the ACL on Tuesday. They are rock bottom of the ACL group, so in theory this should be our easiest game of the campaign. Presumably a heavy defeat for us coming soon then! After that, we’re away to Kashiwa on Saturday. Fingers crossed we can keep these good times rolling through those two games. 

Team

GK 98. YAMAGUCHI Louis
DF 5. SASAKI Asahi
DF 2. TAKAI Kota
DF 35. MARUYAMA Yuichi
DF 13. MIURA Sota
MF 19. KAWAHARA So
MF 77. YAMAMOTO Yuki
MF 14. WAKIZAKA Yasuto
FW 28. PATRICK VERHON
FW 20. YAMADA Shin
FW 23. MARCINHO (Yellow card 3')

Subs

GK 1. JUNG Sung-Ryong
DF 7. KURUMAYA Shintaro
MF 8. TACHIBANADA Kento (on for YAMAMOTO 77')
FW 9. ERISON (on for YAMADA 82')
DF 15. TANABE Shuto
FW 24. MIYAGI Ten (on for MARCINHO 82')
MF 26. YAMAUCHI Hinata (on for PATRICK VERHON 77')
DF 31. VAN WERMESKERKEN Sai (on for SASAKI 16')
DF 44. CESAR HAYDAR

My Frontale Man Of The Match

Normally it would be easy to decide who to hand this award to after a 4-0 win, but truly, there were so many good performances that I think I’ll have to give it to…

THE WHOLE TEAM - well done everyone. Spreading the goals around and making it a joy to watch us again. Bravo! 

Goals

TAKAI (Frontale) 58' 1-0
YAMADA (Frontale) 67' 2-0
YAMAUCHI (Frontale) 79' 3-0
MIYAGI (Frontale) 88' 4-0

Highlights

New songs for the 2025 season

Here are the new player songs for 2025 (with a few mid-season songs from last year which didn’t make it to the last songs post. You can check the previous songs posts here). By popular demand, (well, one request), I will add links to the original songs that our chants are based on too. Also, my favourite new song from last season has been very slightly amended so I’ve added the new version of that too.

Player songs

16. OZEKI Yuto

It’s alright Ozeki Yuto
Misero Ozeki Yuto
It’s alright Ozeki Yuto
Misero Ozeki Yuto


 

Original here:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UxiJ6Rwv1OA


17. ITO Tatsuya

Ito Tatsuya Oh Oh Oh
Ito Tatsuya Laa La La Laa
Ito Tatsuya Oh Oh Oh
Ito Laa la la laa



Original here:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JeMQ24fOoHA

19. KAWAHARA So

Kawahara So
Powerful So
Kawahara So
Izayuke So



Original here:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Mzkf1OGgSz8

27. KAMIHASHI Ryota

Kamihashi la la la la laa
Ryota Laa la laa laa
Kamihashi!



Original here:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=loKi3-q3fqk


30. NODA Hiroto

Noda Hiroto
Noda Hiroto
Ao kuro seotte kakeagare



Original here:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=l5FYVmqNwQQ

33. LEE Keun-Hyeong

Igyora Kunhyon
Igyora Kunhyon
La la la la Kunhyon
I Kunhyon



Original here:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SbAKYgfYET8

35. MARUYAMA Yoichi

Maruyama 
Maruyama
Oh Oh Oh O Oh



Original here:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Js-_XM20BbA

38. KANDA Soma

Kanda Soma
Kanda Soma
Kanda Soma
Kanda Soma



Original here:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yCPLiwyfmeo
 

39. TSUCHIYA Kaito

Tsuchiya

T T T T



Original here:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8QHO_ilvhQM


44. CESAR HAYDAR

Oh Haydar
Oh Haydar
Oh Haydar
Laa la la laa



Original here:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iOGaJcaTo48

98. YAMAGUCHI Louis

Misero Yamaguchi Louis
La La La La La La La La La La La Laa La Laa

Tomero Yamaguchi Louis
Oretachi no goal o mamorinuke



Original here:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=r107W1YXrSM

Team songs

Ale Kawasaki

(The changes here are slightly ridiculous as they are only to the part with the las and laas. But in the interest of getting things right…).

Allez allez oh Forza Kawasaki
Koe agero tamashii komete
Tsukamitore kokode shori o

Hibikasero oretachi no koe
Laa la la, la la la la, la la la, la la la la
Laa la la, la la la la, la la la, la la la la
Laa la la, la la la la, la la la, la la la, laa la
La la la la, laa laa



Original here:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Nn1IeHL5DHY

Osoreruna

Osoreruna tachiagare
Tatakae otokotachi
Saa ikuzo tomo ni Kawasaki
O o o o o o Oh o o



Kawasaki Frontale Original!

883

Are aokuro no hata o furi tsuzuke
Orera no omoi wa tomaranai no sa
La la la la la la la la la la la la la la la
Kawasaki no jonetsu wa yuruganai
Oh oh oh oh



Original here:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lrRqQkn6kZI


Seishun Oka

Kobushi agero noroshi agero
Mune ni aoi hono o tomose
La la la laa la laa la la la laa la laa
Moeagare toshi tagirasero



Original here:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_QlaA-RG7Lk

Vs Pohang Steelers (away) 11/2/25 ACL 2024/25 game 7

Pohang Steelers 0 - 4 Kawasaki Frontale

So off we go with a new season and perhaps a new era. And you have to say it’s quite a positive start to Hasebe Frontale. As I only watched this game on the internet I’m not going to go into much detail as there’s nothing I know that you won’t if you watched it yourself. But I will briefly mention a few things.

Firstly I guess we should discuss who played and who didn’t. I was a bit shocked to see Sung-Ryong only on the bench. But at the same time, perhaps Saturday’s game might be more important in Hasebe’s eyes. Or perhaps he prefers Yamaguchi. Yamaguchi did nothing wrong in this game, but to be honest, I think he only had one tame shot to stop in the whole match so you can’t read much into that. Initially, I thought things were going to be pretty much as they always were, with Sasaki kind of out of position at right back, Wakizaka kind of out of position up front and Ito kind of out of position on the right wing. But you can’t really argue with the result, can you? Of course this had a lot to do with them going down to ten men in the first half though. Whether our defensive solidity was down to Hasebe or whether it was down to Pohang not being up to much on the night, well, I guess time will tell. It’s clearly too early to start jumping to conclusions. But allow me to step gingerly towards saying that although the first half was for the most part pretty dull, we did look solid and we did score. I felt we might be getting the ball forward a bit quicker and certainly weren’t endlessly fucking around with passing it along between the keeper and the centre backs. And we seemed to be crossing a bit more. And there seems to be a bit more willingness from Hasebe to give more players a chance. Under Oniki, it was not only the starting line ups but also the substitutions that were pretty predictable, so a bit of a refresh is a good thing. I think it’s kind of stupid to go into any more depth as this is only one game. But, after a dull start, this was a thoroughly satisfying result.

Next up, Nagoya at home on Saturday. We’ll be able to tell a lot more about what might happen this year when we have two games to consider. I’m kind of interested to see what the starting line-up will be. And it’s been a very long time since I’ve said that!

Team

GK 98. YAMAGUCHI Louis
DF 5. SASAKI Asahi
DF 2. TAKAI Kota
DF 35. MARUYAMA Yuichi
DF 13. MIURA Sota
MF 8. TACHIBANADA Kento (Yellow card 31')
MF 77. YAMAMOTO Yuki
MF 37. ITO Tatsuya
MF 23. MARCINHO
FW 14. WAKIZAKA Yasuto
FW 20. YAMADA Shin

Subs

GK 1. JUNG Sung-Ryong
GK 21. ANDO Shunsuke
DF 7. KURUMAYA Shintaro
FW 9. ERISON (on for YAMADA 81')
DF 15. TANABE Shuto
MF 19. KAWAHARA So (on for TACHIBANADA 46')
FW 24. MIYAGI Ten (on for MARCINHO 86')
MF 26. YAMAUCHI Hinata (on for ITO 76')
FW 28. PATRICK VERHON (on for WAKIZAKA 76')
DF 31. VAN WERMESKERKEN Sai
FW 32. KANDA Soma
DF 44. CESAR HAYDAR

Goals

YAMADA (Frontale) 38' 0-1
WAKIZAKA (Frontale) 71' 0-2
KAWAHARA (Frontale) 75' 0-3
ERISON (Frontale) 89' 0-4

Highlights

2024 season survey results

Yep, I know this is absurdly late, so apologies for that. But I just about managed to get it online before our new season starts. Also, I should apologise for that fact that there aren't many responses this year. Quitting Twitter has really impacted my ability to get these blog posts noticed and has cut off the most useful way of getting answers for this. At the same time, it was absolutely the right thing for me to do. FUCK OFF ELON MUSK. Anyway, you're not here to hear my political opinions so let's get on with the answers.


1. Game of season

Winner - Vs. Machida Zelvia (away) 5/10/24 J League match 33

Typical that one of the matches I missed due to being sick was the game of the season. Although some might say that was precisely why it was a good game. My curse was not present so we could play well. Also mentioned were Verdy away in the league, FC Tokyo away in the league, the Super Cup win against Vissel Kobe, (the last time some of our squad players were seen...), and the 4-0 against Shandong in the ACL. I'd personally like to add the home win against Vissel in the league, perhaps because the Super Cup is on in the background whilst I write this and it is bringing back wonderful memories of those two red cards. I bet Thuler is the kind of guy that thinks Elon Musk is cool. Definitely wasn't our best performance but damn it was fun.


2. Player of the season

Winner - YAMADA Shin

Runaway winner here and perhaps not a surprise. Also mentioned were Takai and Sasaki. I'd add Sung-Ryong to that list. Kind of weird that three defensive players have been mentioned!


3. Goal of the season

Winner - YAMADA Shin vs. Avispa Fukuoka away



This one came out on top, if this is the goal the person who said 'That solo goal by Yamada where he dribbled half the length of the field' meant.

There were a few mentions for 'can't remember' and that works for me. The other goals mentioned were:

Bafetimbi GOMIS vs Consadole Sapporo home 2nd goal




MARCINHO vs Machida Zelvia away





4. Disappointment of the season

In a season of numerous disappointments, I'll just list everything mentioned.

- Lack of squad depth
- Oniki
- Losing to Niigata in the cup
- Screwing up the ACL home tie against Shandong at the start of the year, and the failure of both team and coach to adapt and evolve
- Gomis didn’t work out
- Our defense all season + especially the games against Tosu 2:5 and Oita 1:3


5. Villain of the season (anyone, from any team or an official or...)

Winners - Frontale / Fujitsu head execitives / Frontale sporting department

Congratulations to the board/people upstairs for taking this title! At least we won something in 2024. Think this is the first time this has gone to anyone related to our club. But I guess it's not a massive surprise is it? I kind of feel the same way. There have been so many ridiculous decisions made at the club that it's no wonder the 2024 season went down the toilet. I'd say 2025 is a big year for the people upstairs. I'm hoping they have learned something from 2024 and realise that running a football club is not the same as running an electronics company. This all brings back memories of the chairman's speech getting booed at the end of the season ceremony. That was quite funny, albeit quite awkward at the time.

Other honorable mentions go to Machida (naturally), '95% of referees' (damn right) and 'Oita Trinita (Because they kicked us out of Emperor's Cup lol)' (that seems a bit harsh, hehe).


6. Best away trip (if you've done one)

As this clearly a personal thing I'll just list them. I'm in agreement with the last answer which is unsurprising as it came from the person who I attended all the games with. Praise the lord for the distractions of away games in 2024. Without the non-football related stuff and thinking only about the matches, away games would have been a bit of a slog.

- Kashiwa - beautiful sunset, nice Kento equalizer & Cerezo - football was shit but I like Osaka city
- Hokkaido Away
- I wish!
- Machida Zelvia
- All good trips but not good games


7. Best stadium in the J League

Winner - Todoroki

Even in a season where I didn't get many responses Todoroki still comes out on top. I can't deny that the atmosphere is good, but I am still really looking forward to us having a football stadium instead of an athletics stadium. I think that could be an important next step for the club. Also mentioned were, (with my thoughts in brackets after each one), Saitama Stadium (good stadium but pretty shitty to get to and I think the atmosphere is quite often not as good as people say it is), Hiroshima (nice to go to a new stadium and a massive improvement on the old Sanfrecce stadium. Convenient too. However, didn't seem to be that much to do outside of the stadium though (perhaps this has now changed) and our end was quite small), JEF Utd (quite like this one), Sunpro Alwin (this is a good stadium! Transport is a bit of a pain but the views are great) and Sagan Tosu (really going to miss this one. Come on Sagan Tosu and get back to J1! Booze!).


8. Opposition J1 team you like the most

Winner - No-one

Fantastic stuff! I kind of agree. Particularly now Sagan Tosu have gone down. Teams mentioned were Shonan, Sapporo and Tosu, two of whom are now in J2. Last year I felt pretty bad when we (I thought) unjustifiably got a winner against Sagan Tosu almost certainly condemning them to relegation. I can't imagine I will have any feelings like that this year as there isn't really anyone who I would rather didn't go down. They can all get relegated as far as I'm concerned!


9. Opposition J1 team you like the least

Winner - Yokohama F Marinos

Delighted with this outcome too! Of course I've never liked them but since the arrogance of the Postecoglou era they have become next level hateable. Seems weird to think that a few years ago we were both good teams and now both are kind of unknown quantities. Also mentioned were Consadole, FC Tokyo and Kashima, (who were also delightfully snubbed by one respondent who said 'my antipathy for Kashima has faded along with their relevance'. We'll see if that continues under their new manager, whose name I can't quite remember right now.


10. Team you're pleased to see come up

Winner - Fagiano Okayama

This was unanimous, which I guess shows that people like a bit of new blood in the league from time to time. Also, considering the other two options were perpetual yo-yo clubs Shimizu and Yokohama FC, it's no surprise that people went for Okayama. Perhaps anyone trying to get tickets for their tiny away section might change their mind though.


11. Team you're disappointed to see go down

Winner - Consadole Sapporo

Consadole came out top here. Sagan Tosu were in second place and Jubilo also got a vote. I'm not particularly happy about any of them going down as two of them were among the best possible away trips and since they built that new station even Jubilo away has been quite fun. Shame it wasn't Urawa, YFM and Machida going down. Oh and Kashima as well in a surprisingly unheralded quadruple relegation season, a special clause being triggered due to there being too many annoying teams in the league.


12. If you could have any J League player sign for Frontale, who would it be?

Here's a list of everyone mentioned.

- Tomoki Hayakawa (GK, Kashima Antlers)
- Kawasaki from Kyoto
- Verdy’s Taniguchi
- I wanted Savio
- None
- Hiiro Komori (but only when Yamada leaves)


13. Which former Frontale player would you most like to see us re-sign?

Winners - TANIGUCHI Shogo & MIYOSHI Koji

One who played a lot for us and one who didn't play that much and might have unfinished business. Probably unlikely that they feel like coming back any time soon though. Others mentioned were Tanaka Ao, Miyashiro, Okubo in another capacity and Ominami.

14. Favourite Frontale song/player song

Winners - Vai La De Frontale & Yamada Shin

These two came out on top. Also there was a mention for Frontale Rabbit (naturally, this is a favourite of mine too). For Yamada, one person said 'I’d like to know the original song. Maybe you could post original songs YouTube links on the players songs blog posts for lazy people like me, cause most of the time I can’t recognize them (except Jesiel’s Ricky Martin)'. This is a good idea. I'll do it for the new songs and the old ones too if people want. To answer your question, it's this song, but you have to wait quite a long time for the bit we use. Another person said 'The one that is inspired by Sarà perché ti amo'. I had no idea which one this was and on listening to the original here, I was very surprised to compare it to our song here. Actually, I think our version, apparently called 'Ale Kawasaki' which to me looks more like a special beer made for the stadium rather than a rousing call to go for it, is probably now my favourite Frontale song. Well, at least at away games when we're playing well, as it is genuinely quite moving and motivating.


15. Best thing about the J League

A list of things mentioned here:

- Competitiveness
- Stadium experience is nice for everyone. And variety of supporters songs.
- Away days
- The emphasis on fun for everyone involved
- Safety at games
- Great atmosphere and fair play


16. Worst thing about the J League

And another list here:

- Easily letting go of players at overly affordable prices and too focused on punishing ungovernable supporters
- Locals not allowed to do middle finger :(
- Not allowed to make fun of the opponent
- Fans get too easily offended over minor decorum issues
- Expensive shirts
- More and more teams changing their nice looking logos to simple and soulless ones


17. Any final thoughts on Oniki?

I'll get my thoughts out of the way first here. Clearly Oniki was a great manager for us. Equally clearly, he stayed too long, and I think this was down to both him and the club. Of course I was irritated by Oniki's inflexibility, and his apparent unshakeable belief in a plan A that hadn't worked for a long time. It's a shame he stayed those extra few seasons though and I think he'd agree with that in hindsight. But it was nice that he could finish up his time with us with some genuinely fun matches at the end. As he's gone to Kashima, I'll stop short of wishing him good luck though... 😉

Here's what other people thought:

- Legendary. Nothing but respect for Oniki-kantoku
- Thanks for everything, too bad he didn’t leave one year earlier
- A lot of respect for him but he went at the right time
- He clearly hit a wall - his methods clearly worked for a squad with the talent to win the league, but he struggled to remediate basic issues in buildup, pressing, etc. which were frankly achievable by any J1 club and we often looked poor against far lower-ranked teams. You can hear it in the players' camp comments recently - that Hasebe is drilling them on getting the fundamentals right ("当たり前の事をやる"). Obviously Oniki is a legend and perhaps he would be well suited to a national team role, where the players are not going to need much needling about basic issues.
- Nice personality, thanks for the titles but he should have gone last season
- I started watching Frontale when the team was at their best under him, so I really respect him for achieving so much. The last few seasons were not really good, so it was best for him and us to part ways. I don't like his transfer destination, but I still wish him all the best.


18. And how do you feel about Hasebe being the new manager?

Again, I'll kick this off, but this time with a bit less detail. Basically, who knows what it will be like. I think the situation in his previous jobs is so different that it's difficult to know what will change and what will stay from his managerial style so far. Clearly though we needed a change and I'll be right behind him... until I find something to moan about. Presumably quite soon into the season. But I dunno, I'd say I'm cautiously optimistic. Other people said:

- Curious to see how Hasebe-kantoku will do his things with the team
- No expectations, wait and see
- I’m excited
- It certainly looks promising! I think worrying about Hasebe deploying defensive or long ball tactics akin to his Avispa sides is frankly a bit superficial. He seems like a coach who will build a solid foundation (see above), then aim to play football which suits the characteristics of the squad. Hasebe has also paid some lip service to respecting the club's existing "philosophy", whatever that may be.
- Positive
- Has achieved much with Avispa, when I always thought they would immediately go down to J2 again. I'm looking forward to what he can do with us next season (but I hope we don't end up being an extremely defensive team)


19. Trophy you would like to win the most next year

Winner - ACL

I guess most people said this because the question says 'most like to win'. Whether it is realistic or not, well, time will tell. One person said the ACL because 'everyone keeps saying Japanese teams don't care about the ACL...' and I totally agree with this. Would be nice to go one step further than YF*choke*M did last year. Also mentioned were the league and the Emperor's Cup. No surprise that no-one said the Levain Cup I guess, hehe.


20. What’s your prediction for next season?

Here's a list. Personally, I haven't got a clue.

- Slight positive progress
- Win ACL-E
- Early drop in domestic cups, 4~6 rank in J1
- Finish top 5, one cup
- Top 3 finish and reach the Saudi bubble round in ACLE
- League title
- Hasebe surely needs some time to settle in. Also it's hard to say because we still don't know who will actually stay with us and we haven't even signed anyone besides Noda in this transfer window (we had some exciting coaching team signings though). So hoping for the best and hopefully most of our players stay! (Sorry, I took so long to post this that this answer is a bit out of date now...)


21. How did you feel about VAR in 2024? And any thoughts on J League referees?

If I had to answer this briefly I guess I'd say that the refs are still woefully bad, and whilst I hate VAR and would love to see it binned, it's no surprise it's looks awful when you consider who is administering it. Basically I guess I'm in full agreement with this first comment.

- VAR is shit and J.League refs are too
- A bit too punishing
- Nonsense and takes too long
- I don't have a strong take on VAR. In the aggregate I think it reduces egregious errors. Refs are poorly calibrated (i.e. inconsistent) - I feel like they show the players/coaches too much respect if anything and lose control often.
- No strong feeling
- Referees are not good at all and VAR still takes way too long in most instances. If VAR would be faster, I wouldn't mind it though.


22. Any other comments

I always ask this question but people just end up saying nice things about the blog. To list them here would seem a bit self-indulgent, but thanks to those who said nice things.