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!
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
No comments:
Post a Comment