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
FW 23. MARCINHO (Yellow card 90+11') (on for TACHIBANADA 46')
FW 24. MIYAGI Ten (on for ITO 61')
DF 27. KAMIHASHI Ryota
DF 30. NODA Hiroto
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!!!!
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
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