Vs Shonan Bellmare (away) 23/9/25 J League match 31

 

Shonan Bellmare 1 - 2 Kawasaki Frontale 

Yay! Back to winning ways after a terrible game against Tokyo. But this was another pretty dodgy performance. Perhaps the saving grace might be that the opposition weren’t as good. Although to be fair to Shonan, at the end of the game, we were the team who looked like the one that was in terrible relegation trouble rather than them. Obviously it’s nice to get a win, and while we played alright for some parts of the game, the shooting was once again quite bad. I know these kind of things go in streaks, but it’s really weird that we couldn’t stop scoring for a few games and now it looks like we need plenty of shots before getting the job done. Normally this is because we’re smashing it over the bar and out of the stadium. On this occasion it seemed more like we were just dollying the ball back to their keeper for most of our ‘shots’. It wasn’t terrible and we got the three points. But it definitely wasn’t good. Thankfully there was a beer festival outside the stadium to smooth things over a bit. Sadly you probably won’t have that luxury whilst reading this horrible blog post.

Us - 

I shouldn’t moan too much. We just about got the job done. Much like against FC Tokyo, the opposition didn’t exactly set the world on fire when it came to attacking. Unlike against FC Tokyo however, we weren’t worse in that respect. In these two games we’ve faced a total of five shots on target so it’s not great that we’ve conceded from two of them and have lost one of the games. Perhaps my whinging has gone up a level because for a while it looked like we might be getting somewhere in this season of transition. But in these two games we’re right back in the mediocre mud again when it comes to putting the ball in the net. We couldn’t even score from a penalty! (Bit unlucky though, hitting the post and then the keeper and still not going in. But it wasn’t as if we particularly deserved to breeze through this match). Being slightly chaotic at the back is kind of fun when we’re marauding forward and scoring with ease. It’s not so much fun when we’re toiling to even hit the target. And once again we conceded almost immediately after scoring which seems to be something of a tradition this year. I think there are some questions about Hasebe again after this match. I don’t want to get on his back, but in this and the Tokyo game there were some baffling choices that makes me worry a bit. I know we have to pretend that we are still in the title race until it’s mathematically gone, but keeping the ball near the corner flag from a corner kick with nine minutes to go has to go down as something that is pretty horrible to see. We definitely looked like we were the ones desperately clinging on to points for survival. I suppose it makes a financial difference to us if we manage to get into the continental competition places, but time wasting in this way against the team second bottom of the league is pretty despicable I think. Obviously this isn’t a decision from Hasebe that I can say is bad, as it helped preserve the points for us. Just felt very cheap. 

 

The starting line-up Hasebe picked for this game, (three days after the last game and four days before the next game), was almost identical to the Tokyo one. Thankfully he didn’t again attempt the experiment with Romanic in the Wakizaka role which it felt like he might have come up with as he got off the team bus, such was the apparent unpreparedness we showed when using it. I think the sensible choice would have been to give Erison a rest and Romanic a start. But he didn’t do that. Instead we went with the usual line up, Erison got a yellow and now will miss the next game which looks like being a much tougher challenge against Kashiwa. I know we are short of numbers in important areas, but it does feel like we’re running the same players into the ground a bit at the moment. Probably Hasebe still has the memory of when he rotated significantly against Kyoto at home, (back when Kyoto were expected to have their usual kind of relegation troubling season), and we played awfully and lost. This seems to have traumatised him and spelled the end of any kind of rotation that isn’t just changing Kawahara for Tachibanada. Surely there must be some kind of middle ground between changing almost the whole team and changing almost no-one? And surely this game would have been the time to do that? But no, on we trot with the same guys. And maybe we can get a hint as to why he didn’t change much. In this match, which as I’ve said numerous times was far from being a confortable masterclass win, we got to the 91st minute of the match having only made two subs. I guess we can only conclude that Hasebe has no confidence in the back-up players. These late changes were made to switch us to playing five at the back to hold on to those… precious(?)… points. Once again, if we were the relegation threatened team maybe that would have made sense, but shutting up shop against one of the teams who are adrift at the bottom of the table and running out of time… hmmmm. All of this is to say that the win, whilst welcome, was by no means comfortable and left a bit of a maybe not bad but certainly weird taste in the mouth. If we play like this against Kashiwa, a team who want to attack, we might get smashed. 

Them - 

Not much to say about Shonan really. At times it looked like they were Barcelona and we were a team made up of elderly tourists assembled outside the Sagrada Familia. But they couldn’t shoot, thankfully. It looks like their fate might have been sealed to be honest. It’s a shame as it’s a decent away trip. The view from behind the goal is awful though. I can blame that for the poor quality of this blog post. Everthing up the other end of the pitch was an absolute mystery to me. I quite like the orange splash across the belly of their kits which under the floodlights made it look a bit like all of their players had done a Yuma Suzuki with their shirts rather than their shorts and rolled them up and under for no apparent reason other than to show off their midriffs. It will be shame if they go down, but they have flirted with relegation and got away with it for quite a few years now so I guess they suspected that sooner or later it might come back to get them. They’ve got a few games left against teams low down in the table though, so I don’t think all is lost, but it will be tough for them. Fingers crossed either them or YFC can get above YFM and stay there till the end of the season.

Ref and VAR - 

Koya was back. We last encountered him away at Tokyo Verdy and I thought he did ok on that occasion.  I mentioned that he was giving no cards until he broke the seal and then suddenly started flinging them everywhere and it was the same in this match. I think the yellow for Ersion which will ban him for the next match was pretty awful. I don’t know where he is supposed to go to get out of the way of the keeper, who is absolutely miles out of his box. The VAR delay for our penalty was ridiculously long. Presumably they checked the hand ball. Then they checked the offside. Then they checked their lottery ticket. Then they checked on the pizza they had cooking in the oven. Then they checked the weather for the weekend. Then they checked how to spell Czech as they weren’t sure if the European born player on the pitch came from a country near Czechia. It all took ages and gave us another reminder of how fucking annoying VAR is. And then of course we missed the flipping penalty. 

Next up, as I said before, Kashiwa at home. This is another weird game. Against Shonan I wouldn’t have been distraught if we’d lost, as our league campaign is over and a win for them would have given YFM something to worry about. Now we have Kashiwa and if we beat them, we’re basically doing a favour to Kashima and Kobe. It’s horrible, isn’t it? Such a shame that with some truly terrible games played we’ve ruled ourselves out of contention and only have the ability to mess up other teams rather than further our own cause. After title chasing Kashiwa at home we have (maybe) title chasing Kyoto away. So we’re definitely going to have some kind of say in where the title is going. Sadly though, it definitely will be going somewhere, rather than coming back to Todoroki. 

 

Team

GK 98. YAMAGUCHI Louis
DF 31. VAN VERMESKERKEN Sai (Yellow card 71') 

DF 22. Filip UREMOVIC

DF 5. SASAKI Asahi
DF 13. MIURA Sota
MF 19. KAWAHARA So
MF 6. YAMAMOTO Yuki
MF 17. ITO Tatsuya
MF 14. WAKIZAKA Yasuto
MF 23. MARCINHO
FW 9. ERISON (Yellow card 70') 


Subs

GK 1. JUNG Sung-Ryong

MF 8. TACHIBANADA Kento (on for YAMAMOTO 90+1')

FW 11. KOBAYASHI Yu (on for ERISON 78')

DF 15. TANABE Shuto (on for ITO 90+1')
FW 24. MIYAGI Ten (on for MARCINHO 62')
DF 27. KAMIHASHI Ryota (on for VAN WERMESKERKEN 90+1')
DF 39. TSUCHIYA Kaito
FW 41. IENAGA Akihiro
FW 91. Lazar ROMANIC

 

My Frontale Man Of The Match 

Not going to bother with this again.

 

Goals

WAKIZAKA (Frontale) 28' 0-1
ITO (Frontale) 80' 0-2
TACHI (Shonan) 82' 1-2

Highlights