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.
GK 98. YAMAGUCHI Louis
DF 31. VAN VERMESKERKEN Sai
DF 22. Filip UREMOVIC (Yellow card 90+1')
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
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')
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?
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
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