Tokyo Verdy 1 - 1 Kawasaki Frontale
So begins a new season. It goes without saying that after the absolute mediocrity of the last half season, there’d definitely be something to work on and room for improvement in the break before the new season proper kicked off. We signed some players. Not many, but some. Two Brazilian strikers and one Brazilian centre back. Of course one of these stickers was presumably to replace Erison who perhaps felt dissatisfied with the situation at Frontale and left for JEF. The fact that we now have plenty of numbers up front and at centre back hinted that perhaps we might be seeing some kind of new approach. So naturally I anticipated the team announcement for the first game with some excitement. I only really have myself to blame for that I guess. Probably shouldn’t have been so optimistic. A couple of tiny changes to what was basically the starting line up from the start of last season. And exactly the same approach. Hip hip hooray.
Thankfully after seeing the starting line up I managed to temper any kind of anticipation I might have had so didn’t end up crushingly disappointed. And in a way, I could also say that our total tedium in this match was a useful thing for me as I was intending to trim down these blog posts a bit and if there’d been something exciting to write about I might have had to make a bit more effort. As I’m always the first to admit, I don’t really understand tactics so I’m going to try to steer away from talking about them so much. I will say though that I do understand utterly pointless tedium football as I’ve become so accustomed to it over the last year or so and that was very much on display in this match. 70% possession so lots of the ball. Almost absolutely zero attacking threat. Our late equaliser was in some ways deserved as Verdy looked as shit as us, but at the same time was utterly undeserved as we hadn’t troubled their keeper for the rest of the game. This is going to be a very long and extremely boring season.
Maybe some positives are that the away kit looks nice. Pedro Romano looks decent. And… erm… that’s it. Unless you go to games looking forward to watching pointless passing in which case you have a lot to look forward to. Negatives, plenty. Fucking hell Hasebe, you had the first season where you didn’t want to rock the boat considering we were in the late stages of the ACL so didn’t change anything. Then we had the half season where we had a free hit and plenty of opportunity to change something and we didn’t change anything. And then the break between another eight place finish and this season where we once again we changed nothing. What’s he doing? Kengo on the bench next to him must feel a bit like his potential successor picking up some tips before he takes his job. I truly hope Kengo doesn’t take any tips from Hasebe though, as all he seems to be able to do is repeat the same thing eternally. Quite why we have five payers in the squad vying for the one striker spot, I don’t know. We’ve got seven players who can play centre back and we’ll seemingly only ever use two of them. I always imagined that the person who signs the players for the club communicates with the manager but I’m starting to think he’s making purchases according to email instructions he’s still getting from his last job or something. If we’re not doing at all well in a game Hasebe’s response is some good old like for like subs, bringing on the players he thought weren’t good enough to start the match. To give him credit he did make a tactical change in the 85th minute with his final sub. To take all the credit back, pretty much everyone in the stadium apart from him must have been able to see how badly we were playing, how much we needed to change something and how insane it was to wait until the game was almost over to do it. I know he’s a nice guy and everything but his eternal optimism when it comes to post match thoughts where he pretty much says we did well but need to score more is absolutely grating on me and it’s only the first game of what will almost certainly feel like a very long season. Fucking hell. Hasebe the baker is constantly praising his assistant bakers for measuring and combining the ingredients perfectly and doesn’t seem worried that no one in the bakery ever thinks of putting the cake in the oven. Hasebe the fashion expert has put together, through wonderful use of layering, a sensational outfit and has accessorised perfectly. Oh, but he didn’t think he’d need to go as far as dress the bottom half, so the model is walking around half naked. Hasebe the hobbyist has built a magnificent train set in his loft but isn’t going to bother with buying any trains. Hasebe the musician has rehearsed for weeks with his band and is now in perfect condition to not bother turning up to play the gig. But in all of these cases he’s reasonably pleased with how the half finished job has turned out.
A few words on the ref as it would be remiss of me to not slag him off. After watching a World Cup with plenty of dubious decisions it was delightful to get back to the J League and see that the refs are just as shit as they have always been. Even among J League ref apologists, I think the name Mikuriya is one that fills people with dread and so it proved to be again. I came up with a very NSFW nickname for him that doesn’t really work that well. but does absolutely suit him down to the ground. If you’re interested in knowing what it is, please ask. The rules saying you need to take throw ins, goal kicks and make subs quickly from the World Cup are now in evidence in the J League, which I’m not sure is a great idea as the poor refs aren’t even really up to actually refereeing to the old rules so to put more on their plate is a bit unfair. Obviously Mikuriya thought we were delaying on one of our throw ins and gave it to them, even though we were trailing at the time so wouldn’t have made much sense to time waste. Making keepers not waste time on goal kicks is an interesting rule. And one which seems like it’s a bit pointless if you only start counting after the keeper has crawled on his hands and knees to retrieve the ball, dropped it a few times, had a couple of drinks, and possibly a light meal before putting the ball on the spot. The fact that the Verdy keeper was wasting so much time in the second half without any kind of censure made it all the more enjoyable that he conceded extremely late on. Also, I think we need some kind of paranormal investigator to have a look at the game, as every time a Verdy player was about to be changed they were suddenly struck down by a phantom condition that meant they needed lengthy treatment. However you feel about these new rules’ implementation at the World Cup, it was always going to be just one more thing for the useless bastards in charge of the J League to mess up. Oh, and finally, Ito's yellow card was a joke, but that's to be expected with Mikuriya. There truly is nothing to look forward to. Apart from the 2027/28 season if we manage to be able to start that one in J1.
Such a pointless game. Such a boring game. Such a predictable game. The finger clearly has to be pointing at Hasebe at the moment. On this showing we’ll be extremely lucky to finish in our usual 8th. Probably much closer to 18th. And for the final crucial game of the season where we’re battling to avoid relegation Hasebe will probably still be going with the same formation, players and tactics and will afterwards comment that we did really well passing the ball sideways back and forth in our own half and that we’ll have to work on actually shooting before the next match. Fucking hell. At least we’ll have some fun away games this time round!
Thankfully after seeing the starting line up I managed to temper any kind of anticipation I might have had so didn’t end up crushingly disappointed. And in a way, I could also say that our total tedium in this match was a useful thing for me as I was intending to trim down these blog posts a bit and if there’d been something exciting to write about I might have had to make a bit more effort. As I’m always the first to admit, I don’t really understand tactics so I’m going to try to steer away from talking about them so much. I will say though that I do understand utterly pointless tedium football as I’ve become so accustomed to it over the last year or so and that was very much on display in this match. 70% possession so lots of the ball. Almost absolutely zero attacking threat. Our late equaliser was in some ways deserved as Verdy looked as shit as us, but at the same time was utterly undeserved as we hadn’t troubled their keeper for the rest of the game. This is going to be a very long and extremely boring season.
Maybe some positives are that the away kit looks nice. Pedro Romano looks decent. And… erm… that’s it. Unless you go to games looking forward to watching pointless passing in which case you have a lot to look forward to. Negatives, plenty. Fucking hell Hasebe, you had the first season where you didn’t want to rock the boat considering we were in the late stages of the ACL so didn’t change anything. Then we had the half season where we had a free hit and plenty of opportunity to change something and we didn’t change anything. And then the break between another eight place finish and this season where we once again we changed nothing. What’s he doing? Kengo on the bench next to him must feel a bit like his potential successor picking up some tips before he takes his job. I truly hope Kengo doesn’t take any tips from Hasebe though, as all he seems to be able to do is repeat the same thing eternally. Quite why we have five payers in the squad vying for the one striker spot, I don’t know. We’ve got seven players who can play centre back and we’ll seemingly only ever use two of them. I always imagined that the person who signs the players for the club communicates with the manager but I’m starting to think he’s making purchases according to email instructions he’s still getting from his last job or something. If we’re not doing at all well in a game Hasebe’s response is some good old like for like subs, bringing on the players he thought weren’t good enough to start the match. To give him credit he did make a tactical change in the 85th minute with his final sub. To take all the credit back, pretty much everyone in the stadium apart from him must have been able to see how badly we were playing, how much we needed to change something and how insane it was to wait until the game was almost over to do it. I know he’s a nice guy and everything but his eternal optimism when it comes to post match thoughts where he pretty much says we did well but need to score more is absolutely grating on me and it’s only the first game of what will almost certainly feel like a very long season. Fucking hell. Hasebe the baker is constantly praising his assistant bakers for measuring and combining the ingredients perfectly and doesn’t seem worried that no one in the bakery ever thinks of putting the cake in the oven. Hasebe the fashion expert has put together, through wonderful use of layering, a sensational outfit and has accessorised perfectly. Oh, but he didn’t think he’d need to go as far as dress the bottom half, so the model is walking around half naked. Hasebe the hobbyist has built a magnificent train set in his loft but isn’t going to bother with buying any trains. Hasebe the musician has rehearsed for weeks with his band and is now in perfect condition to not bother turning up to play the gig. But in all of these cases he’s reasonably pleased with how the half finished job has turned out.
A few words on the ref as it would be remiss of me to not slag him off. After watching a World Cup with plenty of dubious decisions it was delightful to get back to the J League and see that the refs are just as shit as they have always been. Even among J League ref apologists, I think the name Mikuriya is one that fills people with dread and so it proved to be again. I came up with a very NSFW nickname for him that doesn’t really work that well. but does absolutely suit him down to the ground. If you’re interested in knowing what it is, please ask. The rules saying you need to take throw ins, goal kicks and make subs quickly from the World Cup are now in evidence in the J League, which I’m not sure is a great idea as the poor refs aren’t even really up to actually refereeing to the old rules so to put more on their plate is a bit unfair. Obviously Mikuriya thought we were delaying on one of our throw ins and gave it to them, even though we were trailing at the time so wouldn’t have made much sense to time waste. Making keepers not waste time on goal kicks is an interesting rule. And one which seems like it’s a bit pointless if you only start counting after the keeper has crawled on his hands and knees to retrieve the ball, dropped it a few times, had a couple of drinks, and possibly a light meal before putting the ball on the spot. The fact that the Verdy keeper was wasting so much time in the second half without any kind of censure made it all the more enjoyable that he conceded extremely late on. Also, I think we need some kind of paranormal investigator to have a look at the game, as every time a Verdy player was about to be changed they were suddenly struck down by a phantom condition that meant they needed lengthy treatment. However you feel about these new rules’ implementation at the World Cup, it was always going to be just one more thing for the useless bastards in charge of the J League to mess up. Oh, and finally, Ito's yellow card was a joke, but that's to be expected with Mikuriya. There truly is nothing to look forward to. Apart from the 2027/28 season if we manage to be able to start that one in J1.
Such a pointless game. Such a boring game. Such a predictable game. The finger clearly has to be pointing at Hasebe at the moment. On this showing we’ll be extremely lucky to finish in our usual 8th. Probably much closer to 18th. And for the final crucial game of the season where we’re battling to avoid relegation Hasebe will probably still be going with the same formation, players and tactics and will afterwards comment that we did really well passing the ball sideways back and forth in our own half and that we’ll have to work on actually shooting before the next match. Fucking hell. At least we’ll have some fun away games this time round!
Team
GK 49. Svend BRODERSEN
DF 29. YAMAHARA Reon
DF 3. TANIGUCHI Hiroto
DF 4. PEDRO ROMANO
DF 13. MIURA Sota
MF 6. YAMAMOTO Yuki
MF 8. TACHIBANADA Kento
MF 18. KONNO Kazuya
MF 14. WAKIZAKA Yasuto
MF 17. ITO Tatsuya (Yellow card 68')
FW 20. MOCHIYAMA Kyosuke
Subs
GK 1. YAMAGUCHI Louis
DF 5. SASAKI Asahi (on for TACHIBANADA 76')
FW 9. Lazar ROMANIC (on for MOCHIYAMA 61')
MF 16. OZEKI Yuto (on for MIURA 76')
MF 19. KAWAHARA So
DF 22. Filip UREMOVIC
MF 23. MARCINHO (on for KONNO 61')
FW 24. MIYAGI Ten (on for YAMAMOTO 86')
FW 34. OSA Ryuki
Man of the match
You’ve got to be kidding me.
Goals
MIZOGUCHI (Verdy) 46' 1-0
ROMANIC (Frontale) 90+6' 1-1
MIZOGUCHI (Verdy) 46' 1-0
ROMANIC (Frontale) 90+6' 1-1
Highlights
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