Kawasaki Frontale 2 - 1 Vissel Kobe
What a delightful result this was! And what a strange season we are having. It’s felt pretty underwhelming but surprisingly we’ve only lost two games and that’s only one less than the teams at the top. I guess it’s the multiple missed opportunities that make things feel frustrating. Particularly strong in the memory still is us battering Kashima but having to rely on a very late equaliser to grasp a point. We’ve thrown away leads so many times, totally dominated but failed to trouble the opposition keeper so many times. And it really felt like that was going to happen again in this game. Kobe looked terrible, had only had two shots and very little possession in the first half but were still absolutely in the game at half time due to us being unable to shoot. But we finally managed to put the ball in the net. And then did it again. And then immediately conceded ensuring that once again we couldn’t have a relatively stress free end to a match. But we held on and it was lovely. Beating one of the teams above us and with interesting results for some of the leading teams made me excited to check the league table. But we finished exactly where we started, in 7th position and seven points off top. But don’t let that kill your buzz as this was a very welcome result.
Us -
Hasebe shuffled the midfield brining in Ozeki and Kawahara and played Yamaichi instead of Ito. Before the game I said that it appeared that he was in a way writing this game off by playing what I presumed he thought of as a semi reserve side. I also said that if we went on to beat Kobe with those players he should have some thinking to do as I felt that quite a lot of our struggles this year have been due to the midfield not really working. Presumably we’ll be back to the usual three on Sunday for the visit of Okayama. I think this would be quite harsh on the starters in this match as I thought they did well. At the back it seemed that our defensive injury crisis might not have been as bad as it looked last week as both Sasaki and Romano started. Romano was taken off after a clash of heads in the second half though, much to his disgust. I think once again it was precautionary. And let’s hope so as we are really down to bare bones. In the first half we contrived to miss good chances in a variety of ways, ranging from massively off target shots to delicate roll backs straight into the keepers gloves. Derik and Marcinho didn’t really have the best of games, but then in the second half Marcinho came up with the goods again. It’s so strange that he always seems to score in games where he hasn’t been playing particularly well. It’s not a bad situation to be in, but can you imagine what we’d be like if his passing in the box was even just a little bit better. Great work for the goal though! On the other wing I thought Yamaichi did really well. I’m starting to like him more and more and it seems like he can do the job in various positions. So, what else? Bit of a shame that Vissel had only one shot on target but still managed to score. That also seems to be something we just have to put up with this year. Matsunagane did really well in his brief appearance, really annoying Kobe by keeping the ball in their half and winning throw after throw to run down the clock. Absolutely loved Ito’s goal. And even more loved the fact that in his post match interview when asked if it was a shot or cross, said it was a cross. I wonder if it was helped in by the swirling wind that kept coming and going for most of the match. Some goal kicks and long balls seemed to just go up and hang in the air. Maybe we can blame the wind for the goal we conceded. Maybe not. I’m not going to say we’ve turned a corner as we’ll more than likely lose to Okayama in the next match, but it did feel good to for once not throw away a game after dominating. Fingers crossed!
Them -
Scummy scummy Kobe. Maybe even their fans are starting to feel the same way as hardly any of them turned up. They couldn’t anywhere near fill the small allocation that we gave them. Their selection of songs contains every single shitty song that other clubs sing. It’s basically like a greatest shits of the lamest stuff including that one that the US men’s team use, the Enter-bloody-tainer and plenty more. If you’ve been irritated by another team singing something tacky, you can almost guarantee that there will be a Vissel version. To be honest though, I shouldn’t be focusing on the fans as they can’t help their team being scummy. On the pitch the scum was scumming, elbows all over the place from the Kobe forward line, Thuler just being the wanker that he is at the back. Shame he didn’t decide to boot the ball at an official and get sent off again. And of course Erik, a scumbag who understandably given his scumminess, seems to want to play for all the scummiest teams in the league. (Presumably he’ll complete the set by transferring to Urawa and Kashima in the next two seasons). To go from Machida to Kobe, back to Machida and then back to Kobe again is just bizarre. Surely the fans of both teams must think he’s a bit of a prick, right? I certainly do. It was very enjoyable when Romano took the ball off of him in the first half. And even more enjoyable when he wet the bed, stamping his feet because the ref wouldn’t let him back on the pitch where he clearly would be interfering with play. I guess this is all the same old stuff that I always write about Kobe. The only original content this time is perhaps remarking on how shit they were! Lovely! I’ll end this part by commenting on one of their banners and by asking a question about another of them. (I probably always do this too). The comment, ‘We Shall Overcome’ is a strange one. Perhaps the last part which said ‘… the awful difficulty of having absolutely massive financial backing’ was covered by other banners. And what is ‘11 Stones’ all about? It was on numerous flags of theirs. It’s so weird that I can’t even think of anything snarky to write about it.
Ref -
Nakamura was back in town to further tarnish the one time glory he got from being voted ref of the year a few years ago. To be honest, he wasn’t too bad compared to some of the other absolute dross we’ve had recently. Pretty sure he missed or wasn’t interested in two Kobe handballs, stopped the game on numerous occasions for Kobe play acting and injury feigning and gave and denied some advantages in a bonkers fashion. Also, his counting down of seconds for their interminable long throws was absolutely random. If you’re not doing a long throw the count starts as soon as the thrower has the ball it seems. But if you’re doing a long throw Nakamura not only doesn’t start counting till you’ve started your 30 metre run up, but almost goes as far as to offer his own shirt for them to use to dry the ball and give the thrower a quick massage to make he doesn’t do himself a mischief through over exertion of the shoulders. To be fair, I think the numerous things they now have to count are a ridiculous over complication of their duties. And given that the countdown speed seems to be quite fluid, the initial seconds being a lot shorter than the final ones, and the four and five of the count always coming precisely as they take the throw, no matter how long they’ve dithered over it, it’s more like a kind of hype man thing, counting down to the launch and building excitement rather than actually measuring time. I wouldn’t mind if they got rid of the law even though it would maybe encourage more long throws. It just seems that it’s probably not worth having the rule if the application of it is so random.
Next up Okayama at home. Will be kind of interesting to see who starts. But I think I can probably predict who it will be. We have the opportunity to win a historic third game in a row. It’s the stuff of our wildest dreams! Even if the inevitable happens and we follow up a nice result with a turd of a performance, at least we’ll still be able to enjoy the fact that Kobe are arse and we actually managed to not throw away what should have been an easy win. Bravo!
Team
GK 49. Svend BRODERSEN
DF 29. YAMAHARA Reon
DF 4. PEDRO ROMANO
DF 28. MARUYAMA Yuichi
DF 5. SASAKI Asahi (Yellow card 52')
MF 8. TACHIBANADA Kento
MF 19. KAWAHARA So
MF 16. OZEKI Yuto
MF 25. YAMAICHI Shuto
MF 23. MARCINHO
FW 97. DERIK LACERDA
Subs
GK 1. YAMAGUCHI Louis
DF 2. MATSUNAGANE Yuto (on for TACHIBANADA 90+3')
MF 6. YAMAMOTO Yuki (on for YAMAHARA 82')
FW 11. KOBAYASHI Yu (on for DERIK LACERDA 82')
MF 14. WAKIZAKA Yasuto (on for OZEKI 59')
MF 17. ITO Tatsuya (on for YAMAICHI 59')
FW 20. MOCHIYAMA Kyosuke (on for MARCINHO 87')
DF 22. Filip UREMOVIC (on for PEDRO ROMANO 67')
FW 34. OSA Ryuki
Man of the match
There’s one person who I always want to give this to every time he plays, but in the interest of not appearing ridiculously biased and instead just a little biased, I’m going to give it jointly to…
KAWAHARA SO and YAMAICHI SHUTO - well played to both of them and they should have given Hasebe some selection headaches if he is picking on form rather than reputation.
Goals
MARCINHO (Frontale) 61' 1-0
ITO (Frontale) 71' 2-0
OSAKO (Vissel) 73' 2-1
Highlights
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