Vs Urawa Reds (away) 13/9/17, ACL, quarter final 2nd leg

   

Urawa Reds 4 - 1 Kawasaki Frontale (5-4 on agg.) 

Damn. It's fair to say that this wasn't how many people expected this game to go. Our ACL campaign is over and in humiliating and heartbreaking circumstances. I think I want to write this about as much as you probably want to read it, so I'm going to try to keep things brief (although I usually fail to do so, when I say this). I don’t think I need to discuss the line-up (the same as usual which has done us pretty well recently) or the goals we conceded (watch the video if you want, but I’d rather not think about them anymore if that’s ok with you). Similarly to the FC Tokyo game, I didn’t make many notes during this match but the reasons were starkly different. Instead of being caught up in the excitement and action, it was more a case of not being able to look away from the extreme slow motion car crash that was materialising in front of us. It’s a cheap metaphor, but there was a feeling of our Kawasaki Frontale puppet having its strings slowly being cut with the only drama being whether the final whistle would come before the scissors delivered the killer blow. In a way, maybe it’s a blessing that they got a winner as I can’t imagine how many more they would have scored if we’d gone to extra time. 

The mood after the game was unsurprisingly, in stark contrast to the pre-game atmosphere, where we were treated to a selection of some of the campest chart music from the early 2000’s. It was quite incongruous with Urawa’s tough guy image and was pretty amusing at the time. I have to say, I was pretty disappointed with the ticket allocation we were handed. There was only one area of the ground that had sold out and that was our part. They penned us in to a narrow area behind the goal whilst huge swathes of the rest of the ground were near empty. This is in huge contrast to the first leg, where we sold their fans way too many tickets. A game against Urawa would normally give me a good opportunity to moan about their boring fans, but to be fair to them, on this occasion they actually managed to make some noise other than booing through the whole game. I guess they had a few things to celebrate though. Unlike us. But we sang our hearts out and didn’t stop supporting even when the game was slipping away, and finally was lost. I feel slightly guilty that I left so quickly after the final whistle, but to be honest, I was quite keen to not be on a train with a load of triumphant Urawa fans. Although it seemed that quite a few of them seemed to also have made a swift exit. Guess they’re used to these kind of comebacks.

Going in to the game Kobayashi had said that we weren’t going to go there and try to defend the lead. We would go and attack and look for the two goals we’d need to make it extremely difficult for them. This made sense to me. I wouldn’t have much confidence in us being able to hang on to a lead for 90 minutes. So far so promising. However, we started the game very much on the back foot, very nervous and completely out of sorts. Our passing was severely misfiring and we kept giving them the ball and inviting attacks. This was very much the theme of the evening actually. There were a lot of long balls being played by both teams. I have no idea why, but we were launching the majority of goal kicks long, unsurprisingly losing the ball as we are not exactly blessed with height up front. I really don’t get why, as this is something we very rarely do. Why were we changing out usual formula? Our goal came a little against the run of play on nineteen minutes and came from a nice long pass from Kengo and was a nice finish by Elsinho. At this stage it seemed we were pretty much through. But the nerves didn’t seem to settle and we continued as if we were a non-league team playing in a big stadium and in front of the TV cameras for the first time. Totally baffling. Of course, after a while they scored and then there was the red card. At the time, it looked like the right decision. From the TV pictures, it looked like the right decision, but I’ve heard Kurumaya say that he didn’t make contact with Koroki, which if true, has annoyed me a little as you'd never know that from his reaction. You can make a case for both sides looking at the replay, but fundamentally, the ref was left with a pretty straight-forward decision and we were looking like we were going to have a pretty worrying next sixty minutes. Kengo was sacrificed and Tasaka brought on to take Kurumaya’s place at left back. Not that you’d really know as the remainder of the game was spent with pretty much all of our players defending desperately behind the ball.

The second half was painful, Urawa’s required goals being slowly and methodically scored as our despair deepened. On 65 minutes Oshima was off, replaced by Edu presumably to shore things up at the back but leaving us with not a lot in the middle. We did manage a few attacks on the break, but we were so outnumbered, what with our entire team being behind the ball, that when someone did break there was no-one to support them and the attack fizzled out. According to the stats we had no shots in the second half, a situation which I guess made it quite difficult for us to score. Urawa were winning corner after corner and it clearly was only a matter of time. Still we pumped the ball forward from every goal kick or free kick, instead of our usual passing it out from the back thing, and it came straight back at us. By 86 minutes they had their fourth and even more agonizingly it had come from what was clearly a mis-hit cross. Our final sub was Morimoto on for Kobayashi. It would have been lovely for Morimoto to score a goal hugely against the run of play and put them out on away goals, but of course it didn’t happen. Cue tears on the pitch, the bench and in the stand, but personally, it had felt like it was coming since the start of the game with our goal only being a mere distraction from the inevitable. Of course, I was gutted, but there was a weird side to this feeling, as I was really confused as to how we had gone so badly wrong. The game was so frantic that the only player’s play I can really remember is Sung-Ryong. He maybe could have done better for some of the goals, but to be honest if he hadn’t have been playing it could easily have been double figures. I can’t point my finger at any of the outfield players in particular for having a bad game. No-one really had anything near a good one though. They all merged into one big desperately defending splodge of blue.

I think most people are blaming Oniki for this defeat, and I guess whilst I have to agree, I think some of the decisions he’s been criticised for are of less significance for me. Firstly the substitution of Kengo after the red card seems to be what everyone thinks was the end of the game for us. It’s true he’s been playing very well recently, but you can’t exactly say he’d been having a good game (like everyone else in blue). I am guessing that Oniki’s thinking was that he’d probably have to replace Kengo around 70 minutes anyway (as has been the case recently) and that bringing someone else off at that stage would have meant that he would need to sub Kengo off later, playing another one of our cards. I think maybe I would have brought on Edu instead of Tasaka and gone to three at the back. Tasaka has played some good games in defence since he has been asked to fill in there last season, but I’m not sure left back is the place for him in a game like this. Our second sub, Oshima off and Edu on, has been criticised too. True, it removed pretty much all of our midfield, but we weren’t really using this area of the pitch much anyway. The ball was being lumped long, usually down the wing or being picked up on the edge of our box, with the player then running forward with it. The final sub, Morimoto on for Kobayashi, was also criticised. I agree with Morimoto coming on to see if we could get something to stick a little up front. Not sure why it came so late though. And not sure who I would have taken off. Kobayashi would definitely have been an option, but probably Abe and Ienaga could also have been possibilities. My criticism is related to the tactics. Sure it was a big game and we were nervous, but I have no idea why we weren’t trying to play our usual game. Even before the sending off we weren’t passing. I’m not sure that Urawa were particularly pressing us to the extent that we were forced to rush and not do our usual passing thing. I know we’ve started games not particularly well recently, but we’ve not started one this badly. It was shocking, with us losing the ball repeatedly and rushing when we would normally stop, think and make another sideways pass. It just doesn’t make sense to change our game plan so drastically when we have used pretty much the same one all season so far. I know I’ve often said that we don’t have a plan B. Perhaps Oniki thought this too and therefore decided to start this game with a plan B that we hadn’t actually tried practicing yet. It’s just baffling. As I said above, there was not even any hint of us trying to go there and score twice. We left the tunnel with our backs against the wall and remained there for 90 minutes.

Positives and negatives are kind of ridiculous after a result like this. Perhaps one positive could be that we are no longer spreading ourselves thin over four competitions. I don’t think we would have been able to win the ACL and the long distance travel required would have stretched our already thin first choice team to breaking point. It does feel heartbreaking to go out like this though, especially against a team like Urawa. I have gone into my negatives at length above so I’ll merely briefly recap them here. Complete tactical implosion right from the start, not just after the red card. A real nervy shakiness that I’ve never seem from us before. Sure, we’ve looked bad in the past, but this was really to another level, or maybe I should say a new low. This must have been as devastating for the players as it was for us. Let’s hope we can pull ourselves together, firstly for Saturday, and then to concentrate on the remaining three competitions we’re in. We can’t afford any slip ups from now on. We’re still in with a shot on three fronts. Let’s hope we can go one better than silver in at least one of these. Oniki is still in his first season and we have to expect that sometimes things won’t go our way and that sometimes this will be due to mistakes on our part. I’m sure he’s learned a lot from this game and I hope that going forward we won’t make the same mistakes again.

Next up in the league is Shimizu away on Saturday. And then Shimizu at home on Wednesday in the Emperor’s Cup. Not exactly the team we might want to be playing in these circumstances as we never seem to do well against teams towards the bottom. In a way though, if we put in a good performance, I’m pleased we are able to get on with things fairly quickly after this game. The ACL has gone now and we have to put it behind us and focus on what we still have. A surprisingly optimistic way to finish this blog post. Go Frontale!

Team

GK 1. Sung-Ryong JUNG

DF 18. ELSINHO

DF 5. TANIGUCHI Shogo

DF 3. NARA Tatsuki (Yellow card 31')

DF 7. KURUMAYA Shintaro (Red card 38')

MF 21. EDUARDO NETO

MF 10. OSHIMA Ryota

MF 41. IENAGA Akihiro

MF 14. NAKAMURA Kengo
MF 8. ABE Hiroyuki
FW 11. KOBAYASHI Yu

Subs 
GK 30. ARAI Shota

DF 6. TASAKA Yusuke (on for NAKAMURA 42')

FW 9. MORIMOTO Takayuki (on for KOBAYASHI 89')

MF 16. HASEGAWA Tatsuya
MF 19. MORIYA Kentaro
DF 23. EDUARDO (Yellow card 71') (on for OSHIMA 65')

MF 28. ITAKURA Ko

My Frontale Man Of The Match

JUNG Sung-Ryong - Kept the scoreline embarrassing, preventing it from becoming totally humiliating. That's about as optimistic as I'll get with this.

Goals  

ELSINHO (Frontale) 19' 0-1 
KOROKI (Urawa) 35' 1-1
ZLATAN (Urawa) 70' 2-1
RAFAEL SILVA (Urawa) 84' 3-1
TAKAGI (Urawa) 85' 4-1


Highlights

Vs Urawa Reds (home) 23/8/17, ACL Quarter Finals

Kawasaki Frontale 3 -1 Urawa Reds

My first game back after my holiday and it was a cracker. We were back on ACL duty again, although this game didn’t have quite the usual exotic excitement of an ACL tie, what with us being up against familiar opponents Urawa Reds. Since we last faced them (and totally demolished them I should add!), they have had a change of manager and had gone on a decent run, being undefeated till this game. Pleasingly, we were able to put that run to bed. It was a good performance from us, with perhaps the only downside being the goal we conceded. But, if we manage to go to their place and score once, we’ve cancelled that out and have given them a mountain to climb. It’s not over though, as they came back from a similar position against Jeju in the last round. I’m keeping my pessimist hat firmly on, very much enjoying this result, but not counting any chickens yet.

Once again for an Urawa game, we decided to hand them far too many tickets. I know we are a friendly club, but I think it’s kind of stupid to diminish our home advantage in this way. Because of ACL rules, the standing terraces behind the goals were closed, so already our capacity was reduced. Urawa fans filled the usual away end and spilled over into our sections down both sides of the pitch. I’m pretty sure they wouldn’t do the same for us at their ground. As usual, their support was pretty rubbish given their numbers. Before the game they were silent aside from briefly singing a song about Kashiwagi (who got injured in the warm up and didn’t start). Similarly, when the game started there wasn’t much coming from their area. Finally, when they were two behind they did start singing a little but I am still yet to be impressed by their support. When they do sing, it’s pretty loud, but it does feel a little like they can’t be bothered most of the time. Although given what their team was producing, maybe it’s not that surprising that they couldn’t be bothered.

Our team was as expected. Sung-Ryong in goal with the recent back four of Elsinho, Nara, Taniguchi and Kurumaya. Neto and Oshima were in front of them and the front four were Ienaga on the left, Kengo in the middle, Kobayashi on the right and Abe ahead of them, although as usual this was somewhat fluid. It seems that we have been able to change the ACL registered players as Edu was on the bench. Also there were Noborizato, Tasaka, Morimoto, Hasegawa, Moriya and Arai. We started the game pretty brightly, pushing forward a lot and were dominating on both possession and chances, although our final ball wasn’t quite getting there. We were however maybe pushing forward a bit too much as when we did lose the ball we were leaving a few gaps at the back. We were defending well though, if a little nerve-janglingly. Neto was totally controlling his part of the pitch. Urawa’s tactics seemed to be desperately defend and then when they won the ball, hoof it forward. Considering that they have a positive reputation for the football they play, it seemed that they were playing more like Kashima, perhaps judging by recent results, looking to come away with a 3-1 defeat, rather than a 4-1 defeat. (Please allow me this joke as it’s not often we hammer Urawa and Kashima so close together). The game was played in an unbelievably laid back style, at walking pace sometimes. Perhaps this was due to the heat (it was a very sticky summer’s evening), or perhaps this is our natural speed but the attentions of the opposition normally force us to speed things up a little. Urawa didn’t seem interested. Surely they weren’t coming with damage limitation in mind? They just sat deep and let us play the ball across our back line even when they were losing. It was really weird actually. We took the lead through some good work from Kengo, who played a one-two with himself if such a thing is possible. He looked like he wanted to lay the ball off to Ienaga, but Ienaga didn’t realise he was involved and Kengo collected his own pass, took the ball to the line and was able to pass to Kobayashi who was waiting on the penalty spot to slot it into the corner, totally unmarked. Pretty poor defending from Urawa, but I’ll let Kengo take the credit. Fantastic dummy from Ienaga too... It was no more than we deserved though as we were making plenty of chances, although our usual accuracy problems were on show. However, if you make loads and loads of chances, I guess it doesn’t matter so much if only a third are on target. So, in we went at half time with a lead and looking like we were pretty comfortably on top.

Within five minutes of the start of the second half we’d doubled our lead. We broke quickly with Neto playing a lovely ball through for Kobayashi. His shot was parried by the keeper and fell to Elsinho who was just about able to divert it into the back of the net, even though it looked like it was dropping behind him. Quite a strange looking finish! Once again, Urawa’s defence was nowhere to be seen. Early on in the half, we were making loads of chances. Urawa were very sloppy, not seeming able to pass or control the ball. It looked like it could be another demolition, but then Urawa came back into the game a bit. I guess that sooner or later both the team and their fans would wake up. They started to peg us back in our half a little but once again the whole team were defending well, if a little desperately at times. On 70 minutes, Nobori replaced Kengo, who’d once again done a good job. We were still having to defend a bit, but we were also back making chances again and Nobori was looking lively. On 76 minutes things got a little tense as Urawa pulled a goal back. It looked way offside from where I was sitting and my first views of some replays looked the same, but I think he was just about played onside by Elsinho. So now they had an away goal and the lead was cut in half. Time for me to feel some tension. We didn’t give up and go more defensive though. We were still attacking and looking to reestablish our two goal lead. Classic Frontale I guess. Nobori had to be subbed off on 83 minutes due to an injury. He didn’t look too bad limping off, so I hope it’s nothing too serious as he’s had more than his fair share of injuries. Tasaka came on to replace him. And soon after our two goal lead was back again! This time Ienaga was the provider, beating an Urawa defender with a burst of speed and floating the ball over from the goal line for Kobayashi to head unmarked into the net. It was another nice move and no more than what we deserved. This was Kobayashi’s last contribution as he was already due to be replaced by Morimoto, who did a decent job of putting himself about up front for the last few minutes and caused them a few problems. I think we would have had a fourth if he had a bit more pace as there was a lovely through ball played for him, but he really, really couldn’t get there in time. From here you might have imagined that the game would peter out, but there was still action at either end of the pitch. Urawa tried to claw a goal back and we still pushed forward, perhaps looking to rack up consecutive 4-1 victories over Urawa. But it ended 3-1 and we celebrated wildly in the stands. A comfortable victory in that we had more possession and eighteen shots compared to their four, but it wasn’t without some moments of worry. But we’ve got a decent lead to hang on to at their place in a few weeks. Although knowing us, I imagine (and I hope) that we won’t go there trying to hold on to what we have and instead go looking for a goal to hopefully kill them off and progress. Fingers crossed…

Positives and negatives. Plenty of positives. Really good result in the first game of a two leg tie and it has put us in a great position to progress to the semi final. Speaking as someone who really doesn’t like them, it’s always nice to beat Urawa, whatever the competition and satisfying to be the first team to defeat them under their new coach. Couple of decent goals from Kobayashi, the kind of easier finishes that you want your striker to be putting away for fun. Goals breed confidence, so hopefully more of the spectacular ones will start going in soon. Lovely cross from Ienaga for the third goal. He seems to be be delivering what we hoped for now. Good performances from pretty much all the team and one player in particular who’ll be mentioned below. Negatives, not many, but as a natural pessimist I’ll find some. Lots of shots but less than a third of them were on target. To be honest, I never really paid much attention to these stats until I started writing this blog, so maybe I’m unnecessarily concerned, but I reckon if we want to keep progressing in all competitions we probably need to be hitting the target a bit more regularly. Nobori got injured, but hopefully it’s not serious. We are relatively light on injuries at the moment, so by the law of averages and given that we’re playing the same group of players pretty much every game, I guess we’re going to get some soon. And finally, a bit of a sloppy goal to concede. But to be honest, I’m kind of grasping at straws to find that many negatives, which has to be a good thing!

Next up, we are away to Ventforet Kofu on Sunday. I really enjoyed this fixture last year so I am hoping for great things again. It helps that there’s a nice beer place in the town. After that, we’re at home on Wednesday to FC Tokyo in the Levain Cup. And in case you were wondering, our next ACL game will be on the 13th September. Looking forward to that one too. Go Frontale!

Team

GK 1. Sung-Ryong JUNG

DF 18. ELSINHO (Yellow card 58')

DF 3. NARA Tatsuki

DF 5. TANIGUCHI Shogo

DF 7. KURUMAYA Shintaro

MF 21. EDUARDO NETO

MF 10. OSHIMA Ryota

MF 11. KOBAYASHI Yu

MF 14. NAKAMURA Kengo

MF 41. IENAGA Akihiro

FW 8. ABE Hiroyuki

Subs 
GK 30. ARAI Shota
MF 2. NOBORIZATO Kyohei (on for NAKAMURA 70')
MF 6. TASAKA Yusuke (on for NOBORIZATO 83')
FW 9. MORIMOTO Takayuki (on for KOBAYASHI 86')
FW 16. HASEGAWA Tatsuya
MF 19. MORIYA Kentaro
DF 23. EDUARDO


My Frontale Man Of The Match

Quite a few candidates. Kobayashi got the two goals, Ienaga and Kengo put in some good work and an assist each and everyone had a decent game, but perhaps controversially I'm going to give it to...

EDUARDO NETO - Totally shut down Urawa in the midfield for most of the game, put some very important tackles and blocks in and raced forward on a few occasions too. Very important to us at the moment I think.

Goals 

KOBAYASHI (Frontale) 32' 1-0
ELSINHO (Frontale) 50' 2-0
MUTO (Urawa) 76' 2-1
KOBAYASHI (Frontale) 85' 3-1

Highlights

Vs Muangthong United (home) 30/5/17, ACL Round of 16

Kawasaki Frontale 4 -1 Muangthong United (7-2 on agg.) 

This was a bit of a funny game to be honest. We went into it with the knowledge that if we didn’t concede three goals we would be assured of going through. So I should have been full of confidence but couldn’t quite help feel that I should be aware that anything is possible with our inconsistent performances (which to be honest have been much less inconsistent recently, but you never know, eh?). Would we turn up and play like we did in the first leg or would we put in an away at FC Tokyo performance and bow out against all the odds? Judging by the coverage we were getting before the game, our progression to the next round was a done deal. No-one was talking about us before and no-one seemed to be afterwards, choosing to focus instead on ‘brave heroes’ Kashima Antlers who won but went out on away goals. After the game the fact that in both legs we had walloped a team that had beaten Kashima was glossed over. But I’m not going to whinge too much as I think I might prefer things this way.

Even though the scoreline suggested we had pretty much already done the job, we started with the majority of the usual line up. Sung-Ryong continued in goal but the defence was shuffled slightly due to Taniguchi not being 100% fit and Edu not being available for the ACL. Tasaka started at right back, Nara was joined by Kurumaya in the middle and Nobori took Kurumaya’s place at left back. The defensive midfielders were Neto and Kengo (who proved again that I know nothing by having a great game after I said last time that he always plays better further forward). The front four were Abe, Ienaga, Kobayashi and Hasegawa. Put them where you want as we seem to be sticking with the plan of them changing their positions throughout the match. The Frontale website has Kobayashi as being up front, Ienaga right, Hasegawa in the middle and Abe on the left. But I thought it looked like we started with Hasegawa up front, Abe on the left, Kobayashi on the right and Ienaga in the middle. In any case, this whole rotation thing seems to be working. The bench was Arai, Taniguchi, Morimoto, Moriya, Rhayner, Kano and Otsuka. Muangthong had brought a decent amount of fans with them. Full credit to them as the situation didn’t look that positive for them. I should also say that their fans seemed like thoroughly decent folks too. For the second ACL game in a row there has been some really nice interactions between opposing fans which I really like. After the game the Muangthong fans were apparently chanting ‘Frontale!’ too which is really nice of them. I hope we are going some way to mending any damage recent events might have caused our reputation. I should also say that Muangthong’s Japanese defender Aoyama got a round of applause from our fans which was pretty nice too. But it wasn’t all a big love-in, there was a football game too so I suppose I should mention that.

Unusually, we changed ends before kick off, so in the first half were kicking towards our home end. I’m not sure whose decision this was. I guess it could make sense from either captain as I suspect both would have welcomed an early goal; them to get back into the tie and us to kill off the tie. We started well with plenty of possession and a few decent chances. As I mentioned above, Kengo was doing a great job in the middle and the combination of him and Neto meant that we were pretty much dominating there. Any attacks that Muangthong had which came through this area were thwarted by them and we were looking pretty comfortable. Possibly up front things weren’t clicking completely with Hasegawa and Ienaga not being quite on the same wavelength. I guess they haven’t played together much yet. Not saying things weren’t working, as we were doing pretty well, but more that a couple of times their runs and passes were totally at odds with one another. A bigger problem was the ref (here I go again). He seemed to be giving us absolutely nothing with pretty much every decision going to them. A few times I was left totally bewildered by him. It felt like he had some kind of interest in evening up the game a bit. We had a definite penalty turned down when they player clearly handled a cross but the more confusing decisions were when he not only didn’t give us the foul but gave the foul against us. I know I’m partizan but it was really weird. I can’t remember exactly, but I seem to think that Abe got booked for getting fouled. If the game had been closer these decisions could really have cost us, but for once it’s nice to be able to moan, but for things not to matter so much. On 31 minutes the game looked to be sealed as we scored the opening goal. They’d now need to score four times. It was another nice goal for Kobayashi. A pass from Nobori was kind of dummied by Abe which seemed to put the defender off. Kobayashi received the ball, turned the other defender and slotted it home from the edge of the box. It seems that the sliding defender got something on it which diverted the ball from its path into the corner but it still had enough power to sneak under the keepers dive. On 32 minutes we scored again but I guess the situation didn’t change so much. Due to away goals they’d still need four, but the kick in the guts you’d get from conceding twice in two minutes must have deflated their confidence further. This time Kobayashi was the provider, collecting a forward pass from Tasaka and driving a cross across the box. Ienaga was inches away from scoring his first goal for us but luckily Hasegawa was lining up behind him to smash the ball home into the top of the net. On 40 minutes it was three and it was now almost certainly over for Muangthong barring a historic collapse. From the penalty appeal that we weren’t given that I mentioned above we won a corner. Kengo took it short to Tasaka who returned the ball. Kengo then looped over a lovely first-time left-footed cross which Neto headed into the corner. Haven’t seen him score like that before and it was also the first time I have been taking a picture and we've scored (see below). I can still make it as a sports photographer! And it seems that we actually pose a threat from corners now which is a bit of a turn up. So, 3-0 at half time, 6-1 on aggregate.

Understandably, the second half wasn’t as exciting. Rhayner came on for Abe after the break, meaning that Abe wasn’t able to keep his goalscoring run going which was a shame for him, but it was a good opportunity to give him a bit of a rest. Muangthong came into the game a little bit as maybe we’d taken our foot off the gas, but I think pretty much everyone, players and fans knew that the game was over and that they were looking for a consolation goal at best. Chances were half-heartedly made at either end of the pitch without a great deal of conviction and it looked like things were petering out a bit. There was a surprise substitution on 62 minutes when Kengo was replaced by Kano Kenta. The crowd was very happy to see him coming on and he got a great reception. I think he can still offer something and hasn’t really had much of a chance this season yet and he did a decent job during the 30 minutes he was on the pitch. We’re playing one of his old clubs at the weekend, so maybe he’ll feature again and do one of the those ‘curse of the former player’ things. He’s an option I hadn’t really considered for the defensive midfield role, but maybe he’s worth a go there. Muangthong had a couple of good chances and I guess showed some of their attacking capabilities. They actually hit the post and had the follow up cleared off the line by Nara. Astonishingly the ref didn’t decide to overrule the linesman and give the goal. I’m not sure if this is the real Muangthong we were seeing. People raved about them in the group stages but we seemed to have dealt with them pretty comfortably for the most part. Maybe we were defending well and breaking up attacks early or perhaps they had expended all their efforts in the group stage. On 79 minutes we scored again. Kano put in a lovely cross which slightly got away from Kobayashi, but he was able to stop the ball leaving the pitch and backheeled for Rhayner to smash home. Based on the second half at least, it felt a bit harsh on Muangthong and their fans, but I’m always delighted to see us score. There was time for a couple more incidents. Morimoto came on for Nobori on 88 minutes. Not sure why. And then a minute later Muangthong got something they could take home with them. A deep cross was headed home past Sung-Ryong with maybe a suspicion of a foul on Kano from the scorer. He certainly seemed to jump quite easily and Kano seemed to be being held down. But anyway, I’m not going to moan about it. And that was it. We were comfortably through to the next round and are now officially one of the eight best teams in Asia (that’s how it works, isn’t it?).

Positives and negatives. Let’s start negative. Actually, maybe there aren’t any this time. The game was a weird one but I can’t remember anything other than the referee that worried or upset me. Positives, plenty of them! Through to the last eight of the competition convincingly against a team that have had some good results against apparently good sides. Another goal from Kobayashi which is hopefully another step towards great confidence and great form for him. Another game where we scored quite a few goals and didn’t concede many. No new injuries! The return of Kano Kenta was nice too. He seems to be well liked by fans and his fellow players and hope he can make a few more appearances. Could he be another back up option for the position next to Neto? Also, our schedule is going to ease off a bit soon so we can get a bit of a rest. I think playing twice a week with predominantly the same players has greatly helped our understanding and communication in the team, but can’t really have helped our energy levels and our propensity for injuries. And as I said above, the good relations between the opposing fans was great. There were two good videos and a nice picture  on twitter which show how things should ideally be. Whilst we rarely have problems with other fans, there is sometimes some ill feeling but we should remember that wherever the other fans are from, they are human beings like us. After all, it’s only a game and often we can’t really choose who we support, it kind of chooses us. Wow…. Peace maaaaannnnn.

Next up is the short away trip to Yokohama to play Marinos. Its a nice stadium and always a good atmosphere. It would be nice to keep our good run going against one of our local rivals, although I’m sure they probably would be delighted to bring us back down to earth. After that, it’s almost two weeks till our next game, at home in the league to a currently wobbling, but almost certainly going to come into some great form when they play us, Sanfrecce Hiroshima. The next ACL match will not be until August, so we have a significant break till we resume in that competition. I guess we will find out our next opponent fairly soon though, although I don’t know exactly when the draw is yet. In any case, we can put the ACL to one side for a bit now and concentrate on hopefully moving up the league table. Go Frontale!


Team

GK 1. Sung-Ryong JUNG

DF 6. TASAKA Yusuke

DF 3. NARA Tatsuki

DF 7. KURUMAYA Shintaro (Yellow card 53')

DF 2. NOBORIZATO Kyohei
MF 21. EDUARDO NETO

MF 14. NAKAMURA Kengo

MF 11. KOBAYASHI Yu

MF 41. IENAGA Akihiro
MF 8. ABE Hiroyuki (Yellow card 29')
FW 16. HASEGAWA Tatsuya 

Subs 
GK 30. ARAI Shota

DF 5. TANIGUCHI Shogo
FW 9. MORIMOTO Takayuki (on for NOBORIZATO 88')

MF 19. MORIYA Kentaro

MF 22. RHAYNER (on for ABE 46')

MF 25. KANO Kenta (on for NAKAMURA 62')
FW 27. OTSUKA Shohei

My Frontale Man Of The Match

Once again, it could have been a few players and I thought Neto and Kengo did a great job in the middle, but one goal and two assists means that one person stood out.

KOBAYASHI Yu  - Another nice goal, two nice assists and a feeling that his confidence is coming back. Long may that continue!

Goals  

KOBAYASHI (Frontale) 31' 1-0
HASEGAWA (Frontale) 32' 2-0
NETO (Frontale) 40' 3-0 
RHAYNER (Frontale) 79' 4-0
DANGDA (Muangthong) 89' 4-1


Highlights

Vs Muangthong United (away) 23/5/17, ACL Round of 16

Muangthong United 1 - 3 Kawasaki Frontale

Another game missed by me. Can I call myself a real fan anymore? To be fair this was quite a long way away and we didn’t get much notice. Also I think I might be testing the patience of my workplace what with always asking for Tuesday off. Full credit to the few fans who did make the trip. After watching the game on TV in a bar in Shinmaruko (no photos of a TV this time though), I wish I had loads of money and no responsibilities as it would have been a great match to attend. Although I’m not sure how I would have dealt with the heat. It certainly seemed to be affecting the players and I am already struggling with Spring in Japan. Muangthong came into the game with a great home record in the competition. They had won all of their home group stage games and had challenged Kashima for the group victory right up until they lost at Kashima in the last group game. So they would definitely be tough opposition for us, especially away from home.

Recently our starting line up has started to become almost predictable. You know the whole thing about not changing a winning side? Well Oniki decided to make a few big changes. I am not sure what the thinking was behind these changes. Was he resting players for the league? Seems weird if he was, as this looked like being a tough and important game and we don’t have any league games for a little while. Sure, Oshima picked up a knock against Kashima so it was no surprise to see him out of the starting line-up and on the bench. I guess the same could maybe be said about Kobayashi. He had a lot of ice on his legs after the Kashima game, so maybe he wasn’t 100% fit. So far, so understandable, but the confusing one for me was Takeoka dropping to the bench. It has seemed recently that he has been preferred to Tasaka at right back, but after a couple of starts (both games won with clean sheets), he was back on the bench. Hasegawa starting on the bench was not so much of a shock as he has been moving in and out of the starting line up for most of the season and that has been working pretty well. And of course Edu can’t play in the ACL as he wasn’t a registered member of our ACL squad. The full starting line up was Sung-Ryong in goal, Tasaka, Taniguchi, Nara and Kurumaya in defence, Neto and Kengo in front of them. Up front we had Rhayner on the right, Ienaga in the middle and Abe on the left with Morimoto in front of them. The bench was made up of Arai, Oshima, Kobayashi, Hasegawa, Takeoka, Moriya and Kano. There had been some talk about how bad the pitch was before the game and whilst it looked ok in the middle, there were definitely some dodgy looking areas at either end. A few times early on we completely lost control of the ball, or scuffed it, or missed it, which makes me think that there were a fair few lumps on it. However we were definitely having the bulk of the early possession. We were also playing pretty sloppily, giving the ball away a bit and generally not passing very well. The ref was doing his bit to contribute to the sloppiness with the typical ACL refereeing performance of moderate incompetence that we’ve come to expect in this competition. One slightly worrying thing was his willingness to be swayed by the crowd or the players, giving decisions apparently when they were sufficiently appealed for. Muangthong seemed to be playing like the away team, sitting back and waiting for counter attacking opportunities. Our sloppy play gifted them a few of these early on, but we began to settle and make some decent chance ourselves. Sadly we couldn’t quiet get to the shooting stage. We would make a lovely move and then give the ball away when we got close to the goal. I’m not sure how much of this was poor play from us and how much was good defending from them, but I lean towards the former. Around thirty minutes we were treated to the rare sight of a water break with both teams going to the side of the pitch for rehydration and ice packs to the neck. It seemed that this was also a legitimate time for managerial input with tactics boards being brandished and tactics tweaked. Approaching the end of the first half we were doing ok. They didn’t seem to be as good as we might have been expecting but we weren’t exactly setting the world on fire. They’d had a few decent chances and forced a few good saves from Super Sung-Ryong, but neither side had particularly imposed themselves on the game. Then they scored… With plenty of defenders back and only a few forwards, we were undone by a pass, dummy, turn and long range shot. It was a nice move, but we were shockingly static. The defenders just seemed to be watching the game rather than participating. We had conceded in the 48th minute, right before half time; our first goal conceded in five games. Time for some reassessment in the changing room at half time.

The second half began with a substitution. Kobayashi came on for Morimoto who hadn’t really been able to get into the game. I think it’s probably nearing make or break time for Morimoto as he really hasn’t done much this season during his opportunities. Perhaps he’ll have a chance in the Emperor’s Cup, but he really has to start performing soon I think. I guess this substitution was promising as it suggests that Kobayashi wasn’t injured, but a little confusing why he would have been rested. I hope we didn’t underestimate the strength of the opposition. That was the accusation leveled at us away against Eastern, but to be honest in that game, the only think we underestimated was the referee’s desire to play by his own rules. We were once again beginning to get going but still when defending we were completely static, frozen in our places, apparently unable to move. It was a bit worrying to be honest, but I suppose everyone’s allowed an off day every now and again and we had Sung-Ryong to save us. On 59 minutes Oshima came on for Rhayner, who maybe wasn’t having his usual ACL man of the match performance that we’ve got used to recently. We turned things up a gear and the goals started flowing. The first came from a Ienaga cross-field ball which was headed into the area where Kengo controlled it with his chest, turned and buried the ball. The second was a beauty. Kengo and Oshima played a nice one-two, the ball was passed to the wing for Ienaga to float in a nice cross and Kobayashi finished masterfully with a spinning volley. Delighted to see him scoring again. I hope he can continue next week as that goal must have given him quite a bit of confidence! Two goals in three minutes and the game had been turned on its head. We were still a little wobbly at the back though and needed our saviour to rescue us again when Muangthong had a quick counter attack and were able to basically run through our backline unchallenged. Not long after coming on and after getting involved to help us score two goals, Oshima had to leave the pitch due to injury. He was replaced by Moriya and looked a bit uncomfortable as he left the pitch. I guess he’d done his job, but hope the injury is nothing too serious. The icing on the cake came in the 89th minute when another fast passing move resulted in Kobayashi crossing for Abe to roll the ball home, keeping his consecutive game scoring record going. Possibly the result flattered us a little as Sung-Ryong had a bit of work to do to stop them scoring more than once, but to be honest, I didn’t think they looked anywhere near as dangerous as we had been led to believe. They seem to have some good players going forward but didn’t really seem able to deal with our attacks. Three away goals has put us in a very strong position going into the next leg. Certainly stronger than Urawa and Kashima who both lost and both failed to score an away goal. I will never underestimate our ability to snatch defeat from the jaws of victory though so am not taking anything for granted yet. But they will have to come and attack us and that will mean that they will be leaving space at the back for us to exploit. We’ll see next week I guess!

Positives and negatives. Negatives first. Oshima’s injured again. We saw how important a player he is for us when he came on in this game. Kengo definitely plays better further forward so it feels like we are wasting him playing him next to Neto. If Oshima doesn’t recover maybe we should put Moriya in next to Neto instead and push Kengo forward. Moriya isn’t exactly suited to that position either, but I don’t think we have anyone who is at the moment. Oshima is injured, Itakura is away with the U20s. Maybe there’s someone else in the squad who can do a job there but hasn’t had a chance yet. Let’s see what Oniki comes up with. Probably the only other negative is the static defence, but let’s hope that was just a blip maybe caused by the conditions and that we’re back to our normal next match. Positives, quite a few! Great goal from Kobayashi. Three good goals, all with lovely movement. Dynamic attacking play. A huge lead going in to the second leg and a victory against a team who had previously won all their home games in the ACL. We just need to keep things under control in the second leg. Of course, another great performance from Sung-Ryong should also be mentioned as he’s playing amazingly at the moment. Certainly at his best since he joined us. And finally, I guess a big positive is the fact that we won convincingly with an average performance. Think we still have a bit more in the tank, but as long as we are winning, there’s no need to complain or feel in any way disappointed.

Next up is the return leg, Muangthong at Todoroki, next Tuesday. There’s no league game for us this weekend as it was due to be the game against Urawa and as we are both still involved in the ACL it has been postponed. I wonder if we’ll get a few more people for this game than usual. The ACL games don’t seem as appealing as the league ones to people for some reason. Possibly, the fact that they are all early weekday evening games can’t help. In any case, it should be a good game and I hope we can hold things together and progress to the next round. Go Frontale!

Team

GK 1. Sung-Ryong JUNG

DF 6. TASAKA Yusuke

DF 5. TANIGUCHI Shogo

DF 3. NARA Tatsuki

DF 7. KURUMAYA Shintaro

MF 21. EDUARDO NETO

MF 14. NAKAMURA Kengo

MF 22. RHAYNER

MF 8. ABE Hiroyuki

FW 9. MORIMOTO Takayuki

FW 41. IENAGA Akihiro

Subs 
GK 30. ARAI Shota

MF 10. OSHIMA Ryota (on for RHAYNER 59')

FW 11. KOBAYASHI Yu (on for MORIMOTO 46')

MF 16. HASEGAWA Tatsuya
DF 17. TAKEOKA Yuto

MF 19. MORIYA Kentaro (Yellow card 90+3') (on for OSHIMA 74')

MF 25. KANO Kenta


My Frontale Man Of The Match

It could have been a few players and Super Sung-Ryong saved us a few times again, but as he keeps getting my man of the match award, I thought I'd give to someone different this time.

KOBAYASHI Yu  - Awesome finish for the goal and seemed to really make a difference when he came on.

Goals  

DANGDA (Muangthong) 48' 1-1
NAKAMURA (Frontale) 66' 1-1
KOBAYASHI (Frontale) 69' 1-2
ABE (Frontale) 88' 1-3

Highlights

Vs Eastern SC (home) 9/5/17, ACL Group Stage Match 6

Kawasaki Frontale 4 - 0 Eastern SC

This will be quite a brief post for a couple of reasons. Firstly, due to work I could only get to the ground for the second half. Secondly, the game was so ungamelike (nice new word there…), that there’s not really a great deal I can say about it. Eastern arrived in Japan already out of the competition with their sole point on the board gained against us at that game in Hong Kong. We needed a win to progress to the knockout stages and it seemed that everyone thought we would get it pretty easily. I suspect we had the same thought going into the away game though. Tellingly, I had a dream the night before that we failed to beat them. I am going to put this one down as another success of my newly found reverse jinxing skills.

There were a few notable elements to the squad selection. In the team line-up message that the club sends out it seemed we were going with the slightly unorthodox line up of playing only two defenders. I’m not sure why it came through like this as the back four was the same as most weeks and usually it’s listed as a back four. Kengo was back and starting. Ienaga was on the bench! Maybe we are starting to pull clear of our injury fug. Or maybe not, as Kobayashi started but had to be replaced due to injury after only 20 minutes. No idea how serious this is as yet. The goals were shared equally, two in each half and two at each end. The first came from a lovely dinked cross from Kurumaya that caught the Eastern defence sleeping. I guess they thought the ball was going to go out. Rhayner headed it home with minimal attention from any of the defenders. The second came from a corner which Taniguchi met with a nice header into the corner. We seem to be scoring from corners recently. The world has clearly turned upside down. Although once again, the Eastern defending left a lot to be desired. Half time, 2-0.

The second half I know a bit more about, as I actually watched it. The atmosphere in the ground was a little flat as you would expect from it being not even half full. I wonder if the next round will draw a bigger crowd. I guess the game was pretty much effectively over at this stage anyway. Eastern hadn’t scored more than one goal in any of their games and it seemed at this stage of the competition they weren’t likely to mount a three goal winning comeback. The second half started with Eastern really flapping. They looked in terrible trouble at the back and we were getting behind them with ease. Rhayner looked like he was enjoying himself running at their defenders and it was him who created the third goal, playing the ball across for Hasegawa who was running in at the far post. The cross evaded three Eastern defenders and Hasegawa bundled the ball home. Shortly afterwards it was 4-0 and this time it was Nara who scored from a Kengo corner. I’m not sure if we are suddenly becoming dangerous from set pieces or if it was just the opposition, but it’s very welcome. Ienaga was on shortly after the fourth goal and he had a few great chances to score his first goal for the club. The first he pulled wide and the second was a thundering half-volley that dipped just over the cross bar when he was through on goal. He probably could have taken it a bit further forward but I can understand why he wanted to smack it when it sat up so invitingly. A bit later on in the game Eastern did manage to pull themselves together a little and resort to their one tactic, hoof it to the big guy up front and have the fast guy race up the pitch after it. It made for a bit of variety as the majority of the game that I saw, they were sitting with almost everyone behind the ball in two defensive rows. I wouldn’t say they really caused us any problems though. Apart from the big guy’s insistence on trying to give third sub Takeoka another injury. I have had a bit of a thing against Bleda since the first game when his foul on Nara got Nara sent off and ruined the game. That was about it for the game really. The ref blew the whistle, the match was over and we had progressed to the knockout stage.

All in all it was a pretty strange evening. The game definitely felt like a training match. In a way, it was probably exactly what we needed. After our win against Albirex it’s nice to get a few more goals on the board and another clean sheet. Although we can’t take too much away from the game apart from good feeling as Eastern didn’t provide much opposition. However, it shows what difference a little bit of confidence (and having 11 men on the pitch) can do. Compared to the game in Hong Kong, this was very comfortable, but that may have been due to the opposition’s performance too. Can’t say there were any negatives in this game, but there were a few positives. Ienaga is back. This could be crucial as he’s a good player who hasn’t had a chance to show what he can do yet. I know he played a couple of games at the start of the season, but apparently he was already carrying the injury that kept him out for a couple of months at that stage. Could be a good time to come back depending on how serious the injury to Kobayashi is (oh, there you go, that could be one negative). We’re through too. And bizarrely we managed to win the group in spite of our goal difference being eight goals worse than Guangzhou’s. We finished equal on points but due to us having shared two draws, and us scoring at their place in the 1-1 and them not scoring at the Todoroki we go top on a better head to head record. Seems a little unfair to be honest, but I’ll take it. In the next round we meet either Muangthong United of Thailand who apparently have loads of money, or Kashima Antlers who have loads of money and always seem to beat us. [Between writing this and posting it, we've found out it is Muangthong for us next].

Next up is Jubilo Iwata away. They’ve had a similar start to the season as we have and we struggled a bit there last year so I don’t think it will be an easy game. Miyoshi and Itakura will be off to the U20 World Cup in Korea soon so we’ll be without them. It’s a good thing that a few players are recovering. Would be nice if we can keep this decent run going though and build on the confidence we are picking up. Go Frontale!

Team

GK 1. Sung-Ryong JUNG

DF 6. TASAKA Yusuke

DF 3. NARA Tatsuki

DF 5. TANIGUCHI Shogo

DF 7. KURUMAYA Shintaro

MF 10. OSHIMA Ryota

MF 21. EDUARDO NETO

MF 11. KOBAYASHI Yu

MF 14. NAKAMURA Kengo

MF 22. RHAYNER

FW 9. ABE Hiroyuki

Subs 
GK 30. ARAI Shota

FW 9. MORIMOTO Takayuki

MF 13. MIYOSHI Koji

MF 16. HASEGAWA Tatsuya (on for KOBAYASHI 20')
DF 17. TAKEOKA Yuto (on for NAKAMURA 79')
MF 19. MORIYA Kentaro
FW 41. IENAGA Akihiro (on for ABE 57')

My Frontale Man Of The Match
Seems a bit unfair to single anyone out in such a weird one-sided match and I did only see half of the game so...

THE WHOLE SQUAD - Did what was required and somehow in spite of drawing the first four matches we managed to win the group!

Goals 

RHAYNER (Frontale) 28' 1-0  
TANIGUCHI (Frontale) 45' 2-0  
HASEGAWA (Frontale) 49' 3-0
NARA (Frontale) 53' 4-0

Highlights