Kawasaki Frontale 5 - 0 Johor DT
This is perhaps the first week for a long time where I probably should spend some time writing a proper blog post as there are suddenly lots of things to talk about regarding Frontale. Sadly, I only have a little time after this game when I’m not working before we head off to Kyushu for the final league game of the season, so as you have probably come to expect, this is going to be the usual rushed out mess.
I guess the first thing to talk about is obviously this game. Although to be honest, I think the things around the game are actually more important and interesting. In last year’s ACL when Johor basically played all of their games at home and their opponents had to travel they ended up winning the group. This year, they are nowhere near as lucky and nowhere near as effective. They have totally dominated their domestic league, conceding only seven goals in 24 games, but somehow 2023 Frontale managed to put five past them. Toward the end of the game when the goals just kept on coming, I got the sense that perhaps the Johor players weren’t enjoying not having things their own way. There were a lot of snippy tackles late on and they probably should have had a lot more yellow cards than they ended up with. The first half was nowhere near as much of a landslide when it came to goals, but as far as I was concerned, we never looked that uncomfortable in this game, which is something that I haven't said much, if at all, this year. I don’t really know what has happened to us recently. After being truly awful in front of goal for most of the season, suddenly we’re scoring goals for fun. Sometimes also conceding goals for fun too, but we seem to have won quite a lot of games in the last couple of months. Aside from the ACL and Emperor’s Cup though, this has all been too little too late. And in fact the two draws and one loss that we’ve had in the last two months have all come in the league, all to teams who are lower in the table than us. You can’t really say we’ve changed much when it comes to players. Our match day squads are basically still made up of the same players, and most changes that are being made are due to a succession of injuries rather than for tactical reasons. Also, I can’t really see any difference in the approach or tactics, but observing these kind of things has never been my speciality. The only thing I can put it down to is us getting some confidence back. Hopefully we can keep that confidence going for the final three games of our season. The remaining ACL game is utterly pointless for us now. Although I guess we could do Johor a favour by beating Ulsan, but even then, perhaps a win against Pathum wouldn’t be enough for them to progress as one of the best second placed teams. The remaining league game is equally meaningless. There’s a slim chance that a big win and other results going our way could see us finish as high as seventh, but to be honest, I think ninth is absolutely the right place for us this year. It’s been pretty hard going until recently. Anyway, back to this game, it was great to see five goals all from different players. It was also great to see some really good moves too. I said in the first half that Yamane never seems to shoot anymore so I’m going to take credit for him scoring in the second half. Not sure how much we can read into this big win though as Johor seemed pretty average. I thought one moment in the first half neatly summed them up. They did a really fancy kind of reverse back heel sweep pass to beat us on our right hand side and then lost the ball shortly afterwards. Johor remind me a bit of one of those people who does amazing ball juggling on Instagram or those guys who make the videos where they take perfect free kicks with no goalkeeper or opposition or dribble past cones and finish with confidence into an empty net (all with us having no knowledge of how many failed attempts haven’t made it on to the video, I guess). They seem to be good at football skills, but maybe not that good at actually playing football. Perhaps this is a bit unfair on them, but I certainly didn’t see much from them last night apart from petulant fouls when things weren’t going their way. Their fans on the other hand, were really good. I don’t know how big their drum was but it was absolutely booming, and their singing was pretty loud considering they didn’t have that many fans there. I think they probably brought more than Ulsan or Pathum did though, even if it was mainly the guys around the drum that were making the noise. And they had some good songs too! Whilst praising their fans, I feel I need to put in my usual moan about our support being a bit shit at times. Our call leader group’s apparent absolute refusal to sing when the opposition have the ball made for a very flat atmosphere when they were playing the ball around the midfield. I guess they want to save their support for when we’re attacking, but to go silent when we don’t have the ball just makes for a weird experience. Before I finish this section about the match, I guess I should mention that once again we were supplied with an absolutely dogshit ref. The linesman on the back stand side was pretty good though, I thought. The ref pissed me off, but this is such a common occurrence that in a way, it’s kind of pointless for me to even mention it.
So, aside from this match, there are also a few other things to mention. As predicted by myself in the pub after the game, Oniki will remain our manager for next season. I had no idea the announcement would come so soon after I said so, but I could never imagine that he would leave after getting us through the group stage so smoothly. Presumably he thinks he can help us navigate our way a bit further in the competition. I hope the other prediction I made about us losing to Ventforet Kofu in the next round doesn’t come true, but it would be a very Oniki Frontale way for us to get booted out of the knockout stage of a competition, wouldn’t it? So what can I say about him extending his tenure with us? Well, not much really as any negativity about it happening when we are scoring for fun would seem like extreme sour grapes. I wonder how the decision will look though if we revert back to our shocking old form in the Emperor’s Cup final and lose it. The end of our season has panned out in exactly the way a manager hoping to extend his contract would want it to, our current good run erasing the memories of some very bad games earlier in the year that saw us ruled out of the league title race very early on. Looking at things optimistically, I guess you have to hope that Oniki has made a subtle but crucial tweak to our play which has caused us to suddenly start doing well again. The first half against Kyoto and most of the game away at Kashiwa were pretty awful though. And I don’t know how long the same group of players can keep playing every game, with very little rotation. I suppose there will be a few players leaving at the end of the year. Damiao certainly was acting again like he won’t be at Todoroki next year. It’s a real shame as he seems to be on top of his game at the moment, but you can’t begrudge him wanting to move on. However, there must be some other players who are thinking that they can have a better chance of playing football if they move away. I don’t want to name names, but I can think or three or four who I wouldn’t be surprised to see moving on at the end of the year. Presumably we’ll get some players in too, but whether they will get any match time is another matter. New signings who aren’t big names normally have to spend a year occasionally gracing the bench and nothing more before being allowed to play football. And then think about all of the players who we had great hopes for who haven’t played hardly at all this year and probably won’t play next year without any major injuries or departures. Us retaining our manager might give some players who have hardly been used and were on the fence about whether to stay or go a reason to look elsewhere, perhaps imagining that their chances or being involved won’t improve with the same guy in charge and the same players ahead of them in the squad. I suspect that we won’t have any first team players departing at the end of the season. I don’t think anyone has shone brightly enough to attract attention from overseas. So it wouldn’t be a great surprise to see the first starting line up of next year being almost the same as the last one of this year, (I guess with someone in place of Damiao). Anyway, we’re doing well at the moment, so this makes it a bit difficult to be even slightly critical. Let’s just hope that good form continues and we can make a better fist of the league next year. We’ll have a few more games as the league expands to 20 teams so maybe we’ll need to rotate a bit more. Conversely, the change in the Levain cup structure means that every game is a knockout, which usually means that Oniki doesn’t change the line up much. I hope that us carrying over our good from the end of the season into next season will happen, but there are definitely weak spots in the line up where players are getting older and their level is dropping off slightly and it would be more likely that they’d get worse as we enter another year rather than better. But I don’t know, it’s all a bit difficult to tell, isn’t it? In my opinion, I think the most likely thing is that not much will change though.
I feel like there was some other major talking point I was supposed to write about, but for some reason it has completely left my mind. Please comment if you know what it might have been and I'll add something. Next up Sagan Tosu away on Sunday which I’m really looking forward to, particularly as the result doesn’t matter and I can just enjoy a nice stadium and nice shochu. Well, I say nice shochu, but I’m most definitely not an expert and find it quite difficult to drink, but for some reason, always seem to have a very nice time after I’ve finished my first glass. So cheers to our progression in the ACL, (hang on, did I even mention that had happened? I guess you knew anyway) and cheers to the final game being one in a good stadium!
I guess the first thing to talk about is obviously this game. Although to be honest, I think the things around the game are actually more important and interesting. In last year’s ACL when Johor basically played all of their games at home and their opponents had to travel they ended up winning the group. This year, they are nowhere near as lucky and nowhere near as effective. They have totally dominated their domestic league, conceding only seven goals in 24 games, but somehow 2023 Frontale managed to put five past them. Toward the end of the game when the goals just kept on coming, I got the sense that perhaps the Johor players weren’t enjoying not having things their own way. There were a lot of snippy tackles late on and they probably should have had a lot more yellow cards than they ended up with. The first half was nowhere near as much of a landslide when it came to goals, but as far as I was concerned, we never looked that uncomfortable in this game, which is something that I haven't said much, if at all, this year. I don’t really know what has happened to us recently. After being truly awful in front of goal for most of the season, suddenly we’re scoring goals for fun. Sometimes also conceding goals for fun too, but we seem to have won quite a lot of games in the last couple of months. Aside from the ACL and Emperor’s Cup though, this has all been too little too late. And in fact the two draws and one loss that we’ve had in the last two months have all come in the league, all to teams who are lower in the table than us. You can’t really say we’ve changed much when it comes to players. Our match day squads are basically still made up of the same players, and most changes that are being made are due to a succession of injuries rather than for tactical reasons. Also, I can’t really see any difference in the approach or tactics, but observing these kind of things has never been my speciality. The only thing I can put it down to is us getting some confidence back. Hopefully we can keep that confidence going for the final three games of our season. The remaining ACL game is utterly pointless for us now. Although I guess we could do Johor a favour by beating Ulsan, but even then, perhaps a win against Pathum wouldn’t be enough for them to progress as one of the best second placed teams. The remaining league game is equally meaningless. There’s a slim chance that a big win and other results going our way could see us finish as high as seventh, but to be honest, I think ninth is absolutely the right place for us this year. It’s been pretty hard going until recently. Anyway, back to this game, it was great to see five goals all from different players. It was also great to see some really good moves too. I said in the first half that Yamane never seems to shoot anymore so I’m going to take credit for him scoring in the second half. Not sure how much we can read into this big win though as Johor seemed pretty average. I thought one moment in the first half neatly summed them up. They did a really fancy kind of reverse back heel sweep pass to beat us on our right hand side and then lost the ball shortly afterwards. Johor remind me a bit of one of those people who does amazing ball juggling on Instagram or those guys who make the videos where they take perfect free kicks with no goalkeeper or opposition or dribble past cones and finish with confidence into an empty net (all with us having no knowledge of how many failed attempts haven’t made it on to the video, I guess). They seem to be good at football skills, but maybe not that good at actually playing football. Perhaps this is a bit unfair on them, but I certainly didn’t see much from them last night apart from petulant fouls when things weren’t going their way. Their fans on the other hand, were really good. I don’t know how big their drum was but it was absolutely booming, and their singing was pretty loud considering they didn’t have that many fans there. I think they probably brought more than Ulsan or Pathum did though, even if it was mainly the guys around the drum that were making the noise. And they had some good songs too! Whilst praising their fans, I feel I need to put in my usual moan about our support being a bit shit at times. Our call leader group’s apparent absolute refusal to sing when the opposition have the ball made for a very flat atmosphere when they were playing the ball around the midfield. I guess they want to save their support for when we’re attacking, but to go silent when we don’t have the ball just makes for a weird experience. Before I finish this section about the match, I guess I should mention that once again we were supplied with an absolutely dogshit ref. The linesman on the back stand side was pretty good though, I thought. The ref pissed me off, but this is such a common occurrence that in a way, it’s kind of pointless for me to even mention it.
So, aside from this match, there are also a few other things to mention. As predicted by myself in the pub after the game, Oniki will remain our manager for next season. I had no idea the announcement would come so soon after I said so, but I could never imagine that he would leave after getting us through the group stage so smoothly. Presumably he thinks he can help us navigate our way a bit further in the competition. I hope the other prediction I made about us losing to Ventforet Kofu in the next round doesn’t come true, but it would be a very Oniki Frontale way for us to get booted out of the knockout stage of a competition, wouldn’t it? So what can I say about him extending his tenure with us? Well, not much really as any negativity about it happening when we are scoring for fun would seem like extreme sour grapes. I wonder how the decision will look though if we revert back to our shocking old form in the Emperor’s Cup final and lose it. The end of our season has panned out in exactly the way a manager hoping to extend his contract would want it to, our current good run erasing the memories of some very bad games earlier in the year that saw us ruled out of the league title race very early on. Looking at things optimistically, I guess you have to hope that Oniki has made a subtle but crucial tweak to our play which has caused us to suddenly start doing well again. The first half against Kyoto and most of the game away at Kashiwa were pretty awful though. And I don’t know how long the same group of players can keep playing every game, with very little rotation. I suppose there will be a few players leaving at the end of the year. Damiao certainly was acting again like he won’t be at Todoroki next year. It’s a real shame as he seems to be on top of his game at the moment, but you can’t begrudge him wanting to move on. However, there must be some other players who are thinking that they can have a better chance of playing football if they move away. I don’t want to name names, but I can think or three or four who I wouldn’t be surprised to see moving on at the end of the year. Presumably we’ll get some players in too, but whether they will get any match time is another matter. New signings who aren’t big names normally have to spend a year occasionally gracing the bench and nothing more before being allowed to play football. And then think about all of the players who we had great hopes for who haven’t played hardly at all this year and probably won’t play next year without any major injuries or departures. Us retaining our manager might give some players who have hardly been used and were on the fence about whether to stay or go a reason to look elsewhere, perhaps imagining that their chances or being involved won’t improve with the same guy in charge and the same players ahead of them in the squad. I suspect that we won’t have any first team players departing at the end of the season. I don’t think anyone has shone brightly enough to attract attention from overseas. So it wouldn’t be a great surprise to see the first starting line up of next year being almost the same as the last one of this year, (I guess with someone in place of Damiao). Anyway, we’re doing well at the moment, so this makes it a bit difficult to be even slightly critical. Let’s just hope that good form continues and we can make a better fist of the league next year. We’ll have a few more games as the league expands to 20 teams so maybe we’ll need to rotate a bit more. Conversely, the change in the Levain cup structure means that every game is a knockout, which usually means that Oniki doesn’t change the line up much. I hope that us carrying over our good from the end of the season into next season will happen, but there are definitely weak spots in the line up where players are getting older and their level is dropping off slightly and it would be more likely that they’d get worse as we enter another year rather than better. But I don’t know, it’s all a bit difficult to tell, isn’t it? In my opinion, I think the most likely thing is that not much will change though.
I feel like there was some other major talking point I was supposed to write about, but for some reason it has completely left my mind. Please comment if you know what it might have been and I'll add something. Next up Sagan Tosu away on Sunday which I’m really looking forward to, particularly as the result doesn’t matter and I can just enjoy a nice stadium and nice shochu. Well, I say nice shochu, but I’m most definitely not an expert and find it quite difficult to drink, but for some reason, always seem to have a very nice time after I’ve finished my first glass. So cheers to our progression in the ACL, (hang on, did I even mention that had happened? I guess you knew anyway) and cheers to the final game being one in a good stadium!
Team
GK 1. JUNG Sung-Ryong
DF 13. YAMANE Miki
DF 31. YAMAMURA Kazuya
DF 3. OMINAMI Takuma (Yellow card 33')
DF 2. NOBORIZATO KyoheiMF 8. TACHIBANADA Kento
MF 16. SEKO Tatsuki
MF 14. WAKIZAKA Yasuto
FW 41. IENAGA Akihiro
FW 9. LEANDRO DAMIAO
FW 23. MARCINHO
FW 23. MARCINHO
GK 22. HAYASAKA Yuki
GK 99. KAMIFUKUMOTO Naoto
GK 99. KAMIFUKUMOTO Naoto
DF 4. JESIEL
MF 6. JOAO SCHMIDT (on for SEKO 85')
FW 11. KOBAYASHI Yu (on for LEANDRO DAMIAO 67')
DF 15. TANABE Shuto
FW 17. TONO Daiya (Yellow card 86') (on for MARCINHO 67')
DF 15. TANABE Shuto
FW 17. TONO Daiya (Yellow card 86') (on for MARCINHO 67')
FW 18. Bafetimbi GOMIS
FW 20. YAMADA Shin (on for IENAGA 73')DF 29. TAKAI Kota
FW 30. SEGAWA Yusuke
Goals
LEANDRO DAMIAO (Frontale) 50' 2-0
MARCINHO (Frontale) 60' 3-0
KOBAYASHI (Frontale) 69' 4-0
YAMANE (Frontale) 88' 5-0
Highlights
