Vs Kashiwa Reysol (away) 12/10/25 Levain Cup Semi Final 2nd Leg

Kashiwa Reysol 3 - 1 Kawasaki Frontale (5 - 4 on agg.) 

We came into this game with one foot in the final. When going ahead after four minutes we could have started making our plans for pre- and post-game activities around the National Stadium on final day. And maybe that’s what our team were doing as after we scored everything fell to pieces. It was a humiliating collapse, definitely helped along by the wanker of a referee. But when your plan after four minutes seems to be not to shut up shop, but something more like as frantically as possible try to hang on to an admittedly massive at the time lead against a team who love attacking, rather than try to score yourself, well, there’s a chance that things won’t work out your way. Thankfully Kashiwa’s shooting was absolutely shit in the first half. As it was in the previous leg actually. Sadly they managed to sort that out in style after half time, all helped along by their friend in the middle. Here are the usual headings in a slightly different order.

Us - 

I’m not sure Hasebe’s changes after the red card worked. Actually, I’m being too diplomatic here. They clearly failed completely. Maybe it made sense at that stage to try to hang on to what we had by putting some more defenders on, leaving us a bit light up front. Not sure it was a good idea to put on two players who between them had exactly 113 minutes of experience playing for us either side of our best full back who’s most recently been our only permanent fixture in the middle of defence. But to be honest, I guess Hasebe didn’t have much choice as at least one of them had to come on. The big problem was that if we conceded, the game got back to a draw and we then had to actually try to score, we’d be in big trouble. This is exactly what happened. I don’t think there is a full replay of the game online for me to check the veracity of the things I thought at the time at the stadium and to be honest, even if there were, I’m not sure I’d be up for spending any more time thinking about this turd of a performance. We absolutely didn’t deserve to win. But we probably should have been able to hang on to a three goal lead, shouldn’t we? Our Jekyll and Hyde season continues. Now there truly is nothing to play for. Which is a bit of luck as we’re totally fucked with injuries and suspensions. Bring on the end of the season. 

Ref - 

I knew we were in trouble as soon as I saw the ref was Imamura. Sorry, I should give him his full title ‘that useless arsehole of a referee with an eternal burning passion for sending off Frontale players Imamura’. I think three of their goals came from ridiculous decisions he’d given against us. We had the play pulled back for a VAR long after the game had restarted. (Rule according to the IFAB - ‘If play has stopped and been restarted, the referee may not undertake a ‘review’ except for a case of mistaken identity or for a potential sending-off offence relating to violent conduct, spitting, biting or extremely offensive, insulting and/or abusive action(s).’). We also had VAR used to give a yellow card. (Rule - ‘Yellow cards and free-kicks cannot be awarded as a result of a VAR check’). Imamura always does things his own way but maybe he’d be less infuriating if he actually followed the fucking rules. Regardless of whether the decision was actually right or not, when you have a ref who doesn’t even know the protocol it’s pretty irritating. We had an official who seemed determined to book anyone on our team who was foreign. He presumably got slightly confused by Sai’s surname. He was less fond of giving out cards the other way. It’s apparently no problem if the whole Kashiwa team chase the ref around the pitch whining, almost pushing him over. (Rule - ‘The players and team officials must not surround the referee or attempt to influence if a decision is reviewed, the review process or the final decision.’). It worked though. He changed his decision after they did it. Also fine is the whole of the bench running into the pitch when they scored. Nothing to see here! I’ve noticed that Imamura is from Aichi which might explain why he apparently hates us so much as most people connected to football from that prefecture seem to. Irregardless of how you feel about the red card and the yellow for Sai, it was the never ending torrent of every fucking decision being given to them which put the nails in the coffin which we were doing our best to build for ourselves. The Romanic yellow was insane! But by that stage it was clear that every time I shouted out disgusted at a foul from Kashiwa it was inevitably going to end up with them being given a free kick. Kashiwa’s attacking and our chaotic defending were responsible for us conceding. But Imamura is a useless arsehole and it was his attitude and incompetence that got us in those positions. In a recent blog post about a game he was in charge of, I said that he wasn’t responsible for us not winning but ‘once again he made mistake after mistake in a game but presumably went home thinking he’d done a great job.’ I think that stands for this game too.

(I’ve now somewhat unwisely watched the highlights and my fury about that twat of a ref has gone into overdrive. Their first goal was down to him to being so close to Erison as he tried to clear it that he was practically tackling him. I wish Erison had just blasted the ball into the ref’s nether regions for the dual purposes of getting a drop ball and to cause as much discomfort to the ref as possible. It’s what he deserved. The highlights video is basically just an Imamura blooper reel. The red card looks ridiculous. Did the ref really think that Uremovic was intentionally rolling into the back of the player. His initial decision of a yellow was right as it clearly was a foul but thanks to the whinging of every member of the Kashiwa team apart from the keeper who were surrounding the ref to the point that he almost fell over, he thought he’d throw them a bone. The winner looks dubious too, with Hosoya absolutely yanking the shirt of Sasaki’s back before he ‘won’ the ball. No surprise Imamura or Okabe on VAR didn’t notice that. Imamura was probably worried about getting surrounded again. If it had gone to extra time it was only a matter of time before we lost anyway, but just fuck off Imamura). 

Them - 

Worthy winners, amply assisted by that twat Imamura. But blimey they are a bunch of divers. But you can’t blame them as almost every dive got them what they were after. Away fans are always treated like shit at their stadium, so recently we’ve done our best to get there as late as possible and leave as soon as possible afterwards, spending absolutely no money there. The music they play in their stadium is the absolute shittiest of shit heavy rock. Their fucking trumpets are really tacky and really annoying. Their tifo was somewhat amusingly made up by their fans holding up yellow bin bags. I can’t quite decide if their diving and play-acting or the referee’s absolute uselessness was more annoying. I think it’s probably the latter. If we’d won this match I would have wished them luck for the league, but in the immediate aftermath of this shit show, I think I somewhat pettily hope that their season ends up as successful as ours has been. But that means I’d be supporting Hiroshima in the final. Hmmmmmm.

Next up, who fucking cares! Actually, it’s Shimizu at home next weekend. As these games are absolutely meaningless now, maybe we can play some of the other players who haven’t had a look in. Although to be honest, it’s probably only a matter of time before everyone will have played due to us having absolutely no options due to injuries and suspensions. The good news is that we’re back to daytime games now, so I can get a decent amount of boozing in after the match and still go to bed at a reasonable time. There you go, I found something positive to finish on.

Team

GK 1. JUNG Sung-Ryong
DF 31. VAN VERMESKERKEN Sai (Yellow card 45+3') 

DF 22. Filip UREMOVIC (Red card 56')

DF 5. SASAKI Asahi
DF 15. TANABE Shuto
MF 19. KAWAHARA So
MF 6. YAMAMOTO Yuki
MF 14. WAKIZAKA Yasuto 
FW 17. ITO Tatsuya
FW 9. ERISON

FW 23. MARCINHO

Subs

GK 21. ANDO Shunsuke
MF 8. TACHIBANADA Kento (on for YAMAMOTO 74')
FW 11. KOBAYASHI Yu
FW 24. MIYAGI Ten
DF 27. KAMIHASHI Ryota (on for MARCINHO 59')
DF 30. NODA Hiroto
DF 39. TSUCHIYA Kaito (on for ITO 59')
FW 41. IENAGA Akihiro (on for TANABE 83')
FW 91. Lazar ROMANIC (Yellow card 76') (on for ERISON 74')

Goals
WAKIZAKA (Frontale) 4' 0-1
KAKITA (Kashiwa) 26' 1-1
NAKAMA (Kashiwa) 73' 2-1
HOSOYA (Kashiwa) 77' 3-1
HOSOYA (Kashiwa) 90+2' 4-1

Highlights

Vs Shonan Bellmare (home) 2/4/25 J League match 8

 

Kawasaki Frontale 2 - 0 Shonan Bellmare

Two local derbies in a row and two wins in a row! It’s definitely the case that the feeling after this game wasn’t as euphoric as after the win against Chofu though. There are a few things that contribute to this I guess. For a start, away games are always more fun. We scored three times in that game and only twice in this game and both of these goals weren’t exactly the most exciting, one being bundled over the line, (with the inevitable consequent fear that VAR would probably find some reason to rule it out. Thankfully, it didn’t on this occasion), and the other being a late penalty which added a little bit of gloss onto the scoreline. The fact is though that we do tend to stuff up games against Shonan, so getting the win in this one without too much fuss should be a great encouragement to us. As I suggested previously, this wasn’t a great game, but we got the job done and now are in a position that we could top the league if we played and won our game in hand. So whilst no-one will have had their socks knocked off by a 2-0 home win with some slightly iffy goals, we have to be pleased with the way things are going at the moment, don’t we? With Machida away coming up on Sunday, and with almost no notes made during this game, this is going to be brief.

Us -

A little bit of rotation in this game. I probably would have liked to see a bit more as the schedule is nuts at the moment, but I can quite understand Hasebe not wanting to go overboard as the last time he made big changes we lost (Kyoto home). I had thought that maybe Erison would come in for Yamada as that seems to be the way things have been going recently, but I suppose that given that both of then scored at the weekend, it would have been harsh to drop Yamada. One thing we probably need to think about though is the fact that Yamada really doesn’t seem to be able to play the role that Erison does when he’s in the team. Erison is great at winning the ball and laying it off to start attacks. Yamada isn’t. With him doing that job, the best we can really hope for is to get a free kick from a foul on Yamada as the role doesn’t really seem to suit him. It would be great if we could play both of them together but obviously that would mean we need to change the formation and that wouldn’t work for Wakizaka. So I guess Hasebe has a few things to think about in that respect. At the other end of the pitch, we’ve conceded only three times in seven games, which is pretty amazing. It’s fortunate that Takai and Maruyama playing together seems to be working so well, as at the start of the year we didn’t have many other choices. Jesiel was back on the pitch in the second half of this game though so maybe we’ll now have a few more options. I wonder if we could be rotating the full backs a bit more though. Sai is ready and waiting, and whilst I think we’ve looked more solid with Sasaki and Miura playing, it might make sense to occasionally give Miura or Sasaki a rest. Yamaguchi didn’t have much to do in this game thanks to Shonan not having any shots on target, but he’s still looking solid. Long may that continue. I think it’s tough to work out what the relative strengths of teams at the moment. It’s still early in the season and plenty of teams seem to have had good spells and some bad games. But with most of the teams having now played eight games, we’re approaching a quarter of the season finished so perhaps we can be a bit bolder when it comes to suggesting who is good and who isn’t. Machida up next will be a big test as they are a bunch of clogger thugs who are annoyingly effective. Hopefully we can get a result like we did there last year. As there’s not much else to say about the game from my limited memory of it, I’ll finish this section with some more general things I’ve noticed that may or may not be significant. I’m really impressed that with Hasebe in charge we’re not taking the ball into the corner flag to hang on to a lead. It’s never a good look, so I’m happy we’re continuing to try to play and make chances right till the end. I’ll be happy about this right up until we concede after dropping a clanger trying to score a second goal and ending up drawing or losing. I’m also impressed that Hasebe seems to make his changes up front a bit earlier than we have been used to. I never think it’s fair to give a striker ten minutes and expect them to play themselves into form, so I think it’s good that Hasebe gave Erison 30 minutes in this match. Maybe some people might have been surprised to see Miyagi take the penalty at the end of this game, but apparently Hasebe’s system is to give the player who won the penalty first refusal. Makes sense to me, and of course in the case of Miyagi, there was never any way he was going to give it to anyone else. Oh, and one final thing that’s not particularly appropriate for the ‘us’ section, but Yokohama F Marinos second from bottom having scored a wonderful four goals in seven games is something that can warm the hearts of every decent person, isn’t it?

Them and ref -

I have lumped these two things together as there’s not much to say about either. After a good start to the season it seems that Shonan might be reverting to type slightly, which makes it all the more surprising that we were able to beat them at home. It was a little disappointing that after having to pay the price for quite a lot of his overly adventurous cock ups when he was playing for us, we didn’t get any really gifts from Kamifukumoto. But I’m pleased for him that he’s doing well there. In this match it didn’t really ever look like we were in much danger, but I don’t know how much of that is down to our defence and how much is down to Shonan. There was definitely a feeling that we’d end up conceding a late equaliser, but at the same time, I couldn’t really see where that might come from, (apart from us dropping the afforementioned massive clanger). The ref in this match was Imamura who I have despised since the idiotic way he sent off Kozuka at the Saitama Stadium. With this in mind, I was quite surprised to see him have a decent first 15 minutes. He soon reverted to type though and got my goat. But I guess the truth is that he didn’t do that much wrong really. Hmmm. Two games in a row that I’ve said that. Am I going soft in my old age? As I said before, the real test will come when we lose, but perish the thought, are J League refs becoming not quite so useless? Presumably not. This has probably just been a blip. We’ll see I guess.

So a workmanlike win, which didn’t dazzle, but provided a bit of fun during the match, and plenty of satisfaction after the match. I don’t think there’s much to be learnt from this game, so let’s just move on to Sunday away at Machida. If Hasebe can get one over the league’s current most irritating manager, that will be great. I missed this match last year due to sickness, so if we get beaten, you can all blame me. I wonder if we’ll see Oshima back again? If we do, I worry for him against dirty, dirty Machida. Machida are one of two teams that are ahead of us in the league at the moment (both of them have played an extra game though…), so if we can win against them we can guarantee that we’ll finish the week at least one spot higher in the table. Fingers crossed that can happen!

 

Team

GK 98. YAMAGUCHI Louis
DF 5. SASAKI Asahi
DF 2. TAKAI Kota
DF 35. MARUYAMA Yuichi
DF 13. MIURA Sota (Yellow card 17')
MF 8. TACHIBANADA Kento
MF 19. KAWAHARA So
MF 17. ITO Tatsuya
MF 14. WAKIZAKA Yasuto
MF 23. MARCINHO
FW 20. YAMADA Shin

Subs

GK 1. JUNG Sung-Ryong
DF 4. JESIEL (on for TAKAI 61')

MF 6. YAMAMOTO Yuki
FW 9. ERISON (on for YAMADA 61')
MF 16. OZEKI Yuto (on for WAKIZAKA 82')

FW 18. SEGAWA Yusuke
FW 24. MIYAGI Ten (on for MARCINHO 82')
DF 31. VAN WERMESKERKEN Sai
MF 41. IENAGA Akihiro (on for ITO 74')

My Frontale Man Of The Match

In the stadium they gave this to Kawahara which was kind of unusual as usually it goes to a goalscorer. Flashscore gave it to Tachibanada, which is also unusual as they always give it to a goalscorer. (Flashscore also gave our lowest score to Yamaguchi which seems a little harsh given that he had no shots to save). Sofa Score gave it to Miyagi who played only ten minutes of the game. So basically, your guess is as good as mine really. Who knows? Oh, maybe it should go to…

WARUNTA - it was his night in the stadium, (Paint it Purple!), and that meant that we all got a Warunta hooded blanket and given that it was cold and I love freebies, let’s say that Warunta was at least the man of the night, if not the match.

Goals

WAKIZAKA (Frontale) 50' 1-0
MIYAGI (Frontale) 90+2' PEN 2-0

Highlights

Vs Machida Zelvia (away) 5/10/24 J League match 33

Machida Zelvia 1 - 4 Kawasaki Frontale

As is probably obvious from the result of this game, I didn’t go. This time it was due to me being sick though. So sick that I slept through the first half and even when I watched the second, I did so horizontally and with not a great deal of conviction. All I’ll say is that Oniki went back to 442 and almost the same starting line up as against Niigata and once again we scored lots of goals. Whether he’ll stick with it in the next Levain Cup game or revert to his beloved and ineffective 433, we’ll see. I’m prepared to listen to financial offers from either Frontale fans, opposition fans or Frontale haters as to whether I should attend next weekend. If I have the power to curse us, I might as well get something out of it, right? Send me a message with your pledge.

Next up the first leg against Niigata, away on Wednesday. I’m not going so we can maybe be positive about that game.

Team

GK 1. JUNG Sung-Ryong

DF 31. VAN WERMESKERKEN Sai
DF 5. SASAKI Asahi

DF 2. TAKAI Kota
DF 13. MIURA Sota

MF 19. KAWAHARA So
MF 77. YAMAMOTO Yuki

MF 14. WAKIZAKA Yasuto
MF 23. MARCINHO
FW 20. YAMADA Shin
FW 9. ERISON

Subs

GK 22. HAYASAKA Yuki
MF 8. TACHIBANADA Kento (on for YAMAMOTO 79')

FW 11. KOBAYASHI Yu (on for ERISON 86')

MF 17. TONO Daiya (on for MARCINHO 79')

FW 30. SEGAWA Yusuke
DF 35. MARUYAMA Yuichi (on for TAKAI 31')
FW 41. IENAGA Akihiro (on for YAMADA 79')

 
Goals

NAKASHIMA (Machida) 13' 1-0
MIURA (Frontale) 28' 1-1

YAMADA (Frontale) 38' 1-2
ERISON (Frontale) PEN 50' 1-3
MARCINHO (Frontale) 71' 1-4

Highlights

Vs Sanfrecce Hiroshima (home) 30/6/24 J League match 21

Kawasaki Frontale 1 - 1 Sanfrecce Hiroshima

Fantastic! Entertaining! Enlightening! Really fun! Much better than things have been recently! But that’s enough about my day. I suppose you’re not reading this to hear how much fun I had taking one of my students to their first game, and rather to hear me moan about us once again being unable to win. The match itself, well, it wasn’t the best, but actually it wasn’t that bad either. Certainly not good enough to spend a lot of time writing a long blog post about though. It is now three draws in a row, and three leads thrown away in a row, and although the flaws have been consistent, there has been a little bit of variation in our performances and my feelings about the games. Away at Niigata started pretty well but we ended up running out of energy and almost fell to pieces completely. Shonan at home was just crap really but ended up with the same result. This game was more like the former, with us making a pretty good fist of it, but once again not being able to hold on to a lead and being quite lucky not to lose in the end. Perhaps the comparison falls down slightly when you consider that against Niigata we looked like we were on top and were bossing the game. In this match, we played more like we were coming up against a stronger opponent, (the last two years show this to be true, I guess). In the past we’d probably expect Sanfrecce to defend in numbers and then break quickly to snatch a goal. In this game we did that to Sanfrecce and it seemed to be working pretty well for about the first hour. Of course there were some dicey moments but I felt our lead wasn’t really that against the run of play. But naturally things fell to pieces. I don’t know if it’s completely Oniki’s fault, (I’m even boring myself with my consistent blaming of him recently), but you’ve got to say that after he brought on an extra centre back to, I guess, ‘shore things up’ we conceded shortly afterwards. I’d be hard pushed to tell you where anyone in front of the defence was playing after those changes too. It was a bit of a mess. But even so, when the inevitable equaliser came it was gutting, particularly as there was a big old deflection involved. To be fair, the initial shot that lead to our goal was similarly deflected so probably can’t moan that much, but it did feel like it was just the perfect way for us to concede to make it feel as disappointing as possible. Anyway, I can’t be bothered to write too much about this game so let’s get the ‘important’ points out of the way,

The team was pretty similar to the team that was pretty bad against Shonan. As he hasn’t been involved for a couple of games now, I think we can assume that Ienaga has been added to the injured list. Jesiel replaced Ominami which I guess shows that Jesiel is being strategically rested so probably isn’t really capable of playing that often anymore. He certainly looks like he’s half injured most of the time. I don’t know if this is age catching up with him or it’s a long term injury that’s plaguing him. I wonder if he’ll only be a bit part player in the future. If that’s the case, it’s quite sad. Yamamoto also has been absent for two games in a row. So maybe he’s inured again. Or maybe it’s just the return of Oshima that’s keeping him out. Tono on the right in the Ienaga spot wasn’t as good as him in the Wakizaka spot. With Wakizaka back, I can’t imagine Tono will get a go there again in a hurry. If Ienaga is injured, maybe Patrick Verhon could be an option up front on the right. Or Yamada. Or Kobayashi, Or maybe we could change the formation. No chance of that happening obviously! Marcinho continued his goal scoring run. Thankfully someone is scoring. I’d say Marcinho is now getting somewhere near to back to his best. Not quite there yet, he’s still hanging on to the ball for a bit too long, and some of his shots are not very good at all. But at least we have some kind of attacking threat there now. The main striker still isn’t scoring, but that’s been the case in most games for the last few years so that’s so expected that it’s probably not even worth mentioning. Sasaki had another good game. Seko too. We were alright! We definitely had chances at the end to get a winner, but there were some shocking decisions made that prevented us from doing so. Kobayashi will presumably really regret not passing to Miyagi. That one was particularly galling. Not sure we would have completely deserved to win, but it wouldn’t have been wholly unfair on how the game had gone. Bit of an Oniki moan, we definitely didn’t use our subs very well, but this is in part because we had to change Marcinho due to an injury. (Guess it’s natural that our only recent goal scorer should get injured too). I don’t know why his first change is always a single one though. On a few occasions recently we’ve been prevented from using all of our subs due to an early change of just one player. And pretty often the subs don’t really change anything. On this occasion, maybe they did, but not particularly for the better. I would have liked to have seen Gomis get the chance to knock the Sanfrecce back three about a bit. I dunno though, not particularly surprised we ended up drawing. Pleased that we didn’t lose. Gutted by the way we conceded. Oh, but there was one more emotion that was present in the stadium, wasn’t there?



 

Fury. Yes, once again we were blessed with an absolutely useless referee, Imamura, most famous recently for his out of control emotional explosion as he sent off Kozuka away at Urawa. Before the match I commented that Imamura is a classic example of short man syndrome. During the match I was surprised to see that he’s not actually that short, so he doesn’t even have insecurity about his height as an excuse for his horrendous attitude. There were SO MANY bad decisions in this game that at one stage the whole Frontale bench were standing at the side of the pitch shouting at him. Even in this situation he failed to do the right thing, which clearly would have been to book a translator or something to send the message that people should calm down. Once again I’ve got a rough voice the day after a match, not because of celebrating a goal but because of screaming at a ref. I know it’s not a very edifying thing to do but it certainly helps me express my frustration a little. Of course, we didn’t fail to win because of Imamura, but once again he made mistake after mistake in a game but presumably went home thinking he’d done a great job. To close this section, here are some words about Imamura from past blog posts that probably are still relevant:



 

‘Whilst I always moan about refs, I don’t think I have screamed so loudly at one for a long time. Let’s hope it’s a long time till we ever see him at one of our games again.’

‘Totally lost control of the game and of course was way out of his depth’

‘Clearly bottled some big decisions’

 



Good to see he’s at least consistent in his shitness.

Next up Jubilo Iwata away, a team who we conceded five goals to last time we played them. Our squad seems to be full of injuries. We haven’t won in our last four league games. Any bright sparks that our manager accidentally stumbles on are quickly extinguished before the next match. So, basically, I’m not particularly confident. But at least it will be a nice little day trip! And who knows, perhaps we could even avoid that whole massive capitulation thing that seems to be part of our game plan recently. Fingers crossed! 

 

Team

GK 1. JUNG Sung-Ryong
DF 31. VAN WERMESKERKEN Sai
DF 4. JESIEL
DF 2. TAKAI Kota (Yellow card 90+1')
DF 5. SASAKI Asahi (Yellow card 67')
MF 16. SEKO Tatsuki
MF 8. TACHIBANADA Kento
MF 14. WAKIZAKA Yasuto (Yellow card 35')
FW 17. TONO Daiya
FW 20. YAMADA Shin
FW 23. MARCINHO

 

Subs

GK 99. KAMIFUKUMOTO Naoto
DF 3. OMINAMI Takuma (on for WAKIZAKA 82')
MF 6. ZE RICARDO
MF 10. OSHIMA Ryota (on for TONO 82')
FW 11. KOBAYASHI Yu (on for YAMADA 62')
FW 18. Bafetimbi GOMIS
FW 24. MIYAGI Ten (on for MARCINHO 65')
 
Goals

MARCINHO (Frontale) 23' 1-0
MITSUTA (Sanfrecce) 88' 1-1

 

My Frontale Man Of The Match

 

No messing around with this. And clearly I’m biased again but…

SASAKI Asahi and SEKO Tatsuki - just for the fact that they once again stood out.

Highlights

Vs Urawa Reds (away) 11/6/23 J League match 18

Urawa Reds 1 - 1 Kawasaki Frontale

Our second 2023 trip to the Saitama Stadium is done, and at least we had something to be at least a little cheerful about this time. An absolute clanger of an own goal to draw us level. It’s a bit of luck as we only had one shot on target in the whole game. Even more special when you consider that shot had nothing to do with our goal, and also given that we’d pretty much given them their goal after a bit of Iikura style messing around from Kamifukumoto. To be honest, it’s been long overdue that we got caught out in that way. We’ve really ridden out luck since he came in to the team. People will tell you that he’s being picked because he’s so good on the ball and is basically a sweeper keeper for us. More often than not it turns out that after playing the ball around between the keeper and the central defenders a few times, the opposition pressure ramps up and Kamifukumoto boots the ball up the field and either off the pitch or to their keeper. I’m not sure if he will be punished and get dropped in the same way that Sung-Ryong was for a bit of dodgy keeping. I doubt it. It’s a shame for him as I thought he was having his best game for us right up until he ran almost halfway up the pitch to meet an Urawa goal kick and headed the ball directly to their attacker in the centre circle.  Credit where credit’s due, he’d made some important saves before. Debit where debit’s due (is that the opposite? Maybe not…) it was a horrendous fuck up. Neutrality where neutrality’s due (really stretching this now…), our tactics were probably at least partly to blame. The pros of these tactics so far seem to be a much higher possibility of lots of passing of the ball in non-dangerous areas. That’s about it, I think, and sadly completed passes don’t get you bonus points.

That’s the two goals glossed over then. I thought the starting line up was the usual Oniki ‘don’t change it even if it’s broken’ style and we started the game in a horrible state. Similarly at the start of the second half. I don’t know if it is fair  to say that Oniki’s influence on and interactions with the team cause complete chaos and disarray. I don’t know if it’s fair but I will say it anyway. To be honest though, I thought this was a better performance than some others recently. Aside from some dodgy moments we were really bossing the game for long periods. Really bossing but of course not really making any dangerous chances. Ienaga seemed to start horribly but wake up and get somewhat back to his old self after the comedy own goal. I think that’s been the case in other games too. He doesn’t quite seem up for it until it becomes fun. Maybe he likes a challenge and waits for us to be in the hole before he gets going. Segawa missed an absolute beauty of a chance and then didn’t do much else. But I’m not going to point the finger at him either as we were slightly scuppered by the red card. Haven’t seen the replay yet, but the consensus seems to be that it was right. (I have now and you can’t really complain about it. You can complain about the total insane reaction of the ref as he got out the red card, absolutely losing his shit and screaming at Kozuka, He also did the shame when he booked Ienaga. Clearly had totally lost control of the game and of course was way out of his depth. But also, Imamura, are you ok? You don’t look like you are). It’s a shame for Kozuka as he’s been doing well recently. I wonder if he will get mercy from Oniki. Not sure about that either. It’s no surprise that the ref gave a red anyway as he seemed to be leaning heavily in Urawa’s direction. Their fans though seemed to think they’d been cheated by the ref. Perhaps they thought Kozuka deserved more than a red card. A prison sentence maybe? Perhaps they were sad that he only played one extra minute of injury time, presumably waiting for them to score, but not long enough in their eyes. Perhaps the majority of their fans are just spoilt brats who after their fantastic and classy ACL win, (two shots on target in 180 minutes), think that they deserve to win every game now. I don’t think they’re that good. They have definitely been better than us previously this season, but not that much. And this year have only beaten us due to a shocker of an own goal when the ball bounced of Joao without him knowing anything about it. We have been shite this year and have a ridiculous amount of points considering quite how bad we’ve played and have been managed. Somehow we’re only five points behind them in the league! Wonder how long their new coach will get. There was a hell of a lot of booing and whistling in this game. In recent years I’ve constantly said their fans aren’t anywhere near as good as people say and as soon as anything goes against them they just boo and whinge. I think this year they’ve been better, even occasionally actually… singing…. But once again, as soon as the tide turns slightly against them the boos are back in town. I guess that’s what the ‘lads’, ‘boys’ and (for some reason last year but not seen since) ‘garcons’ of the foreign teams with ‘passionate’ support that they admire so much do. Anyway, it’s delightful to hear them booing so much. It’s not so delightful that we had one shot on target in 90 minutes.

 

To sum up, I’d say this game wasn’t great, probably should have been a 0-0, but at the same time showed a bit of progress for us. But not that much progress. And when Oniki gets involved things seem to take a turn for the worse somehow. Next weekend we have Nagoya away, who will probably prove a sterner test. Particularly if we start horribly again. But for now, let’s enjoy this 1-1 draw. (How far we’ve fallen for that to be something that’s enjoyed. But I guess the best part for me is the fact that the Urawa fans were so narked!). Onwards and probably not upwards, but we’d probably all settle for onwards and not downwards right now, wouldn’t we?

 

Team 

 
GK 99. KAMIFUKUMOTO Naoto

DF 13. YAMANE Miki

DF 3. OMINAMI Takuma

DF 7. KURUMAYA Shintaro

DF 2. NOBORIZATO Kyohei

MF 6. JOAO SCHMIDT

MF 14. WAKIZAKA Yasuto

MF 10. OSHIMA Ryota

FW 41. IENAGA Akihiro (Yellow card 81')

FW 33. MIYASHIRO Taisei

FW 17. TONO Daiya
 

Subs

 

GK 1. JUNG Sung-Ryong

MF 8. TACHIBANADA Kento (on for JOAO SCHMIDT 83')

MF 16. SEKO Tatsuki (on for WAKIZAKA 83')

FW 20. YAMADA Shin (on for MIYASHIRO 83')

FW 30. SEGAWA Yusuke (on for TONO 64')

MF 31. YAMAMURA Kazuya
MF 49. KOZUKA Kazuki (Red card 78') (on for OSHIMA 74')

My Frontale Man Of The Match

At the end of the first half, I was seriously considering giving this to Kamifukumoto. Obviously I can’t do that now. There were two massive flags in front of us which were waving much more than normal and much more than I wanted, so much of the game was invisible. This also explains why I have only two bad photos of the game. Less than usual, and also worse than usual. With this ignorance in mind I’ll give it to….

KURUMAYA Shintaro and OMINAMI Takuma - did alright. Maybe. At least that’s what it felt from like behind those flags.
 

Goals

 

SEKINE (Urawa) 53' 1-0

NISHIKAWA (Urawa) OWN GOAL 58' 1-1

 

Highlights

 

Vs Kyoto Sanga (away) 3/5/23 J League match 11

Kyoto Sanga 0 - 1 Kawasaki Frontale

Back home now after a nice trip that involved two games where we miraculously managed to find some form and win twice! Well, the second part is perhaps a bit less certain but we definitely did win twice. I quite enjoyed keeping the last post brief and as I’m back home with a hell of a lot of things I need to catch up with, this one will be done in a similar way. We’ll see whether I return back to the lengthy rambles for subsequent games. I will divide things up on this occasion with the usual headings but will not go into much detail.

Us -

We went with the same team again as I kind of expected and you can’t really blame Oniki for sticking with a winning formula after a long time of trying to find one. But we looked really tired in this game. I think some changes need to be made for the next match, but I said that last time too. In this match we weren’t very good, and a 0-0 probably would have been the fairest score. Both teams had goals rightly disallowed and apart from, that not much happened. We had four shots in the first half and five in the second. But in the second I think all of them apart from the goal came from the same late attacking move where we were foiled on numerous occasions. It’s also telling that Kobayashi was the shots leader in the game stats with three, despite only coming on in the 80th minute. Anyone that thinks that this could be the start of a good run should probably take into consideration quite how average we were again. But I guess that’s no surprise when the same players have started three games in ten days. Probably one bright point we can take from the game is that Kobayashi and Marcinho were on the bench again. Although the former’s recent absences were more to do with not being picked rather than being injured I think. Perhaps he’s given Oniki a selection headache for the next match. Perhaps… And of course, another bright point is the fact that we won again, and this could help us get some of the confidence we have been in desperate need of for a while. Perhaps winning so late on and when we probably didn’t deserve to might give us another little boost. Let’s hope so!

Them -

I think Kyoto looked a bit more positive than last year when they just seemed content to dive their way to a 0-0 but ended up winning thanks to our generosity. I don’t know if their captain Kawasaki was the player I moaned a lot about in this game last year, but if he wasn’t he certainly is a worthy successor for whoever that was as both of them spent most of their time on the pitch writhing around on the floor in fake agony. Delighted we won in the way we did after so much fakery from their players. Their fans gave Kamifukumoto a big old boo at the start of the match and continued to do so every time he touched the ball. Not sure what he did when we scored but would like to see the footage of it. I can understand their feelings to some extent though. Not sure what they had against Kurumaya who got a load of booing for getting injured by a hack from one of their players though. Maybe a hack... I can’t remember and it was at the other end of the pitch, but they were definitely booing him. I’m not sure how I can fit in the one zinger I thought of for this post so I’ll just wedge it in here at the end of this paragraph. Kyoto in Golden Week is insanely busy with everywhere being extremely crowded. Everywhere except the home sections of the Kyocera Stadium that is. We must have accounted for something approaching almost half of the attendance, with light blue shirts all the way to the half way line. I guess the train journey is a bit of a pain in the arse though. But it is a nice stadium, and now has Pilsner Urquell available in proper glassware in the football diner part that you can go into before you enter the stadium. Good price too!

Ref -

Let’s keep this brief and just say that Imamura is obsessed with free kicks being taken from the exact correct spot but doesn’t understand how to play an advantage. And was wildly inconsistent, particularly when it came to bookings. Whilst I always moan about refs, I don’t think I have screamed so loudly at one for a long time. Let’s hope it’s a long time till we ever see him at one of our games again.

Next up Sagan Tosu at home on Sunday. I’m not going to make any predictions about line-ups as I should by now realise that Oniki does things his own way. It would be lovely to make it three wins in a row, but Tosu at Todoroki is more often than not a draw, and usually a 0-0. We still haven’t won at home in the league, so it would be lovely to round off Golden Week with a third win in a row, but that might be a bit optimistic. Fingers crossed though!

 

Team 

 
GK 99. KAMIFUKUMOTO Naoto

DF 13. YAMANE Miki (Yellow card 53')

DF 29. TAKAI Kota (Yellow card 12')
DF 7. KURUMAYA Shintaro

DF 2. NOBORIZATO Kyoehi

MF 6. JOAO SCHMIDT (Yellow card 27')

MF 16. SEKO Tatsuki

MF 14. WAKIZAKA Yasuto

FW 41. IENAGA Akihiro

FW 33. MIYASHIRO Taisei

FW 17. TONO Daiya

Subs

GK 1. JUNG Sung-Ryong

DF 3. OMINAMI Takuma (on for NOBORIZATO 74')

MF 8. TACHIBANADA Kento

MF 10. OSHIMA Ryota (on for SEKO 67')

FW 11. KOBAYASHI Yu (Yellow card 90+4') (on for MIYASHIRO 80')

FW 20. YAMADA Shin (on for IENAGA 74')

FW 23. MARCINHO (on for TONO 67')

My Frontale Man Of The Match

 

This wasn’t a vintage performance so it’s a bit tricky. I think Takai and Joao had good games but most players looked quite tired. It’s a cliche to give it to a goalscorer but, why not…

KOBAYASHI Yu - came on with a drive and purpose that really helped us get over the line and shot and SCORED! Also it was generous of him to take his shirt off and gave Imamura the chance to actually get one decision in the match right by booking him. 

 

Goals

 

KOBAYASHI (Frontale) 90+4' 0-1

 

Highlights