Vs FC Tokyo (away) 2/5/26 J League East match 14

FC Tokyo 2 - 0 Kawasaki Frontale 

Well that was shit, wasn’t it? Maybe not quite as bad as against Urawa but pretty close. And at least in the Urawa game we had two shots on target. In this one we managed just one. Three shots on target in 180 minutes of football. Truly woeful stuff. And still Hasebe seems to think we’re making progress. His post match comments are top level gaslighting at this stage. He says our defence is slowly improving, apparently unaware that we’re still conceding goals for fun. He says we need to improve our attacking. No shit! Don’t forget his intention when he arrived was to tighten up our defence a touch and keep the exciting attacking. He’s done the opposite with both of those things. And apparently hasn’t really noticed. I know this season is a pointless waste of time but it would be nice if we weren’t playing like we had that at the forefront of our minds. An attack every now and then would be nice. And it’s not as if Hasebe is using the opportunity of having a pointless season to try some things out. Even the slightest tweak is immediately erased and we return to the same old crap. The booing at the end of the game spoke volumes. I don’t particularly like to boo, but on this occasion I did. You could argue that it’s the fault of the manager rather than the players, but there definitely are some of them that are stealing a living at the moment. As I’m currently on a train and won’t be home till shortly before the next match, this post will be quite threadbare till I have time to add the usual bits. But let’s be honest, I don’t think anyone wants to read much about another shitty game, so I think it doesn’t really matter. 

A few words about this travesty. Hasebe did exactly what I hoped he would after the Urawa debacle. He switched to 4-4-2 and dropped Wakizaka. Sadly in a Trump rivalling U-turn, he brought Wakizaka on at half time. And also Marcinho, who let’s be honest, has really struggled recently. So two of our most ineffective players against Urawa were supposed to come on and turn the game around. Marcinho isn’t having a good year. At the moment he only seems to be able to run fast and occasionally successfully dribble, but his passing and crossing are awful right now. I wish I could be so positive about Wakizaka, whose main contribution seems to be giving the ball away stupidly to start dangerous  opposition attacks. Hasebe did the right thing to leave them out, but you know, HACO, Hasebe Always Chickens Out. His response to us not setting the world on fire after trying something slightly different for 45 minutes is to go back to the old way which has failed for most of this year and last year. Such is his skill-sapping influence that I think if he took charge of the most successful top league moneybags team in any country, he could probably have them in non-league within just a few years. Shortly after their fourth successive relegation was confirmed he’d probably comment that their defence is steadily improving. I think our squad is pretty good, so it takes a really special manager to get so little out of them and make the football they are playing so unappealing.  

Erison and Kanda up front seemed like a strange choice. It looked like they hadn’t even met before, let alone played together. Miyagi was on the wing again and underwhelmed again. He had a great game when he played up front but clearly that was a bit too daring for H(ACO) so he has never been played there since. Last year, Ito, fresh from a disappointing European stint was keen to impress and was on fire. But don’t worry H(ACO) has now squashed all of that out of him. Both of these players got 45 minutes and then were replaced by Wakizaka and Marcinho. Wakizaka on the wing never works but still it’s H(ACO)‘s answer if the formation we’re playing doesn’t suit Wakizaka. And no worries anyway, Wakizaka will wander across the field anyway, meaning that one of our strikers ends up on the wing. All good, as long as Wakizaka gets what he wants and can move into more central areas to wave his arms, tell people what to do whilst doing nothing himself other than giving the ball away to start dangerous opposition attacks. We’re fucking shit! We spent about a whole minute camped in their box in control of the ball and failed to even have a single shot instead just moving the ball from side to side presumably waiting for the defenders to get bored and get out of the way to avoid prolonging the tedium. I just don’t understand what the game plan is. I suspect there maybe isn’t one. 

There’s no point me writing any smart arse comments about the opposition. I can’t even be bothered to write about the shit ref. It’s all down to Hasebe and he’s almost certainly not the man to sort the situation out. The board seem to be equally or perhaps even more useless, so don’t expect anything to change on the managerial front. As long as the club keeps making money the club president Yoshida is happy. He is a businessman with absolutely no understanding of football. I wish he’d fuck off back to Fujitsu where his talents might be more appreciated. Our president doesn’t understand football, our manager doesn’t seem to be able to manage and our players have lost the ability to play. And this all is kind of understandable, because as a supporter, I’m losing any enthusiasm for supporting. I don’t have any problem with losing to better teams. I have a big problem with us losing every match before a ball has even been kicked because the game plan is so stupid and the manager seems to be incapable of motivating anyone. If he hasn’t lost the changing room, he really should have done by now. Someone needs to say something. Or are the players being gaslit too?  

Even when we’ve won this year it has more often than not been luckily. Great players are becoming shit players and there still seems to be the feeling that we should just say ‘oh well, let’s move on and support even more in the next match’. Considering the shit we’ve been put through by a string of awful games we should really be reacting in a way that isn’t just shrugging our shoulders and looking forward. If I succeed in getting a ticket for the Mito game I will have seen every fucking minute of this awful season and I feel that rather than unconditionally giving my support for every subsequent game I should be getting a handwritten apology from the club and some payment for the massive amount of wasted time and effort. Think of all the more exciting things we could have done instead of watching these matches. We could have counted how many grains of rice there are in a 5kg bag. We could have unfurled and then rerolled a Costco bumper size pack of toilet paper. We could have reread every one of these awful blog posts and counted how many times I’ve used the word ‘shit’. All of these things currently sound more appealing prospects than watching another turgid 90 minutes of so called football. But as I’m an idiot, I’ll go to the next game.  

Next up Tokyo Verdy at home on Wednesday. The away leg was a shockingly boring game and since then we’ve absolutely regressed so expect an absolute rotter. If there was any justice, Hasebe would start the match with a completely different team from the ones who’ve started the last two matches. I want to see Hayashi, Kan, Noda, Mochiyama. And some of the players who have been in and out and have been doing their best. But the problem is that we can’t drop the manager so we’d still be shit. It’s going to be 4-2-3-1 again with the usual players, isn’t it? Two shots on target against Urawa, one in this match, so presumably on Wednesday we’ll fail to hit the target even once. But we’ll still get the post match comments saying how we’re improving defensively, in spite of conceding five. Maybe I’ll take a book to read and some noise cancelling headphones. That way it won’t have been a complete waste of time. 

Team 

GK 1. YAMAGUCHI Louis
DF 29. YAMAHARA Reon
DF 5. SASAKI Asahi
DF 28. MARUYAMA Yuichi
DF 13. MIURA Sota
MF 17. ITO Tatsuya
MF 8. TACHIBANADA Kento
MF 19. KAWAHARA So
MF 24. MIYAGI Ten
FW 9. ERISON (Yellow card 66')
FW 38. KANDA Soma

Subs

GK 21. HAYASAKA Yuki
DF 2. MATSUNAGANE Yuto
MF 6. YAMAMOTO Yuki (on for TACHIBANADA 79')
MF 14. WAKIZAKA Yasuto (on for ITO 46')

DF 22. Filip UREMOVIC
MF 23. MARCINHO (on for MIYAGI 46')
DF 32. HAYASHI Shunsuke

MF 34. OSA Ryuki (on for ERISON 87')
FW 91. Lazar ROMANIC (on for KANDA 57')

Man of the match

There wasn’t one.

 

Goals

SATO (FC Tokyo) 41' 1-0
NOZAWA (FC Tokyo) 56' 2-0

Highlights

Vs Machida Zelvia (away) 28/3/26 J League East match 5

 

Machida Zelvia 1 - 1 Kawasaki Frontale

(Machida win 3 - 1 on penalties) 

With most of the league off on an international break, maybe all eyes were on this massive game being played in a stadium with a cauldron like atmosphere. Hmmmm. It’s impressive that we’ve arrived in a nothing to play for situation before we’ve even got half way through the league. Maybe this will give us an opportunity to try some new things. Well, we definitely will have the opportunity, but whether we will or not is another question. There was a certain amount of experimentation with this line up, but it’s difficult to say whether that was enforced or whether Hasebe was finally cutting loose. Probably the former, but to give the boss the benifit of the doubt, which seems to be something that not many are willing to do anymore, I think he at least tried something interesting in this match which kind of worked for a while. I’m slightly surprised by my fairly laid back feeling after this match. After all Machida are a truly scummy club and I would have loved to have beaten them. At the same time, results are pretty insignificant now, given that Kashima already have double the points we do after only 45% of the season being completed. So maybe you might be surprised to see me reasonably positive after this match. But don't forget, it was a draw. Don’t believe the people who tell you Machida won. 🙂

Good day -

Kind of good day for Hasebe as he got fully into the spirit of things and tried to fake out Machida with our team announcement. Miyagi was listed as a defender, presumably making everyone think that it was going be a 3-4-2-1 formation. Instead Miyagi played up front with Erison in a 4-4-2. (Although Flashscore disagrees with this and said it was a 3-4-2-1. As did DAZN). As far as I'm concerned though, Hasebe still seems to be terrified of playing a back three. This may be something to do with injuries though. Maybe. It’s feels weird to say Hasebe’s changes to the starting line up were good as the first half of this game, whilst feeling like an improvement on the debacle of the previous week, ended up with the same score and even less goal threat from us. The second half though was a different matter. We really had them rocking and could have, maybe should have won. Clearly we have good players, but the morale is really suffering at the moment, so hopefully the second half gave us a boost in that respect. It’s a bit of a shame that we had to have the penalties at the end though as that may have set things back again slightly. There were a few players who had a good game I thought, but I’ll save that for the man of the match section.

Bad day -

Kind of bad day for Hasebe. Bet you didn’t see that coming, did you? We still can’t win. The first half saw us have two shots, both off target and we could easily have been 2-0 down. I saw some criticism of his tactics when he replaced two reliable, (touch wood), penalty takers late on with some players who probably couldn’t be trusted so much, but I think I’ll give him the benefit of the doubt and say that I was pleased that he made the changes as it meant we were really trying to win the game in the 90 minutes and could have done. Erison was looking knackered, I think I might have left Miyagi on though. The subs were a bit strange in this match as they followed the old Oniki pattern of moving someone all over the pitch in small stages. In this match it was Miyagi. And the first change seemed to mess up what had been a quite effective system. But what do I know? I always feel uncomfortable writing these kind of hamfisted attempts at some kind of analysis. So let’s double down and ask why it always seemed that when Machida were crossing, we always had either Tachibanada or Kawahara being the ones challenging for the headers. If Tachibanada had been just a little taller we might have won the match. But if he’d been a little taller, he presumably wouldn’t have fulfilled the criteria we look for when we’re signing players.

High point -

Definitely seeing Erik get sent off. Even when the ref is dodgy, you do sometimes get a moment of absolute justice. No surprise the ref missed it in the moment though.

Low point -

Their goal being scored through the axis or arseholery combination of Soma and Erik. I’ve really got to stop slagging players off before the game as it seems that every time I do it they then go on to score.

Any other business -

- Wonder what happened to Wakizaka? Not on the bench even. I don’t think he would really fit into this system, but you’ve got to think that Hasebe would still include him on the bench. Maybe he’s injured or maybe we could start a rumour about him and Hasebe having a falling out. (I don’t think this has happened, just for the record). I don’t think he’s had a particularly good season so far, so don’t mind him not playing. The bench looked quite light in midfield though, which makes me think it’s probably an injury. 
- I saw a Machida fan at the station wearing a shirt with the name Kuroda on the back and instead of a number, a big GO on it. What kind of person admires Kuroda? Very bizarre.
- They may have enough big bucks to buy or at least compete with Vissel Kobe for every ex J League star who's made a slightly disappointing move to Europe and is returning to Japan with their tail between their legs, but it’s clear that money can’t buy everything. One of the most amusing things, (in a laugh at them way, rather than with them), is the fact that the merch stall outside the stadium is referred to as a 'weapons and armor shop' and is decorated with those kind of images too. Guess they are trying to make a big thing out of the ‘Fortress Nozuta’ thing. Dunno if that really makes sense though as I don't think it’s somewhere that the opposition team doesn’t like to visit. Certainly there isn’t going to be anything resembling a fortress when it comes to the Machida fans who are pretty quiet and not exactly numerous. Maybe a lot of them were still trying to get to the stadium long after the game had been completed. I don’t think the numerous hooligan/right wing related flags are going to make them more feared either. Particularly not the one behind the goal that just said ‘The Blokes’. Think I might have written all of this last year maybe. So I guess it must all be because of those guys with the big flags wearing the medieval style bondage gear on the pitch before the match. Certainly had me shaking with fear. Well, right up until one of them slipped over mid-routine, presumably giving himself a medieval style leather wedgie. Fair play to him, he didn’t seem to let it interfere with his big flag waving afterwards, 

- The big talking point about Machida away is normally the access. To be honest though, getting there was a breeze this time. As my bus pulled away from the station around 13:00, the line of people waiting was quite short and there was another bendy bus waiting. So it looks like they’ve got that part sorted. Afterwards our plan was to walk the 5km back to Tsurukawa. If you’ve got to walk one way, it certainly makes sense to do it downhill. I’ve no idea how bad the buses were afterwards, but the queue did look impressively long. As this is all sounding a bit too positive, let’s undercut that. Apparently in response to the awful bus situation after games, they have now introduced a new system, whereby if you pay a premium fee you’ll be able to get on a bus before anyone who is paying the normal fee. A pretty despicable way to do things, I think. But in the light of their recent rise, it’s easy to say C.R.E.A.M. (Cash Rules Everything Around Machida).
- Fucking hell our penalties were bad. In a way I’m glad that three people missed as it doesn’t put the guilt on any one person. But when we saw Kobayashi stepping up for one, it was difficult not to remember the time when he was our regular penalty taker and the fact that it was definitely not a good idea to implement that policy. I suppose we can take some consolation in the fact that all three were saved rather than missed, can’t we? Hmmmm, actually maybe that’s not as positive as it might sound. Combine this with the fact that penalties definitely don’t seem to be Brodersen’s speciality, it’s a bit of a worry. But at the same time, this is only going to be an issue in this stupid half season as normally we won’t be having many penalty shoot outs. On the same topic, I wasn’t particularly enthused about this league’s format before the start of the season so was surprised when I heard some people saying that the penalties were a bit of fun. If those people still think this, I’d be surprised, as I find the shoot outs quite annoying already. Definitely boring. And they way the staff on the sidelines line up as if the shoot out is to decide the World Cup final is kind of irritating too. Oh well, at least we know we won’t have any more than 11 more penalty shoot outs this season. What a relief!

WOW! -

With no Shimoda in the match day squad for Machida this could easily just be a list of their players, their manager and the ref. But let’s get a little more specific. Of course Erik, Soma, Tani and Kuroda aromatically qualify for this category, even when we’re not playing Machida, so they definitely get it. The new Machida striker / beanpole Yengi was quite annoying, his main abilities seeming to be falling over and complaining to the ref. But once again it has to be the man in black who takes the cake. Ueda had definitely researched Machida before the match. He probably read the part about them being fierce and the ground being a fortress and was pleasantly surprised. But he clearly had also heard about power harassment and maybe either in an attempt to avoid being harassed himself, or in order to stop some backroom staff being singled out as ‘dissenters’ he decided to give everything their way. Even with the red card, he didn’t even see it as a yellow card offence till he was told to get a grip by VAR. There were multiple yellow cards that he wasn’t interested in, instead going for a policy of just let the Machida ‘blokes’ express themselves through a bit of elbowing, diving, pulling, hacking and of course whinging. There was one occasion where they tried to steal almost half a pitch length at a throw in. The ref told them to go back. They did it again. He told them to go back again. They did it a third time and the ref decided to just turn his back rather than have to do anything. I know refs are supposed to let things go a bit this year, but Ueda’s commitment to letting things flow clearly favoured Machida. I don’t think Erison got a single foul on him given. In the past Ueda has been pleasantly insignificant in the matches we’ve had with him. But he definitely was all in favour of being assisted in his decision making by the Machida players in this match and they were well up for telling him which way he should give everything.

Next up, Urawa at home next weekend. They are about as shit as we are this year, so everything points to it being a stinker of a match. We definitely owe them one for the pasting they gave us at the end of last season. But hang on, that was mainly Yamaguchi’s doing, so maybe we owe him instead. No midweek game means that maybe we can get some players back from injury. At the same time, we don’t really know who is injured and how seriously, so this is all merely guesswork. I will say though that we saw some players after the game (Sasaki and Ozeki) so maybe they are closer to coming back than some others (Taniguchi). After that match we’ll be halfway through the half season. Obviously it’s over already, so I guess the only fun we can really have now is messing up other people’s seasons and maybe seeing some new ideas. I am praying that we can see both of these things at some stage in the next 11 games.

 

Team

GK 49. Svend BRODERSEN
DF 29. YAMAHARA Reon
DF 2. MATSUNAGANE Yuto
DF 28. YAMAMURA Yuichi
DF 13. MIURA Sota
MF 19. KAWAHARA So
MF 8. TACHIBANADA Kento
MF 17. ITO Tatsuya
MF 23. MARCINHO
FW 24. MIYAGI Ten
FW 9. ERISON

Subs

GK 33. LEE Keun-Hyeong
MF 6. YAMAMOTO Yuki (on for ITO 76')
FW 11. KOBAYASHI Yu (on for TACHIBANADA 86')
MF 15. MYOGAN Toya (on for MARCINHO 86')
DF 27. KAMIHASHI Ryota
DF 30. NODA Hiroto
DF 32. HAYASHI Shunsuke
FW 38. KANDA Soma (on for MIYAGI 90+1')
FW 91. Lazar ROMANIC (on for ERISON 90+1')


Man of the match

There are a few players who deserve a mention here I think. I’d like to give it to Maruyama who was great after a very dodgy cameo against YFM. Similarly Matsunagane did petty well after a confidence mashing last match. Kawahara looked good in the middle I thought. And Miura played well again. Maybe he really needed that dropping against Verdy. But I think it has to go to someone who I probably never imagined would ever get this ever again…

MIYAGI Ten - has really flattered to deceive since he came back from his loans… whenever that happened. Seemed to vacillate between being utterly focused on scoring a goal by getting the ball and not giving it to anyone before shooting (and missing), and hanging around looking not very interested waiting for a penalty he could take (and score). But in this match, playing up front with Erison, I thought he had the best game he’s ever had for us. Clearly this is the position he should play in. Whether he’ll get more chances to do so in the future, I’m not sure, but this was a really refreshing and promising game from him.

Goals

ERIK (Machida) 41' 1-0
ERISON (Frontale) 59' 1-1

Highlights

Vs Yokohama FC (away) 14/6/25 J League match 20

 

Yokohama FC 0 - 1 Kawasaki Frontale

Oops. I’ve left it a bit late to write this and given that I went to another game between this one and writing this, everything has got a bit blurry. This is all excellent news when it comes to how long this will be and how long it will take you to read it. It’s fair to say that even if I had scrupulously taken copious notes it would probably be kind of tricky to write much about this match as it wasn’t really a very exciting match and not a great deal happened. Perhaps due to the generally dubious level of the game, even the winning goal felt like a bit of a soft one at the time. Having watched the replay it was clearly a lot better than it seemed at the time. So maybe everything I thought about this match was equally inaccurate. Please feel free to correct me if this is indeed the case. I’ll do the usual headings but the paragraphs are gong to be a lot shorter than usual. Here we go.

Us -

One of my few notes says that we were on top for most of the first half but only had our first shot around the 30 minute mark. In the past maybe this would have meant that we were going to have a storming second half, but to be honest that half went similarly to the first. In fact one of my other notes says that we were even worse in the second but somehow we managed to score. Praise the lord for Yamamoto Yuki! The fact that it was raining for most of the match meant that I couldn’t take my phone out as much as I usually do to write down stuff. The fact is though, that even if I had been able to, there wasn’t really anything to write about. It was a ‘real nothing game’ according to my penultimate note, possibly written on the train on the way home. Oshima started, which was nice. But it didn’t really mean that we played well. But the most important thing is that we won and we’ve done the double over YFC, which I can’t remember us doing recently. At this stage of the season with us playing catch up, getting the three points is the most important thing, so I’m not going to get too upset about boring games if we win them. 

Them - 

Perhaps things would have turned out differently if YFC had managed to get any of their shots on target. The had 50% more shots than us, which sounds like they had a massively attacking game, but in this case 50% more was 9 to our 6. There probably isn’t really anything else to say in this section. Maybe YFC could feel hard done by, but I guess if you don’t hit the target even once, you can’t expect to win. Maybe the lack of excitement in our play was down to YFC having a good game defensively, but I suspect it was more due to two teams who are a bit tired both being off the boil and we were perhaps lucky to edge it because we hit the target. Definitely not a game either set of fans will be watching back much, I suspect.

This flag didn't seem annoying at the time, 
but it takes up most of every photo I took

Ref - 

So poor was this game that I came away from it with no strong feelings about the ref. I have only one note regarding him and that was he was soft on Suzuki who I thought probably should have got a second yellow card. Aside from watching the entire game back, I don’t really know how I can verify this comment and I don’t intend to do so, so once again, feel free to correct me. My feelings about this ref were probably softened by witnessing a truly atrocious homer of a ref in the game I watched on Sunday when Criacao Shinjuku got absolutely everything from the ref. Delightfully, Grulla won the game though. This point is only added to say that perhaps it’s true that the refs in J1 are the cream of the crop if the others in the JFL are as bad as the one on Sunday was. Cream of the crop! Even if that cream is slightly sour. Guess that would work better in a dinner than in a coffee, so perhaps there is somewhere where J1 refs could really look good. But anyway, this all feels like a slightly unfair diversion as Ueda didn’t do much wrong, I reckon.


Next up Vissel Kobe at home on Saturday. I reckon we owe them a beating after the away game. Although to be honest, as far as I could tell from what I heard, we were awful in that game, so perhaps we don’t particularly deserve to get ‘revenge’. Would be nice though, wouldn’t it? And as I’ve heard that wanker Thuler might be leaving them soon, it would be nice if get could get sent off again before he leaves. Fingers crossed for that and three points for us, even if it is dull again. 

 

 

Team

GK 98. YAMAGUCHI Louis
DF 5. SASAKI Asahi
DF 2. TAKAI Kota
DF 35. MARUYAMA Yuichi
DF 13. MIURA Sota
MF 10. OSHIMA Ryota
MF 6. YAMAMOTO Yuki
MF 17. ITO Tatsuya
MF 14. WAKIZAKA Yasuto
MF 23. MARCINHO
FW 20. YAMADA Shin

Subs

GK 1. JUNG Sung-Ryong
DF 7. KURUMAYA Shintaro
MF 8. TACHIBANADA Kento (on for YAMAMOTO 75')

FW 11. KOBAYASHI Yu (on for YAMADA 67')

DF 15. TANABE Shuto 
MF 16. OZEKI Yuto
MF 19. KAWAHARA So (on for OSHIMA 58') 
FW 24. MIYAGI Ten
MF 41. IENAGA Akihiro (on for ITO 67')

My Frontale Man Of The Match

I know I’m copping out of doing these a lot recently, but this game was generally shite, so it’s difficult to work out who I might give this to. If MVP stood for mediocre very player, there would be plenty of candidates. But you know, they did the job, so either give it to everyone or no-one, depending on your preference. 

Goals

YAMAMOTO (Frontale) 58' 0-1


Highlights 

Vs Vissel Kobe (away) 16/4/25 J League match 12

 

Vissel Kobe 2 - 1 Kawasaki Frontale

Finally! Finally we’ve broken that run of drawn games. Oh… Whilst it’s never good to miss a game, sometimes, with hindsight it might seem that you did the right thing by going to work instead and not even bothering with the highlights. I realise that this is an utterly ridiculous thing to say. After all, how can I even comment that the game was terrible without even seeing a moment of it? Well, I guess the scoreline helps give you an idea. And then you could look at the stats. We had only six shots and only one on target, which their keeper let in. Might have been worth trying a few from our own half if he was that dodgy. In the second half apparently we only had two shots, both off target. I still think these games don’t really show where we are as a team, the closer we get to leaving for Saudi Arabia, the more cautious we’re becoming perhaps. It’s just a shame that we’ve had so many games crammed in to such a short period already. It’s almost as if the league is willing us to fail. Can you imagine the situation if Oniki was still in charge. The same players would have played every single minute of both the ACL and league games. But anyway, I keep saying we’re playing with the handbrake slightly on and while I still think this is the case, It’s getting as boring for me to say it as it must be for you to read it. Thankfully there’s only one more game before we leave. It’s probably a must win though, as otherwise we’ll be leaving for our biggest recent challenge with no wins in five games. Hasebe played the first team in this match and we lost. I presume he’ll rotate for Verdy. But the truth is we don’t seem to have that many options right now with an already massive and increasing by the week injury list. And if we do manage to win our first match in Saudi Arabia we’ll then be up against a really stupid schedule of games. Will there be anyone left standing by the time it comes to our first league match after returning from the ACL? Anyway, this is way too long considering I saw nothing of the match and I have nothing new or interesting to say. Perhaps there will be more to write after the game against Verdy at home on Sunday. Hopefully it will be a bit more positive. At the same time, I remember how bad the home game against Verdy was last year so I’m not holding out too much hope. Keep your fingers and your toes and your arms and your legs and even your eyes crossed, I guess. Actually maybe skip that last one.

Team
 

GK 98. YAMAGUCHI Louis
DF 5. SASAKI Asahi
DF 2. TAKAI Kota
DF 35. MARUYAMA Yuichi
DF 13. MIURA Sota
MF 19. KAWAHARA So
MF 6. YAMAMOTO Yuki
MF 17. ITO Tatsuya
MF 14. WAKIZAKA Yasuto
MF 23. MARCINHO (Yellow card 12')
FW 9. ERISON (Yellow card 45+2')

Subs

GK 1. JUNG Sung-Ryong
FW 11. KOBAYASHI Yu (on for MARCINHO 78')
MF 16. OZEKI Yuto (on for KAWAHARA 78')
FW 18. SEGAWA Yusuke
FW 20. YAMADA Shin (on for ERISON 61')
FW 26. YAMAUCHI Hinata
DF 31. VAN WERMESKERKEN Sai (on for SASAKI 78')
MF 41. IENAGA Akihiro (on for ITO 61')
DF 44. CESAR HAYDAR

Goals

SASAKI (Kobe) 31' 1-0
THULER (Kobe) 45' 2-0
MARCINHO (Frontale) 45+3' 2-1

Highlights
 

Vs Fagiano Okayama (away) 16/3/25 J League match 6

Fagiano Okayama 0 - 0 Kawasaki Frontale

Well I guess you could never say that 2025 Frontale is dull and predictable. Although perhaps our football has at times been like that. After walloping Shanghai Shenhua and progressing in the ACL, I guess some people might have thought this would be an easy victory. But of course that wasn’t the case. At the same time, the reputation of Okayama being dull cloggers, extremely defensive and really physical might also have been a common prediction. So maybe this game might have been more like Kyoto at home part 2. Well, that didn’t quite pan out either, did it? Okayama would have been worthy winners, so coming away with a point is a big positive for us. As I write this I’m desperately trying not to fall asleep on a train to Matsuyama. The fact that I’m on a train to a new city is however helping matters when I think about how I feel about this game. Had it come at home and I had to go to work tomorrow, I might have been a bit peed off. But with the holiday only just starting it’s hard to get angry about what was admittedly quite a poor performance. As I’m still quite busy this month, this post is once again kind of brief. But that is also in part due to there not being many positive things to write about in this match.

Us -

A similar team to the one against Shanghai but with no Oshima, which makes complete sense. Yamamoto came in for him and to be honest didn’t do that well. But exactly the same can be said about pretty much everyone. Marcinho had a bad day, and just couldn’t really get going. Wakizaka was pretty much non-existent. Every one of our players was giving the ball away for fun. Normally I’d moan about it being a terrible pitch or a different type of ball here, and whilst some players’ comments seems to be suggesting there was something a bit weird about the pitch, Okayama didn’t seem to have any trouble with it. And maybe a weird pitch doesn’t explain why we often just kicked the ball straight off the side of it. We were definitely having an off day, almost to a man. Our passing was horrible. Time after time we lost the ball under not much pressure whilst trying to build from the back. Nothing stuck up front either. The defence, from the point of view of the result, stood firm, but it was very much a surprise it did, and this was perhaps more due to the opposition than us. The first half we were out possessed 60-40% and were out shot 12 to 2 and didn’t get either of ours on target. In the second half we rallied slightly shooting eight times but still Okayama out shot us 10 to 8, our 64% possession contributing to our improved shot count but also perhaps contributing to the fact that we let them shoot ten times. We did finally get that magical first shot on target though. It came in the 82nd minute and sadly was also our last shot on target. Clearly this wasn’t a great day for us, and it does seem that we’re going to have an up and down 2025. Don’t think I’m pinning it on Hasebe though as in this match the players clearly weren’t up to it. If it wasn’t for an amazing save from Yamaguchi we could easily have lost. And probably would have deserved to. So with that in mind, coming away with a point is a very good thing, I think.

Them -

At the station there was a sign welcoming people getting off the Shinkansen to Okayama, the sunniest city in Japan. Naturally it pissed it down almost constantly from when we arrived till late on in the second half. Okayama were always going to be dull, right? Except they weren’t. They were really good and nothing like the bores I’d been told they might be. Perhaps really good is over-egging the pudding slightly as thankfully, they were as bad at shooting as we were at retaining the ball and getting out of our own half. But full credit to Okayama. If you told someone who knew nothing about the J League that one of these teams came up last year and the other was the champions a few years ago they’d almost certainly get the teams the wrong way round. Also, as Okayama are unbeaten at home this year, maybe a draw’s a good result? At the same time they’ve lost to YFC, and also to Urawa who seem to be a bit shite so perhaps a draw isn’t a good result? One thing’s for sure, the league is all over the place this year. Seems like there are plenty of teams winning and losing games they shouldn’t, so maybe that bodes well for it being an exciting season. And somewhat strangely, I thought this was a kind of exciting game. Perhaps not for the right reasons, but at least an exciting 0-0 draw when we play shit is better than some of the other more likely and considerably more depressing outcomes.

Ref -

In spite of having some preconceptions of the ref, I can’t say he got that much wrong in this game. I thought the yellow cards he gave us were a bit harsh, but when again I would, wouldn’t I? He and his linesman did appear to miss Lucao booting Maruyama in the head, but I haven’t watched it back so I might be wrong about that. This point should probably have been in the ‘them’ section , but Lucao seemed like a player who when he was a youngster always practiced ball skills and weight training but never had any friends to practice passing with or enough space to set up a goal to practice shooting. He was a beast and we couldn’t really deal with him, but thankfully he couldn’t pass or shoot for toffee, (at least in this match). Maybe it was the pitch... Anyway, shockingly no real complaints or comments about the ref apart from a weird gesture he did a few times, both arms aloft and opening and closing his hands as if he was performing an air puppet show. Kind of weird, but if I can’t complain about his reffing that’s got to be a good thing.

So a point gained in what was an entertaining game of extremely low quality. I must say, it’s nice to visit a new stadium and once again go complete when it comes to visiting all the stadiums in J1. It’s also good when you can walk to the stadium from the station. The ground wasn’t as bad as I might have expected. There’s a running track but the views were decent enough. The away section did wobble quite a bit when fans were jumping though which was slightly disconcerting. As was the rhythmic squeaking sound you could hear under the stand when that was happening. But presumably as Japan is somewhat earthquake ready country, the wobble is ok as it means it’s not going to fall to pieces and fall down. I had a fun time. And now we all get a nice break! No games for almost two weeks. The next match will be the Tamagawa Classico away version on the 29th. I think we need a rest so the break is welcome. Perhaps it will also give Hasebe some time to work with the players and tweak things a little further. There have been highs already this year, but an at least equal amount of treading-water-just-as-bad-and-dull-as-last-year games too. Fingers crossed our new manager can tip the balance a little further towards the former over the coming months!

 

Team

GK 98. YAMAGUCHI Louis
DF 5. SASAKI Asahi
DF 2. TAKAI Kota
DF 35. MARUYAMA Yuichi
DF 13. MIURA Sota
MF 19. KAWAHARA So
MF 6. YAMAMOTO Yuki
MF 17. ITO Tatsuya (Yellow card 43')
MF 14. WAKIZAKA Yasuto
MF 23. MARCINHO
FW 9. ERISON (Yellow card 41')

Subs

GK 1. JUNG Sung-Ryong
MF 8. TACHIBANADA Kento
MF 16. OZEKI Yuto (on for YAMAMOTO 62')
FW 18. SEGAWA Yusuke (on for KAWAHARA 84')
FW 20. YAMADA Shin (on for ERISON 62')
FW 24. MIYAGI Ten (on for MARCINHO 75')
DF 31. VAN WERMESKERKEN Sai
FW 41. IENAGA Akihiro (on for ITO 62')
DF 44. CESAR HAYDAR

My Frontale Man Of The Match

 

Pretty much crap all round in this match but given that without his intervention we would have lost, it goes to…

YAMAGUCHI Louis - one amazing save, clawing the ball back with his right hand just as it was about to cross the line. Bravo!

Goals

Not today... (actually, considering the way the game went, that's probably a good thing)

Highlights

Vs Urawa Reds (away) 22/11/24 J League match 28 Part 2

Urawa Reds 1 - 1 Kawasaki Frontale 

This is the second part of a blog post about a game that was started on the 24th August. You can read that bit here

 

This part should probably have the subtitle 'Iwate Grulla Morioka 1 - 4 Fukushima United' as you can probably tell from the pictures.

Sorry, but the second part of this blog post is even less informative than the first. A rearranged 45 minutes at a stadium that is a pain in the arse to get to and the surrounding area of which offers absolutely nothing of interest was always going to be a hard sell. As it was we already had a trip booked in which we saw Ozeki and Matsunagane play for Fukushima United against Grulla and in spite of it being bloody cold at the game, (J League, once again give yourselves a pat on the back for your genius idea of changing the season dates in a couple of years time. Clearly a lot of the Tohoku teams’ home games are going to be pretty inhospitable). It will come as no surprise to hear that Ozeki is looking very good. Matsunagane had a decent game too, I thought, but got stitched up by the officials on a few occasions. And I would say that we should never moan about our refs as the J3 contingent are truly terrible but that sounds too positive. The truth probably is that J1 officials are hopeless and J3 ones are on the career path to progress from being truly hopeless to just plain hopeless. Good luck to them. So yeah, back to Frontale and there's nothing much I can write in the second half of this blog post. We scored and therefore drew. With everything surrounding the game, it was always going to be a bit of a weird one. That’s all I know really. The team have already flown to Thailand for the game against Buriram on Tuesday. I’m not going to that one either so I guess that blog post will also be a short one. And the Saturday after that we have Verdy away. Some might say we are out for revenge, but as far as I can remember, the home game against them was one of exceedingly low quality and extremely lacking in excitement, so not sure how that really fits into the whole revenge thing. Two more league and two more ACL games to go for the Oniki Frontale project and then we can start thinking about what a new manager can bring to us in 2025. I guess that counts as semi-exciting times, particularly after experiencing large parts of 2024.

 

Team

GK 1. JUNG Sung-Ryong

DF 31. VAN WERMESKERKEN Sai

DF 5. SASAKI Asahi
DF 7. KURUMAYA Shintaro
DF 13. MIURA Sota
MF 8. TACHIBANADA Kento

MF 10. OSHIMA Ryota

MF 14. WAKIZAKA Yasuto
FW 41. IENAGA Akihiro
FW 20. YAMADA Shin
FW 23. MARCINHO

Subs

GK 98. YAMAGUCHI Louis
DF 4. JESIEL (on for VAN WERMESKERKEN 81')
FW 9. ERISON (on for YAMADA 81')

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

DF 15. TANABE Shuto

MF 17. TONO Daiya (on for MARCINHO 73')
MF 19. KAWAHARA So (on for OSHIMA 56')

DF 44. Cesar HAYDAR

Goals

KOBAYASHI (Frontale) 55' 1-1

 

Highlights

 

 

Vs Urawa Reds (away) 24/8/24 J League match 28 Part 1

Urawa Reds 1 - 0 Kawasaki Frontale
(match abandoned at half time)

I’ve spent most of this week enjoying not having to worry about writing a blog post about this half game. For some reason I thought I’d just do it when the game was replayed and write this off. But I hadn’t really considered that it would restart from half time and that meant that I probably needed to write something about the first part. So after relishing a blog post free week I’ve now realised I’ll eventually have to write two blog posts about this game. However, it’s not all doom and gloom as this first half was so predictably dull that I can knock that part out in a few sentences and then focus, as I like to do, on the chaos surrounding the match instead. So here we go.

- Pretty irritating starting line up, or more accurately bench, in my eyes at least. Our young keeper Hayasaka who conceded three against YFM, none of which were down to him as far as I was concerned dropped out of the match day squad completely. There was talk that he was ‘sick’ but at the time I suspected this was ‘bullshit’ and it seems to have proved to be. Yamaguchi was on the bench which slightly confuses my usual rant about new players needing to spend a year in the stands aside from emergency situations, but the fact that Hayasaka wasn’t there does back up my other usual rant that Oniki is an absolute psychopath when it comes to not being able to understand the emotional impact of the usually pretty random decisions he makes on players’ morale. Guess Hayasaka can at least get some consolation from Ando, who seems destined to be our fourth keeper eternally, regardless of who signs for us.

- Similarly when it comes to psycho Oniki it must have been a bit of a shock for Yamamoto, one of our big summer signings to see that Kawahara, after his arrival from Sagan Tosu on Tuesday, made it to the bench on Saturday. I feel sorry for Yamamoto. As has been the case with multiple midfielder signings in recent years, the new guys are held to a much higher standard than Oniki’s golden boys. Any sub-magnificent performance in a rare start will certainly mean another month on the sidelines. In the meantime, those preferred players can have stinker after stinker and only lose their place when hell freezes over. I imagine Ze Ricardo is probably feeling similarly. I guess the revival, (however long it lasts), of Oshima has lessened their chances further. Now Oniki has three automatic picks in midfield. And practically a quarter of the squad sitting on the bench or in the stands who would like to play in one of those spots. Utterly ridiculous recruitment again in a transfer window. I suspect Kawahara is a very good player. But so is Yamamoto. And so probably is Ze Ricardo (we haven’t really had a chance to judge him). Let’s hope they enjoy showing their skills in practice sessions because with Oniki in charge, as long as we avoid injuries or suspensions, they aren’t going to be getting much of a chance.

- The return of Oshima has caused a great deal of excitement on Twitter. We did alright when he came back from injury. We actually won some games. As I’ve said before though, those wins come with some massive caveats. We also got absolutely walloped by YFM with him in the team and went a goal behind in this game. All the time we’re getting little clips of Oshima skills appearing online, apparently without any acknowledgment of that fact that whilst he’s doing well, we’re still shit. I’m not saying he shouldn’t play or isn’t doing well. I am saying that people’s excitement about him is a perfect distraction for the club from the absolute dogshit performances down to Oniki’s absolute refusal to change anything. The little run of wins was perhaps the worst thing that could have happened when it comes to the likelihood of us making any progress. It gave him the perfect excuse to stay strong in his belief that farting around with the ball and avoiding shooting unless absolutely necessary is the way to win matches. There has been some talk this week that we’ve been experimenting with playing two up front in practice. It speaks volumes that we’re only trying this now when our football has been ineffective and predictable for at least the last three years. And Oniki giving this a go in practice by no means guarantees that he’ll ever try it in a game. He does have form for changing things when we play Sapporo though, (remember the year he decided the perfect approach would be to put the strikers on the wing and play with Ienaga ‘up front’? I think we just about scraped through that game), so perhaps he’ll do it for one game and then revert to the same old stuff afterwards. It all seems kind of performative anyway, and I think a certain section of the fanbase isn’t really that bothered about our lack of success with Oniki’s usual approach. Even when we play our shittest football, there are people who praise the players for giving it their best and looking a bit upset by yet another horrible result. It doesn’t have to be like this. It’s a terrible thing to say, but I’m kind of hoping we get destroyed in our first four ACL games as I think if we do well in them there’s a chance that Oniki will be ‘persuaded’ to sign a contract extension.

- Oh, so on to the actual game. Hmmm. I didn’t have many notes but one was ‘45 mins of possession, passing and conceding’ and I think that just about sums it up. More possession, more passes, less shots and one goal down. It’s classic Oniki stuff. Perhaps the game and our current season were summed up in the move, (which has also been widely shared online, again with no apparent acknowledgement that the skills were ultimately pointless), where Yamada raced through shrugging off the Urawa defender several times before a nice turn put him on his backside, at which point with the goal in front of him and only the keeper to beat, Yamada passed the ball backwards. Oniki ball at its finest. No write up of the game would be complete without mentioning that the conditions were absolutely awful due to the heavy rain which seemed to start just as the ref raised his whistle to his mouth and continued until long after we’d all left Saitama. When the game was abandoned after an initial decision to prolong half time by 20 minutes the Urawa fans broke into a chorus of boos. Hmmm, I say ‘broke into’, but ‘resumed’ probably would have been a more accurate word as once again the ‘amazing’ atmosphere their fans create was definitely one which focused more on booing and whistling the opposition rather than actually supporting their own team. When Wakizaka and Oniki came out to apologise to/thank our fans, the brave Urawa ultras who’d stayed on just to be able to boo a little longer, wholeheartedly resumed their booing, clearly convinced that because we’d been losing we had asked for the game to be abandoned and because everyone hates them and everyone loves us, it immediately happened. Anyone in the stadium who thought that the game could go ahead was clearly delusional (hmmmm, I guess that does sum up the attitude of quite a large element of their fanbase…). This was particularly demonstrated when Miura attempted to run up the wing, pushed the ball ahead of himself, the ball grinding to a halt as it entered a Biwa-esque lake, which in turn then tripped Miura over. If you asked the Urawa fans though they probably would have had a theory that Frontale after going a goal behind had been secretly watering the pitch to try to get the game called off. Or perhaps that not only are the league and the other teams anti-Urawa, but also Mother Nature is against them too. Perhaps it’s because the strength of their support is greater than anything else in heaven or on earth and therefore even the elements are jealous and want revenge.

- Whilst I’m on an Urawa bashing roll, might as well keep going, right? After all, there wasn’t much else to write about regarding this match if I’m being honest. I work in Urawa and on Saturday morning had been at work. The thought of going from home to Urawa, then back home for a couple of hours at the most, then back to Urawa and then back home again wasn’t exactly appealing so instead I decided to see out the day boozing my way around Urawa. One thing that I always moan about when it comes to going to the Saitama stadium is how crap the journey is. When you consider that the line was built pretty much to serve the new stadium, it’s impressive that Urawa Misono station is still absolutely miles from the stadium. For away fans coming from Tokyo, well, I guess it’s not supposed to be easy, but I was shocked how difficult it is to get to the stadium even from Urawa. I suppose this is what happens when you build a stadium in the middle of nowhere. To be honest though, I usually don’t really mind the walk. It’s much better than cramming on to a shuttle bus. The problem is when it is absolutely pissing it down and the rain floods the sewers on the path back to the station. What better way to top off an abandoned game after a shit first half than to wade through toilet water that at points goes over ankle level filling your shoes with watered down faecal matter. Actually I suppose it was kind of appropriate considering what we’d seen in the first half. After all, I’m sure we’re all fed up of seeing the same old shit on the pitch so perhaps it was interesting to encounter some different diluted shit directly flowing into your shoes on the way home. Can’t blame them for the weather though. (As much as they seemed to want to blame us for it). Can however blame them for the usual absolutely awful music they play. I’m starting to wonder if there is some kind of secret agent in their stadium staff who is looking to undermine the tough guy image that their fans so desperately want to pursue. Of course we always get East 17’s ‘House of Love’ which still entertains me for its bizarreness. But on this occasion it was backed up by what could only be selections from one of those CDs you get from a TV shopping channel. ‘Love all those great soul anthems from the 70s and 80s but disappointed that they’re not quite uplifting enough? Yearning for something a bit more like what you might hear at a party night in a medium sized town’s All Bar One on a Saturday night? Well buy this CD and play it to a stadium full of tough guys! Featuring mid tempo versions of ‘The Greatest Love of All’ and ‘Loving You’ complete with a foot tapping light house beat.’ It’s so absolutely hilariously out of step with the image their fans seem to want to portray that it can only be the work of someone trying to undermine them! Extremely amusing!

- Also perhaps trying to undermine them are… themselves. After hiring yet another foreign manager and splashing the cash and then starting to freak out when the team isn’t immediately top of the English Premier League and hasn’t won the World Cup within the managers first 30 games, Urawa have once again dumped another manager! It used to be the case that getting beaten by Frontale, (somewhat surprisingly even when we were absolutely flying), was the straw that broke the camel’s back and was enough to get any manager sacked. Now we’ve fallen so far that only being 1-0 up against us at half time is enough of a reason to change things at the top. Urawa, like FC Tokyo, seem to be a club that thinks that the only reason they aren’t winning everything is the manager, and haven’t noticed that the same problems keep happening whoever they hire. It’s quite amusing to watch from the outside. And as for the fact that they’ve rehired their previous manager, who seemed to spot that the club was perhaps rotten from top to bottom and left before he was fired, well, I hope he’s getting a lot of money, because I’m sure he knows what’s going to happen. When I quit my previous job due to the working conditions becoming unbearable I felt great relief. I was stupid enough to go back when they begged me to return, and whilst things were better for a while, it came as no surprise when things started getting shitty again and I had to quit a second time. Skorża, I hope it’s going to be worth it. It wasn’t for me. Maybe this might be the first time in the J League that the manager of a team has been changed at half time in a game. Although judging by the number of batshit chairmen and clubs that are around I wouldn’t bet that it hasn’t happened somewhere before. Probably best to restart the game at 0-0 though, right?😉 If there’s any sign of rain in the area for when the second half is played, I think a great deal of people might be traumatised and give the game a miss. It’s certainly a bit of a pain in the arse to make the trip given we probably know what’s going to happen anyway. Well, unless you’re really addicted to seeing passes and the occasional piece of skill that doesn’t even result in a shot but looks nice when cut up for Twitter.

Considering there were only 45 minutes played in this match and I have hardly written about the actual football, this has turned out to be a surprisingly long post. I thought I’d stopped doing that kind of thing recently, so after I’ve put this up I’ll have a moan at myself to add to all the other moans I’ve had already. Or maybe as a tribute to Urawa I should scream, whistle and boo as loudly as I can whilst looking myself straight in the eyes in a mirror. Next up, Sapporo away on Sunday. At least it’s a nice trip! I think we’ll probably lose. And it could be another game that is tricky due to weather. Of course as it’s being played in the Dome the game will be fine, but the approaching typhoon is making our flight back look a bit dicey. Still I guess it would be more fun to be stranded in Sapporo than to be stranded in Urawa Misono! After that we have a Levain double header against Kofu. I’m not exactly confident about that either, but once again, at least the trip is a nice one. So here’s to good away trips! And to good times (before and after but probably not actually) at home games! The games are mostly frustratingly crap right now, so let’s be grateful there’s more to life than the 90 minutes! 

Team

GK 1. JUNG Sung-Ryong

DF 31. VAN WERMESKERKEN Sai

DF 5. SASAKI Asahi
DF 7. KURUMAYA Shintaro
DF 13. MIURA Sota
MF 8. TACHIBANADA Kento

MF 10. OSHIMA Ryota

MF 14. WAKIZAKA Yasuto
FW 41. IENAGA Akihiro
FW 20. YAMADA Shin
FW 23. MARCINHO

Subs

GK 98. YAMAGUCHI Louis
FW 9. ERISON

FW 11. KOBAYASHI Yu

DF 15. TANABE Shuto

MF 17. TONO Daiya
MF 19. KAWAHARA So

DF 44. Cesar HAYDAR

Goals

WATANABE (Urawa) 23' 1-0

Highlights

Seems like Youtube agrees with me that there were no highlights in this game