Vs Vissel Kobe 18/2 Super Cup

Vissel Kobe 0 - 1 Kawasaki Frontale

It’s February 18th and already we’ve played our second game of the year. By the time 16 out of the 20 J1 teams kick off their first competitive game of 2024, we’ll be starting our fourth. And there’s no time to sit around enjoying not writing blog posts because game number three is fast approaching. After our first eleven just about did enough against what looked like a not particularly strong Shandong team last Tuesday we turned up at the National Stadium with a completely different first eleven. I think I expressed my doubts that Oniki would rotate much for this match, but he totally did so I have to eat some humble pie. Maybe he really has changed his approach. I guess that will become clearer as the games continue to come thick and fast. I know I always make a joke about the Levain Cup being the most prestigious of all Japanese football titles, but the Fujifilm Super Cup, as I believe it is now called, is most definitely the title all teams take least seriously and care the least about. Well, unless you are the troll Marinos fan who always finds something to criticise us about and expressed his disgust at us not taking this prestigious cup final seriously by rotating too much. Perhaps he’s still a bit sore after his side threw away a two goal lead against Bangkok United. I think a competition that only two teams have a chance of winning and which is usually crammed in between the last pre-season friendly and the season opener is absolutely the least admired trophy to add to the cabinet. But I am delighted that we snatched it away from Vissel Kobe’s clutches. Actually, that makes it sound like they were cruelly denied the cup by some misfortune, but I think we looked much better than them. To add a bit more detail and heat to that burn let’s say I think our second team looked much better than their first team. And even if they want to use the excuse that we’d already started our season, I’d like to add that any start to the season that our starting eleven had had, was basically sitting on a plane, and then sitting on a bench. I’m sure Mikitani could have funded a similar trip for their players if they’d wanted it. Anyway, this introduction has already gone longer than I wanted the whole post to go on, so I’d better get on with rolling out some more insults, as I’m sure that’s why you’re here. Let’s use the usual headings.

Us -

Massive changes as I said above. First pitch time for Ze Ricardo, Patrick Verhon and Yamauchi.  First starts for Van Wermeskerken and Maruyama. And I thought everyone did alright! There was no-one on the pitch for us who didn’t show some real positive promise. Certainly there were a few dodgy moments, but that’s to be expected with a team and partnerships that have never played together. And presumably there was a bit of a language barrier between Ze Ricardo and Patrick as they’ve only been in the country about a month. Sai almost made the perfect start to his Frontale career, coming very close to scoring with a backwards header very early on in the game. He later went on to actually make the perfect start to his Frontale career by scoring in the second half. It doesn’t bother me that he basically blocked a clearance which was then deflected into the net. I’ve seen goals that have more egregiously been not designated as own goals. I thought the rule was that if the ball was going on target before the final deflection it’s not an own goal. But anyway, I’m sure he’s happy to be credited with it and us fans are just happy it went in. To be honest, I couldn’t see a great deal of difference in the way we approached the game to how we did last year, but it just felt a lot better than it has recently. I guess this is due to the novelty factor of there being different players. I don’t think it’s particularly apparent that the ‘first choice’ team is better than the ones who started this match, which is something that if Oniki agrees with, will give him some difficult decisions to make. Certainly in the past I have been frustrated by us not changing anything much when the one plan we had wasn’t working. Seems like I’m easily placated by seeing some new faces though. Oh, and perhaps by winning! As I said above there were plenty of decent performances. I’m a bit biased as I like him a lot, but I thought Seko had a really good game and was unlucky to see his free kick hit the bar. His corners looked better than Wakizaka’s 2023 corners too. (I do remember thinking his corners were a bit better in the ACL game though). Takai was the other stand out I thought. He was clam and assured at the back and dealt with Osako pretty easily for the most part. He also looked good coming out of defence too. He showed this kind of promise in his first few games, so it’s good to see that kind of thing coming back after he had a bit of a wobble. I felt a bit sorry for Gomis in this game as he’s coming closer and closer to scoring but just doesn’t seem to have any luck. When he did put the ball in the net, (see below), the ref wasn't having it and he was denied an almost certain goal when after Marcinho came on and did one of his trademark dribbles, he tried to shoot rather than pass to an unmarked Gomis. Hopefully he’ll score soon, as I think that when he does he’ll start banging them in for fun. So, a much improved performance from our last game in this stadium and maybe some reason for optimism. Hopefully that doesn’t come crashing down in the immediate future.

Them -

After years of laughing at Vissel Kobe’s splashing of the cash to no effect I think everyone had to admit that last year they were deserved champions. Certainly their ability to sign plenty of high profile and effective players, somewhat in contrast to some of their recent more high profile foreign imports, helped them do well, but they more than earned their success. This is especially easy for me to say as they stopped YFM winning the league and did so with an extremely dodgy decision, hopefully rubbing salt in the YFM wounds. Not sure what’s happened to them since last year though. Now they seem like an ineffective long ball team. I particularly enjoyed the English language interview of Sai (van Wermeskerken, from now on just know as Sai as it’s a long name to have to keep typing), where he singled out the fact that it had been a challenge because we had to deal with a lot of long balls from Kobe. I don’t know if this was a wonderfully taken dig, but I kind of hope that it is. I guess their shooting was pretty bad in this game and that helped us out. Sakai was particularly awful when it came to getting shots or passes on target. I wonder if they’ve turned into 2023 Frontale. I saw they had plenty of possession and a decent amount of shots but failed to score. Got to love it when one of the three teams who people seem to be tipping for the title start out their year like that.  Their keeper looked awful too. I’ve been trying to think of a more amusing second half to the following comparison but haven’t quite been able to find one so you have to make do with this. Maekawa had more flaps than a migrating Arctic Tern in these 90 minutes. And one of these set up our goal. It’s a bit of a shame that we couldn’t have taken advantage of more of them though. One final point on Kobe. Seeing Arai and Miyashiro in their colours was a bit of a wrench. Arai was much loved at Frontale and we were kind of surprised when he left. The fact that he went down to J2 for a few seasons with JEF and then ended up at the J1 champions is a surprise, but I guess he’ll be playing a back up role there. Perhaps judging on how bad Maekawa played though, he could be getting more action than anyone expected. Miyashiro is a tough one. I had his shirt last year, (curse of the shirt, basically it’s my fault he left), but can’t begrudge him leaving us as he was underused, never really played in his best position and even though he scored more goals from open play than any other player in far less minutes, it was clear that Oniki wasn’t going to either make him his first choice striker or change our system to suit him. I was a bit shocked to see how many of our fans booed him before, during and after the game, and kind of disgusted that it happened when he and Arai came to greet us after the match. I don’t know if it’s because they resent him for leaving for a bigger pay packet, for the reigning champions or just because he was a youth team product who didn’t stay with us for the rest of his career. It seems that no-one has a problem when our players leave for foreign teams, regardless of the level, but if they leave to a J1 rival they should be hated. Of course it wasn’t everyone booing, but it was a significant amount of people. Perhaps these people think it would be better for him to stay with us forever, playing fewer and fewer games as the years pass, but still being there to take pictures with bananas for themed match day events and to make everyone in the crowd feel comfortable and warm inside. I don’t know what 2024 will hold for him, but maybe Kobayashi is an interesting comparison. He turned down some offers to go to teams where he’d definitely have played more and is apparently going to have a career with us after he stops playing. I can’t imagine it’s much fun for him though, particularly in a season like 2023 where the rotation was really minimal. Fingers crossed for him in 2024.

Ref and VAR -

This game had the potential to be a perfect storm of absolute shitness when it came to officials. The ref was Ikeuchi who is notoriously bad, but who I faintly praised in the last game we had with him saying that I ’didn’t find much if anything to get irritated about’. Perhaps he read this and was infuriated and determined to prove that there is always something to get irritated about when he’s in charge. The first note I made during the game said ‘four mins till first absolute shit decision’. I can’t remember what it was now, but I guess it was one of many, in my opinion, absolutely one-eyed decisions he made in the game. I knew we were in trouble when he decided to apparently warn Tanabe after a tackle that he didn’t even give a free kick for. Then unsurprisingly, the very next tackle Tanabe made he was booked. Gomis pointed this out to Ikeuchi but perhaps that only encouraged him, and it wasn’t long before he was able to book Gomis too. It seemed like everything was given Vissel’s way. I wouldn’t be surprised if you checked his fridge you’d find a massive bit of Kobe beef in there and a big pile of Rakuten gift cards on top of it. Of course I am naturally biased in favor of Frontale and my Vissel supporting friend seemed to think he’d done ok in the game. I find though that in the J League, if you feel like the ref has had a decent game, he’s probably been biased in your favour. I think a ref having a decent game is rarer than a cross that Maekawa doesn’t flap at. Or a bit of Kamifukumoto distribution that doesn’t end up flying off the side of the pitch,(this is hugely unfair, as I thought he had a decent game yesterday). The most egregious Ikeuchi cock up though was him blowing for a free kick when Yamada absolutely fairly won the ball by the goal line, passed it back to Gomis who put the ball in the back of the net. He clearly blew up for a free kick as it looked like some of the Kobe players had stopped. So I guess he must have been confident he was right, or does that 'let the play go on and get VAR check it' thing only work with offsides? I can’t remember if it was Ikeuchi who previously decided to blow the whistle for a goal that we scored that was incorrectly flagged offside, but crucially blow the whistle before the ball went in, so ruling out any possibility of VAR coming into play? I don’t know if it was him, but I wouldn’t be surprised if it was. I know it’s not a good look for our fans to boo the ref as he went up to receive his medal for a job truly terribly done, but to be honest, I thought he was awful, so probably got what he deserved. One thing that I thought was interesting was that the stadium screen which was broadcasting the action throughout the game stopped showing the action or replays as soon as there was any kind of hint of a decision which could have been contentious. I guess they are fed up of the referee’s incompetence being clearly shown to all in the stadium, and I suppose if you have incompetent refs it’s easier to try to hide their incompetence than try to actually make them not incompetent.

Next up, Shandong at home in the second leg of our ACL knockout game. We did our best to try to make the second leg interesting by gifting them a few goals late on in the first game, but it would be nice if we could put in a good and confident performance in what will be a library of a stadium given that the kick off has been set for 5pm on a Tuesday. I can only imagine this is due to us being obliging with the opposition's request which was probably intended to minimise any home advantage we might have. Certainly, there isn’t a rational reason to start at 5 when it comes to other time zones. Fingers crossed for a good result. I’m hoping that these posts might become a bit less rambly, a bit funnier and a lot less moany in 2024. I’m not sure I’ve started that particularly well though. And I guess a lot depends on what’s happening on the pitch. Definitely it’s a lot easier to not moan when the team isn’t playing badly, but I’m honestly trying to be less critical and a bit fairer to people who are doing their best. I’m sure Ikeuchi would be happy to hear this. Of course the useless bastard would. 😉

 

 

 

Team

GK 99. KAMIFUKUMOTO Naoto
DF 31. Sai VAN WERMESKERKEN
DF 2. TAKAI Kota

DF 35. MARUYAMA Yuichi

DF 15. TANABE Shuto (Yellow card 15')

MF 6. ZE RICARDO

MF 16. SEKO Tatsuki
MF 26. YAMAUCHI Hinata
FW 20. YAMADA Shin
FW 18. Bafetimbi GOMIS (Yellow card 25')

FW 28. PATRICK VERHON

Subs

GK 21. ANDO Shunsuke
MF 8. TACHIBANADA Kento (Yellow card 90+3') (on for YAMAUCHI 80')
DF 13. MIURA Sota (on for TANABE 46')
FW 23. MARCINHO (on for PATRICK VERHON 65')
MF 25. MATSUI Renji
FW 30. SEGAWA Yusuke (on for VAN WERMESKERKEN 80')
MF 77. YAMAMOTO Yuki (on for SEKO 85')

 

My Frontale Man Of The Match

 

This game and the team showed something of a work in progress, but some of that work was more complete so I have to give it to...

TAKAI Kota - looked great at the back and also bringing the ball out from the back. Really pleased to see him back on track after a little wobble.

 

Goals

VAN WERMESKERKEN (Frontale) 48' 0-1
 

Highlights

Kawasaki Frontale U18 vs Japan High School Selection

Kawasaki Frontale U18 1 - 0 Japan High School Selection

What a fantastic way to start football in 2022. Our U18 team took on a Japanese high school selection and came away with a 1-0 win, despite losing a couple of their best players to our first team squad. It was an interesting game with both teams having good chances but we came out on top and took the headlines with a well deserved win. I know the Winter Olympics are on at the moment, but certainly all football fans were much more interested in this game than any other matches that might also have coincidentally been taking place the same day...

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Ok, I suppose I can’t really continue with this hilarious joke any longer without actually having to write something about the other game that took place in the Nissan Stadium on the same day. Although I’m sure most Frontale fans won’t want to think or read about it much. The Levain Cup always has a reputation for being a competition that you care about if you win, but you write off if you don’t do well. I would say that the Super Cup is the same, but as as supporter of the losing team on this occasion, even that might be actually be overdoing it a bit. My Urawa supporter friend kept saying before the game that it’s just a glorified pre-season friendly, presumably expecting them to lose. Now that line of thinking has switched over to Frontale fans and the Urawa fans are probably giving the competition a lot more status. So yeah, just a pre-season game and ultimately meaningless blah blah... It may be telling that we last played Urawa in the Super Cup in 2019, when we were flying high and looking for a league three-peat and a successful ACL campaign. We won the Super Cup 1-0 at the Saitama Stadium and then… well nothing much went right after that and 2019 was a total disaster. Without thinking about it, I wore my 2019 shirt to this game. So maybe you can blame me. But for those who like to find patterns, perhaps we can take some consolation in the fact that we won that 2019 game and then had a bad season. Perhaps this year, the reverse will happen. To be honest though, there wasn’t much sign of that on the pitch in this match.

We started the game with a couple of notable absences. Of course Jesiel is still not available as he’s still recovering from his serious injury. Hopefully it won’t take too much longer… Once again we haven’t really signed any experienced defensive cover in the transfer window but at this stage of Oniki's reign I wasn’t really expecting anything else. Perhaps the more worrying thing is that it seems that the young defenders we sign or bring through our youth system don’t really seem to be considered as available either. In spite of numerous injuries in our defence last year, our next generation of defenders (Issaka, Kamiya, Tanabe) were only called on when absolutely necessary or when the opposition was very weak in the ACL group stages. Even when we played J3 and J2 teams in the Emperor’s Cup we went with the usual defenders. I’m not sure how they are supposed to develop as players if they never even make the bench. I will say though that we really struggled though the Emperor’s Cup games so maybe it’s a good thing we weren’t trying out the youngsters more. Now two of those three defenders have gone out on loan (Zain to YFC and Kamiya to Fujieda) so hopefully they’ll be playing some football. I’ve meandered massively off the plot here. Our other big absence was Tachibanada who was nowhere to be seen. The day before the game it was announced that we had two players who had caught COVID, and you have to think that Tachibanada might be one of them. It’s difficult to say who the other one might be, as most of the players who weren’t in the squad didn’t seem that likely to be in the squad anyway so it’s probably a waste of time speculating who it might be. Joao Schmidt came back into the Tachibanada spot. After being apparently exiled for missing a penalty in the ACL and seeming to be extremely likely to leave the club at the end of last season it was something of a surprise to see him starting yesterday. I don’t think he was treated very fairly by Oniki last season and I’m worried that he’s going to be scapegoated for this loss too and perhaps get exiled for another six months. I hope not as I don’t think he was to blame, but more on that later. Chanathip came in on the left up front and Oshima started in midfield. These were probably the only changes from last year’s peak starting line up apart from the enforced ones. Although I guess you could say Oshima in was an enforced change as someone has now left us to play under a thoroughly distasteful manager in a league which is apparently a much lower standard than the J League. So not many changes really. But this was a performance that looked like it was from a team of players who’d never met each other. We were very rusty. Our preparations for the season probably weren’t really helped by half of our back four playing international games whilst we were having our pre-season camp. I guess the World Cup is at a weird time of year this time round, but having international matches a few weeks before the start of the season probably isn’t going to help either the national team or the teams of the Japanese based selected players. On the Frontale forum it seems that no-one got away without being blamed. Everyone is past it or not good enough. Admittedly, if you based your analysis only on this game it might be easy to agree with this as I can’t really think of anyone who had anything near a good game. But I’m sure Schmidt will be blamed. He certainly was under a lot of pressure in the first half. I would have thought it might have made sense for either Oshima or Wakizaka to drop back and help him out a bit, but to be honest both of them were pretty anonymous anyway. It should come as no surprise though that Oniki didn’t really change the system. In previous years we’ve been able to get away with just sticking to the same system and the same plan, almost to the point of stubborn insanity and more often than not something works out for us. But it didn’t on this occasion and I think that was partly due to Oniki being out-thought by Rodriguez when it comes to tactics. 

 

Urawa came with a game plan that seemed to be go all out pressing and try to nick a goal. It paid off after only seven minutes but the writing was on the wall even before then. We had trouble getting out of our own half as we were being pressured constantly. After they got their goal they had something to hang on to and could start the time wasting, constantly repositioning goal kicks, rolling around on the floor from the slightest contact and waiting to see if they could take an opportunity if one turned up. It wasn’t nice to watch from a Frontale point of view but must have been very enjoyable for fans of other J League teams. If you have checked Twitter you could be mistaken for believing that Urawa are now the greatest football team in the world and will stroll to the title. I certainly think they will be a challenger this year, but I’d like to see what they do against teams who are happy to sit back in numbers against them. Of course I’m not going to praise Urawa, and instead will give the credit for their victory on the uselessness of our performance instead. In the past it has been too easy to slag off Urawa for the horrible racist and wannabe hooligan element of their fan base (plenty of whom left the stadium at the same time as I did, which is saying something as I really didn’t hang around once the whistle had been blown. Perhaps they didn’t realise there was silverware at stake). Now we might have to switch to disliking the team more. Ito is the prime candidate for me. I know heat maps are a popular part of football analysis recently. I’d like to see the horizontal heat map for Ito in this match. I’m pretty sure the majority of the 'heat' would be at a very low level, as he spent at least 15 minutes lying or writhing on the pitch. Seems like a bit of a wanker to me. But obviously this childishness on my part has been intensified by the rubbishness of our players on this occasion. So basically to sum up this Urawa paragraph, I’d say that they seem organized and have a plan, which might not be very nice to watch, but seems to be quite efficient. I’m hoping that this match was a freak game though. It would be nice if it were a false dawn for them and a false sunset for us, if that makes any kind of sense.

I’ll finish up with a few random observations. First a caveat. I know our last game was in the same stadium (albeit at the other end), but I don't remember the pitch being so far away last time. I know this is a problem at all stadiums with a running track, (even if they do cover it up), but it seemed particularly bad at this match. Perhaps that's because there was nothing much to watch anyway. It wasn't an engrossing or enjoyable 90 minutes in any way really. With our support being almost as lacklustre as the performance on the pitch. But you can't really blame the fans I guess. Many of them, (the newcomers I mean), are probably not used to watching us be rubbish. No fun to be had really. However, I thought it was quite amusing the way the two teams came out lead by their captains who were both holding the trophies they’d won to qualify for this game. It almost felt like the concept was that the silver be melted down, combined and forged into a new cup during the match, ready to be handed over at the end of the game. Kasahara was the ref and he was almost enough for me to wish that Iemoto would come back out of retirement. Almost… If Kasahara is the bright upcoming reffing talent in the J League we’re in for some trouble. I always think he’s rubbish but at least on this occasion he didn’t red card Taniguchi. Doubly surprising as he seemed to interpret most tackles as a foul on Urawa. Perhaps this was assisted a bit by Ito’s wonderful death scene auditions. Surely a role in a Japanese crime drama will be offered to him soon. So basically Kasahara was shit and Urawa had and executed a good game plan, but I’m not going to take the blame away from us. We didn’t deserve anything from this match and that was sadly evident pretty early on and for long periods of the game. We had four shots in 90 minutes. Only one was on target. Urawa had five, three on target and scored twice. So you can blame pretty much any of our players wherever they were on the pitch. Chanathip didn’t seem to work in the forward left position but looked a lot better in the second half when he was moved more central and a little bit backwards. Shortly after this he was subbed (insert shoulder shrug upturned palms emoji here). I’ve got no idea where anyone was playing towards the end of the game as our subs just seemed to be kind of random as they do often tend to be when we’re chasing matches recently. On this occasion though it didn’t work and our non-formation got caught out with a long ball over the top and we conceded our second. We probably should have tried the same thing a bit rather than then endless sideways and backwards passing trying to slowly edge out of our own half than made up the majority of this game. Only time will tell as to whether this is a sign of our strengths waning, or whether this was a very 'off' off-day from a rusty team. This evidently wasn’t a good result for us, but I think it could turn out to be a useful result if we pay attention to what the game taught us. We can’t just continue on as we have for the last few years without any other plan. And we can’t coast our way into a new season thinking we’re still better than everyone else. The league is probably going to be a lot more open this year with some new teams challenging. Whether that will include our first league opponents FC Chofu who we'll face at Todoroki on Friday, we’ll see. We definitely need to up our game against them even if they are a work in progress, as I think on the evidence of our performance yesterday, our U18 team would have given us a good run for our money. I thought this would be a quite short blog post as we were so lifeless there wasn’t really much to say, but instead it has meandered on. For that reason, I’ll knock it on the head here. Let’s be snooty and write this off as an unimportant pre-season game for us and use it to get up to speed for Friday when we’ll hopefully have a bit more fun and have a spring in our step again.

Team 

 
GK 1. Sung-Ryong JUNG
DF 13. YAMANE Miki

DF 5. TANIGUCHI Shogo

DF 7. KURUMAYA Shintaro

DF 2. NOBORIZATO Kyohei

MF 6. JOAO SCHMIDT

MF 10. OSHIMA Ryota

MF 14. WAKIZAKA Yasuto

FW 41. IENAGA Akihiro

FW 9. LEANDRO DAMIAO

FW 18. CHANATHIP

Subs

GK 27. TANNO Kenta

MF 3. TSUKAGAWA Koki (on for OSHIMA 82')
FW 11. KOBAYASHI Yu (on for CHANATHIP 77')

MF 16. SEKO Tatsuki (on for WAKIZAKA 71')

FW 20. CHINEN Kei (on for LEANDRO DAMIAO 71')

FW 23. MARCINHO (on for JOAO SCHMIDT 46')

MF 31. YAMAMURA Kazuya

 

 

My Frontale Man Of The Match

 

If you expect there to be anything in this section you clearly haven't read the post or watched the game or highlights.

 

 

Goals

ESAKA (Urawa) 7' 0-1

ESAKA (Urawa) 81' 0-2

 

Highlights

 

Vs Gamba Osaka 20/2 Super Cup

Kawasaki Frontale 3 - 2 Gamba Osaka

A new season starts, so off we go again on this blog. Feels like it’s only been a few weeks since I last had to write a blog post on here. But what a joyful few weeks that was! It’s good that I’ve made an early start to the whinging this season. I think as we’re going to be experiencing another quite hectic season, (although probably nowhere near as hectic as last year), I’m going to slightly adapt the format on here again. Also, it looks like it might be more difficult to get tickets to games this year as our season ticket holder privileges have been revoked. (Not just ours, but all season ticket holders. I didn’t do anything bad). Writing lengthy blog posts on games I’ve watched on the internet seems to be a bit of a waste of time as clearly the majority of my readers know what they are talking about more than I do. So, perhaps there will be a slight change in focus. But I always say that and then end up reverting back to the same old things. So, we’ll see I guess! For this game, I’m going to go with the tangential bullet points that occasionally seem to work. You are not going to get much in the way of useful information, but I guess you never really did. Hopefully there will be something worth reading though! Here we go…

The heady thrills of a silent stadium on TV -

Football is back and, due to the state of emergency, so are crowds limited to 5000. I’m sure that in the stadium there might have been a slight wash of excitement at various points, but watching this game on TV, I found it quite hard to focus at times. 5000 crowds means no drums but we do seem to be able to do some kind of rhythmic clapping so perhaps the latest research has proved that unlike soldiers marching in step over a bridge, people clapping at the same time isn’t a danger to everyone involved. We’ll find out whether it is as flat an atmosphere as it sounded on TV next Friday I guess. Although given that we only managed to get tickets in the main stand, it might be hard to tell. Let’s hope that the state of emergency is lifted on March 7th and we can get back to at least 10000 crowds and just a bit of atmsophere as soon as it is safe and possible.

MITOMA SHOOTING!!!! (said in the style of a Japanese TV commentator) -

We have been firing in goals galore in our preseason games. I’m never sure if this is a good thing or not as preseason form often bears little relation to how teams play when the real stuff starts. But we did start this game in kind of exciting fashion. Perhaps taking a cue from our Kanagawa neighbours YFM, who after winning the league in 2019 started the next season in pretty haphazard style, we started this game looking good going forward (up until it came to shooting) and looking pretty dodgy at the back (until it came to conceding). All of the excitement without any of the goals! After an absolute howler of a miss from Taniguchi after Joao Schmidt was unlucky to not open the scoring with a header from a corner, we did kind of get ourselves together a bit and managed to score twice. It will come as no surprise to discover that it was Mitoma with both goals, who seems to have not got too disheartened by not being able to move overseas yet. So far so good! Damiao even was trying to the overhead kicks again. However, judging by the second half, it seems that we are equally capable of conceding goals in quick succession as we are of scoring them. This was never a comfortable game for us, but I guess at least that makes things exciting. Anyway, this is getting dangerously close to talking seriously about the game so I’ll move on.

New year, new players -

This game gave us an opportunity to get a look at some of our new players. We had a new guy called Tanaka playing in the number 25 shirt… oh hang on, it’s just Ao, whose face seems to have changed again. Apparently he’s also growing still which isn’t something you can normally say about players who’ve spent a couple of years as an important member of the first team. Joao Schmidt was perhaps the biggest of the signings and it looks like he’ll be slotting into that Morita-shaped hole in the team. I thought he looked like he had settled in already which was nice, but he shouldn’t get complacent. There have been quite a few singings in recent years who went straight into the team only to gradually disappear from view, as if on one of those really long travelators at Haneda, slowly receding into the distance, only ever appearing in training ground videos and occasional autograph singing sessions. Three other new players played a part from the bench. Tsukagawa looked pretty exciting in the tackle I thought, giving back to the Gamba players as good as he got, getting VERY involved with some hard but fair challenges. A perfect person to take over Nara’s number 3 shirt. Was a shame to see him have to leave the pitch after a particularly hard challenge but he seemed ok and it did give us an opportunity to see the 6th sub rule come into effect for the first time. I’m not 100% sure of the details but it allows a team to replace a player who’s had a bang on the head rather than having them play on and risk their health. Tono got a bit of time on the pitch at the end in place of Ienaga. It seems that unlike Kobayashi, he is willing to play in that position on the right. And he did provide an assist for the very enjoyable last minute winner from Kobayashi. It’s nice that we have another option in that position as Hatate seems to be a left back now. Tachibanada had been touted as being ready for the first team and I’d say that seems to be true. He was also said to be a defensive midfielder but in his time on the pitch it seems that all the other midfielders had a go in that position apart from him. Whether this line up represents Oniki’s best eleven and subs, who knows. The game had a bit of a feel of a warm up fixture to it, (for me too, judging by my attention span). Guess we’ll find out next Friday.

CONVERT! -

Oniki is a religious zealot! Oniki is a fly-half after a try is scored! (Maybe… I know nothing about rugby and had to google this). Oniki is a bigoted parent of a LGBT child! What I’m trying to say is that he seems obsessed with converting. And I don’t mean converting Brazilian singings from athletes into people for the translators to take shopping. Who needs to sign defenders when you can covert players from all over the pitch into defenders! Hatate started this game at left back and it looks like it will be him playing there till Nobori is fit again. Yamamura who was a midfielder and was then converted in a defender seems to have been converted back into a midfielder again judging by the clubs grouping of players in Instagram posts. Oniki loves converting players into defenders so much that he even converts defenders into different position defenders. It seems that Kurumaya is now going to be playing centre back, (or probably covering for centre back), rather than left back. Which made it slightly amusing that with our emergency 6th sub Oniki had to put Kurumaya at left back. There was even a rumour pre-season that he was thinking of converting Taniguchi in a defensive midfielder to replace Morita. Which is also funny as that was where he used to play before he was converted into a centre back. If Claudio Ranieri was the tinker man, surely it’s only a matter of time before Oniki has to be referred to as the tweaker man. Hmmm, sure there is a better word for that but I’ve been searching for it for a while and can’t find it so that’ll have to do.

VAR -

VAR, it’s crap, isn’t it? It allowed our second goal, which looked offside but wasn’t, but I’d still love to see it launched into space or thrown overboard in the middle of the Pacific. In theory, decisions will now be correct. Although even some refs have said that there will still be an element of personal judgement involved. But whether it is worth ditching the exhilaration of scoring a goal for the sterile thrill of accuracy I’m not sure. In fact, I think I am kind of sure that it isn’t worth it. As I tweeted,
‘The VAR delay makes the celebration so much sweeter!’ said no-one, ever. The big VAR decision in this game for our second goal was particularly weird as on the TV coverage they didn’t even bother showing a replay until the decision had been given. Perhaps they were too worried that something said by a commentator or analyst might contradict the official verdict. I dunno. I’m sure there will be disasters with VAR this season and ridiculously marginal calls which cause uncomfortable vibe-killing delays. While at the same time decisions that aren’t covered by VAR will be totally bodged by the ref. I’m pretty sure that Gamba’s late free kick in this game came from one of their own players elbowing a teammate. Of course I wouldn’t have been too happy if they’d scored from that free kick, but at the same time there’s no way I’d be calling for VAR to run the rule over all the decisions in a game. Better for consistency’s sake to just bin it, right? Hehe.


So, this post seems to have just gone the same way that all the previous ones did. I guess it will take a while for my new blogging style to bed in. Unlike our new players who seem to have hit the ground running! The Super Cup is a competition that winner is delighted to win whilst at the same time every other team in the league says is meaningless. Certainly though, it was nice to get off to a winning start and irritate plenty of opposition fans with a last minute winner. Hopefully we can keep this going on Friday against YFM at home to kick off the league campaign. We’ll probably need to iron out a few of those dodgy crinkles at the back though and probably take our chances a bit more. We won’t always be able to rely on a last minute winner. Fingers crossed we won’t need one! Go Frontale!

 

Team 

GK 1. Sung-Ryong JUNG 

DF 13. YAMANE Miki

DF 4. JESIEL
DF 5. TANIGUCHI Shogo

DF 47. HATATE Reo

MF 6. JOAO SCHMIDT
MF 25. TANAKA Ao

MF 8. WAKIZAKA Yasuto

FW 41. IENAGA Akihiro

FW 9. LEANDRO DAMIAO

FW 18. MITOMA Kaoru

Subs

GK 27. TANNO Kenta 

MF 3. TSUKAGAWA Koki (on for JOAO SCHMIDT 64')

DF 7. KURUMAYA Shintaro (on for TSUKAGAWA 90+1')

FW 11. KOBAYASHI Yu (on for LEANDRO DAMIAO 72')

MF 16. HASEGAWA Tatsuya (on for MITOMA 72')

FW 19. TONO Daiya (on for IENAGA 83')

MF 22. TACHIBANADA Kento (on for WAKIZAKA 64')

 

My Frontale Man Of The Match

 

I definitely could have paid a lot more attention to this game than I did, but the experience of watching a game played almost in silence on TV didn’t exactly grip me. (Still managed to write all of this crap on it though didn’t?). Going to give it to…

MITOMA Kaoru - Maybe a lazy decision to give it to the guy who scored twice but he really can shoot can’t he? While others fluff their lines he seems to more often than not do the business. Long may that continue!

 

Goals

MITOMA (Frontale) 29' 1-0

MITOMA (Frontale) 32' 2-0

YAJIMA (Gamba) 60' 2-1

PATRIC (Gamba) 67' PEN 2-2

KOBAYASHI (Frontale) 90+6' 3-2

 

Highlights

 

Vs Urawa Reds 16/2/19 - Super Cup

Kawasaki Frontale 1 - 0 Urawa Reds

 

We’re back! The 2019 season has (sort of) kicked off. At least as far as we’re concerned anyway. In the interests of my sanity and the sanity of my readers, I’m going to try to reform the way I write these posts into a general introduction part, some ‘what we have learned’  bullet points and then a conclusion. We’ll see how that goes, but  it seems clear to me that I’ve waffled on a bit too much in the past, with some of my posts being pretty text heavy and undigestible. Your feedback is welcome and may even be taken into consideration. Whilst last year’s Fuji Xerox Super Cup ‘final’ saw us flicker into life and then immediately extinguish ourselves, this was a whole lot more of a convincing start to a year, even if the scoreline didn’t completely reflect it. We got an opportunity to see some new faces, sing some new songs and celebrate a first cup title and a welcome win at the ‘neutral’ Saitama Stadium against Urawa, whose home ground is the Saitama Stadium. Here’s ‘what we learned’:

New players means new excitement!

- There was quite a buzz about the arrival of Leandro Damiao and it seems that he’s well up for fulfilling people’s expectations. He had a great first game, full of energy, causing big problems for the Urawa defenders and keeper with his pressuring and harrying. It was genuinely quite frightening to see him running towards the opposition keeper who’s trying to get rid of the ball. His goal was a nice one, with a lovely half-volleyed finish with plenty of power behind it. Maguinho had a decent game too, but, I felt, fell victim to some bizarre decisions from the officials. His replacement midway through the second half, Mawatari looked less comfortable, but admitted afterwards that he was quite nervous. I think it showed, and things will presumably only get easier for him from here. No sign of Yamamura or Jesiel, neither even making the bench, so the jury’s obviously still out on them.

Tactical juggling and perhaps even some flexibility!

- Apparently, Oniki spent the off-season in England, watching Premier League games and visiting an Arsenal training session. Interesting… This presumably resulted in us revealing our long overdue Plan B! Although perhaps this Plan B is actually the new Plan A and there still won’t be a Plan B, but who needs a plan B if the Plan A works well? The starting line-up was announced as being 4-2-2-2, with Kobayashi and Damiao up front and Kengo and Ienaga behind them. In reality we started more like last season’s 4-2-3-1 with Damiao being up top by himself. But any thoughts about this being a solid continuation of last season’s formation were soon in tatters. I’m not great with tactics, so I’m not sure exactly what was happening, but it seemed to me that the formation was very fluid. Kobayashi was at times alongside Damiao and at times on the right. Ienaga was all over the pitch, Kengo often back with Oshima as Morita bombed forward. It seems that maybe Kengo and Ienaga have some kind of agreement that while one of them does whatever they want, the other will stay in position. The lack of width is made up for by the fact that both of the full backs were pushing very far forward with Morita, Oshima or Kengo at times dropping back. It was pretty exciting from an attacking point of view and at the same time, we seemed surprisingly solid and well-organized at the back. The only drawback of this formation is the fact that the left side attacking midfield position that we are totally over-subscribed with talent for, and that Ienaga has now nominally been moved into, doesn’t really exist anymore. Perhaps we’re more likely to see Abe, Saito and Hasegawa further in-field and a bit freer when they get a chance. This would probably suit Saito quite well and he did well when he came on. It’s probably a bit early to declare Oniki a tactical genius, but this was pretty promising. Fingers crossed it doesn’t all fall to pieces in a week’s time against FC Tokyo.

New season, same poor officiating

- The ref was Iemoto again, and he still desperately seemed to be trying to prove that he doesn’t favour us since we stupidly cheered his announcement as the ref for our away game against FC Tokyo. Thankfully we were mid-song when he was announced for this game so we weren’t able to worsen the situation. Iemoto trying to appear like he doesn’t favour us can be the only justification for some of the truly bizarre decisions that riddled this game. But of course, I would say he was terrible and didn’t give us anything, wouldn’t I? I found it astonishing that Urawa only picked up one yellow in the whole game in spite of their constant fouling and destroying tactics. Yeah, this is all a bit biased, I guess, but it certainly seemed like we were getting the rough end of most of the calls in the game. Maguinho dribbled the ball up the pitch, through foul after foul, finally being felled just outside the box and Iemoto gave a free kick against him. Can’t really have any complaints about our two disallowed goals. Was furious at the time, my view at the other end of the pitch, directly behind play with perhaps a sub-standard prescription in my glasses clearly indicated two perfectly legitimate goals cruelly chalked off. Being able to watch the highlights proved that both decisions were right, with Kobayashi and Damiao being not perfectly in tune just yet. Can’t wait till they really start clicking!

Urawa: pride of Urawa

- I recall once being greatly amused by a Boston Utd flag which instead of having the expected ‘Pride Of (insert county)’ merely went with ‘Pride of Boston’ presumably realizing that Lincoln City or Grimsby Town had more claim on being the pride of Lincolnshire. Urawa have a similar flag, but I think in this case it’s probably more a case of the rest of Saitama being embarrassed by them. Leaving their supporters legendarily dubious politics and love of hooliganism aside, neither supporters or team left the stadium with much credit. I don’t know if it was because we played well, but Urawa looked very very ordinary, managing only one shot all game. Apparently they’d only played one pre-season game before this, which if it’s true is a bit bizarre. Presumably most of their pre-season training was spent perfecting fouling and I’ve got to give them credit, they were well drilled in that respect. As for the fans, as per usual (as far as I’m concerned), they were pretty quiet. I always say the same thing, but if they want to, they can make a lot of noise, but they seem to not be bothered most of the time. Although they piped up during the national anthem, which was a bit weird but not altogether surprising. Guess they are ‘patriots’. The other bizarre thing they did, apart from booing relentlessly the same few of our players they always do, was give Kurumaya a round of applause as our team was announced. I know he rejected an offer from them in the off-season, so perhaps the whole ‘treat ‘em mean, keep em keen’ thing works for them.

So, all in all, reasons to celebrate and reasons for cautious optimism. I never like to get too excited about things as I’m afraid of jinxes, but I’m looking forward to next weekend and seeing if we can pick things up from where we left off in this game. I guess if you’re looking for some doom and gloom, I could probably say that we only scored once in a game we pretty much dominated. In the second half things perhaps weren't as exhilarating as in the first, but we did actually score and there were new partnerships and relationships being built all over the pitch. Considering how poorly we normally start the season this either means that we’re going to be totally unstoppable, or we’re reversing the normal trend and will start well and then do a Hiroshima when it comes to the crunch. We should remember that this game with its multiple subs and rustiness all over the pitch is not a real indication of how the season will start. But at the same time we should consider that one-off games or cup competitions are the things that we normally mess up the most, so perhaps that monkey is off our back now. If we’d lost we’d probably be saying it doesn’t matter, but are now giving it added significance as we won. Whichever way you want to look at it, let’s enjoy another ‘title’ if you can call it that, enjoy sending out a message to our rivals this season and enjoy the thought of Leandro Damiao charging at the opposition defences equally committed, whether he has the ball or not. Go Frontale!


Team

GK 1. Sung-Ryong JUNG
DF 26. MAGUINHO
DF 3. NARA Tatsuki
DF 5. TANIGUCHI Shogo (Yellow card 66')
DF 7 KURUMAYA Shintaro
MF 10. OSHIMA Ryota
MF 6. MORITA Hidemasa
MF 11. KOBAYASHI Yu
MF 14. NAKAMURA Kengo
MF 41. IENAGA Akihiro
FW 9. LEANDRO DAMIAO (Yellow card 27')

Subs
GK 21. ARAI Shota
MF 2. NOBORIZATO Kyohei (on for KURUMAYA 14')
FW 8. ABE Hiroyuki (on for KOBAYASHI 88')
DF 17. MAWATARI Kazuaki (on for MAGUINHO 70')
MF 19. SAITO Manabu (on for NAKAMURA 70')
FW 20. CHINEN Kei (on for LEANDRO DAMIAO 79')
MF 25. TANAKA Ao (on for MORITA 79')


My Frontale Man Of The Match

Yeah, it’s a glorified friendly, yeah, people are rusty and there are new faces to integrate. But I’m still going to award this. Don’t think anyone had a bad game but there was probably one stand out performer, especially if you judge these things by the sprint count, a stat that Japanese football broadcasters seem to be obsessed with. So, it goes to…

LEANDRO DAMIAO - Bossed the Urawa defence with his power and drive, constantly chasing apparently lost causes, willing to shoot and scored an absolute blaster half-volley that wouldn’t have been stopped even if there was a player in the way. Bravo! (Please don’t get injured…). 26 sprints.


Goals

LEANDRO DAMIAO (Frontale) 52' 1-0


Highlights

 

Vs Cerezo Osaka 10/2/18 - Super Cup

Kawasaki Frontale 2 - 3 Cerezo Osaka

So once again, back to the Saitama Stadium to play Cerezo Osaka in a cup final, this time ridiculously early in both the day and the season. I am not sure of the esteem in which the Fuji Xerox Super Cup is held for the majority of J League fans, but this was at least an opportunity to get some kind of revenge on Cerezo for ruining our day back in early November. Sadly, this opportunity was spurned and instead we got another reason to either dislike Cerezo or at least consider them as our new bogey team. Last season we had two rotten games against them when we really didn’t show up and one stormer (at home in the league). We can now add another to the first column. In the end you could say the scoreline flattered us a little. They weren’t particularly good, but we were pretty rotten, lethargic and a mess all over the pitch. Bit worrying that this is the case after a fairly long break and with a starting eleven with hardly any changes from the side that won the league. Oh dear. Shanghai at home on Tuesday…

The day started, as I said above, ridiculously early, even more so for the Cerezo fans I guess. A 13:30 kick off with another whole 90 minute game before kick off, (J League U18 selection vs Japanese high school selection), meant that the gates opened at 09:30. I have no idea what time the many people ahead of us in the queue got there as we arrived around 08:40 and were quite a way back. Thankfully the weather wasn’t too bad and there was also the prospect of a huge number of J League mascots in attendance hanging around outside the ground. An early highlight of the day was getting my photo taken with Ehime’s angry orange and long time favourite Sagan Tosu’s Wintos. This early highlight actually proved to be the only highlight of the day for me. It was a fairly depressing game to watch. The only changes to last year’s first choice starting line-up were Tasaka in for Elsinho (again inured against Urawa in pre-season. Just saying, but maybe we should stop playing one of our main rivals a couple of weeks before the start of the season…), and Moriya in for Oshima who was on the bench, but still recovering from the injury he got playing for Japan. Joining him on the subs bench were Arai, Noborizato, some guy called Okubo, Hasegawa, Chinen and new signing Morita. As seems to be the way in such competitions, we were treated to a bizarre special rule for this game, this time involving substitutions. We were able to change five players, but had to do it on no more than three occasions (not including half time). The fact that the rule requires deatiled explanation says something I guess, but I suppose the thinking was, it’s almost a pre-season game so allow them to make a few more changes, but not give anyone the opportunity to use all five changes to bring the game almost to a halt, hanging on to a lead at the end of the game. 

I know there’s an element of sour grapes in this, but I’m not going to dwell too much on specific events in the game. If you saw the game, you don’t need anyone bringing back the misery. If you didn’t, consider yourself lucky. You’re better off not knowing. We didn’t start particularly well. They had us penned back in our half and were making a few chances. Admittedly the start was better than in the Levain final, but I certainly felt a bit apprehensive for the rest of the game after the first five minutes or so. Our off season seems to have left us unable to pass the ball and the midfield was pretty anonymous. Neto and Kengo were having a bit of a dodgy time of it, but really, no-one was covering themselves in glory. We were doing ok at the back, for the most part stopping their attacks but as soon as we tried to move the ball forward we lost it. Sung-Ryong took an early knock with a knee to the head from a Cerezo forward. Surprised it wasn’t a booking to be honest as it looked pretty bad. Not saying it was intentional but his boot and knee were pretty high. He was down a long time but thankfully could continue. We seemed to be doing ok passing the ball along the back line but, thanks to Cerezo pressing us, were having trouble getting out of our own half. When we did try to move the ball forward we lost it and they came back at us fast. Inevitably, sooner or later they scored and whilst it was a nice move from them, it was made all the easier by the fact that we gave them acres of space in spite of having loads of players back. No-one got anywhere near the ball or any of their players so they were effectively able to pass the ball into the back of the net. Very frustrating. The goal resulted in a change of game plan for them and it was almost like we were back in the Levain final again. Cerezo put everyone behind the ball and waited for a fast break on the counter attack. There aslo was a considerable amount of time wasting. Both of these things are annoying, but they’re legitimate tactics so we’ve got to learn how to deal with them. When we did manage to move the ball forward a little they started to look a bit rattled, but as seems to be the case against Cerezo at the Saitama Stadium, our shots were high, wide or rolled straight at the keeper. It was a pretty underwhelming first half, but the consolation was that things could only get better.

Half time saw a couple of changes. Moriya was replaced by Oshima and Kengo by Okubo. I did think that maybe Okubo might be playing in the Kengo role more this year and that is where he came on. Things did seem quite fluid though, with him apparently swapping front man position with Kobayashi quite a bit. He looked determined to get involved and from the start was at the heart of a couple of early good moves. However, we then conceded again. It was route one stuff but still featured high levels of ineptitude from us. A long goal kick was smacked up the pitch, Nara missed the first header, Neto was outmuscled for the second one and Tasaka half pulled out of the challenge on Kiyotake as he ran through on goal, presumably knowing that if he made any contact, it probably would have been a red card. Once again, loads of space and an inability from us to make a challenge. This goal didn’t seem to deter us too much though. We were back pressing again and starting to build up some momentum. And it didn’t take long for us to get one back. It was from the penalty spot and was an absolute gift from Cerezo. Their player smashed into the back of Kurumaya, who was on the edge of the box, waiting to head the ball. It seemed like a totally unnecessary challenge for them to make and was a really clumsy one. I’m not sure what they were complaining about, as the Cerezo player made no attempt to go for the ball and simply took out the player. Kobayashi put the penalty away, straight down the middle. Shortly after the goal Tasaka was replaced with Morita. Oniki has done this a few times in the past and I’m not sure I really agree with it. If someone makes a clanger of a mistake they are sometimes hauled off shortly afterwards. But it did give us our first look at Morita who slotted in at right back. He gave a decent account of himself in the rest of the game, getting forward well and looking dangerous at times. Good for him! This goal really opened the game up with Cerezo seemingly unsure as to whether to try and play football or put everyone behind the ball. Things got a bit ragged with attacks going from end to end and with lots of space. But we were clearly in the ascendency and building up a bit of speed and rhythm with Cerezo taking every opportunity to try and slow things down and waste some time. I couldn’t have imagined they’d go as far as to have two of their players run into each other though. It was a bit of a slapstick moment, but to be honest the joke was on us, as Kiyotake was down for an eternity, the stretcher being called on, then him standing up, then sitting back down and then leaving the field on the stretcher, killing two or three minutes. This killed our momentum dead and we were back to square one again. Around this time we had some more major let offs, with Cerezo going close on a few occasions and even having the ball in the back of the net only for it to be ruled out for offside. Our midfield was a bit more solid with Oshima doing a better job than Neto was doing or Moriya had done. In the second half, it was definitely the defence who went missing rather than the midfield. Both Nara and Taniguchi made shocking errors and Neto was also playing a part in the shambolics. But we had little choice than stick with the same at the back as our squad seems horribly light on defenders. Hasegawa came on for Abe and gave it a good go. Our threat was definitely coming predominately down the left, with him and Kurumaya linking up quite well. But we weren’t scoring. And once again we feel asleep at the back and conceded. A defensive clearance was, as seemed to be the case all game, collected by a Cerezo player rather than a Frontale one, headed back towards our box and they had plenty of time and space to pass the ball through the whole of our backline and finish easily. Again, we made it too easy for them. Oniki responded to this by bringing on Chinen for Ienaga. Your guess is as good as mine as to where the front four were playing. It always feels like the right thing to do to bring on a striker, but I think we were lacking a bit of organisation up front. To be honest, at this stage, I would have been quite happy if the ref had blown up ten minutes early and put us out of our misery. But as tends to happen, we were thrown a lifeline, to give us just a little hope that could later make the misery more pronounced. On the 92nd minute we pulled a goal back again and it was through Okubo. Hasegawa made a nice run up the left, but lost the ball by the goal line. Generously, they returned the ball to him and he passed the ball across the box for Okubo to prod home. A bit of a gift again, as probably all of there goals in this game were. There were still three more minutes of injury time left to play, and due to plenty of time wasting, we got a bit more than that. But there were no more goals. It wasn’t to be and we got exactly what we deserved from the game - nothing. Cerezo were just more organised than us, dealt better with the occasion and whilst they didn’t exactly set the world on fire, justifiably took home the trophy. Another silver for us. Although to be honest, this time it was second place out of a total field of two, so probably doesn’t count.

It seems ridiculous to be moaning so soon after we won the league in dramatic fashion, but I guess that’s what people have come to expect from this blog. The wins are fantastic and the defeats are tragedies. To be honest, on this occasion, it was just a case of mild disappointment and frustration. We simply didn’t turn up, but in the scheme of things, it was’t a crucial game. I think the more worrying thing is how unprepared we look for the start of the season. We’ve got a very important game on Tuesday in the ACL and if we play like this, we could be in real trouble. Two defeats in the bag before we start the season. Fingers crossed, this dodgy performance can give us a bit of a kick up the backside. Let’s tentatively do some positives and negatives. Negatives first. Rotten midfield in the first half, rotten defence in the second and a forward line that didn’t really get into the game. Worryingly few decent chances (although apparently we had the same amount of shots as they did…). Not the best performance from Oniki either. A game with five subs is a weird one, but  at the end we seemed to be just throwing on players more out of hope than anything else. Also, a bench of seven with a disturbing lack of defensive options on it. I know that’s not the way we play, but if we’d had an injury to Nara or Taniguchi we could have been in real trouble. But I don’t want to blame him too much, as the goals were all down to individual errors it seemed and there’s not much you can do about that during the game when you’re the manager. Perhaps the most worrying thing, is that again, we failed to rise to the occasion. Last year we succeeded, but it was after almost all hope was gone and we had to rely on other teams, rather than our own composure in a pressure situation. Can we really say that the chokers tag has been dispelled? Maybe not. It’s difficult to find positives in the game, but maybe you could say that the subs played alright, maybe better than the starters. Okubo seems determined to make up for lost time and I hope he’ll remain motivated for the whole season. Morita did well on his debut too. He must have made quite an impression in preseason to be given an opportunity so early. Although I suppose the Elsinho injury helps. There has been some talk about the grass being long and the pitch being dry from the players afterwards, but let’s be honest, we’ve got to have a plan B, and an ability to cope with conditions which are not the same as at our home games. To tie all this up into some kind of conclusion, I’d say that as we lost this game, we’ll say it’s an insignificant cup. If we’d won, of course we’d be saying the opposite. This was a rotten performance, but it’s early stages still and it’s stupid to read too much into one match. Perhaps if we hadn’t made so many errors in one game, we could have won it. Small things change matches, and sadly on this occasion, the small things that changed the match were for the most part us handing them goals on a plate. Onwards to Tuesday when we can either completely forget about this performance, or sink into a bigger funk of doom and gloom.

So, next up are Shanghai SIPG at home on Tuesday in the ACL. Despite then having to go through the qualification rounds, they probably are our strongest opponent in the group stages, given some of the big name players they have. Sadly, due to the really early kick off and my work, I’m probably going to miss this game. The game after is also ACL. We don’t get into action in the league till the 25th when we’re away at Jubilo. It feels a bit lacklustre to say it after this damp squib of a game, but as tradition dictates, GO FRONTALE!


Team

GK 1. Sung-Ryong JUNG

DF 6. TASAKA Yusuke

DF 3. NARA Tatsuki

DF 5. TANIGUCHI Shogo

DF 7. KURUMAYA Shintaro

MF 21. EDUARDO NETO

MF 19. MORIYA Kentaro

MF 41. IENAGA Akihiro

MF 14. NAKAMURA Kengo

MF 8. ABE Hiroyuki (Yellow card 60')

FW 11. KOBAYASHI Yu

Subs 
GK 30. ARAI Shota
DF 2.  NOBORIZATO Kyohei
FW 4. OKUBO Yoshito (on for NAKAMURA 46')

MF 10. OSHIMA Ryota (on for MORIYA 46')

MF 16. HASEGAWA Tatsuya (on for ABE 71')

FW 20. CHINEN Kei (on for IENAGA 79')

MF 25. MORITA Hidemasa (on for TASAKA 52')

My Frontale Man Of The Match

Not sure anyone really deserved it. The game was just a bit of a let down. I’ll leave it for this match but note that Okubo did a good job, and I’m surprised I’m saying that as I thought his return was not a good idea. Oshima made a difference when he came on but couldn’t do quite enough. Morita had a solid debut with his 40 mins on the pitch. Out of the starters, I guess if I had to pick one, it would be Kurumaya, but it wasn’t really anyone’s day.

Goals
 
YAMAGUCHI (Cerezo) 26’ 0-1

KIYOTAKE (Cerezo) 48’ 0-2

KOBAYASHI (Frontale) 51’ (PEN) 1-2

TAKAGI (Cerezo) 78’ 1-3

OKUBO (Frontale) 90+2’ 2-3     

 
Highlights