It’s a bit early in the season to be having make or break games, but Tuesday night’s away game in Korea was exactly that. Given our/the referee’s (delete as the mood takes) terrible performance in Hong Kong it was nice that we were still in the competition by the time the fifth game came round. And whilst we weren’t exactly looking like we were in a particularly strong position, the fact that our last group game at home against Eastern was potentially our easiest (but we all know how we normally go in those kind of situations…), gave us the knowledge that if we were able to get a result in Suwon, we would have an excellent chance of progressing. I’ve tweeted about some things that happened at the end of the game but will leave them out of this match report as I am intending to write another post on that soon. Needless to say, it was an eventful evening in Suwon, in what was a very nice stadium but which was very empty. It seems that the Suwon fans aren’t too keen on weekday evening games or possibly the ACL or possibly Frontale. The attendance was only about 3500. It’s difficult to estimate how many of these were Frontale fans, but I’d say that there probably weren’t more than about 100. I am not very good at estimating numbers of people though.
I was expecting the starting line-up to clarify whether we were serious about progressing. I have no idea if it did or not. Somehow we seemed to name both a strong and weak line-up at the same time. Sung-Ryong was in goal and the back four was Tasaka, Nara, Taniguchi and Kurumaya. So far so familiar. The defensive midfielders were Kengo and Moriya and in front of them were Miyoshi, Otsuka and Abe (from right to left) with Kobayashi up front by himself. Rhayner was back from suspension in the league but only made it on to the bench. Neto who is suspended for the next league game was also on the bench. I was a little surprised by both of these. The rest of the bench were Arai, Itakura, Hasegawa, Morimoto and a back from injury Takeoka. In spite of the lack of supporters for both teams, the atmosphere was actually pretty good. I don’t know how big Suwon’s drum is, but it made a hell of a noise and there was plenty of singing from both sets of fans. We started the first half pretty shakily. Suwon had several very good chances, but they were wasteful in front of goal. As were we when we had our chances. In the two games I have seen, I feel that we are fairly similar teams to be honest. We both pass the ball around quite nicely and neither of us seem to be able to put away many of our chances. But they do seem to be able to do the physical thing a bit better than us and have a lot more height in their team. There were a few crunching challenges flying in our direction quite early on but it seems we miraculously managed to escape any further injuries to our glass-limbed squad. Otsuka was playing in the all action role that was familiar last season and started the game in not the best form. He was giving the ball away a bit and wasn’t quite up to speed but was running around a lot and making a nuisance of himself. Our passing took a while to click and we were pretty sloppy for the first quarter of the game, often passing the ball to nobody. There also seemed to be a bit of a lack of communication in between the defensive midfield and the forwards which is ironic considering all of the outfield players were Japanese. Suwon probably had the best of the first half to be honest, but it was fairly even. We’d both had good chances and failed to put them away, but Suwon had a few more and better ones too. One miss was a particular stinker. It was pretty much the same old story as the last few games with possession, passing, pressure but not really any decent shots. But in a new development to the same old story thing, we were a bit more shaky at the back. Great…
We started the second half pretty well, coming out firing and were piling on the pressure. On 48 minutes Kengo swung in a lovely free kick and Nara beat three defenders to head the ball into the far corner. It was a beautiful goal and we celebrated like crazy. This goal seemed to give us loads of confidence and we started playing some lovely stuff. On 65 minutes we made a double substitution with Neto on for Moriya and Rhayner coming on for Otsuka. It looked like Miyoshi moved into Otsuka’s position and Rhayner on the right. Kobayashi had a one-on-one with the keeper and when it looked easier to score than not he managed to take the tougher option. I hope he can soon get scoring again, as aside from penalties he hasn’t found the net much recently and must be low on confidence. We really needed another goal and we were making chances. Rhayner and Kobayashi combined with some lovely skills but he Rhayner could only hit it straight at the keeper. Suwon, who only needed a draw to progress started piling on the pressure and we were riding our luck a little. However, you could probably say the same about them as we were still attacking well, right up until the bit where you have to shoot. Abe was having another good game, helping out a lot defensively and showing that he has a surprising amount of strength for a little guy. The ref, who had been having a slightly flaky game was really coming under some pressure from the Suwon fans who definitely felt like they were being hard done by. Towards the end of the game he seemed to almost completely lose control. We made it to 90 minutes with our clean sheet still intact and only needed to see out the four minutes of injury time. I’m sure the late capitulation against Shimizu was in our minds for better or worse as the clock ticked on. And then in the fourth of the four minutes Suwon had an amazing chance to score and looked destined to do so. Sung-Ryong pulled out a worldy (as I believe they are called), managing to get down fast, get an arm on a powerful shot and then roll on to the loose ball. I had no idea how close we’d come to messing it up again until I saw the replay as this was very much at the other end of the pitch. The replay shows just how good the save was. Must have been particularly emotional for him in front of the fans of the team he used to play for. Not sure how the feel about him, but I imagine they were a little irritated after he saved that shot.
So, we did it. We held on, took the three points and whilst we are still in third position in the group, our last game puts us down as favourites to go through. But best not count our chickens yet. Suwon and Guangzhou now both have a tricky last game where a win for either team will take them through, but a draw will put Suwon out. We’ll see what happens the week after next. Positives and negatives. Positives first. Finally a win in this competition, and finally a win after a long run of draws. Another goal for Nara and a clean sheet (even if we probably didn’t deserve it). Amazing performance from Sung-Ryong to keep us in the game in the second half and one particularly amazing save. Hopefully we’ll get a confidence boost from this too. Takeoka back from injury too, which gives us a bit more depth in the squad. Negatives, we rode our luck defensively and whilst we got away with it, we probably shouldn’t have done so. Still wasteful in front of goal, but hopefully the win will bring confidence which will bring more goals. The big negative is the thing I haven’t talked about. The invasion of our end by the away fans was pretty shocking and quite scary, although the fact that no real trouble seems to have occurred has to go down as a positive. We had no idea at the time why it had happened, but once we were back on the bus found out. The two idiots who were displaying the rising sun flag should be ashamed of themselves, not just for the cultural insensitivity, (which may well have been exactly why they took it in the first place) but for the impact it could have had on the safety of the Frontale fans, the reputation of the team and any possible punishment we may receive for displaying it. Like I said, I will write another post going into more detail when I have sorted the whole thing through in my head, but however long or short it was displayed for was too long.
Next up, we’re away at Cerezo Osaka on Sunday. This is the third of three games against promoted sides in a row, two away and one at home. So far we’ve had two draws. Let’s hope we can draw on some of the confidence we’ve gained from this victory and put it towards another win. And let’s hope that we can get a few more of the injured players fit again and put a run of good results together. Go Frontale!
So the new season has started. Although we don’t get underway in the league until Saturday, but now we have a bit more of an idea how we might be lining up for the foreseeable future. Last night’s game against Suwon Bluewings in the ACL answered a few questions that we might have been considering over the last few weeks. However, it did throw up a few more and maybe some issues that we’ll have to sort out over the coming weeks. All in all though, I guess we have to be reasonably pleased with how things went.
Going in to the game, we suffered the dual blow of losing Elsinho to a three month injury and of having a J League ‘expert’ predict that we would finish the league in 16th position. It seemed a bit random and I can’t help think that there is some kind of agenda at play, but it annoyed me to a surprising extent. I should stop mentioning it though, otherwise maybe the fates will conspire to prove me wrong and give everybody a ‘told-you-so’ moment. So I will say no more about that. The Elsinho injury will undoubtedly prove to be more significant. We started the game with three new faces playing. Michael James (as I will call him from now on, or maybe I’ll shorten it to just Michael, but it doesn’t feel quite right somehow) started in central defence with Taniguchi, Kurumaya and Tasaka taking the full back positions. They were all in front of Sung-Ryong, who was playing against his old team for the first time. The defensive bit of the midfield was the usual Neto and Oshima and our other new boys Ienaga and Abe played either side of Kengo behind the lone striker Kobayashi. It was great to see Nara back on the bench after two long injuries. He was joined there by Itakura, Miyoshi, Morimoto, Noborizato, Arai and the other newbie Rhayner. The stadium was half full as seems to be the case on these occasions and the travelling Suwon fans were shifted round to the corner slightly. Well done to them for making the trip and supporting their team. Sadly they are another team that has a song to the tune of ‘The Entertainer’. I’m getting fed up with people singing that.
We started quite brightly. Ienaga and Abe were both looking pretty good and seemed to be playing with some confidence. It wasn’t long before the match officials started making their mark on the game. They were all from Bahrain and in my opinion gave our regular J League refs and linesmen a run for their money in their level of shitness (but maybe that’s just me thinking that!). As per last season, we are still looking to slowly build from the back, playing it out of defence with short passes and at least one in ten times giving the ball away dangerously. Suwon seemed to work this out quite quickly and were putting pressure on us. But we dealt with it fairly well in the first half. In the second half we were kicking it long a lot more frequently. This basically meant that it would go towards Kobayashi, who would gamely try to win the ball but fail due to the opposition defence being much taller. Funny that… We took the lead in slightly bizarre fashion. A through ball deflected off a Suwon defender and fell for Kengo to kind of scoop a cross to Kobayashi who put the ball into the net with his shoulder. We were doing pretty well though, making some chances. Abe was tracking back and defending well as long as providing us with a bit of thrust going forward. Ienaga looked comfortable on the ball and pretty strong. There were some nice flicks and dummies going on in the middle of the pitch. What could possibly go wrong? A calamitous own goal, that’s what. A nice passing move from Suwon resulted in a cross being cut out by Kurumaya and the ball bouncing off Taniguchi and rolling agonisingly slowly into the net. In a way, it’s probably better to concede in this kind of unfortunate way rather than our usual generous defending. Can’t really fault anyone too much. It was just unlucky. Perhaps we did let them slice through us a bit too easily though. The goal destroyed any confidence we had built up and we started flapping around a bit. Abe had a good chance to score but unfortunately he tried to find the corner a bit too much and put it wide instead. As is the case with pretty much everyone we play, the other team seemed to be a bit more physical than us. There were a lot of little fouls going on in the middle of the pitch and the ref seemed to get a little annoyed but when he tried to stamp his authority on the game he failed. I don’t know if it is a language barrier problem, but he never really seemed to have control of the game. He kept his cards his pocket for the whole game and whilst there weren’t any bad challenges in the game, there was a lot of persistent and petty fouling which I think he never really got under control. All in all, a bit of a weird first half. We looked good, scored, then conceded and looked very shaky.
The second half continued in much the same vein. Both teams were huffing and puffing and nothing much was clicking. It really did feel like the first game of the season. A bit sloppy really. Passes were being misplaced by us a lot. Suwon seemed to kick the ball off the pitch quite a bit. It seemed that neither team had enough to win the game really, but there was always the danger of someone getting a breakaway goal. The game got quite stretched towards the end and it felt like a goal was coming, but it didn’t. We made a few substitutions, the first of which seemed to be a tactical change, which was nice to see. On 72 minutes Nara came on for Abe, who I felt had done a decent job but kind of drifted out of the game in the second half. This meant us switching to three at the back and pushing Kurumaya and Tasaka on a little. In the 83rd minute Miyoshi came on for Oshima who seemed to have a bit of cramp or had picked up a slight injury. Miyoshi almost made something happen on a few occasions and I wish he had been given a little more time to be honest. The final sub came a couple of minutes afterwards and was one new boy replacing another, Rhayner on for Ienaga. Again, maybe it would have been a bit more effective a little earlier, but what do I know? We were certainly creating a few chances at this stage, but not really testing their keeper enough.
All in all, I think it was a fair result. We definitely dominated on possession and chances (fourteen to their eight apparently) and although apparently ten of our fourteen shots were on target, it didn’t really feel like we tested their keeper much. It seems like we are still a bit of a work in progress to be honest and I hope we can sort this out before Saturday at Omiya. I wonder if we will start with the same line-up. Positives and negatives. Positives first, the new players looked decent enough, Ienaga, strong and good on the ball, Abe pushing forward and also defending when he had to. Michael James had a decent game, although he almost gifted them a goal with a stray backpass at one stage (classic Frontale defender then!). Didn’t get much chance to see Rhayner, but he seemed keen to attack when he came on and looked good on the ball. It’s nice that Oniki seems to be willing to change the system through substitutions. Kazama’s subs sometimes seemed a bit haphazard. Also, we didn’t lose and the goal we conceded was unfortunate rather than due to our bad defending. Negatives, it wasn’t a particularly convincing performance. Whilst we created chances, we didn’t look particularly dangerous (well, not after we conceded anyway). It’s a bit worrying that our swagger seemed to disappear after the own goal. Kobayashi looked a bit isolated up front and Kengo seems to be starting the season slowly again (although that’s harsh to say after only one game where everyone started slowly). Few too many misplaced passes too to be honest. And we have to come up with a plan for when teams don’t let us play it out from the back and we have to kick it long from goal kicks. At the moment it’s just giving away possession and the ball's coming straight back at us.
But, still very early days. Saturday will give us more of an idea where we are as Omiya are much more familiar opponents. Ienaga will be going back to his old team, so I’d expect him to start and hopefully do well. In fact I’d expect the same eleven to be named. Hopefully we can kick off our J League campaign in a more convincing way than we started our ACL campaign (although I’m fairly satisfied so far…). Then next week we’re travelling to Hong Kong who got absolutely hammered last night by Guangzhou Evergrande. That will be my first ACL away trip so I’m looking forward to it. So, at the moment, cautiously optimistic and slightly satisfied.
Suwon Bluewings 0 - 1 Kawasaki Frontale 
