Vs Vissel Kobe (home) 21/6/25 J League match 21

 

Kawasaki Frontale 1 - 2 Vissel Kobe 

When we played Vissel Kobe away, I was lucky enough to have to work so I missed what I have heard was an absolutely awful game. Sadly on this occasion, I’d finished work by lunchtime so was not spared watching what really must be one of the worst games of Hasebe Frontale. But hang on you might be saying, we’ve heard this before. In fact maybe you even heard that in the last blog post on the game against YFC. The crucial difference was that although we were terrible in that game, we somehow won it. In this game we came out blazing for the first five minutes, scored, and then proceeded to not bother to do anything aside from concede goals for at least the next fifty or so minutes. This isn’t going to be a pretty blog post. There is going to be plenty of whinging, and most of it will be directed at us rather than vaguely ‘amusing’ quips about useless referees or the opposition. On this occasion the damage was almost completely self-inflicted and the blame is entirely ours. It was a game so poor that the only two photos I have are of the pre-game warmup and the half time YMCA, (which rather fittingly was also extremely underpowered compared to previous versions, to the extent of feeling almost pointless, therefore being an absolutely perfect filling for the shit footballing performance sandwich). This probably tells you all you need to know about the excitement of the match. I took my phone out to take some photos but every time, in between getting it out, unlocking it and raising it to take a photo we’d lost the ball or played it backwards into dreary defence. I should really try to stop mentioning him, but this was peak shit Oniki Frontale, with Tachibanada playing in defence and at least 70 minutes of pointless passing. We came away from the match with a magnificent 60% possession and almost entirely no threat at all. Let’s get this miserable post out of the way and do our best to forget about this match as soon as possible.

Us - 

After coming back from injury, Miura has disappeared again. Sai is also missing, presumed injured. As good as Sasaki has been on both the left and right this year, it’s probably asking a bit much for him to play in both positions simultaneously, so Tachibanada was back in defence again. In the past I’ve moaned a lot about this kind of thing. It will come as no surprise to hear that I will moan a bit about it again. I thought Tanabe did pretty well when called on recently. Clearly he’s not as good as our injured options, but has the advantage of actually being a defender. But he was still overlooked for Tachibanada. Perhaps this was due to Hasebe worrying that if he played Tanabe, Kobe would target him. Instead they targeted Tachibanada. Almost all of their attacks went down that side. To be fair to him though, he had a decent enough match. So the moaning about him playing in defence will be restricted to the decision this time, rather than extended to his performance. The real problem in this match were the ‘Yamas’. We had players with Yama in their name right through the spine of the team and it’s fair to say that they were all pretty bad in this match. To start off with the ones who were just pretty bad, Maruyama has really dropped off recently, perhaps unsurprisingly given his age. Yamamoto had a bad game, but everyone has an off day now and then and he saved us in the previous match where we were also awful. The real problems were at the front and the back. Yamada is back to being absolutely terrible again, after what we hoped might be a renaissance when he scored two tap-ins against a J3 side. He was anonymous against YFC and in this game did nothing apart from mess up. I really feel for him, but he clearly can’t play the role that is being expected for him right now, so we’ve got to do something else. At the back, Yamaguchi had another stinker, reverting to his fairly regular thing of diving long after the ball has passed him. Of course he can’t be held fully responsible for us conceding as the ball seemed to easily pass through the massive gaps in our defence, but I have almost no confidence in Yamaguchi. As a back up, maybe, but as a first choice keeper, well, I think he seems to have been promoted way beyond his abilities. Don’t get me wrong, he has had some good games, but more often than not he gives the opposition at least one goal. One Vissel cross sailed way over his head with him doing some kind of spiderman pose jump nowhere near either the ball or any players. Thankfully the defence dealt with it, because if it had gone to a Kobe player it would have been an open goal with Yamaguchi on the floor near the penalty spot. You may think all of this is my pro-Sung-Ryong bias and maybe some of it is, but I don’t think he’s the solution either. To be fair to him though, every time he’s played it has been with the (very much) second choice defence in front of him. It would be interesting to see how he does with some more assured players. The thought of Yamaguchi with the second choice defence is not something I want to dwell on for too long. Ienaga doesn’t have ‘Yama’ in his name but can be lumped in with the Yamas in this match. How he is starting ahead of Ito is a mystery. When Hasebe made some changes late on we finally started looking like we might do something. But before then Ienaga had had another pretty bad game I think. So it’s probably no surprise we lost when you consider that I have singled out five of the starting eleven as being bad in this match. 

 

I think however it’s not completely down to them. I don’t really like doing this, but… hmmmm, I guess this is my first Hasebe moan. Those players aren’t playing well but keep starting. That’s down to Hasebe. Even if you say that we don’t have replacements, well, maybe he should change the system and stop playing Yamada in a position that he isn’t suited for. After the subs, which I have to say came very late given how obvious the problems were from very early on, we looked like a different team. You could praise Hasebe for this, but maybe it makes more sense to question why those players didn’t start? We have been mostly pretty dodgy since the ACL but perhaps the fact that we’ve picked up a few lucky wins has convinced him he’s doing the right thing. I think we should probably pay more attention to the draws and defeats though. Sure we’ve been a bit unlucky with injuries, particularly to Erison just as he was starting to get into some form. I wonder if we’ll get any reinforcements in the transfer window. I hope so, as right now the squad looks pretty threadbare. Segawa and Verhon have gone, (Verhon on loan), we can’t score for toffee and still we’re going with the same players, formation and tactics every game. Kanda seems to score every time he plays for the national team, but seems to be way out of contention. The players who are playing almost every match are looking increasingly tired, but there seems to be no desire to either give them a rest, (apart from the occasional game where almost everyone is rested), or any signs of any reinforcements. It’s a miracle that the stats said we had 60% possession in this match as every time we hoofed the ball forward it boinged straight back to us. BOING! It’s a stat I’d like to see added to the usual ones that are compiled. I reckon we must have had at least 30 long ball boings in this match. How on earth could that result in 60% possession? Ah, of course, it’s our old friend backwards passing, playing it around beautifully at the back, just waiting for the right time to lump it forward for the next boing! This game made me quite angry. There was no way we were going to do anything after the first five minutes. What an absolute waste. So poor were we at shooting that if Vissel hadn’t played a keeper for the second half we would only have come away with a draw. Two early shots on target, one of which was a goal and then just the one in the remaining 85 minutes. Absolute dogshit. And all the more annoying given that Kashima lost. Although who am I kidding, there’s no way we’re in the title race. If we had won this match though we would have ended the day in third, only six points behind Kashima with a game in hand. But we fucked it up. I can’t really understand how we’ve scored so many goals and have conceded relatively few when we’ve been playing quite badly recently. Our next two games are against 18th placed Niigata and 15th placed Verdy. These are clearly must win games. After that we have Kashima at home. After Vissel Kobe have done the double over us, it would be a huge disappointment to have another despicable club do the same a couple of weeks later. Hasebe, you’ve got some work to do.

Them -

Nothing much to say. I don’t like their players much, particularly those arseholes Thuler and Erik. Obviously it wasn’t nice to see Miyashiro score twice against us, but I did appreciate that he didn’t celebrate. He clearly did the right thing by leaving us to get away from our shit formation and tactics. I’m not sure if they’re particularly good. They certainly didn’t seem to be that dangerous, yet they totally dominated for most of the match. I’m in a bit of a quandary as obviously I don’t want Kashima to win the league, but at the same time I don’t want Vissel to win it. The standard of the league seems to have really dropped this year. Perhaps it’s because we’ve had to play over half the season in just 4 months. Anyway, this isn’t really Vissel talk so let’s knock this on the head here.

Ref - 

Once again we were subjected to the referee exchange program and had a ref and two linesman from Poland. The fourth official who had trouble working the subs electronic board thing was Japanese though. And so was the VAR guy. Naturally, I moaned about the ref during the game, but can’t really say he did anything wrong. We were just shit.

Next up, well, I mentioned it above. A must win (maybe?) against Niigata at home, a team that Yamaguchi conceded four against when we played them in the Levain Cup last year. I suspect that Hasebe might rotate a bit on Wednesday so maybe we won’t see him and it will be Sung-Ryong conceding four instead. I just pray though that we have something to get at least a little bit excited about. Hopefully Ito will start as with Marcinho getting increasingly knackered he seems to be our only attacking threat at the moment. Please please please let us have a bit of fun as this match was so crushingly dull and we were so utterly impotent. What a lovely positive way to end this. 

 

Team

GK 98. YAMAGUCHI Louis
DF 8. TACHIBANADA Kento
DF 2. TAKAI Kota (Yellow card 75')
DF 35. MARUYAMA Yuichi 
DF 5. SASAKI Asahi
MF 19. KAWAHARA So
MF 6. YAMAMOTO Yuki
MF 14. WAKIZAKA Yasuto
MF 23. MARCINHO
MF 41. IENAGA Akihiro
FW 20. YAMADA Shin

Subs

GK 1. JUNG Sung-Ryong
DF 4. JESIEL
MF 10. OSHIMA Ryota (on for YAMAMOTO 66')

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

DF 15. TANABE Shuto 
MF 16. OZEKI Yuto (on for WAKIZAKA 80')
MF 17. ITO Tatsuya (on for IENAGA 66') 
FW 24. MIYAGI Ten (on for MARCINHO 80')
DF 44. CESAR HAYDAR

My Frontale Man Of The Match

YOU MUST BE JOKING, WE WERE ABSOLUTELY SHIT 

Goals

WAKIZAKA (Frontale) 6' 1-0
MIYASHIRO (Kobe) 10' 1-1
MIYASHIRO (Kobe) 52' 1-2

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 Vissel Kobe (home) 7/8/24 J League match 25

Kawasaki Frontale 3 - 0 Vissel Kobe

This game was delightful. It’s always fun to beat a team who splash the cash and even more so this season considering we are struggling to beat almost anyone. This was the first time this year that we’d managed to win two games in a row. We’ve somehow ended up in 12th after this result. Although the score might suggest otherwise, this wasn’t a magnificent demolition of Kobe by us. Instead it was something more like someone trying to do their washing up by throwing a grenade into the sink by them. Which probably made it even better. Let’s get straight into this in depth and considered post. (Well, actually more like into the pointless rambling bitching).

Don’t believe everything, (hmmm, maybe anything), you read on Twitter. That second red was an absolutely nailed on one. You can’t see it from the single replay everyone has used to add their measured expert opinions after viewing but Thuler was shouting at the linesman to enter the field to take off an extra ball that was in play. The linesman said he couldn’t, to which Thuler responded with a torrent of abuse and then kicked the ball directly at him. The Kobe manager says he doesn’t know why he would even be booked as he was passing the ball to the linesman, perhaps ignoring the fact that the ball didn’t need to go to the linesman and Thuler would have been fine kicking it anywhere in absolutely any other direction other than directly at the official. It was clearly intended to intimidate the linesman so fair play to him for drawing the ref’s attention to it. We constantly hear people talking about players lacking respect for officials and when they are pulled for doing something that exactly demonstrates that kind of thing everyone thinks it’s a disgrace. Wonderful double standards! And even better coming from a point of view of almost complete ignorance about what actually happened in the stadium. If I were a Kobe fan or anyone to do with the club I’d be more angry at a totally dickish bit of petulance from a player whose team was already down to ten man rather than moaning about the officials.

Initially wasn’t as sure about the first red. At the time I couldn’t see what had happened so was relieved to see the card going to them and not us. On replays which apparently have convinced Kobe fans in the absolute opposite direction, I think it’s probably fair enough. From the majority of his first half performance it seemed that Iino was mainly concerned with diving so it was a really pleasant surprise to see him get booked for it. It always annoys me that no one seems to get booked for diving anymore. He was definitely looking for contact and even seemed to stop as he got in front of Ominami, perhaps aiming for the red card rather and a free kick rather than a penalty and a yellow. And he did that really fucking annoying thing of grabbing the ball as he went down. He seemed to be an intensely annoying character and this is even reflected in his name which whenever it is typed in romaji looks like lino, a common shortened form of linesman. See you can’t even tell the difference, can you? I might have just typed the same thing both times. It’s probably a bit of luck that Thuler was the idiot kicking the ball at the linesman rather than Iino otherwise we’d be talking about an interaction between the Iino and lino. It could be even further confused if that situation had taken place on an interior floor surface as them we’d be talking about Iino and the lino on the lino.

As I constantly say that Kasahara is normally a nightmare ref for us due to us always getting DOGSO reds when he’s in charge of our games it would probably cause the irony detector to explode if I were to praise him on this occasion. Put your hard hats on, because he got both decisions right as far as I’m concerned. I’m sure Twitter experts all over the world though will know better though from their one camera angle of the second red, which was coincidentally the exact worst one possible to understand the decision. Everyone knows the best place to truly enjoy football is on a screen thousands of miles from the stadium with a dubiously stained Sorare tshirt on. Even better if you can parade the fact that you are truly of superior intellect by saying something like this would only happen in Japan, right? It doesn’t matter if you only got the tiniest glimpse of something, you can still have an EXPERT OPINION. I’ve seen that picture of the dinosaurs looking slightly perturbed as a massive meteor crashes into the earth and although it is only an artistic rendering of something that may have happened millions of years before I was born I can conclusively say that that kind of thing could only have happened in that particular place, (I have no experience of it and no knowledge about it, but that doesn’t matter because I KNOW). In addition those dinosaurs went down too easily and the linesman missed a clear offside from the meteor. Don’t forget this is not an opinion this is CAST IRON TRUTH. Don’t doubt it, I’ve watched a two second gif of one dinosaur’s eyebrow movement several times so don’t need to see the rest of the picture. Oh, and I have managed a premier league team for over 200 matches on Championship Manager.

Now, let's take a little break and look at some whining at the ref for giving correct decisions Kobe photos!

Red whine - pair with beef dishes.
Particularly good if the beef is misplaced

White whine - pair with roasted official,
sorry, I mean roasted pork

Rosé whine - pair with a green salad
with a very sour citrus dressing

Sparkling whine - pair with something cheesy,
like your chairman's online presence

Dessert whine - pair with bitter
(at decisons) chocolate pudding

This was a thoroughly enjoyable game because of what happened. It’s a bit difficult to say whether we were any good or not. Especially given that for the majority of the first half this was a game that perhaps could be described as one between two great teams who were cancelling each other out. Equally though the same could be true if it were two teams playing mediocre to dogshit level stuff. And seeing as neither team managed to hit the target in the first half this is probably closer to the truth. In spite of this being a wonderfully entertaining victory, it does leave a bit of a bad taste in the mouth when you consider that it has probably done Machida a bit of a favour. I guess a distaste for Machida is one thing we can all agree on. Hopefully they’ll have three people sent off when we play them. On the notoriously tweaky J League forums Vissel fans were talking about it being a league wide conspiracy because ‘THeY dOn’T wAnT Us tO wIn tHe LeAgUe’. I think pretty much everyone would rather they do than Machida do. I don’t think us Frontale fans ever said that when decisions went against us when we weren’t doing absolutely shit like we are this year. Guess Rakuten money can’t buy any relief from paranoia or a persecution complex, eh?

Hmmmm, wasn’t a great deal of actual content in this post was there? Next up, FC Tokyo away and then YFM at home the following weekend. Would be lovely to keep the run going. Actually can you call it a run if it’s only a run of two matches. Guess it’s more of a brisk stroll at this stage. It would be a miracle if either of those games ended up being as amusing and entertaining as this one though. It’s somewhat unfortunate that us finally managing to string two wins together is coinciding with a period for me where I have way too many more important things to do than write these blog posts. So I know I always say this, but they will be a lot shorter in the future, for a while at least. Which is a huge shame after the way this game went and considering that we’re playing two derbies in our next two games. I’ll do my best to leave out the informative bits and leave the snark and insults in though. With this in mind, I’ll finish by briefly resurrecting a recently dormant format point and see you next time for the new ‘don’t have the time or inclination to do this properly’ style Frontale Rabbit blog.


Banner Wisdom

 

‘We shall overcome’

What do they mean by this? Is it the massive amounts of cash that they’ll overcome? Is it the constant interference from their chairman? Perhaps it’s the well known on the internet anti-Vissel conspiracy that runs through the entire league and is especially rife amongst the officials? Or is it the handicap of two of your players being idiots and getting sent off? Ah, actually it’s definitely not that last one, is it? Because that resulted in a 3-0 defeat. 😉

 

 

Team

GK 1. JUNG Sung-Ryong

DF 31. VAN WERMESKERKEN Sai

DF 3. OMINAMI Takuma

DF 5. SASAKI Asahi (Yellow card 20')
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 22. HAYASAKA Yuki
DF 7. KURUMAYA Shintaro (on for SASAKI 90+1')
FW 11. KOBAYASHI Yu (on for IENAGA 86')
MF 16. SEKO Tatsuki (on for VAN WERMESKERKEN 78')

MF 17. TONO Daiya (on for OSHIMA 78')
FW 26. YAMAUCHI Hinata (on for MARCINHO 78')
FW 30. SEGAWA Yusuke 

 
Goals

IENAGA (Frontale) 57' 1-0
YAMADA (Frontale) 71' 2-0
YAMADA (Frontale) 85' 3-0


My Frontale Man Of The Match

A slightly left field selection on this occasion as they haven’t started any games for us so far this season, but it has to go to…

KARMA - it’s a bitch when you break the rules and get caught, isn’t it? 😉

Highlights

 

Vs Vissel Kobe (away) 16/6/24 J League match 18

Vissel Kobe 1 - 0 Kawasaki Frontale 

I’m sure you’ll understand why I want to keep this brief. Not only is there nothing new to say as the fact that we keep taking the exact same approach to every game with almost exactly the same players, unsurprisingly keeps yielding the same results, but also because this match was so unrelentingly shit from both teams and there are only so many synonyms that I can find for terrible. Yeah, of course we’ve been poor all year, but blimey, this was a new level of shitness. Not the worst we’ve played all year, but definitely the most boringly we’ve played and the game which most felt like an utter waste of time. And we didn’t even get the consolation of traveling to a different part of the country for an away game. Instead we could ‘enjoy’ the ‘LOVE KOBE FESTIVAL’ just the 500 or so kilometres from the city it was celebrating. Or perhaps I’m wrong and this was supposed to be a ‘LOVE (VISSEL) KOBE FESTIVAL’. I’d say that was equally misplaced logic, as even from a Vissel point of view, in spite of getting the win, there probably wasn’t that much to enjoy about this stinking turd of a game. Perhaps the one small crumb of comfort we could hang on to after this match was that thanks to how bad Vissel were at shooting, we could come away with a defeat by just the one goal. If they could hit the target we probably could have conceded four or five so absent was the concept of defending from Oniki’s match plan. Perhaps it’s unfair to blame Oniki for the defence being shit, but blimey it was terrible. I saw someone on Twitter saying that the 'J2 level defenders' Ominami, Jesiel and Sasaki were hindering Takai’s development. On the evidence of this game, I’d say that was generous to the extreme to Takai who had another one of his increasingly frequent absolute stinkers. It always seems that after he’s had a good few games or has achieved something he has a series of horrible performances. He couldn’t pass to save his life in this match. And much like some of his teammates in spite of playing horribly this year he still seems to be so full of confidence that the idea of making a simple pass without attempting some kind of trick shot at the same time seems to be complete anathema. It was by no means Takai only who wasn’t at their best in this game. Once again Tachibanada, Wakizaka and Ienaga were almost anonymous apart from when they were fucking up. Gomis didn’t do much, but how was he supposed to do anything when the only time the ball came anywhere near him was when it was hoofed from a goal kick to him? Yamauchi had another quiet game, but it was still kind of baffling to see Oniki change him at half time when you probably could have made a better case for changing almost anyone else on our team. Certainly anyone in the midfield or the attack.

Just how big are those technical areas?
Guess you can tell how bored I was from the fact
that I took this photo

But you know, that's the mystery of Oniki, eh? And by mystery, I don’t mean the mystery that he is still in the manager's job. The mystery is just that his tactics are at such a high level that mere mortals like us can’t understand them. Two examples so perfectly encapsulated this game that I will state them here to show you how Oniki is working and thinking on a higher plain that we can. The first was when Wakizaka chased across the field to deftly steal the ball from a Kobe player. He won the ball, beat the player and then proceeded to boot the ball directly off the pitch. I’m only a mere fan, but if I can speculate, perhaps the idea was that giving Kobe the ball in their own half would allow us to ‘draw them out’. And as we all know, drawing the opposition out is the pinnacle of football as far as the mighty O is concerned. In fact so important is it that usually after successfully drawing them out we put our foot on the ball and allow them to regroup so we can attempt to draw them out again. The second noteworthy moment was when Yamada got the ball in the box with the goal gaping and only a pretty dodgy looking keeper to beat and instead of shooting decided to cut back and play the ball out to the wing. I have to admit, Oniki has foxed me with this one. I can’t work out any reason why this might be a good idea. However, it certainly helps to explain why we didn’t have a shot for the first 31 minutes and even then that was off target. In the next 30 minutes we managed just the one more shot. Also off target. So no work for their keeper in the first hour. The last 30 minutes was blistering though, with us doubling our shot count for the match, unsurprising I guess as we were behind and were chasing the game. We even got those shots on target. Perhaps it’s a bit of an exaggeration to call a ball gently rolled towards the opposition keeper a shot on target, but I think we should really hang on to that positivity and claim them as near misses. After all, if the keeper and all of his defenders hadn't been there it would definitely have been a goal. Well definitely unless the ‘shot’ ran out of oomph before it managed to trickle over the line. Four shots in ninety minutes. You can’t really say we didn’t deserve to lose. With our cutting edge right now, it’s pretty certain that the best result we can hope for is a 0-0. Oniki found his level when he outfoxed a team three leagues below us with a pretty average at best performance. It’s just a shame that we can’t play amateur teams every week really. Well, I shouldn’t wish too much for that as that clearly lies in the future for us if we renew Oniki’s contract again. In three years we can play in the JFL! Plenty of new grounds to visit. Presumably he’ll still be using the same tactics to the same effect.

So, anything good to come out of this game? Well one thing might be the fact that so many of our players have shown themselves to be so out of form that they shouldn’t start the next game. Unfortunately most of the players who’ve been rubbish also fall into the 'Oniki’s favourites' camp and therefore will continue to be played, no matter how bad they become. I reckon even a serious muscle injury or a broken bone might not be enough to change Oniki’s mind about how one of his favourites will be much better to play than any other player in the squad. As we can’t hope for any real changes in personnel it seems pointless to say that Ze Ricardo came on and had his best (part of a) game for us. Would love to see him and Seko start the next game. I don’t know who else I’d want in midfield but I know it wouldn’t be Wakizaka or Tachibanada. Erm… that’s it. Ze Ricardo had a good 20 minutes, That’s all I have to say apart from the fact that I avoided disappointment after the match by resigning myself to that fact that we’d lose before the game had started. But even this mental prep didn’t help me avoid the absolute boredom and frustration of watching such a terrible performance. And the bewilderment of reading Oniki’s post match comments where he followed the same tactical instructions he’d given the team perfectly and repeated exactly the same bollocks he says every week, somehow thinking that it might make sense this time. Of course, it didn’t. It seems he thinks we need to increase the variation of our attacks. Jeez, no shit. That’s why he gets the big bucks, I guess. Presumably not big enough bucks though to able to find the solution to the problem which is staring most people apart from him in the face, which is TRY TO SCORE A FUCKING GOAL INSTEAD OF FOCUSING ON PRACTICING SIDEWAYS PASSING IN OUR OWN HALF FOR NINETY FUCKING MINUTES.

Wow. A post that is so pissed off that I didn't even bother to make fun of the opposition. I normally try to be pretty supportive (to the players at least) even when things aren't going well, but I can't put up with much more of this absolutely awful stuff. It's taken the fun out of even making a joke about Furuhashi doing well to stay on his feet during his half time appearance in contrast to all of the times he's played against us. Next up Niigata away on Saturday, a game which when it occurs in the league even when we’re having a good season is pretty much always a disappointment with us performing terribly and coming away with nothing. Not sure what that means will happen this year. I don’t think there’s any further we could sink. Perhaps just the one shot in the whole game maybe? Anyone expecting anything exciting from this match is clearly a more positive person that I am! At least it’s a fun city to visit. 

 

Team

GK 1. JUNG Sung-Ryong
DF 3. OMINAMI Takuma

DF 4. JESIEL
DF 2. TAKAI Kota
DF 5. SASAKI Asahi
MF 8. TACHIBANADA Kento (Yellow card 14')
MF 17. TONO Daiya

MF 14. WAKIZAKA Yasuto
FW 41. IENAGA Akihiro
FW 18. Bafetimbi GOMIS
FW 26. YAMAUCHI Hinata

Subs

GK 99. KAMIFUKUMOTO Naoto
MF 6. ZE RICARDO (on for YAMAUCHI 46')
DF 15. TANABE Shuto
MF 16. SEKO Tatsuki (on for JESIEL 72')
FW 20. YAMADA Shin (on for GOMIS 61')
FW 23. MARCINHO (on for TONO 61')
MF 30. SEGAWA Yusuke (on for IENAGA 80')

Goals

MUTO (Vissel) 43' 1-0


My Frontale Man Of The Match

 
It’s a bit of a shock that I’m doing this for such an awful game, but I guess I’m grasping at any kind of positive. There’s only one option, (aside from giving to Sung-Ryong again who managed to stop all but one of the shots Vissel managed to get on target), and it’s…

ZE RICARDO - give this man a start and give certain other players a rest. His brief appearance resulted in what I guess were probably the only forward passes in the entire game for us. 

Highlights

 

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

Vs Vissel Kobe (home) 12/8/23 J League match 23

Kawasaki Frontale 0 - 1 Vissel Kobe

Writing these blog posts and watching Frontale games; two activities which at some stage were quite fun and seemed to be worthwhile activities but now both of which are liable to ruin a whole day with their spirit sucking yet wholly predictable misery! Before we get on to the game, there are some other things that maybe need talking about. We’ve signed a player! I guess in response to us being so utterly crap this year we’ve decided to freshen things up a bit and inject some energy! Well, maybe. We’ve signed a 38 year old forward who won’t be with us for a few weeks by which time we might be out of all competitions. I guess his signing was with the ACL in mind, perhaps Oniki’s last hope for being able to hang on to his job with any hint of justification. I say this, but the truth is, from a very unscientific poll I did in the pub after the game, it seems that I am still very much in the minority when it comes to thinking that Oniki isn’t up to the job. Everyone else seems to be of the opinion that it’s unfortunate that we’re crap, but we’ve been a bit unlucky and it just can’t be helped. Anyway, back to our new signing Gomis. From what everyone has said, it seems that he could be a breath of fresh air and a very effective addition. But time will inevitably catch up with him eventually and this signing is both very much not one for the future, and also a signing in an area of the pitch where we already have way too many players in relation to starting spots if we don't change our formation. If the signing had been done purely to lift spirits, well perhaps it will work. In the club shop they had a Gomis shirt on display, perhaps significantly with no number at this stage. I was pondering why they wouldn’t have decided on his squad number yet, as surely it wouldn’t need a massive amount of effort to sort it out. But then it was pointed out to me that perhaps the number he’s going to have is currently occupied by someone who might leave before he arrives. You’ve got to think it would be Damiao, of whom we can never be sure if he’s fit or not this year as he clearly is just completely out of favour with Oniki, occasionally making an appearance and then disappearing. I guess the problem is that right now there might not be any offers on the table for him. I think he’d decided to leave a year or so ago but then got injured so the plan changed. Now perhaps we’re in the situation that his replacement has been signed, (his replacement being someone who is four years older than him, and who if I’m right will be the second oldest player in our squad), but he doesn’t have anywhere to go. A big old potential mess that is all quite appropriate for 2023, our worst season in years, where it’s still an absolute miracle that we’re in 8th. How shit must everyone else be in the league this year?! Pretty shit, because we are awful.

On to this game, another terrible game in a year so bad that it makes me yearn for the good old days of 2019. Before the game I had a feeling we’d win after we lost against Gamba last week. In 2023 we tend to lose when we shouldn’t so I was hoping the reverse might also be true. In the away fixture we flukily took a two goal lead and then threw it away. My confidence that we might get something out of the game took a knock when I saw the lineup before later getting absolutely obliterated in the 37th minute. It wasn’t the starting line up I would have chosen but then again I feel that it doesn’t matter who Oniki chooses at the moment, as his tactics could make a team filled with galacticos lose against a non-league team. I thought Joao was being punished for giving away the penalty last week by being dropped. This would not be wholly out of character for Oniki. In fact he did the same thing to the same player when he missed a penalty in the ACL a couple of seasons ago, didn’t he? I was slightly relieved to find out that perhaps Joao wasn’t playing due to him having broken his nose in training. I’m pretty sure we’ve had more injuries in training this year than we’ve had in matches. Perhaps we can put this down to bad luck. Or perhaps it’s something more serious. Oniki responded (perhaps) to calls for Segawa to get a start after he scored twice coming off the bench against Gamba. Yamada also got the nod. Not sure what our 2023 top scorer Miyashiro has done to be dropped for so long. Even when he’s played in recent times it has been on the wing. Of course the front line was completed by the undroppable Ienaga. It’s slightly ironic when writing this that undroppable autocorrected to unstoppable. In 2023, Ienaga is far from unstoppable. Much like Yamane, it doesn’t matter how Ienaga is playing, he’ll always start. I feel like that’s one of our biggest problems at the moment as he doesn’t seem like he can keep up with the pace in every match. (He’s younger than our new signing though...). In the second half of this match, I’d completely forgotten he was playing until he made a cock up, so unnoticeable had he been since half time. He also seemed to be feeling the pace when he was substituted as he barely exceeded walking speed when leaving the pitch despite the fact that we were losing at the time. Feel like there’s something going on behind the scenes there. The centre backs in this game were Yamamura and Ominami, new hope Takai dropping to the bench after a couple of horrible errors in the last match. Definitely no need for us to get any reinforcements in that area, right? I don’t know when Jesiel will be back, and I don’t know where Kurumaya has gone. Probably another injury from a bare-knuckle cage fighting training routine that Oniki came up with. Let’s get all of the light player grumbling out of the way here and now. Nobori isn’t having a good year and I’m not sure why he’s always starting. Wakizaka did some amazing things on the ball in this game which were breathtaking, but not as breathtaking as him blasting the ball well over with an open goal gaping. And it would also be remiss if I didn’t mention the fact that his corners were once again terrible. Please just let Seko have a go from time to time. After he came on, Marcinho missed a few good chances too, and continued on in his 2023 style of dribbling nicely but not being able to shoot and hanging on to the ball for a bit too long. Yamane had his worst game for us for a while. I haven’t watched the ‘highlights’ of the game, but I think he might have stitched up Ominami a bit for the red card and much like Ienaga, he looked like he couldn’t really be bothered. The weather clearly didn’t help as it was hot and humid, but you can’t avoid the thought that the lethargy that is infecting our squad has less to do with the conditions and more to do with the direction of our esteemed manager.

Oh Oniki, you should have resigned at the end of last season. You presumably knew that you were hopelessly out of your depth and sinking slowly. But somehow you fluked your way to only losing the title on the last day of the season. You could have gone saying that you’d done your best and come close with your big successes at the club still very much in recent memory. Instead you’ve carried on, apparently determined to trash your own reputation as a good manager. It’s really not going to work out for either him or us. If we reach the end of the season in 8th, out in the ACL group stage and having failed in all competitions I can’t imagine there will be a massive number of clubs clamouring to employ him. And perhaps that means that well once again ignore everything that’s gone on on the pitch and sign him up for another miserable season. I don’t think he’s up to it and I think that anyone would do a better job of managing us at the moment. It’s difficult to say whether he has lost the changing room as everything we hear from behind the scenes is always about what a nice guy he is. But you’ve got to think that some players have their doubts about his capabilities. I wonder if his failure to ever not play Ienaga has anything to do with him trying to prevent any possible changing room disturbances. In this game we were dominating Kobe until the red card. Well I say dominating, but the reality was that we were dominating in recent Oniki style, passing the ball around slowly progressing to the opposition box and then playing it around in little triangles, resolutely refusing to try to get any closer to the goal or to shoot. So focused were we on not shooting that it was at times difficult to keep hold of the ball, concentrating intently on not entering the penalty box. I remember an occasion where after numerous triangles Wakizaka got the ball on the edge of the box, unmarked and with no one anywhere near him, and instead of trying to score, decided to dither a little before returning the ball for some more triangles. In the second half we had Kobe really rattled, even with one less player and still we couldn’t get anywhere near scoring. In the game we had 12 shots and not a single fucking one of them was on target. They could have not bothered playing a goalkeeper and they would have still won the game. Some might say it’s not Oniki’s fault that so many players missed the target. But it definitely is Oniki’s fault that everyone has been indoctrinated with the idea that shooting is something to be done as a very last resort. As we get shitter and shitter, Oniki gets more and more conservative. If Joao hadn’t got injured I’m pretty sure we would have gone with him and Tachibanada together. And then even when we’re in trouble, losing the game and with subs available he dithered. Down to ten men from the 37th minute and he didn’t make any changes till the 71st minute and even then it was only one, and that was Ienaga coming off who’d be totally anonymous for the previous 26 minutes of the second half. People might say that we’ve been unlucky with injuries and red cards, but to be so repeatedly unlucky is quite something. So perhaps it’s more likely that we just have a manager who isn’t up to the job. We’ve now had six red cards this season and it’s been six different players getting sent off. We’re not a dirty team, so you’ve go to point the finger somewhere else for that. You’ll be unsurprised to hear that I’ll point it at Oniki.

A few words about the opposition and the ref. Plenty of Kobe players wearing nappies again in this game. I think I went into that too much last time. I do wonder though if rolling up your shorts in an adult baby style isn’t good for your leg muscles as both Sakai and Osako seemed to have to spend a long time on the floor for injuries that appeared to have come from nowhere. Let your shorts hang free and maybe you won’t have to roll around on the floor so much. As what was going on with our attacking was just an endless exercise in futility, my attention shifted at times to the Kobe supporters. It seemed like they didn’t have a single original song and instead sung the same crap that loads of other J League teams sing with lyrics that barley stretched further than the two words ‘Ole’ and ‘Kobe’. I’m just trying to be an arsehole here really. I’ve said in the past that Kobe fans have probably taken a lot of stick as a result of their owner and his fripperies. So I guess they have the right to enjoy themselves now they’re finally doing well. Well apart from their fans who just support them because Iniesta joined them. They can fuck off. 😉 Although as he's gone now, they probably already have done! Nishimura was back at Todoroki again and once again he was utterly useless. No complaints about the penalty to free kick/yellow to red card. Plenty of complaints about the fact that until that moment he had let almost every Kobe foul go, absolutely refusing to book any of their players on the rare occasions he gave a decision in our favour. Their centre back got numerous final warnings from Nishimura but never got a yellow. In the second half one of their players kicked Takai in the face and didn’t get booked. Muto got away with numerous hacks too before he was finally booked. Guess Nishimura has a Rakuten credit card and they’ve been very understanding with his monthly payments recently. Right at the end of the match with Sung-Ryong in the box for a late free kick for us, he got totally flattened and of course Nishimura gave nothing. I haven’t watched it back because why would I want myself to be proved definitively wrong and instead I’ll enjoy my grumpiness and leave the possibly unjustified moan here. And another reason I haven’t watched it back is because it was just another shit game for us, and as fun as it is to moan, I don’t need to let Oniki’s mastery of football ruin anymore of my week than it absolutely has to.

So another shit game. Two moments of positivity though. The pitch looked a bit better than last week. And before the game an ex-member of Exile took a penalty against the boss of a local Kawasaki soul food noodle shop. The fun stopped there though. After that it was mostly passing triangles occasionally interrupted by us basting the ball high or wide. Next up, Hiroshima away next weekend and I’m not going. It is a shame that I can’t make the trip but is a very good thing for my mental health. I’ll find a pub to watch the game in and try my best to get plastered before kick off to lessen the blow when we lose to a team that’s maybe in worse form than we are. It was kind of ironic that halfway though the game, the advertising opposite me flashed up the slogan ‘Keep Smile, Keep Soccer’. Once again there wasn’t much to smile about, but I suppose it’s important to not get too stressed about all of this and try to not be so bothered. And it’s good that when what is happening on the pitch is so miserable, at least I can get some enjoyment and a morale boost from the advertising hoardings. Keep Smile Frontale fans!

Team

GK 1. JUNG Sung-Ryong

DF 13. YAMANE Miki

DF 31. YAMAMURA Kazuya

DF 3. OMINAMI Takuma (Red card 37')

DF 2. NOBORIZATO Kyohei

MF 8. TACHIBANADA Kento

MF 16. SEKO Tatsuki

MF 14. WAKIZAKA Yasuto

FW 41. IENAGA Akihiro
FW 20. YAMADA Shin

FW 30. SEGAWA Yusuke

Subs

 

GK 99. KAMIFUKUMOTO Naoto

DF 5. SASAKI Asahi (on for SEKO 81')

FW 11. KOBAYASHI Yu

FW 17. TONO Daiya (on for IENAGA 71')

FW 23. MARCINHO (on for SEGAWA 81')

DF 29. TAKAI Kota (on for TACHIBANADA 38')

FW 33. MIYASHIRO Taisei (on for YAMADA 81')

 

Goals

 

OSAKO (Kobe) 39' 0-1

 

Highlights