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!
This was a game where we found a new way to finish the game with just one point. Previously we’ve tried the 'go ahead and throw it away almost directly from the kick off', the 'play well, concede and grab a goal back' and a few other variations. But to totally dominate the first half but go in a goal down, then rally a little and take a 2-1 lead only to concede weakly with the last kick of the game was in some ways more painful than to have lost. I guess we now know how Yokohama felt with our 100th minute winner against them last season. I think the most concerning thing about today's game was the fact that it is a fine line between coming back from a goal down to win and gain some much needed confidence, and to give up that lead so late on, smashing what little confidence we had. I really hope that we can move on from this game quickly, and we have a chance to do so in Korea on Tuesday. We don’t need to linger on this and I don’t particularly want to write much about it. I imagine Frontale fans’ grumbles will seem particularly ridiculous to Omiya fans, who got hammered by Gamba the same night and are sitting right at the bottom of the table with one point from eight games. But I think the thing that irks so much is that we aren’t playing too badly, we just can’t put the ball in the net and are making crucial occasional stupid mistakes. I’m getting sick of draws but I’m sure Omiya would take a draw or two at the moment.
Talking of mistakes, it seems that Tasaka was being punished for his gaffe that gave Consadole their goal last week. He dropped to the bench and was replaced at right back by Nobori, a left-footed left back… The rest of the back four was the same as the last game, Nara and Taniguchi in the middle and Kurumaya at left back, all in front on Sung-Ryong. Seems a bit tough on Tasaka as you could easily say Kurumaya (easily out-jumped) and Sung-Ryong (saved the shot but about a foot behind the line) were equally at fault. The defensive midfielders were again Neto and Kengo, but the three in front of them were shuffled once more. Abe was on the left, Otsuka in the middle and Miyoshi on the right. Kobayashi was the lone striker (hasn’t really worked so far, still hasn’t I don’t think). Whilst Otsuka was announced as playing up front with Kobayashi he was in reality behind him at the front of the attacking midfield part of our team. I wonder if it might make more sense to switch those two round in the future as Otsuka is a bit taller than Kobayashi and the Kobayashi up front thing isn’t working (maybe I mentioned that a few times...). The bench was changed a little too. Rhayner was suspended so was absent. Arai was the reserve keeper and the others on there were Tasaka, Morimoto, Hasegawa, Moriya, a fit again Edu (who looked so chuffed coming on to the pitch to warm up before the game!) and Kano.
The first half started with loads of possession for us. I don’t think Shimizu touched the ball for about three minutes. It was a very familiar story though. Lots of possession and not many good chances, at least not on target. The Shimizu fans were in good voice which was surprising given the extremely negative stuff their team was playing. I particularly enjoyed one of their songs which had almost an afrobeat feel to it. Very shuffly. Shimizu apparently had come for the draw. They pretty much had 11 men behind the ball at all times and were shutting down our attacks with some meaty challenges. Neto put one in himself and was booked. I don’t know if it’s just me, but it feels that Neto and Rhayner get booked for pretty much anything they do whereas others get off. It was clear Shimizu were going to sit back, absorb our sideways passing and hit us on the break when we gave the ball away. And this is pretty much what they did. We had plenty of players back as they counter attacked but a cross from former Frontale player Chong Tese went through the legs of Taniguchi and our defence just watched as one Shimizu player slid and missed the ball and it ran to another who tapped in easily at the far post. I’ve no idea what any of the defenders were doing. No-one was anywhere near the ball or the Shimizu attackers who were lining up to put the ball in. Sung-Ryong wasn’t really to blame as he was ready for the shot from the sliding Shimizu player who didn’t connect and then had to scramble back across goal, but as for the rest of the defence, I have no idea what they were thinking. Our defence has looked much better recently, but looked absolutely terrible here. It was far too easy for Shimizu. This gave them a goal to hang on to, so they retreated even further behind the ball. It was clear it was going to be a long night for us of trying to break them down with our deadly sideways and backwards passes. Neto was lucky not to get sent off later in the half. He was looking a bit disheartened after the early booking and got a lucky escape when he clattered into a challenge on the edge of our box. Unbelievably, the usually useless Nishimura didn’t get out his card. Maybe I need to reassess my opinion on him. Probably not… So, we finished the first half with 79% possession, 422 passes with a 92% pass completion rate. And trailing 1-0. Classic Frontale really… We had been careless at crucial times and no-one looked like they were playing particularly well. Kengo looks tired recently. Neto looked sad.
The second half brought Moriya, who replaced Neto. An understandable substitution, but one which left our defensive midfield being made up of two attacking midfielders. The bench was maybe not the best. Plenty of attacking options and one centre back. There was no natural replacement for Neto. Got to go down as a mistake by Oniki. But I do think he was right to make the change. There was a feeling of hopelessness around the ground I think. At least there was in my seat anyway. I commented that it felt like we might never score again. Nice reverse psychology from me, eh? But it didn’t come that soon so I had to wallow in despondency for a while before my spirits could be lifted a little. We were attacking a lot more but the end product wasn’t there as usual. On 62 minutes our first goal came. Miyoshi cut inside and put in a lovely cross to Abe who was running in at the far post. He volleyed the ball home off the keeper and then the post. Not the cleanest of finishes, but it went in and the mood lifted a little. With this attacking though, Shimizu were starting to come into the game a little more and it definitely felt, at least in my pessimistic eyes, that we would need another goal to avoid defeat. It seemed clear that we would keep attacking and that they would nick a goal. I don't know why they came with such a negative game plan as it seemed they were able to play some decent football. Any preconceived notions of a formation were gone and we were doing that thing we normally do when we are chasing a game, where everybody plays everywhere. I know we had a few players playing out of position, but it didn’t feel like it because it seemed like we had done away with those old-fashioned concepts of shape and formation. Our all out attack was really lifting the crowd and we were making some decent noise. We got our second goal on 73 minutes, after some great work from Kobayashi in the box, who collected the ball on the penalty spot and as is the Frontale way, dribbled it away from goal, held off and beat a few defenders and passed to Kengo who was running into the box. He finished expertly and all was good again. This would be a great morale boost for our low on confidence team. A comeback from a goal down. Just what we needed to kick on this season, and especially before a crucial ACL game on Tuesday. Oh confidence! The one thing we can’t work on in training, the ephemeral but crucial ingredient to success. The tide was turning. No more bore draws. From now on it would be a goal fest with sturdy defending for the rest of the season. Now we were in front, better make some substitutions, eh? Hasegawa came on for Otsuka and shortly afterwards Tasaka came on for Miyoshi. Like I said, we had abandoned such outdated concepts such as formation by this stage, but it seemed that Tasaka was playing left wing and Abe moved to the right. Hasegawa also seemed to be playing right wing… Approaching the 90th minute, the fourth official signaled 4 minutes of injury time. Just four minutes to hang on and we’d be back again. On the 95th minute they scored with the last kick of the game. Alves cut in from the wing, shot and the ball rolled past three Frontale players who didn’t get anything in the way of it and dribbled past Sung-Ryong at his near post. This one was 100% Sung-Ryong’s fault I reckon. It was a horribly weak goal to concede. And there goes that confidence and any hopeful thoughts. This season is going to be a long and stinky one it seems.
Positives and negatives. Positives first. Abe scored. Maybe it will give him some confidence. No fresh injuries maybe. I’m clutching at straws. Negatives. Loads. Our big confidence boost created by the second goal was smashed into a million pieces and booted down the toilet. Strange image I know, but kind of how it felt. Woeful keeping from Sung-Ryong for the second goal. Completely incompetent defending for the first goal. Plenty of average or below performances. Players played out of position and a very lop-sided bench. Neto now banned for the next game in Osaka next weekend. I don’t particularly want to list any more as I’m trying to forget about football for the rest of the weekend. Oh, I thought of another positive! We don’t have another home game for a couple of weeks, so the next time we get a draw or a loss we will at least have the distraction of visiting a different city and therefore attending the game won’t feel quite so much like self-flagellation. Boos rang out at the final whistle which is pretty unusual for Frontale. I don’t think I agree with booing the players. I think they are suffering as much as we are. I’m not sure we should really be cheering them after the whistle though. It definitely felt like there was a difference of opinion within the fans at the end of this game. Tediously, I think I’m probably somewhere in the middle.
Next up is the away ACL fixture against Suwon Bluewings. We’re going to the game. Right now I feel like I would rather use my day off to have a nice sleep or maybe bang my head against a wall. But at least it will be a new city and a new country for me. Possibly not the best time to visit Korea given the current political situation... Maybe this game will be the one where we turn things around. It’s probably the case that if we don’t win it, our ACL campaign is almost certainly over. Too many draws so far. Very reminiscent of our league campaign! After that, we’re away again at Cerezo next Sunday. It’s too early to even think anything about that game. Let’s get the ACL one out of the way first. Go Frontale!… I guess.
Team
GK 1. Sung-Ryong JUNG
DF 2. NOBORIZATO Kyohei
DF 3. NARA Tatsuki
DF 5. TANIGUCHI Shogo
DF 7. KURUMAYA Shintaro
MF 21. EDUARDO NETO (Yellow card 16')
MF 14. NAKAMURA Kengo
MF 13. MIYOSHI Koji
FW 27. OTSUKA Shohei
MF 8. ABE Hiroyuki
FW 11. KOBAYASHI Yu
Subs GK 30. ARAI Shota
DF 6. TASAKA Yusuke (on for MIYOSHI 83')
FW 9. MORIMOTO Takayuki
MF 16. HASEGAWA Tatsuya (on for OTSUKA 79')
MF 19. MORIYA Kentaro (on for NETO 46')
DF 23. EDUARDO
MF 25. KANO Kenta
My Frontale Man Of The Match
Do I have to do this? What a stupid idea for a new feature this was. Guess there's one person who I could just about consider giving it to, but I don't have the appropriate gacha gacha thing so no picture this time.
The Frontale youtube channel has
longer highlights provided by DAZN, but given that last year's
highlights got wiped when the broadcaster got changed, I'm going to
stick with the official J League ones. But you can watch the longer
highlights here if you want.
Yep, can still keep using the same blog post with a few details changed. Another game and another vaguely unsatisfying performance and scoreline. So, what was different this time? Well, I suppose the injury situation got slightly better with the return of Abe to the bench. But presumably we’ll have lost someone to injury from this game. Most likely suspect is Taniguchi, who fell heavily on his hand/wrist just before half time and looked to be in some discomfort. He played the second half, but knowing our luck with injuries recently, I wouldn’t rule out him having picked up something that keeps him out for a few games. I could probably have predicted it at the time, but the most exciting footballing part of the weekend was when we found ourselves to be on the same flight as the team on the way up. Ridiculously, I felt a little star struck and the most I could manage was to awkwardly say ‘こんにちは’ to Moriya and Miyoshi who were standing right in front of me. They responded with the same words and the same awkwardness.
Our starting line up was slightly shuffled again. It was reminiscent of how we lined up in the second half against Guangzhou, with Sung-Ryong in goal, a back four of Tasaka, Taniguchi, Nara and Kurumaya, Neto and Kengo as the defensive midfielders, Rhayner and Nobori on the wings and Kobayashi and Hasegawa up front. Rhayner didn’t seem to have as much freedom as he was given against Guangzhou and stuck to his right wing position for the majority of the game. So another slight tweak to the formation/line-up but with not a great deal of noticeable difference to the performance, game and result. The subs bench was made up of Arai, Morimoto, Miyoshi, Moriya, Otsuka, Itakura and a back from injury Abe. This was the first time I had been to the Sapporo Dome and the first time I had watched a football match indoors. The stadium and the atmosphere was pretty good though. If you weren’t aware, there is an intricate process of transforming the dome from a baseball stadium to a football stadium which involves wheeling the pitch in from outside where it spends most of it’s time growing and getting some sunlight. There’s a video of the process here if you are interested in that kind of thing. Perhaps because of the roof, the stadium seemed pretty loud. The Consadole fans were in good voice and it was nice to see them give a good reception to Nara, returning to the club where he started his career. It was also nice to see the Console mascot giving its all with the cheerleaders before the game. Classic entertainment!
The first half began with us giving them a few chances with some dodgy defending. We seemed incapable of marking and were leaving lots of gaps. I have no idea why, as this has been something we’ve been ok at recently (aside from the FC Tokyo game obviously, but that was a bit of a false result in some ways). Our passes were also not quite going where they were supposed to be. I wonder if there was something a bit weird about the pitch, as before the game, a few of the Frontal staff were bouncing, kicking and running balls along the pitch, suggesting that things weren’t going to be exactly as we were used to. Just my theory anyway, and we did seem to get to grips with it after 20 minutes or so. As I’m writing this on the same day as the game, I haven’t seen the highlights yet, but I don’t remember there being a great deal of them. Tasaka had a decent shot saved by their keeper at the other end of the pitch. Taniguchi almost scored another own goal (poor him! or rather lucky him as it was an almost own goal rather than actual own goal) when he got his head on a shot, trying to block it and diverted the ball on to the post. Bit of a let off to be honest! We did seem more willing to shoot though and were maybe a little bit more direct than usual. At least in the first half anyway. This wouldn’t be a Frontale Rabbit blog post if I didn’t complain about the ref, so I’ll give him the usual stick. He was weak. I don’t think there were any glaring errors from a decision point of view, but he was letting way too much go in my opinion. And he was really being given a lot of lip by the Consadole players who were surrounding him for almost every decision that went against them. He did seem to be getting influenced by this bullying, but remember that this is coming from an extremely biased point of view. First half progress report would probably say something like, ‘showing decent potential and desire to get forward, but must learn that it’s not physically possible to pass the ball through the opposition players’. I don’t know if they were pressing us well, but it looked more like we were just kicking the ball against them all the time.
The second half continued where the first left off. Consadole using their strength and us not really getting anything going. Taniguchi’s wrist or hand was strapped up so something was wrong with it. Let’s hope it’s not serious. I was as always, disappointed to hear another team singing ‘The Sodding Entertainer’. Maybe that’s not the official title, but it’s certainly the first thing that springs to mind when I hear these songs. The ref was still wafting across the pitch getting blown around by the grumbles of the Consadole players. Nothing much was happening really. On 71 minutes, Abe came on for Hasegawa, who’d had a quiet game. And then we should have had a penalty. Kobayashi was shoved to the floor by the defender who had absolutely no interest in the ball whatsoever. It was waved away by the ref and the defenders, who I guess indirectly had some kind of say over most of the decisions in the match. Shortly afterwards, after a couple of decent Kurumaya goal attempts, we had another appeal and we got that one. Haven’t seen the replay but Kengo was driving into the box and was upended. I thought it was a penalty but was expecting it not to be given. But it was, and Kobayashi put it away, not before pretty much 75% of the Consadole players had stood in the way, or tried to talk to him to put him off or moved the ball or do just about anything part from get out of the way and get on with the game. Weak ref again. The distraction was so intense that I was a little worried it was going to work. But he put it away. The keeper was close, judging by my photo, certainly closer than I remember, but close is not good enough and we were one up. So, unfamiliar territory, at least recently. But it wasn’t to last long. Down the other end of the pitch Tasaka battled with a Consadole player running towards the goal line outside the box, he won the battle and then slid to prevent the ball from going out for a corner. Just as I said ‘maybe he shouldn’t have done that’ the loose ball was picked up by another Consadole player, crossed and was in the back of the net, at least metaphorically speaking. It was saved, but Sung-Ryong was way behind the line when he did so. Who to blame? I guess it has to be between Tasaka, for setting up the cross but that feels a bit harsh, Kurumaya (I think…) who was out jumped by Tokura or Sung-Ryong who seemed to be beaten quite easily. Probably it’s fair that they share the blame. As a reaction to the goal, Oniki brought on Miyoshi for Rhayner. I think Miyoshi needs to get more of a chance soon, and maybe he will as Rhayner picked up his fourth yellow of the season in this game so now will miss the next match. But to be honest, it felt like too little too late. It seems that we get going when we concede, but I wish we could do it before we concede. Our final substitution was Moriya coming on for Nobori in injury time. It’s a bit weird, as Consadole seemed to be playing for the draw but we were the team making the time-wasting substitution. So, 1-1. We only had three minutes of injury time which didn’t seem much given the time it took to get the penalty taken and various other things, but even if we’d played for eight minutes I wouldn’t have been that confident we’d have got a winner.
So, 1-1. It felt like it was probably a fair result and looking at one site's early statistics, it seems like it probably was too. We had the same amount of shots and shots on target, and whilst we had an advantage in possession, we know that most of our possession was passing the ball backwards and sometimes sideways. It’s the same story as a few games recently. We haven’t looked like we were in much trouble at the back, but haven’t really looked like we are causing much trouble up front. I know we still have a huge amount of injuries, but I would have hoped that we would be scoring a few more goals as we’re not playing badly at all. Positives and negatives. Let’s start positive. Aside from the goal and the almost own goal, we didn’t look threatened by them too much. Our defence is definitely feeling more solid than last year. At least most of the time anyway. Another big positive is the fact that we are only four points off the top of the table still. I know it’s early days, but it’s good that we’re not being left behind whilst we’re struggling. We were playing with a bit more directness at points in the game which hopefully should help us, but didn’t particularly today. Also, Abe is back, which could be a positive if he can start playing well. Negatives, a few more. A weak goal to concede. A lack of chances. 11 shots yeah, but not many that we can look back on and think almost went in. A fourth booking for Rhayner meaning that probably our most creative player recently in a very uncreative slump won’t be able to play the next game. I don’t think anyone had a stinker, but the whole performance was a bit underwhelming. Not sure Kengo is best suited to playing in defensive midfield with Neto. Although to be honest both of defensive midfielders have been getting forward a lot recently, although to not much effect. I think Oniki has some thinking to do.
Next up are Shimizu S-Pulse at home on Friday. They’ve had a reasonable start to the season so have the potential to cause us some problems. Let’s just hope that we can cause a few problems ourselves. The absence of Rhayner means that Oniki has to make at least one change. Let’s hope he can shuffle the pack again and this time come up with something that works a bit better. 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 14. NAKAMURA Kengo
MF 22. RHAYNER (Yellow card 32')
MF 2. NOBORIZATO Kyohei
FW 16. HASEGAWA Tatsuya
FW 11. KOBAYASHI Yu
Subs GK 30. ARAI Shota
MF 8. ABE Hiroyuki (on for HASEGAWA 71')
FW 9. MORIMOTO Takayuki
MF 13. MIYOSHI Koji (on for RHAYNER 84')
MF 19. MORIYA Kentaro (on for NOBORIZATO 90+3')
FW 27. OTSUKA Shohei
MF 28. ITAKURA Ko
My Frontale Man Of The Match
Not sure anyone particularly deserved it to be honest. Everyone was kind of average, but I'll give it to Nara as he's been doing ok lately and was going back to his old club. And I have got his gacha gacha keyring thing.
The Frontale youtube channel has
longer highlights provided by DAZN, but given that last year's
highlights got wiped when the broadcaster got changed, I'm going to
stick with the official J League ones. But you can watch the longer
highlights here if you want.
Recently, I’ve been feeling that I could probably use the same blog posts for most of these recent games with just a few details changed. Wednesday’s game against Guangzhou was very much a case of so far, so familiar, with us putting in a decent performance in the middle of the pitch but not really getting that close to scoring. Going in to the game I guess we probably would have been expecting a 1-1, as this has been the score in every one of our ACL games so far this year. But that was too much to hope for as both teams played out a disappointing 0-0 draw in pretty horrible windy and rainy weather. I think this is the first 0-0 we’ve had since I started writing this blog actually. It was by no means a boring game, but there definitely was a bit of frustration as we did our usual beautiful passing right up until their penalty box when we either gave the ball away or tamely shot at the keeper. We now really need to win our last two ACL group games, away in Korea and at home against Eastern, to have any chance of getting through to the next stage.
There was some positive news before the game as Sung-Ryong was fit to start, his injury from the weekend not being as serious as we thought. When the team line-up was announced, it was really difficult to work out what kind of shape we would be playing in. At times during the game it wasn’t so clear either, but as far as I could see we had a back four of Tasaka, Nara, Taniguchi and Kurumaya, with Neto and Itakura ahead of them. We seemed to be playing with a front three of Kobayashi on the right, Morimoto in the middle and Hasegawa on the left. Rhayner was also playing but was all over the pitch and did a pretty good job. On twitter I described it as a 4-2-3 plus Rhayner wherever he fancied being. The Frontale website has Morimoto up front by himself with Rhayner taking the central midfield attacking position, but it seemed pretty clear to me that Rhayner had a free role to roam wherever he fancied. The subs bench was made up of Arai, Noborizato, Miyoshi, Kengo, Moriya, Kano and Otsuka. Guangzhou had brought a pretty big crowd to Todoroki. Credit to them for that! I guess maybe some of them live in Japan, but whichever you look at it, it was an impressive away attendance. Before the kick off, the teams unusually changed ends. I guess this was due to the strong winds which were clearly blowing much more in one direction. We started the first half kicking into the wind, and whilst it was strong, I guess we don’t really put the ball in the air very often so it wasn’t such a problem for us. The game started with wild attacking from both teams. There was no way this was going to end up as a 0-0… The Frontale line-up seemed to be quite fluid, epsicllay Rhayner of course and he was causing Guangzhou quite a few problems early on. Guangzhou’s trio of Brazilians were performing pretty much as they had in the last game. Alan was constantly diving and whinging, Goulart was just a mystery, (the mystery being how he could be have a probably high-paying career as a professional footballer) and Paulinho hanging around, waiting for a free kick which he could blast either at the wall or straight at the keeper. Alan was once again particularly infuriating, going down like he had been invisibly lassoed by a local Kawasaki cowboy. I can’t recall seeing anyone get booked for diving recently. Has the rule changed? I was pleased to see a Guangzhou defender get booked early on for a nasty hack and thought that finally we might have a ref who does something about the persistent fouling that we always seem to attract. Seems I was wrong though. After this early yellow, the cards were kept firmly in the pocket until the 93rd minute. Of course I’m going to say this, but this was another terrible referee, giving decisions out at random. We benefited from them as much as we had them go against us, but is it too much to ask that the referees actually know how to do their job? The Guangzhou keeper was looking a bit dodgy, he didn’t seem too confident with his kicking. Hasegawa’s pace against a stodgy Guangzhou right back was causing some problems and Morimoto was doing a decent enough job of leading the line. But it was all a bit scrappy in midfield. Constant fouls were destroying the rhythm of the game and there was a bit of a lack of quality from both teams.
The second half, we had the wind with us for what it was worth. Kengo came on at halftime for Itakura who after a shaky start seemed to have settled down and was playing ok. It made sense though to bring on the experience of Kengo to hopefully create some more in the middle. Rhayner was still causing problems and was once again getting some rough treatment from the opposition. I guess it’s because he’s good on the ball that he attracts so many fouls, but it does seem that people’s response to him beating them once is to just knock him over repeatedly afterwards. I’m sure there could have been a few cards given for persistent fouling, but I guess that was a bit too much to be expected from this ref. One thing that was particularly annoying about the second half was the fact that every free kick we got, we played short with the opposition standing in very close proximity. I know they shouldn’t be there, but them standing there reduced the effectiveness of us taking our quick free kicks. I don’t blame them. They stand close and either have a good chance of winning the ball back immediately or if the ref is paying attention, prevent the free kick from being taking quickly. I’m not sure why we didn’t recognise that this was their tactic and change things up a little. Instead, we just kept doing the same thing and turning attack into defence. We were having a few more shots in the second half but they were mostly from long range and going straight at the keeper. In fact I’d say that we didn’t really put any of the seven (yes, only seven…) shots we had in the entire game anywhere that wasn’t wide of the post, over the bar or straight at the keeper. On 58 minutes Morimoto was replaced by Nobori. I thought Morimoto had an ok game. Hope this is the first step in his recovery of form. He’s been really off recently. This meant Kobayashi moved into the front man position. But still we were lacking the final ball. We dominated possession and caused them some problems, but the final pass or the shot was always not up to scratch. Guangzhou seemed to have decided to settle for the draw and were wasting a fair bit of time. On 88 minutes Moriya came on for Hasegawa. Felt a bit like too little too late to be honest, unless we too were trying to run the clock down. And maybe both teams got what they wished for as the game finished 0-0. Whilst preferable to losing the game, another draw, especially after dominating the possession felt a bit disappointing. But at the same time, with our apparently toothless attack, perhaps a 0-0 was the best we could have hoped for.
Looking back at the stats after the game, I think maybe the draw was a fair result. At the time it felt hugely frustrating. For most of the game Guangzhou’s whole game plan seemed to be to try to score from a free kick. Apparently they had eleven shots in the game, but I don’t remember it being that many. For a team with plenty of money, they really don’t seem to be as good as people think they are. But, we didn’t beat them… As I said at the start of this post, plenty of our recent games are playing out the same way at the moment. Decent amount of possession, making a few chances but not taking many of them. It’s pleasing to have a bit of stability at the back recently, although I guess there’s no guarantee that will last, but we are really lacking a cutting edge up front. I’m not sure it’s the players, as we have people throughout the team who can score goals. Perhaps it’s the system. Or perhaps it’s just a matter of a lack of confidence. I don’t think things are going so badly this year, but they really aren’t clicking yet. Not sure how long we can still be a work in progress without losing touch in all of the competitions we are in. Positives and negatives. Positives first, we didn’t lose. And Rhayner. That’s probably about it. He was all over the pitch and created and tried to take quite a few chances. The free role seems to suit him quite well and he’s getting closer to scoring but, and this brings us on to the negatives, we didn’t score and didn’t make enough chances. We can pass the ball all day, and our passing looked pretty good in this game, but you don’t get awarded goals for nice passes. We now have to win the last two games to probably have any chance of progressing and one of those is a tough away tie against a Suwon team who put five past Eastern. If we don’t win that, it probably won’t matter how many we can score against Eastern in our last game. And who says we actually will score against Eastern! I know we are still blighted by injuries (and actually, when are some of those players coming back?) but the players we have available probably shouldn’t be stumbling so much at the moment. I think Kobayashi up front by himself doesn’t work, so I’m not sure why we keep resorting to it. We need to get some confidence back after the FC Tokyo game, which I think is still playing on our minds, and I hope we can do so soon.
Next up, Consadole Sapporo away on Sunday, Nara returning to visit the team he started his career with. Another plane away-day and I’m quite looking forward to it. Hopefully the game will live up to my expectations. They did us a favour and beat FC Tokyo last weekend (Okubo still with just the one goal this season, presumably waiting till he plays us again…). Hopefully we can do a bit better than FC Tokyo did and come away with a result. After that, we’re back at home hosting Shimizu S Pulse next Friday. How good would it be if by next Saturday we had six more points and a few more goals scored. We can always hope I suppose! 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 28. ITAKURA Ko
MF 21. EDUARDO NETO
MF 22. RHAYNER
FW 11. KOBAYASHI Yu
FW 9. MORIMOTO Takayuki
FW 16. HASEGAWA Tatsuya
Subs GK 30. ARAI Shota
MF 2. NOBORIZATO Kyohei (on for MORIMOTO 58')
MF 13. MIYOSHI Koji
MF 14. NAKAMURA Kengo(on for ITAKURA 46')
MF 19. MORIYA Kentaro (on for HASEGAWA 88')
MF 25. KANO Kenta
FW 27. OTSUKA Shohei
My Frontale Man Of The Match
(This is going to be a great new pictorial feature on here as long as I have the player in question in my growing collection of these things. Please understand that my choice of player will be in no way swayed by who I have and who I don't. Probably)
After the mood boost of last weekend in Sendai, it now somehow seems inevitable that we would come crashing back to earth at home against Kofu. April is a crazy busy month for us and we have some pretty important games. So far, won one and drawn one. To be honest, things could easily have been a lot worse given how late we conceded. But the real disappointment is the difference in how we played compared to last week. In Sendai, I was full of optimism with our new formation and how well some of the team performed. Today, we started with a similar formation which was gradually dismantled over the course of the game, and whilst we didn’t play particularly badly and we had loads of possession, we couldn’t put the ball in the back of the net until the 93rd minute. The picture above shows what was probably the highlight of the day for many. Some people messed around a bit with a drone and everybody took pictures.
We started the game with only one change from the Sendai match. Due to Oshima’s injury (5 weeks out…) Moriya took his place in central midfield alongside Neto. So we started with the same 3-2-3-2 as I want to call it, although the Frontal website seems to think it was more 3-4-3. I feel that Kengo was definitely behind Kobayashi and Hasegawa though, so I’m sticking to 3-2-3-2. The bench was an attacking one, with Miyoshi, Morimoto, Chinen and Otsuka (with Itakura, Arai and Kano being the other three). I suspect the big thing this tells us is who is fit to play though. We are not getting any luck with injuries at the moment and Kofu gave us another one in this game. We really need some of those injured players back soon. We must be getting close to breaking point! Kofu seemed to be lining up in a 9-1 formation, with loads of players at the back to hoof it to the big lump up front. Consequently, our three at the back was maybe a bit excessive. Kurumaya spent a lot of the first half attacking. I’m sure he was the furthest forward player on a few occasions. This wasn’t causing us any problems really though as Kofu weren’t offering much apart from an away shirt that looked a bit like a magic eye tablecloth. Stare at it long enough and the words ‘hit it long’ appear. Rhayner was all over the pitch and causing some problems and Nobori was tearing up the left with Kurumaya. We had a lot of possession in the first half, and actually in the game as a whole, but we weren’t really creating many chances (apparently only three shots in the first half). Rhayner had a decent effort. He’s getting closer every week. Hope he can score soon. The ref (here I go again…) put in another ridiculous display. Kofu were kicking lumps out of us with no punishment and Neto gets a card for his first foul. Is it just me, or are the majority of officials in the J League pretty useless? It’s always a pleasant surprise when the ref actually seems to have watched a game of football before. Although, I don’t moan about refs as much when we win, do I? All in all, it was a pretty disappointing first half. We were by no means terrible, but things weren’t clicking for us.
The second half started with a bit of a shuffle. We switched to a back four with Kurumaya at left back and Nobori at right back. Both were attacking a lot though. Kofu still weren’t offering much and seemed to be time-wasting right from the kick off. They were hoping to soak up our pressure and hit us on the break. Their penalty box and the area in front of it was very congested and we were really having trouble breaking through it. A lot of our players looked tired, which is a bit concerning this early on in the season. Rhayner was still running a lot, but there was something missing all the way through the middle of the team. Neto wasn’t having his best game. Same for Kobayashi. Kengo was pretty quiet. Hasegawa wasn’t having the impact he had in Sendai. But we slowly started picking things up a bit. It really felt like we needed a substitution and we got one on 72 minutes. The Kofu forward Dudu left a boot on on Sung-Ryong and he had to be replaced. We were at the other end of the ground, but it looked like a nasty little foul to be honest. Sung-Ryong seemed to want to continue, but apparently there was quite a lot of swelling around his eye so he was replaced by Arai. A few minutes later we got a substitution that wasn’t enforced on us. Hasegawa was replaced by Miyoshi who took up a position on the right, with Kengo to the left of him behind Kobayashi. Remember how well that whole Kobayashi up front by himself thing has gone recently? I guess it worked a little better today, but unfortunately Kobayashi wasn’t having the best of days. We were creating chances though and plenty of them. Whilst we still feel the need to try to pass the ball all the way to the net, we were having some shots and Rhayner was getting closer. We hit the post and it was surely only a matter of time… Chinen appeared again, replacing Moriya. I can’t even tell you what the formation was like at this stage. All I know is that he played up front and the other players played in other positions. Thing were pretty fluid with people all over the pitch. Due to the injury to Sung-Ryong, we were to have seven minutes of injury time. And then the inevitable happened. Completely against the run of play, they hit a through pass to their striker who I swore at the time was miles offside (he wasn’t…) and he managed to sprint past Nara and slot the ball home. Nara and Arai ended up in a heap and gave each other a rueful look. I don’t know who I blame. Maybe Nara would have had a better chance of catching him if he wasn’t appealing for offside. Taniguchi lost the ball pretty cheaply and you could say he was maybe a bit too far forward. Arai could probably have done a bit better. But what’s certain is that we were exposed in the way that we probably knew we were going to be. But, credit to the team and to the fans, we didn’t give up. We were making a lot of chances now and the noise in the stadium was building. Two minutes after their goal we were equal. Nara floated a well-directed header into the corner of the net from a corner. His first goal for Frontale and it was an important one. We still were pushing hard and looking for a winner. But it wasn’t to be. We had left it too late.
After the game, mixed emotions really. We really should have won it, be I can’t say for sure we deserved to. Certainly we were the team making the chances and with the possession, but our inability to finish off the nice moves we make is costing us at the moment. Sure, we’re blighted by injuries, but for pretty much the same team to perform so differently in two games only a week apart is a bit worrying. We had a lot more shots in the second half. 13 rather than the pitiful three in the first half. Over the course of the game we had twice as many as they did, but we scored the same amount of goals and took the same amount of points from the game. Positives and negatives. Start positive. We avoided a defeat and we came pretty close to it. We played some nice stuff on occasions in the game, but I think I’m clutching at straws a little. Rhayner looked decent. Kashima and FC Tokyo lost. But, (moving on to the negatives) Urawa won 7-0. I think at the moment it would take us three or four games to score that many goals. Too many players weren’t really with it in this game. Neto, Kobayashi, Kengo, Hasegawa all looked very different from last week. Potentially big negative is Sung-Ryong’s injury. Apparently it’s too early to say whether he will be able to play on Wednesday against Guangzhou. I hope he does as he was looking solid recently. Another player joins the injury list… And I guess the biggest negative is our inconsistency. Maybe it’s due to all the injuries, but I think Oniki is having trouble finding how we should be playing. Miyoshi doesn’t seem to be in favour at the moment, but maybe it’s worth giving him a start soon. We’ll see on Wednesday I guess.
As I’ve already mentioned a few times, next up is Guangzhou on Wednesday. If we’re going one good game one then one bad game at the moment, this bodes well for this game I suppose. I hope we can play like we did in the second half against them in the last ACL game, rather than put in the rabbit in the headlights performance we did in the first half of the same game. Whilst we’re still unbeaten in the ACL this year, we’re going to need to turn some of those 1-1s into wins soon. After that we’ve got another long away game against Consadole Sapporo next Sunday. Guess it’s going to be a bit chilly up there. Anyway, onwards and upwards. Go Frontale!
Team
GK 1. Sung-Ryong JUNG
DF 3. NARA Tatsuki
DF 5. TANIGUCHI Shogo
DF 7. KURUMAYA Shintaro
MF 21. EDUARDO NETO (Yellow card 7')
MF 19. MORIYA Kentaro
MF 22. RHAYNER (Yellow card 84')
MF 14. NAKAMURA Kengo
MF 2. NOBORIZATO Kyohei
FW 16. HASEGAWA Tatsuya
FW 11. KOBAYASHI Yu
Subs GK 30. ARAI Shota (on for JUNG 72')
FW 9. MORIMOTO Takayuki
MF 13. MIYOSHI Koji (on for HASEGAWA 75')
FW 20. CHINEN Kei (on for MORIYA 84')
MF 25. KANO Kenta
FW 27. OTSUKA Shohei
MF 28. ITAKURA Ko
The Frontale youtube channel has
longer highlights provided by DAZN, but given that last year's
highlights got wiped when the broadcaster got changed, I'm going to
stick with the official J League ones. But you can watch the longer
highlights here if you want.
After a two week break, Saturday saw us get things back on track a little with a decent performance away at Sendai. Going in to the game we were (and to some extent, still are) blighted with injuries. Unavailable for selection were Elsinho, Edu, Abe, Ienaga, Tasaka, Igawa, Ao, Michael, Takeoka and Popp. Think that’s all of them but it’s a little difficult to keep up with the injuries recently. Sendai had started pretty well this year, with three wins and one loss, so it looked like we would be in for a decent game. Away at Sendai is one of my favourite away trips, probably mostly due to the atmosphere, which was pretty good, and also the fact that you can walk all the way round the ground with both sets of fans mingling freely. It’s nice that we can have a sensible relationship with the opposition fans. It seems that I enjoyed Sendai so much on Sunday that it has taken me a long time to get round to writing this.
There was a bit of a shuffle with the starting line-up, in part forced on us by injuries, but also in part, I guess, due to Oniki tinkering a little with the formation. In spite of the way the team was announced before the game we played with three at the back, which I was quite interested to see, as I think our centre backs have been playing pretty well recently (apart from the FC Tokyo game…). I like the fact that we are still trying to play mind games with our team sheet. I suspect it isn’t really very successful though. The formation was a kind of 3-2-3-2, which is a new one for me to be honest. Sung-Ryong was in goal, Nara, Taniguchi and Kurumaya were the back three, and as usual, in front of them were Oshima and Neto. We had a midfield of Rhayner on the right, Kengo in the middle and Nobori on the left and a front two of Kobayashi and Hasegawa. I don’t know what the thinking was behind this change. Maybe Oniki wanted to give us a bit more stability at the back. It meant that Rhayner was going to have to do a bit of defending, which apparently he was up for. The game started quite evenly. Both teams were being pressured when on the ball and the referee was giving a lot of free kicks, pretty much any time there was a tackle. Whilst it’s annoying to have the game stopped so often, it was nice to see some consistency from an official for a change. We were making some good chances early on, our usual bright start I guess, but Sendai had a few too. Rhayner drove a shot across the goal and just outside of the post. Hasegawa had a semi-acrobatic effort on the turn which unfortunately fell straight to the keeper. Our passing was looking a bit better than it has recently, but we were still occasionally giving the ball away cheaply. Hasegawa seemed very lively and up for it. His pace was causing the Sendai defenders some problems. Rhayner and Nobori were covering a lot of ground on the wings and our defence was looking reasonably solid. We scored the opening goal on the 27th minute. Rhayner broke down the right wing, threaded a nice pass through to Kobayashi who was able to wrestle past the defender and square for Hasegawa who was running into the box, timed to perfection! It was a nice team goal and probably well deserved. We had nine shots in the first half and whilst the possession was quite evenly balanced it seemed we were making more of ours. It was a satisfying first half all in all and I enjoyed watching this team playing this formation.
The second half started similarly to the first. We had a few decent chances early on but couldn’t quite get the second goal. Once again, our passing was better than in previous weeks, but still not quite there. On 53 minutes we suffered yet another injury. Oshima went down in our own penalty box. As we were at the other end of the pitch I’m not sure what happened but Rhayner seemed pretty annoyed about it. He was stretchered off and replaced by Moriya. As is usually the case with our injuries, we don’t hear anything about them for ages so we still have no news on it. As he was carried off the pitch he was sitting up and not writhing around in pain, but he was taken striaght down the tunnel and didn’t reappear at the end of the game. Hope it’s not too serious. Moriya slotted straight into the position Oshima had vacated and whilst there wasn’t that much upheaval in the team, we did lose our way a little. Passes started going astray and Sendai had a few more chances. Sung-Ryong was playing really well though, coming out to claim the ball when necessary and making so decent saves. Around 60 minutes Kobayashi had another shot deflect off the post and out across the goal. At the time I thought it was exactly as had happened away at Guangzhou, but looking at the replay, it was actually put onto the post by the keeper. Unfortunately, Kengo could only blast the rebound into the side netting. Not long after that we were piling forward again. Neto floated a lovely ball through to Hasegawa who held on to the ball for a bit and then played it back to Neto who had sprinted towards goal. He tried an audacious rabona finish which unfortunately just went straight across the goalmouth. Not particularly close to a goal, but quite an exhilarating moment. At this stage it seemed like Neto was a man possessed. He was breaking forward at every opportunity, attacking a lot more than we are used to seeing him do. Consequently he seemed to be knackered shortly afterwards and was replaced by Itakura on 74 minutes. Now we were playing the rest of the game with Moriya and Itakura in the defensive midfield positions. And it kind of showed. There were a huge amount of chances being created both ways and lots of action. It did seem that we were going to need another goal though. And on 82 minutes it came. It was in some ways reminiscent of the first goal, just down the other end of the pitch. Rhayner passed to Kobayashi who this time really wrestled past the defender who seemed to be doing his best to foul him and hand a handful of his shirt. This time the willing recipient of the pass was Moriya who calmly slotted the ball home with a twist of the body totally disguising the direction of the shot. The game kind of petered-out from here, but not without another decent chance for Sendai and another good save from Sung-Ryong. Chinen came on for his debut on 92 minutes, presumably just to waste some time, but he got a few touches and we got to sing his name in the ‘young players without a song’ song, if you know the one I mean. And then the final whistle. A pretty satisfying day.
All in all, I felt this was a good result and one that was well deserved. I liked our new formation and it seemed to work. Sendai didn’t have a great season last year, but had started well, so to put in a fairly dominant performance against them away from home was quite pleasing, especially after our last game. It’s clear to see that Oniki Frontale are still a work in progress, but I think he’s doing a decent job given the injuries he is having to deal with at the moment. Positives and negatives. First the negatives. Oshima’s injury, still to be confirmed by the club but which didn’t look good. Let’s hope it was only a cut or something and that he can come back quite quickly. One other tiny negative, and it’s a bit greedy to say so, but we probably should have scored a few more given the chances we had. But realistically, I think we are all just happy with the three points! Positives, considerably more of them. Great performance from Sung-Ryong, maybe the best I can remember seeing him play. Sometimes I’m a little worried about him, particularly him punching all the time, but at Sendai he looked calm, confident and efficient. Long may that continue. Hasegawa looked great, lots of energy, pace and enthusiasm, delighted to see him score. Likewise Moriya, who has never quite managed to cement a place in the starting line-up for any length of time, but always seems to score important goals. I hope he’s happy with his super-sub status. You could see the goal meant a lot to him. Rhayner was great given the unfamiliarity of his position. Reminded me of when Tasaka was converted to a defender. Initially worried about it, but they put in a good shift right from the start. He looks full of energy and I hope he’ll score soon as this will only boost his confidence. And Kobayashi too. A great game from him. Clearly playing up front by himself doesn’t really suit him, but playing alongside a strike partner seems to supercharge him. He was great for both of the goals. It seems unfair not mention everyone else who played as this really was a good team performance. The defence looked fairly solid and no-one had a bad game. Not often you can say that!
Next, we have Kofu at home on Saturday. Let’s hope we can continue with this positivity. They haven’t had a great start, so we should really be looking at taking three points. But you know how things are when we play teams that we should be beating… After that, we are back to the ACL, hosting Guangzhou next Wednesday. It will be a tough game, but our showing against them in China should give us some confidence as I don’t think they looked as good as we had expected. Presumably they’ll come into form next week though... Hopefully we’ll have some players back from injury by then as the treatment room really must be running out of space. Onwards and upwards! Go Frontale!
Team
GK 1. Sung-Ryong JUNG
DF 3. NARA Tatsuki
DF 5. TANIGUCHI Shogo (Yellow card 51')
DF 7. KURUMAYA Shintaro
MF 21. EDUARDO NETO
MF 10. OSHIMA Ryota
MF 22. RHAYNER (Yellow card 58')
MF 14. NAKAMURA Kengo
MF 2. NOBORIZATO Kyohei
FW 16. HASEGAWA Tatsuya
FW 11. KOBAYASHI Yu
Subs GK 30. ARAI Shota
MF 13. MIYOSHI Koji
MF 19. MORIYA Kentaro (on for OSHIMA 53')
FW 20. CHINEN Kei (on for NAKAMURA 90+2')
MF 25. KANO Kenta
FW 27. OTSUKA Shohei
MF 28. ITAKURA Ko (on for NETO 74')
The Frontale youtube channel has longer highlights provided by DAZN, but given that last year's highlights got wiped when the broadcaster got changed, I'm going to stick with the official J League ones. But you can watch the longer highlights here if you want.
Suwon Bluewings 0 - 1 Kawasaki Frontale 
