Vs Kashima Antlers (away) 19/5/17, J-League match 12

Kashima Antlers 0 - 3 Kawasaki Frontale

[Insert expletive to show shock here]. This was a bit of a surprise. Going in to this game against our bogey team Kashima Antlers we had won three in a row, scoring nine and conceding none. I would never have expected us to get the 3-0 scoreline to keep the average going from the previous games. But we did. And whilst it wasn’t the most convincing of performances, it was the most convincing of scores and to be honest, I think most of us would take a good result over a good performance when we’re playing Kashima. This time I decided to spice up the usual challenging bus journey by going to a beer festival immediately beforehand. In the end though, it wasn’t too bad. I guess that due to the Friday night kick off a lot of people didn’t go. The attendance was only just over 10,000 which is pretty shocking for a team like Kashima in their big fancy stadium. We took a decent amount though and the away end, which for some reason has moved to the other end of the pitch from last year, was making a decent noise. I think this is why I always prefer away games. There are a lot more people singing rather than just clapping which makes for a much better atmosphere and a more enjoyable experience. Thankfully, due to Kashima winning their ACL group, we won’t be playing them three times in a row. This would have happened if either of us hadn’t topped our groups. I wouldn’t have fancied doing that coach journey four times in just over a week. And I’m sure they would have got the better of us, as they always seem to do when it matters.

The team was slightly changed from our last game against Jubilo. Sung-Ryong continued in goal and continued in the fine form he has been in recently. The back four was Takeoka, Taniguchi, Edu and Kurumaya. Defensive midfield was Neto and Oshima and the front four was made up of Kengo, Kobayashi, Abe and Hasegawa, who took the place of Rhayner. On the bench were Arai, Noborizato, Nara, Tasaka, Morimoto, Rhayner and Ienaga. Once again, I can’t really say who was playing up front. Again, it seemed that Kobayashi and Abe were taking turns which seems to be working quite well. We started the game with loads of possession and a load of booing from the Kashima fans. It seems that, similarly to the Urawa fans, they don’t like it when the other team has the ball. I don’t know why, but I find it quite annoying. Sure if we are just playing it repeatedly across the back four, it might be irritating, but if we are passing and making chances and your team can’t get hold of the ball, it seems a little pathetic to boo every pass. Early on it was clear that we had a new contender for worst ref in Japan. I think this is the first time I have come across Tojo, or if he’s refereed one of our games before he couldn’t have been as useless as he was on Friday night. Normally a ref annoys one set of fans, but Tojo seems to have a wonderful ability to unite rival fans in mutual bewilderment and dismay at his bizarre decisions and incomprehension of the rules of football. In the first half it seemed to be the case that all the decisions went your own way if you were in your own half. In the second half he mixed it up, making decisions entirely at random, apparently controlled only by the desire to make sure that they were always the wrong decision to make. Also, somewhat bizarrely, all the officials seemed to be wearing the same shirts as Sung-Ryong. Neto and Oshima were playing well in midfield, totally controlling things. Hasegawa was all over the pitch getting involved up front and at the back. He’s really having a good season this year. Whilst we rode our luck a little in the first half, not being punished by some dodgy finishing and being saved on a few occasions by some Sung-Ryong super-saves, we were also testing their defence a fair bit. It was from one of these saves that we scored our first goal. A half-volleyed shot from a Kashima corner was well blocked by Sung-Ryong and the ball fell to Kurumaya who set off upfield. Hasegawa sped through the middle, collected a pass and shot across the goal. The keeper parried it, but it fell to Abe to tap in for three goals in three consecutive games. A nice move and unusual for us to score on a quick breakaway. We’re normally a lot more deliberate about things! Our second goal was also an uncharacteristically fast move. A pass from defence was beautifully half-dummied by Oshima to put Kobayashi through. I say half-dummied as I initially thought he’d dummied it and it seems that the Kashima defenders bought that dummy, but there does seem to have been a small touch on it. Kobayashi crossed the ball and this time it was Abe whose shot was saved and fell for Hasegawa to smash home. You’ve got to feel a bit sorry for their keeper (another South Korean!), who was doing his best, but we always seemed to have players available to smash another shot in from the rebound. Very satisfying! And also right on half time, which they always say is a good time to score, but I think in my book, anytime is a good time to score. So we went into the break with a 2-0 lead and very very happy.

The second half started with no change in players or formation. We were doing well and whilst we weren’t dominating, there was definitely no reason to change anything. It seemed that Kashima had received a bit of a talking to though, as they came out with some determination and made a few more decent chances. Cue some more great Sung-Ryong saves. I didn’t realise how good some of these saves were till I saw the highlights to be honest. He’s really doing the business at the moment and long may that continue! On 56 minutes Nobori came on for Hasegawa. I’m not sure why to be honest and made a note saying it was a strange sub as Hasegawa had been doing well. Perhaps he’d picked up a little knock though. No sooner than I had made the note saying it was a strange sub, the sub scored. Recently I had been thinking that Nobori’s song was a bitterly ironic one, a darkly humorous yet nostalgic nod to the times when he did ‘get goal’, but apparently not. Again it was good work from Kurumaya who fed the ball to Abe on the edge of the box. The Kashima defender totally flattened Abe and the ball ran to Nobori who drove into the box round a couple of players and put the ball in off the far post. He looked delighted to score for the first time since 2014 and the mood in the stand reached a new unheard of peak. I think the defender was lucky to get away with not being booked for his assault on Abe but it seems the ref missed it, despite it being right in front of him.

30 minutes to go and we were leading 3-0 away from home against our bogey team. What could possibly go wrong? Fortunately, nothing it seems. Sung-Ryong kept up his dominant form and people were getting in the way of shots and passes all over the pitch. The defence was having a decent game and when they were beaten we had our hero in between the sticks to save us. If he’s a confidence driven player, he must be getting better and better as he is making more and more great saves recently. I wouldn’t say we saw out the remainder of the game easily but we did it competently. I was a bit surprised to see Kashima show-boating flicks and backheels whilst 3-0 down at home, but each to their own. They certainly seem to be better at doing that kind of thing than shooting. Probably the only other notable incidents were Rhayner coming on for Oshima who seemed to have picked up a knock again, and Ienaga replacing Kobayashi. Both of these subs had a decent go in the limited time they had available. The feeling at the final whistle was great. The best since Suwon away, another game where we had shut out the opposition with some great stuff from Sung-Ryong. It was a nice relief not to have the opposition fans invade our area though and we were able to fully enjoy Edu forcefully leading the crowd in the ‘Vai La De Frontale’ song. What he lacks in tunefulness he certainly makes up for in enthusiasm!

Positives and negatives. Let’s start negative, although all I can think of is the possible injury to Oshima. I hope it was more of a precautionary sub rather than anything serious. I honestly can’t think of anything else, which is lovely! Positives, a few more. First of all the goals. Three in three for Abe, Hasegawa keeps putting them in and Nobori got one. Shame Kobayashi didn’t score again, but he’s doing a great job helping make them at the moment, so I hope he’s happy with that. Apart from giving the ball away a couple of times I thought Neto had a great game. His best one for a while. He was my man of the match till I saw some of Sung-Ryong’s saves. Can’t say anyone had a bad game. Very satisfying. Three points at Kashima and the scoreline is a big bonus. Seems like many of the other teams at the top have also won this weekend, but I’m happy as long as we keep winning. Let’s start paying more attention to the others when we aren’t winning, as as long as we keep winning, there’s not much else we can do. Maybe the front two rotation thing with Abe and Kobayashi could also be the solution to our previous goal-scoring problems. It certainly seems to be working at the moment anyway. And confidence… that most elusive of qualities that seems to be sticking with us for the time being. Long may that continue. Four wins in a row, 12 goals scored, no goals conceded.

Next up we have Muangthong United of Thailand in the ACL knockout stage. They are another moneybags team and won all of their home games in the group stage, before finishing runners up to some team called Kashima. Whilst they apparently started the ACL as underdogs in their group, they have done pretty well. But let’s hope that run stops from Tuesday onwards. It’s a long journey to Thailand and I reckon it will be pretty hot and humid there, but hopefully we’ll be able to get a decent result to take into the home leg on May 30th, which will be the next game in our quieter than usual schedule. We’re back to J League action on Sunday June 4th away to Yokohama. So a little break from the league, but still plenty to get excited about. I won’t be going to Thailand so expect some more photos of a pub TV in the next game report. Let’s hope we can keep this winning run going! Go Frontale!

Team

GK 1. Sung-Ryong JUNG

DF 17. TAKEOKA Yuto

DF 5. TANIGUCHI Shogo

DF 23. EDUARDO 

DF 7. KURUMAYA Shintaro

MF 21. EDUARDO NETO

MF 10. OSHIMA Ryota

MF 11. KOBAYASHI Yu

MF 14. NAKAMURA Kengo

MF 16. HASEGAWA Tatsuya
FW 8. ABE Hiroyuki

Subs 
GK 30. ARAI Shota

DF 2. NOBORIZATO Kyohei (on for HASEGAWA 56')
DF 3. NARA Tatsuki

MF 6. TASAKA Yusuke

FW 9. MORIMOTO Takayuki

MF 22. RHAYNER (on for OSHIMA 71')
FW 41. IENAGA Akihiro (on for KOBAYASHI 83')

My Frontale Man Of The Match

Was going to be Neto until I saw the highlights as I thought he'd bossed the midfield. But after seeing some of the saves it has to once again be Sung-Ryong.

JUNG Sung-Ryong - getting better and better, game by game. Long may it continue!

Goals  

ABE (Frontale) 19' 0-1
HASEGAWA (Frontale) 45' 0-2
NOBORIZATO (Frontale) 61' 0-3

Highlights

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.

Vs Jubilo Iwata (away) 14/5/17, J-League match 11

Jubilo Iwata 0 - 2 Kawasaki Frontale

So the good run continues. Three wins in a row now, no goals conceded and nine goals scored. Can’t really complain about that! Iwata were probably the strongest of the teams that we have faced in this run of three games and possibly the result flattered us a bit. But a good team is a lucky team and things have been falling our way a little recently. I didn’t attend this game (hence no photos), so this post is again going to be pretty short. It was my first opportunity to watch a Frontale game on Dazn. I’ve heard quite a few negative things about their coverage but it was on the whole, not too bad. One thing that really stood out was the DAZN sound man who seemed to be really riding the faders, with both teams chanting rising and falling and mixing in with each other like sound kind of musique concrète performance piece. The weird thing is, I thought that watching the game on TV would give me a better understanding of what was going on, given that I usually can’t work out what’s going on at the other end of the pitch. But I came away from the experience having less appreciation of what was going on rather than any more. I guess the moral of the story is for me to go to more games, but it was quite nice to have a weekend off as the schedule has been pretty intense recently.

The formation for this game was the same as usual but there were a few changes in personnel. Takeoka made his first start of the season at right back with the rest of the defence being Taniguchi and Edu in the middle and Kurumaya on the left, all in front of Sung-Ryong. The defensive midfield was the reassuring pairing of Neto and Oshima. Up front the line was led by Kobayashi with Kengo behind him, Rhayner on the right and Abe on the left. After making his recovery from injury, Ienaga is now sick. I wonder if this will be a real stop-start season for him. The bench was Arai, Noborizato, Nara, Tasaka, Morimoto, Hasegawa and Moriya. We didn’t make the best of starts, giving them a few early chances with some sloppy passing. But they didn’t score, (thank you crossbar!) and this gave us something to build on. We made a few chances but there never seemed to be anyone in the box to receive a pass or cross. It’s weird that even though we’re playing with four forwards and are generally speaking doing a very slow build up that by the time we get to the part of the pitch where we can cause them some trouble we don’t seem to have anyone in the right place. Although Kobayashi started up front there seemed to be some kind of rotation going on with Rhayner, Abe and Kobayashi all taking turns to lead the line. As usual we were dominating possession but on the whole I’d say the first half was fairly even.

We started the second half with a substitution. Rhayner was replaced by Hasegawa. I quite like the fact that Oniki is not afraid of changing things up at half time. Kazama seemed to always wait till around 60 minutes to do anything. Not sure Rhayner had done anything wrong but he had been booked again, for ‘rough play’ apparently, which is ironic as he always seems to get smashed around and not even win free kicks. Not long into the second half we went ahead and it was a nice move. As has been the case so often recently, Kobayashi was the provider and Abe the finisher. The Jubilo defenders were claiming offside but it was definitely onside. Abe had timed his run perfectly and it was a tidy finish. Maybe it was the goal, but we were looking a bit better in the second half. Our passing was working nicely and we had some confidence. Neto had a great opportunity to score a second, but his clever backheel-kind-of-flick went a bit wide of the goal. I admire the fact that he always seems to be looking to score the fanciest goal over, but wish that sometimes he would just leather the ball into the back of the net. Especially when it’s only 1-0. We were attacking a lot more with a bit more directness and the whole team seemed to be in a forward thinking frame of mind. We had another lovely chance too when a nice Kobayashi back heel put Hasegawa through but he slightly scuffed the shot and it was cleared off the line with the keeper beaten. Shame! On 77 minutes, Nara came on for Kengo and then on 78 minutes, Morimoto for Kobayashi. It made sense to give both of them a rest. I can’t say what happened to the shape as I was in a slight panic rushing to get ready for work at this stage. What I can say though is that Morimoto has got hair now and it’s orange! Long may that continue. I hope it will be his lucky charm. Once again, chance wise the second half was fairly even, but unlike the first half, we were taking some of the chances. In injury time we scored another, putting a bit of a shine on the result. It came in unusual circumstances for Frontale. A huge goal kick from Sung-Ryong (nice assist) bounced once and then Hasegawa (tall, tall Hasegawa) was able to head the ball over Jubilo’s 191cm keeper who was rushing out to claim it. It was nice finish from Hasegawa who seems to have an eye for goal recently. Good for him! I guess he doesn’t score many headed goals either!

So, 2-0 which flattered us a little but it’s good to be playing ok and getting wins. Certainly preferable to playing great stuff and getting draws or losses. We’re in 7th now, but things are pretty tight at the top of the table. The first eight teams are only divided by three points so it’s very open this year. Our next game is a tough one though. Positives and negatives will be brief as, like I said, I didn’t really get much from watching the game on the laptop compared to at the stadium. First, negatives. Not much to say really. It’s a shame we keep picking up yellow cards maybe. I feel like we get more than we deserve but of course I would say that. Not a completely convincing performance and we rode our luck a bit at times but we did win. Which moves us on to the positives. A win from an average performance and this is a nice little run that we’re on at the moment. Long may that continue. Nice goals from Hasegawa and Abe. Maybe that’s about it.

Next up is Kashima away on Friday night. This will tell us where we really are. Kashima are definitely one of our bogey teams. Their dull dull football is horribly effective against us, especially when it’s crucial. Yeah, we beat them in this fixture last year, but look who won the title after knocking us out of the Championship at the first stage. A win against them and then we can really start looking at the top of the table. Sure there’s lot’s of teams involved still, but that would send a message to the others. Fingers crossed anyway. I really hope we can overcome the curse of Kashima but I’m not going to be too optimistic. After a rotten bus journey home from that game last year (in spite of the victory) I think we said we wouldn’t be going back there this season, but we seem to have match tickets and bus tickets so I guess we are. Missing the match day experience I guess! After that, we’re away in Thailand for the first leg of the ACL knockout stage against Muangthong. Couple of big games coming, so let’s hope we can keep this run going. Go Frontale!

Team

GK 1. Sung-Ryong JUNG

DF 17. TAKEOKA Yuto

DF 5. TANIGUCHI Shogo

DF 23. EDUARDO 

DF 7. KURUMAYA Shintaro

MF 21. EDUARDO NETO

MF 10. OSHIMA Ryota

MF 22. RHAYNER (Yellow card 19')

MF 14. NAKAMURA Kengo

MF 8. ABE Hiroyuki
FW 11. KOBAYASHI Yu

Subs 
GK 30. ARAI Shota

DF 2. NOBORIZATO Kyohei
DF 3. NARA Tatsuki (on for NAKAMURA 77')

MF 6. TASAKA Yusuke

FW 9. MORIMOTO Takayuki (Yellow card 88') (on for KOBAYASHI 78')

MF 16. HASEGAWA Tatsuya (on for RHAYNER 41')

MF 19. MORIYA Kentaro

My Frontale Man Of The Match

Not sure this week. Decent performances from most of the players without anyone standing out so much, but given that he's only 164cm tall but scored with a header over a very tall keeper I'll give it to him.

HASEGAWA Tatsuya - soaring to new heights! 

Goals  

ABE (Frontale) 51' 0-1
HASEGAWA (Frontale) 90+1' 0-2

Highlights

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. 

Vs Eastern SC (home) 9/5/17, ACL Group Stage Match 6

Kawasaki Frontale 4 - 0 Eastern SC

This will be quite a brief post for a couple of reasons. Firstly, due to work I could only get to the ground for the second half. Secondly, the game was so ungamelike (nice new word there…), that there’s not really a great deal I can say about it. Eastern arrived in Japan already out of the competition with their sole point on the board gained against us at that game in Hong Kong. We needed a win to progress to the knockout stages and it seemed that everyone thought we would get it pretty easily. I suspect we had the same thought going into the away game though. Tellingly, I had a dream the night before that we failed to beat them. I am going to put this one down as another success of my newly found reverse jinxing skills.

There were a few notable elements to the squad selection. In the team line-up message that the club sends out it seemed we were going with the slightly unorthodox line up of playing only two defenders. I’m not sure why it came through like this as the back four was the same as most weeks and usually it’s listed as a back four. Kengo was back and starting. Ienaga was on the bench! Maybe we are starting to pull clear of our injury fug. Or maybe not, as Kobayashi started but had to be replaced due to injury after only 20 minutes. No idea how serious this is as yet. The goals were shared equally, two in each half and two at each end. The first came from a lovely dinked cross from Kurumaya that caught the Eastern defence sleeping. I guess they thought the ball was going to go out. Rhayner headed it home with minimal attention from any of the defenders. The second came from a corner which Taniguchi met with a nice header into the corner. We seem to be scoring from corners recently. The world has clearly turned upside down. Although once again, the Eastern defending left a lot to be desired. Half time, 2-0.

The second half I know a bit more about, as I actually watched it. The atmosphere in the ground was a little flat as you would expect from it being not even half full. I wonder if the next round will draw a bigger crowd. I guess the game was pretty much effectively over at this stage anyway. Eastern hadn’t scored more than one goal in any of their games and it seemed at this stage of the competition they weren’t likely to mount a three goal winning comeback. The second half started with Eastern really flapping. They looked in terrible trouble at the back and we were getting behind them with ease. Rhayner looked like he was enjoying himself running at their defenders and it was him who created the third goal, playing the ball across for Hasegawa who was running in at the far post. The cross evaded three Eastern defenders and Hasegawa bundled the ball home. Shortly afterwards it was 4-0 and this time it was Nara who scored from a Kengo corner. I’m not sure if we are suddenly becoming dangerous from set pieces or if it was just the opposition, but it’s very welcome. Ienaga was on shortly after the fourth goal and he had a few great chances to score his first goal for the club. The first he pulled wide and the second was a thundering half-volley that dipped just over the cross bar when he was through on goal. He probably could have taken it a bit further forward but I can understand why he wanted to smack it when it sat up so invitingly. A bit later on in the game Eastern did manage to pull themselves together a little and resort to their one tactic, hoof it to the big guy up front and have the fast guy race up the pitch after it. It made for a bit of variety as the majority of the game that I saw, they were sitting with almost everyone behind the ball in two defensive rows. I wouldn’t say they really caused us any problems though. Apart from the big guy’s insistence on trying to give third sub Takeoka another injury. I have had a bit of a thing against Bleda since the first game when his foul on Nara got Nara sent off and ruined the game. That was about it for the game really. The ref blew the whistle, the match was over and we had progressed to the knockout stage.

All in all it was a pretty strange evening. The game definitely felt like a training match. In a way, it was probably exactly what we needed. After our win against Albirex it’s nice to get a few more goals on the board and another clean sheet. Although we can’t take too much away from the game apart from good feeling as Eastern didn’t provide much opposition. However, it shows what difference a little bit of confidence (and having 11 men on the pitch) can do. Compared to the game in Hong Kong, this was very comfortable, but that may have been due to the opposition’s performance too. Can’t say there were any negatives in this game, but there were a few positives. Ienaga is back. This could be crucial as he’s a good player who hasn’t had a chance to show what he can do yet. I know he played a couple of games at the start of the season, but apparently he was already carrying the injury that kept him out for a couple of months at that stage. Could be a good time to come back depending on how serious the injury to Kobayashi is (oh, there you go, that could be one negative). We’re through too. And bizarrely we managed to win the group in spite of our goal difference being eight goals worse than Guangzhou’s. We finished equal on points but due to us having shared two draws, and us scoring at their place in the 1-1 and them not scoring at the Todoroki we go top on a better head to head record. Seems a little unfair to be honest, but I’ll take it. In the next round we meet either Muangthong United of Thailand who apparently have loads of money, or Kashima Antlers who have loads of money and always seem to beat us. [Between writing this and posting it, we've found out it is Muangthong for us next].

Next up is Jubilo Iwata away. They’ve had a similar start to the season as we have and we struggled a bit there last year so I don’t think it will be an easy game. Miyoshi and Itakura will be off to the U20 World Cup in Korea soon so we’ll be without them. It’s a good thing that a few players are recovering. Would be nice if we can keep this decent run going though and build on the confidence we are picking up. 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 10. OSHIMA Ryota

MF 21. EDUARDO NETO

MF 11. KOBAYASHI Yu

MF 14. NAKAMURA Kengo

MF 22. RHAYNER

FW 9. ABE Hiroyuki

Subs 
GK 30. ARAI Shota

FW 9. MORIMOTO Takayuki

MF 13. MIYOSHI Koji

MF 16. HASEGAWA Tatsuya (on for KOBAYASHI 20')
DF 17. TAKEOKA Yuto (on for NAKAMURA 79')
MF 19. MORIYA Kentaro
FW 41. IENAGA Akihiro (on for ABE 57')

My Frontale Man Of The Match
Seems a bit unfair to single anyone out in such a weird one-sided match and I did only see half of the game so...

THE WHOLE SQUAD - Did what was required and somehow in spite of drawing the first four matches we managed to win the group!

Goals 

RHAYNER (Frontale) 28' 1-0  
TANIGUCHI (Frontale) 45' 2-0  
HASEGAWA (Frontale) 49' 3-0
NARA (Frontale) 53' 4-0

Highlights

Vs Albirex Niigata (home) 5/5/17, J-League match 10

 Kawasaki Frontale 3 - 0 Albirex Niigata

We’re going to win the league! And the ACL! And both the cups. Friday’s 3-0 win against perennially  relegation threatened Albirex Niigata has proved it! We are now clearly unstoppable. Obviously I am not being in any way serious. Whilst it was a good confidence building result and it’s nice to see some goals from open play again, it is only a small step in the right direction and there were still plenty of problems on show. The result flattered us in a way. Going forward we looked a bit better. But if it wasn’t for some horribly wasteful finishing from the Albirex players the game could have been a hell of a lot closer. But anyway, best to enjoy the victory as they’ve been few and far between recently.

It was a pretty nice day for a football game, or at least it was up in the SG section. There we don’t get the direct sunlight and there was occasionally a nice cooling breeze stopping things from getting overheated. When the players came out for the warm up I was shocked to see new haircuts for both Neto and Edu. Presumably, it’s half price this week for people called Eduardo at the local barbershop. I was also shocked to see Oshima back. Shocked and pretty happy to be honest. Instead of having to find someone to play in Oshima position we could use the man himself. There were a few changes in the line-up as you’d expect after a result like we got against Cerezo. Sung-Ryong continued in goal, the defence was Tasaka, Taniguchi, Edu and Kurumaya. In front of them were Neto and Oshima and then from right to left Kobayashi, Rhayner and Hasegawa with Abe up front. I’m pleased to see that Oniki read my last blog post and moved Kobayashi. The bench was Arai, Nara, Morimoto, Miyoshi, Takeoka, Moriya and Otsuka. I feel it was a bit harsh to drop Nara after last week as it could have been any of the defensive players, but clearly someone had to take the blame.

The first half began as many of our first halves have begun recently. Hugely scrappy, not much in the way of skill, control or football from us and a few decent chances for them. We couldn’t hold on to the ball and were giving them way too many easy chances. Thankfully, their strikers seem to have been using the same training techniques as ours have recently and were wasting any chances they got. According to the stats, they only had two shots in the first half, but that’s really not how I remember it being. Perhaps their chances didn’t result in shots, but we were riding our luck again a bit. Rhayner was coming really deep and was pretty involved in the game. Hasegawa’s running at their defenders seemed to have them wobbling a bit too. The game did feel a bit boring though. There was a general lack of quality on show which was a bit worrying. Whilst realistically speaking I don’t think we’ll be winning the league this year, I don’t think we are relegation contenders but this is a bit how this first half felt. Both teams were nervous and playing football of dubious quality. I guess they have had a pretty bad start to the season and I guess we have also had a bit of a sticky patch. It was looking like being more of a slog-fest than a slug-fest. But then Rhayner turned up with his first goal for Frontale and everything was right in the world again. Actually he scored shortly after I had made a note saying that his control and dribbling is great but he doesn’t seem to be able to shoot. Very pleased that I can take some of the credit for the goal with my reverse jinx. The goal came from a fast break with Abe putting a lovely ball through for Rhayner to slot home through the keeper’s legs. Very pleased another player has got off the mark. The more people we have scoring the better I guess, This was probably the only real highlight of the first half, but it meant that we went in to half time leading.

The normal script we’ve been following lately would have meant that we were due for a second half of fluffed attempts on goal, then conceding a late one to get the usual 1-1 draw. But it seemed that we came out with a bit of determination after the break. We were making more chances! Would we score another goal? We would! In what was a lovely move, Hasegawa battled to win the ball near the halfway line, turned and ran at the Albirex defence beating a few players on the way and ending up with five of the opposition around him. He passed the ball over to Abe in the middle who was in plenty of space thanks to everyone running towards Hasegawa, and who made a first time pass to Kobayashi who slotted the ball home. It really was a lovely goal. And very happy to see Kobayashi get a goal as he’s had a period recently where nothing has been falling for him. Another player getting a confidence boost hopefully. And another assist from Abe (who I said hadn’t done anything in the last game. Another excellent reverse jinx from me!) Two goals from open play in the same game! Amazing! Naturally we followed it up with almost conceding from a corner, twice in a row. The two goal lead seemed to cause things to get scrappy again. Not long after Kobayashi hit the post again. He must be leading the charts for hits of the woodwork in the J League. Actually, I bet that statistic does actually exist. I feel for him, as every time he hits the post or the bar it always seems to bounce away from the goal rather than in. I guess that’s what happens when you’re on a bad run. On the 65th minute Miyoshi came on for Hasegawa who’d had a good game. It seemed that Miyoshi went up front with Kobayashi, with Abe moving to the left and Rhayner to the right. Our third goal came shortly afterwards and was another nice move. Miyoshi passed to Abe who did a lovely one-two with Kobayashi and then rolled the ball into the corner from the edge of the box. It’s weird, but his shots never seem to be the most powerful, but keepers do seem to have trouble stopping them. So, two assists and a goal for Abe. Pretty impressive. With a three goal lead Oniki did the right thing and took off Oshima. Best not overdo it as he’s only just back. He’d had a pretty good game and it’s crucial that he stays fit. Moriya came on in his place. We continued to make some chances and Albirex huffed and puffed but to be honest the game was kind of over at this stage. The only other notable incident was the return of Takeoka who replaced Rhayner on 87 minutes. Nice to see him back on the pitch again.

So, definitely a step in the right direction. Like I said, the score flattered us and we have to remember who we were playing. Albirex are definitely not going to be our toughest opponents this year. Whilst we might not have put in the most convincing performance at the back, we didn’t concede. And we scored three good goals and in between big periods of not quite getting things right, played some football that was pretty exciting. Positives and negatives. Let’s start negative. It didn’t have any bearing on the result, but we gave them plenty of chances that a better or more confident team would have taken. Also, if I’m being really picky, (and it seems I have to be today to come up with some more negatives…) long periods of the game were quite boring, so I guess we’re not really back at the free-flowing-super-attacking stuff we played last year. But let’s not be greedy. Positives. Goals!!! Three of them and they were all from open play and all pretty nice. Big plus must be the fact that Kobayashi has found the net again. We need his near misses to start going in and goals make confidence which breeds more goals. Similarly Rhayner scored his first for the club. Let’s hope it’s the first of many. And I guess I have to mention Abe scoring and setting two up. In this game he seemed to have developed a nice understanding with Kobayashi. Having Oshima back is a big plus too. Although sometimes it’s easy to not notice him, I think that actually speaks volumes. We looked a lot more solid in that area with most of the Albirex threat coming from down the wings. We do have a team of quite short players, but many of those players do seem to be surprisingly strong on the ball and in the tackle. Well done to Oshima, Abe and Hasegawa particularly in this respect in this game. It feels mean to not mention more players, but let’s not get carried away. If we win a few more games then we can start getting effusive and excited. Until then, let’s try to stay calm.

Next up is Eastern at home in the ACL. Our fate is very much in our own hands. A win will take us through to the knockout stages. We should have enough to beat them, but we probably thought that before the away game. Even when we were down to ten, we probably still should have won, but that was all written about on a different post and I’m trying to forget that game. After that, it’s away at Jubilo Iwata. This will be the first league game we’ve missed this year. Decided not to go as the games are really coming thick and fast at the moment and last year’s trip there was blighted by a distinct lack of seating, poor view from the stand, slightly dodgy performance and a nightmare snail’s pace bus journey back to the Shinkansen. It will give me my first opportunity to watch a game on DAZN and presumably afterwards complain about their coverage. Anyway, let’s hope we can build on this win with a couple more and a load more goals. I’m going to stay optimistic for the time being. Go Frontale!

Team

GK 1. Sung-Ryong JUNG

DF 6. TASAKA Yusuke

DF 5. TANIGUCHI Shogo

DF 23. EDUARDO

DF 7. KURUMAYA Shintaro

MF 21. EDUARDO NETO

MF 10. OSHIMA Ryota

MF 11. KOBAYASHI Yu

MF 22. RHAYNER

MF 16. HASEGAWA Tatsuya
FW 8. ABE Hiroyuki

Subs 
GK 30. ARAI Shota

DF 3. NARA Tatsuki

FW 9. MORIMOTO Takayuki

MF 13. MIYOSHI Koji (on for HASEGAWA 65')
DF 17. TAKEOKA Yuto (on for RHAYNER 87')
MF 19. MORIYA Kentaro (on for OSHIMA 76')
FW. 27 OTSUKA Shohei


My Frontale Man Of The Match

For once it could have been a few people. But I think two assists and a goal seals it for Abe. Unfortunately I still haven't got him in the gacha gacha, so no picture.

ABE Hiroyuki - did the business with a complete performance.

Goals  

RHAYNER (Frontale) 40' 1-0

KOBAYASHI (Frontale) 50' 2-0  
ABE (Frontale) 75' 3-0


Highlights

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.

 

Vs Cerezo Osaka (away) 30/4/17, J-League match 9

Cerezo Osaka 2 - 0 Kawasaki Frontale

This weekend’s punishment came in the form of a visit to newly promoted Cerezo Osaka. I think I am running out of things to say about our form and our play at the moment so this post might end up being mercifully brief. The result was one of the positives from the game. Yes, we lost 2-0, but if it hadn’t been for the heroics of Sung-Ryong, we could easily have lost this match by five or six. The outfield performance was pretty woeful and we got exactly what we deserved ie. nothing. Maybe it was a hangover from a tough trip away in Korea, but I was hoping that the rare win we had there would give us some confidence, rather than drain us of all footballing ability.

The starting line up was similar to away in Korea. Sung-Ryong in goal, a back four made up of Tasaka on the right, Nobori on the left and Nara and Kurumaya in the middle. Taniguchi was pushed up into defensive midfield with Moriya to take Kengo’s place (yet another injury…). Abe and Miyoshi were the wide players and Otsuka played behind Kobayashi. The bench was Arai, Edu, Itakura, Kano, Hasegawa, Rhayner and Morimoto. The Cerezo stadium was nice but unfortunately there’s a running track which is always a shame. It seemed to have been coloured in by a pensioner who’s taken up pastel drawing to calm themself down. This effect was later hidden by a wall of Fuchsia shirts. One whole side of the ground was filled up with local kids' football teams which must have helped push the attendance up a bit but created a bit of a strange view as they were all wearing different kits and consequently it looked a bit confusing. Cerezo seemed to have several players who looked a bit like they were on day release from prison having been locked up for town centre brawling and were another team with a Korean goalie. Seems like there are loads in this league. Are Korean goalies great? Or Japanese goalies not very good? Today, I’d lean towards the former. As I said above, Sung-Ryong repeatedly saved us in the first half as we flapped around in defense. He made some wonder saves, plenty of regular saves and we cleared the ball off the line twice. We could easily have gone in to half time with an impossible second half task. But as it turned out, we could have gone in with an entirely undeserved lead. Right down the other end of the pitch we were awarded a penalty. Miyoshi almost had his head taken off by an attempted overhead clearance. I had no idea why the penalty was given at the time and it took a few looks at the replay to work out what was going on. I think @DauringuG explained it best on twitter when he said that anywhere else on the pitch it would have been an easy free kick to give but was a little bit surprising to see the penalty awarded. Kobayashi stepped up and placed the ball perfectly onto the top of the cross bar. He never seems to have much luck with the woodwork. It always seems to bounce away rather than bounce in for him. Probably sums up his form recently though. He seems to be struggling at the moment. So, 0-0 at half time. We were a mess. All of our clearances went straight to them and we seemed to have no real midfield which I guess would explain why the former was happening. We needed to change something.

 

And Oniki did. Otsuka didn’t come our for the second half and was replaced by Itakura. Otsuka hadn’t had a particularly good game so it wasn’t that much of a surprise. But then again, it probably could have been any of the outfield players who was replaced. Itakura seemed to slot into the defensive midfield spot and Moriya pushed forward. At least that’s what I guess would have happened, but it was pretty difficult to see where anyone was playing. We were still a bit of a mess to be honest. Although, we did start the second half quite brightly. We made a few chances and maybe we had some room for optimism. Rhayner came on for Miyoshi on 64 minutes. I think it was a bit harsh on Miyoshi as Abe hadn’t really done anything. Rhayner was playing all over the pitch again and any concept of formation seemed to have been abandoned. Three minutes later Cerezo went ahead. With loads of our players back, Cerezo exchanged a couple of quick passes and cut out half of our defence. Kurumaya, Nobori and Itakura all seemed rooted to the spot. It was a nice finish, but we didn’t exactly make it difficult for them. From here onward we tried to step things up a bit, but it didn’t really work. Cerezo seemed to be knocking lumps out of our players and we seemed cowed by it. In the notes I made during the game I have multiple references to how terrible the referee was but to be honest, we were worse. All our problems were of our own doing, so as much as I like to moan about officials, I probably shouldn’t on this occasion. On 87 minutes the long-expected second goal game. Again, it was down the other end of the pitch so everything I know, I know from the replay. Looks a bit like a handball initially, doesn’t it? In any case, by the time the shot came we had four players between the shooter and the goal yet it seemed like all he had to do was roll the ball home. Another soft goal. And mercifully, but unjustifiably, that’s how it ended up. Cerezo seemed pleased with the three points, but if we keep playing like this, I think teams will be disappointed to only score two against us in the future.

Positives and negatives. Two positives only. Sung-Ryong kept the score down and played well again. Can’t blame him for either of the goals. The other positive was that I was given a free notebook on the way in by a schoolchild. Beats the usual carrier bag full of adverts. Negatives… where to start? Absolutely woeful performance with no outfield player coming out of it with any kind of credit. Kobayashi seems to be really struggling, Abe was really quiet, Otsuka had his dodgy opening 10 minutes but this time for the whole first half. Oniki isn’t exempt from criticism either. I know we’re blighted by injuries but the defensive midfield pairings recently really haven’t worked. In fact in this game it appeared that we didn’t really have a midfield. Maybe we left it at home. Also it seems like the substitutions have been decided before the game. They’re pretty predictable and on Sunday seemed to mainly have the effect of breaking down the limited shape and organisation we had. I wonder if Oniki is too wedded to the system we're playing at the moment. It doesn't seem like we currently have the right players to fill the spots and it's not exactly working, so maybe we should change it. The three at the back worked ok at Sendai but was soon abandoned. That was the last league game we won, wasn't it? We can’t play two good games in a row at the moment. To be honest we can’t even play two good halves in a row. On Sunday we didn’t manage more than about 10 minutes. I really hope Kengo isn’t out for two long as even when he doesn’t play his best, he still plays a lot better than anyone did on Sunday. I know we have been, and continue to be very unlucky with injuries. And we’re playing twice a week. Both of these could be causing the problems, but put them both together and we’ve got some serious issues. We can’t rotate the team at all as the same players are playing pretty much all of the games (apart from when they get suspended). They seem tired and I understand why. I don’t understand why we haven’t done anything about it. It’s not as if the starting line-up we’re using has been getting results so why are we sticking with them? But saying that, I don’t know what I would change. Kano maybe? Or give Chinen a chance? Or Morimoto another chance…? Or swap the positions of Otsuka and Kobayashi maybe? Kobayashi plays much better when he's not the lone front man. Anyway, need to change something pretty urgently. Please come back soon Elsinho.

After playing the three promoted teams and getting two draws and a loss from them, we next face Albirex Niigata at home next Friday. A team that always seem to be flirting with relegation and it’s those kind of teams that we always seem to play badly against. I think it could be a pretty crucial indicator of how this season is going to go. We need some decent management from Oniki and some players stepping up. If we don’t get a result in this game, the wheels are really going to look like they’re coming off and our confidence is going to plummet to a new low. Get a decent win and it could just spark something and get us going. So almost certainly going to be a 1-1 draw, isn’t it? In any case, I’ll still optimistically say Go Frontale!

Team

GK 1. Sung-Ryong JUNG

DF 6. TASAKA Yusuke

DF 3. NARA Tatsuki

DF 7. KURUMAYA Shintaro

DF 2. NOBORIZATO Kyohei

MF 5. TANIGUCHI Shogo

MF 19. MORIYA Kentaro

MF 13. MIYOSHI Koji

FW 27. OTSUKA Shohei

MF 8. ABE Hiroyuki
FW 11. KOBAYASHI Yu

Subs 
GK 30. ARAI Shota

FW 9. MORIMOTO Takayuki

MF 16. HASEGAWA Tatsuya (on for MORIYA 76')

MF 22. RHAYNER (on for MIYOSHI 64')
DF 23. EDUARDO
MF 25. KANO Kenta
DF 28. ITAKURA Ko (on for OTSUKA 46')

My Frontale Man Of The Match

Not exactly blessed with options this week. In fact there's only one person it could be.

SUNG-RYONG - only positive in a bad team performance, sparing our embarrassment.

Goals  

YAMAMURA (Cerezo) 67' 1-0
KIYOTAKE (Cerezo) 87' 2-0

Highlights

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.

My thoughts on the Suwon game mess

As I am sure you have heard, Tuesday’s game against Suwon was notable as much for activities that occurred in the stands as it was for being our first win in the ACL this year and our first win for what seems like ages. In my blog post on the game, I said I would write something separate about these events and now I find myself sitting down to do just that. I was hoping that the situation might have become a bit more clear by the time I wrote this, but it seems that the issue will be dragging on for a while whilst various decisions are made. I should say before I continue, that plenty of things about these incidents remain unclear. To a certain extent we are having to rely on what various sources are saying, many of which contradict each other. In any case, I’ll try to explain what we experienced at the game and how I feel about these things. Perhaps it isn’t necessary for me to add to the ever-growing pile of words written about this subject, but I haven’t seen much in English and I feel that I should at least address the matters rather than sweeping them under the carpet and hoping they go away.

There weren’t too many Frontale fans at the game on Tuesday. There weren’t many more Suwon fans to be honest and we were all rattling around in what is a pretty nice stadium. The 100 or so Frontale fans were spread across the stand with the majority congregating behind the goal but not particularly close together. I took this photo coming back from the toilet and you can see that we weren’t exactly packed together.

Consequently, the Kazoku tried to encourage us to group together a bit more. This encouragement was politely acknowledged and half-followed. By the time the game started we were mostly in a loose group behind the goal. There were a few other small groups of fans spread across the stand to the left too, and this is where the rising sun flag was displayed. I only found this out later, as for the whole of the game and right up until we were on the bus back to Seoul, many of us were unaware of why things had happened. Judging by the two photos of the flag I have seen, the two ‘students’ as they have been described, were to the right of the main group of fans as you look at the stand. I don’t know if they joined the group when asked to, or whether they remained by themselves for the whole game. Both of these photos look like they were taken a while before the game and quite close to each other time wise. The story I have heard from twitter is that the flag was displayed before the game, spotted by someone with the club (either a staff member or fan, I’m not sure) and they were told to remove it and did so. I have been in contact with a fellow blogger who I wrote a pre-match preview with and he says that from the Suwon end of the stadium, he saw the flag before the game but didn’t see it again later on. Some of the Suwon fans have apparently said that it was displayed again towards the end of the game. Unfortunately, we don’t really have any proof of this either way.

After the final whistle as we were celebrating a rare victory we first became aware of Suwon fans breaking in to our section. There were initially not many of them but their numbers were gradually growing, many of them masked and shouting. As I am (possibly) a bit of a coward and also a British person who is aware of the scourge of football hooliganism from the 80’s, this made me pretty uneasy. There were a few security guards who came in with them, or probably I should say pursuing them, but they didn’t really seem to be trying very hard to stop them approaching the area where the majority of us were gathered. In fact they didn’t seem to do anything really. The fact that they headed straight for the main group of us is a little confusing for me, as the flag was earlier displayed in a very different area. Apparently their intention was not to come in and fight but to come and take the flag. All the same it did look like something could kick off at any stage. There was then a slight withdrawal with the Suwon fans being removed to the top of the stand (near the exit…) where they continued to shout at the Kazoku and seemed to be growing in numbers. Many of us moved away from this area and eventually sneaked out of the stadium behind where they had gathered. Like I said, at this stage I had no idea why they had broken in. True, we had sneaked a win in what was a pretty even game, they hadn’t been too pleased with Kengo’s long injury treatment and then him jogging back on to the pitch and they had just been denied by a wonder save, right in front of them by their former keeper, so I guess emotions were running high. But it still seemed like a bit of an over-reaction. That was until we saw the news on the bus and our bewilderment at the behaviour of their fans became directed instead at the two idiots who had brought the rising sun flag to the game.

I have only lived in Japan for five years and I don’t have a great deal of in depth knowledge of Japanese history, but even I know that this flag is a big no no. I cringe when I see opposition fans using it in the J League and it always brings with it a feeling of horrible nationalism and wannabe hooliganism. I don’t think I have ever seen Frontale fans displaying it at the Todoroki or at an away game. But as I alluded to above, you don’t really see these things in your own section as you're facing the same direction as the flags. I can’t even really remember seeing that many Japanese hinomaru flags to be honest. We usually just wave the Brazilian and Korean flags for the foreign players. This makes it even more annoying and ridiculous that someone should decide to bring it to this game. It either suggests complete ignorance or worse an intention to offend and cause trouble. Whilst the former is better I guess, it’s still no excuse. It’s hugely reckless behaviour for a number of reasons. Firstly and most obviously, it’s offensive. Because of this, they put the other fans at the game in danger. If it wasn’t for the large amount of Frontale peacemaker fans I think it could easily have escalated, as the security didn’t seem to be doing any kind of security job. I take my hat off to everyone who got involved to try to keep trouble from happening. I’m not particularly sure it’s a good idea to keep waving the hinomaru as opposition fans storm your end though. The Kazoku member who did should probably have known better than to do that. The second big problem is the potential fallout which we are only starting to become aware of. The AFC has formally charged us for discrimination which carries a minimum punishment of a fine of at least $15,000 and the penalty of having to play two home matches in an empty stadium. This will mean a significant loss of revenue for the club and more significantly the loss of some of the home advantage that you might get from having the majority of the stadium behind your team. Finally, there is the matter of the reputation of the club and its fans. I have always been happy that Frontale fans are generally nice people and have no problems with opposition fans. Before the game we were praised on our forum by a Korean fan who said we had treated them so well at the game at Todoroki that they would be happy to help out in any way if any of us needed. Last season we had a taste of reputation damage at the debacle that was the away game against Omiya and it was a major embarrassment. After what was a hugely frustrating game, some of the Kazoku took it upon themselves to surround the Omiya team bus and scrap with Omiya fans. This is pretty shameful behaviour and tarnished our reputation. Now that reputation has taken another hit with the wide reporting of this idiotic incident. It’s pretty difficult to regain a clean reputation when it gets stained like this.

So I’m not really sure what my intentions were in writing this. I guess I wanted to apologize to the Suwon fans for the fact that a tiny minority of idiots in our end showed this offensive flag. However short a time it was shown for, it was still too long. What with the rise of nationalism in many countries recently, I’d hate to see this become part of the Frontale experience. I would hope that people don’t feel the need to hate someone or try to offend them just because of where they are from or who they support. After all, we were all in the stadium for the same reason. We wanted to support our football team and hopefully see them win. I also wanted to say thank you to some people who will probably never read this, those who intervened and calmed the situation down. Thank you to the lady on our tour with the Abe shirt and all of the others who didn’t want to shout, posture or fight but just wanted to regain some kind of peace. I’m kind of ashamed that I didn’t do anything myself and admire you all for doing the right thing. The club will have a chance to put their case to the AFC and I believe a decision will be made on our punishment before the next ACL match. It’s all left a bad taste in the mouth though and we’ll have to do our best to get rid of that in the next few weeks by accepting any punishment we get and not giving anyone any reason to comment negatively on our behaviour. Depending on any evidence that is around that we might not have seen, I think we have a fair case to say that the two culprits had their flag removed pretty quickly and are in no way representative of the fans or the club. I’m not denying what happened in any way, but I think short of searching everybody fully on the way into the stadium, there’s not much more we could have done. But like I said, I think I’m maybe just clutching at straws. We’re not a bad group of fans. In fact, I think we’re a pretty reasonable bunch. I have really enjoyed football in Japan as unlike in the UK, it seems to be generally free from the idiotic posturing and naked aggression that saturates the game there. We should in no way deny what happened, but at the same time, I hope the Suwon fans, other J League fans and in fact everyone I guess, realises that the majority of us condemn the flag wavers and that we’re not all like that.