Vs Machida Zelvia (away) 6/4/25 J League match 9

 

Machida Zelvia 2 - 2 Kawasaki Frontale

Another local-ish derby(ish) and another… ah, not a win on this occasion. But this was, I think, a reasonable result in the circumstances. More about those circumstances later. I’ve got a few things to say in the usual sections, but due to a pretty shitty view from the stands, I imagine that anyone who watched online will have a better idea of what went on in this game. The Gion Stadium might have a relatively new medium-sized ‘back stand’ but the fact is that the view from behind the goal isn’t the best. And it was made worse by the fact that we arrived a bit late, (by which I mean just the one hour before kick off), so ended up quite near the front. Don’t get me wrong, it wasn’t all bad. The atmosphere was pretty good, with some top level ref and Machida baiting, (not from me on this occasion. At least not wholly). But from my eye level, I couldn’t even see the bottom of the goal. It almost felt as if they’d raised the pitch up a bit and we were watching in a little dip, meaning that the advertising hoardings obscured anything below the kneecaps of the players. This made it a tad tricky to work out if the ball had gone in or not and therefore any celebrations or frustrations started after interpreting the reactions of our players. All of which is to say that I couldn’t see much of what happened and now I’ve started to forget what happened, so expect this post to be the usual old shit. With that in mind, let’s get right into it.

Us -

A few surprises in the starting line up, mainly Takai being absent and Jesiel starting in his place, with Kurumaya coming onto the bench. Further forward we had the usual kind of rotation that we’ve seen recently, with those few players who seem to be un-rotatable keeping their spots and the other usual switches taking place. I’m not sure what to hope for when it comes to Takai. I guess we should hope for him being rested, worry about him being injured and really worry about him being prepared for some kind of janky transfer. In spite of my past comments about him playing amazingly for a few games then dropping a series of absolute clangers, I have to say that he really seems to have come on this season and had a great partnership with Maruyama. Clearly the main talking point of this match has to be the two (probably serious) injuries to Tachibanada and Jesiel, both of which came in the first half. With us having to make two separate changes before half time, (and for a while it looked like we might also have to make a third when Marcinho went down before half time), we were really up against it when it came to being able to use subs to change the game, what with us only having the one change window left. I think I might have just made up the phrase ‘change window’, but hopefully you know what I mean. I understand why, aside from changes made at half time, subs have to be made in a maximum of three slots, but the rule really screwed us in this game. I’ll speak more on the Tachibanada incident later, but with the Jesiel one, whilst it looked kind of innocuous at the time, it quite quickly became apparent that it was serious from his reaction. I guess we can pray that it’s not as bad as Jesiel clearly thought it was, but I suspect it could be another long term injury. And given that he’s had so many, you might have to wonder if it could be even more serious than that. Even though we were put in a tricky situation by those enforced early changes I think we still did a decent job of trying to win in this game. The two goals we conceded looked a bit soft, which was all the more surprising given that recently we’ve looked pretty sturdy at the back. But their first did come directly after our second enforced change of the match and was from one of their grotty long throws. I guess you can’t blame them for pursuing the tactic as it works but… actually do blame them, they are a team of terrible wankers, aren’t they? (Aside from Shimoda of course). At the end of the game I felt like both teams were really going for the win, which was quite nice. At the same time, I feel like with a bit better finishing we could have already been home and dry as we missed some very good chances. But, given the circumstances and the fact that the ref (who somehow Machida thought was against them!! Insane!) was absolute dog shit, a 2-2 draw felt kind of like we’d done quite well. The fact that Machida’s game-plan was able to dictate some of our subs and that the ref seemed to be, if not excactly encouraging their play, but definitely enabling it, meant that a 2-2 draw away from home against a team above us in the table who had an extra man on their team was reason to send me home reasonably content. And the fact that the reasonable contentment could be combined with some top level disgust for certain members of the opposition and some irritation at a ref who always disappoints meant that Sunday evening was quite alright by me.

A characteristic Tani flap as seen from the trench
that the stand behind the goal was in

Them and the ref-

Sometimes I combine these two sections as there’s not much to say about them individually. On this occasion, I think they should go together as they were working hand in hand, one clearly enabling the other. I don’t know how much of this needs to be said in every Machida blog post, but given that this is the first game against them this season I’ll put it in. What a scummy team they are! I don’t think this phrase is often used without the negative, but ‘Machida Zelvia, what’s… to like?’. When usually used in the negative this is a rhetorical question, but for a neutral fan, I think would be hard to come up with something positive to say about them. I guess people who like watching (ex) national team players who have pursued their dream of playing at the ‘highest level’ overseas only to be lured back to the club of their dreams… oh sorry, I meant the club that plays horrible football but can give them more money than others, might be interested in going to watch Machida. What other positives are there? Charismatic and charming manager? Errrrmmm, no. Beautiful football? Errrrmmm, no. A nice and well connected stadium? Ermmm, no. A charming story of a small team of underdogs who through great team work managed to get to the top of J1? Errrrmmm, no. Machida quite rightly don’t seem to have many neutrals’ support and I fully support the neutrals for not supporting them. I don’t really know why they are so horrible as clearly they have good players. But they kicked us all over the pitch in this match and a very weak ref didn’t let the rules of the game interfere with their plans. The foul on Tachibanada was horrible, the Machida player basically just booting him as hard as possible on the front of the ankle. I’d be surprised if we see him playing again soon. The ref Kimura barely gave the foul and wasn’t interested at all in any kind of card. Also, a player who has never particularly annoyed me in the past has now joined my shit list. I don’t remember Soma being such a petulant little twat but he seems to have become a proper arsehole. Perhaps this is just top quality coaching from top quality shithead Kuroda, the Machida manager. As an aside, what a surprise it was to see some power harassment allegations come out about him! And equally surprising to see that the club had a good look at the evidence and decided that there was no case to answer. Perhaps Kuroda also used the ‘Be careful, I’m very close to the owner’ threat on the person who was investigating. But the thing is we knew Machida would be cheating shitbags, so there has to be a lot of blame given to the ref, who was happy to go along with everything. I wasn’t aware that the J League has introduced a personal ref consultation system now. I don’t know why we didn’t use it, as it seemed that everything the ref did had to go through a discussion with Kuroda before it was given. I don’t know if Kimura was intimidated by Kuroda or whether he’s just a shit ref. Actually, there’s a high probability that both are true. And who wouldn’t be intimidated by the sports jacket, white t-shirt, white trainers and skidmark beard that Kuroda rocks? When there’s someone that cool around, there’s no other option than to do exactly what the Machida Fonz wants, right? In my last blog post on a game we had with Kimura I said that he gives way too many cards out. Perhaps he read it and overcorrected in this match as he went from deluge to drought. I reckon they could have had at least two players sent off in the first half and still the arseholes harangued the ref presumably all the way to the officials toilet where he had to look the door and repeatedly press the running water sound button and wait till they went away, probably distracted by someone carrying something that looked like a envelope of cash. Anyway, I’m going to restrict my abuse to just the ref, Kuroda and some of the Machida players and instead switch to poking fun when it comes to the club itself. I was quite baffled by the bizarre loosely-medieval theme they seem to go with for home games. I guess they are trying to promote the image of FORTRESS NOZUTA, which has a certain amount of sense to it, as the first thing everyone knows about castles is that they are usually on a hill with the intention of making approaching it as difficult as possible. Nice that they back up the Fortress Nozuta idea when it comes to their shuttle bus policy. For those who didn’t find the Fortress Nozuta name evocative enough there were some aural and visual hints to push you in the right direction. First the unusual and intriguing music being played in the food area outside the stadium and immediately before the game in the stadium, which was akin to the lightest of EDM being produced with a drum machine and some flutes, pipes and lutes. Or at least the flute, pipe and lute settings on a mid-range Casio. I have to say, I quite enjoyed it, particularly as the bassline was getting a bit farty on the speakers in the food area. Once inside the stadium the medieval vibe was amplified by the bizarre sight of some prancing shirtless flag-wavers who appeared to be dressed in something halfway between a kilt and that sarong that David Beckham briefly flirted with wearing. The whole image was like a cross between the kind of look you’d expect from a guy who does the juggling at battle reenactments and a bordering-on-racist approximation of the genie from Aladdin. Once again, quite intriguing, and wonderfully naff. Big thumbs up for all of this. Big thumbs down though for the old Japanese imperial flags and the big Stone Island flag in their end. And big question marks for the numerous St George's cross flags and for the flag behind their goal that said 'Three Stripes, Two Soles, One Love'. Your guess is as good as mine. So to distill the various themes in this overly long paragraph into single buzz words, I’d say, team - arseholes,  tactics - shithousery, vibe - enjoyably bonkers, ref - useless, Kuroda absolute total cu

Ran out of characters in that last paragraph. Seem to remember that happened once before too. This was a surprisingly enjoyable game, but maybe just because of my antipathy towards Machida Zelvia who must be closing in on joining that top level of my most hated teams now. 2-2 was probably fair even if the way they went about securing the draw was far from fair. At least as far as I’m concerned. Next up, no time to breathe before another derby, and this time it’s against the forever top tier hated team YFM. It seems like it should be a good time to play them as they are wonderfully shite this year, but I’d say that almost certainly means that they are going to beat us. After that we’re away at Shimizu on Saturday. The schedule is relentless, so please spare a thought for us bloggers who have to come up with a whole new load of insults, (or at least a new way of expressing them), every three or four days. I think the only right thing to do is send me lots of money so I can spend it on booze as this is the way I come up with all of my best snark. Well, drinking or when I’m in the shower. Best not to mix up those two situations unless you’re using a straw and a well sealed cup. Cheers! 

Team

GK 98. YAMAGUCHI Louis
DF 5. SASAKI Asahi
DF 4. JESIEL
DF 35. MARUYAMA Yuichi
DF 13. MIURA Sota
MF 8. TACHIBANADA Kento
MF 19. KAWAHARA So
MF 41. IENAGA Akihiro
MF 14. WAKIZAKA Yasuto
MF 23. MARCINHO
FW 9. ERISON

Subs

GK 1. JUNG Sung-Ryong

MF 6. YAMAMOTO Yuki (on for TACHIBANADA 15')
DF 7. KURUMAYA Shintaro (on for JESIEL 33')

MF 17. ITO Tatsuya (on for IENAGA 70')
FW 18. SEGAWA Yusuke
FW 20. YAMADA Shin (on for ERISON 70')
FW 24. MIYAGI Ten (on for MARCINHO 70')
FW 26. YAMAUCHI Hinata
DF 31. VAN WERMESKERKEN Sai

My Frontale Man Of The Match

The way Machida played made this a difficult game for any of our players to particularly stand out as it’s tough to show what you can do when the other team are just employing spoiling tactics and the ref is useless. However, for the gutsiness and the goal, I’ll give it to…

KAWAHARA So - I really like him.

Goals

ERISON (Frontale) 16' 0-1
OKAMURA (Machida) 34' 1-1
NISHIMURA (Machida) 53' 2-1
KAWAHARA (Frontale) 73' 2-2

Highlights

Vs Shonan Bellmare (home) 2/4/25 J League match 8

 

Kawasaki Frontale 2 - 0 Shonan Bellmare

Two local derbies in a row and two wins in a row! It’s definitely the case that the feeling after this game wasn’t as euphoric as after the win against Chofu though. There are a few things that contribute to this I guess. For a start, away games are always more fun. We scored three times in that game and only twice in this game and both of these goals weren’t exactly the most exciting, one being bundled over the line, (with the inevitable consequent fear that VAR would probably find some reason to rule it out. Thankfully, it didn’t on this occasion), and the other being a late penalty which added a little bit of gloss onto the scoreline. The fact is though that we do tend to stuff up games against Shonan, so getting the win in this one without too much fuss should be a great encouragement to us. As I suggested previously, this wasn’t a great game, but we got the job done and now are in a position that we could top the league if we played and won our game in hand. So whilst no-one will have had their socks knocked off by a 2-0 home win with some slightly iffy goals, we have to be pleased with the way things are going at the moment, don’t we? With Machida away coming up on Sunday, and with almost no notes made during this game, this is going to be brief.

Us -

A little bit of rotation in this game. I probably would have liked to see a bit more as the schedule is nuts at the moment, but I can quite understand Hasebe not wanting to go overboard as the last time he made big changes we lost (Kyoto home). I had thought that maybe Erison would come in for Yamada as that seems to be the way things have been going recently, but I suppose that given that both of then scored at the weekend, it would have been harsh to drop Yamada. One thing we probably need to think about though is the fact that Yamada really doesn’t seem to be able to play the role that Erison does when he’s in the team. Erison is great at winning the ball and laying it off to start attacks. Yamada isn’t. With him doing that job, the best we can really hope for is to get a free kick from a foul on Yamada as the role doesn’t really seem to suit him. It would be great if we could play both of them together but obviously that would mean we need to change the formation and that wouldn’t work for Wakizaka. So I guess Hasebe has a few things to think about in that respect. At the other end of the pitch, we’ve conceded only three times in seven games, which is pretty amazing. It’s fortunate that Takai and Maruyama playing together seems to be working so well, as at the start of the year we didn’t have many other choices. Jesiel was back on the pitch in the second half of this game though so maybe we’ll now have a few more options. I wonder if we could be rotating the full backs a bit more though. Sai is ready and waiting, and whilst I think we’ve looked more solid with Sasaki and Miura playing, it might make sense to occasionally give Miura or Sasaki a rest. Yamaguchi didn’t have much to do in this game thanks to Shonan not having any shots on target, but he’s still looking solid. Long may that continue. I think it’s tough to work out what the relative strengths of teams at the moment. It’s still early in the season and plenty of teams seem to have had good spells and some bad games. But with most of the teams having now played eight games, we’re approaching a quarter of the season finished so perhaps we can be a bit bolder when it comes to suggesting who is good and who isn’t. Machida up next will be a big test as they are a bunch of clogger thugs who are annoyingly effective. Hopefully we can get a result like we did there last year. As there’s not much else to say about the game from my limited memory of it, I’ll finish this section with some more general things I’ve noticed that may or may not be significant. I’m really impressed that with Hasebe in charge we’re not taking the ball into the corner flag to hang on to a lead. It’s never a good look, so I’m happy we’re continuing to try to play and make chances right till the end. I’ll be happy about this right up until we concede after dropping a clanger trying to score a second goal and ending up drawing or losing. I’m also impressed that Hasebe seems to make his changes up front a bit earlier than we have been used to. I never think it’s fair to give a striker ten minutes and expect them to play themselves into form, so I think it’s good that Hasebe gave Erison 30 minutes in this match. Maybe some people might have been surprised to see Miyagi take the penalty at the end of this game, but apparently Hasebe’s system is to give the player who won the penalty first refusal. Makes sense to me, and of course in the case of Miyagi, there was never any way he was going to give it to anyone else. Oh, and one final thing that’s not particularly appropriate for the ‘us’ section, but Yokohama F Marinos second from bottom having scored a wonderful four goals in seven games is something that can warm the hearts of every decent person, isn’t it?

Them and ref -

I have lumped these two things together as there’s not much to say about either. After a good start to the season it seems that Shonan might be reverting to type slightly, which makes it all the more surprising that we were able to beat them at home. It was a little disappointing that after having to pay the price for quite a lot of his overly adventurous cock ups when he was playing for us, we didn’t get any really gifts from Kamifukumoto. But I’m pleased for him that he’s doing well there. In this match it didn’t really ever look like we were in much danger, but I don’t know how much of that is down to our defence and how much is down to Shonan. There was definitely a feeling that we’d end up conceding a late equaliser, but at the same time, I couldn’t really see where that might come from, (apart from us dropping the afforementioned massive clanger). The ref in this match was Imamura who I have despised since the idiotic way he sent off Kozuka at the Saitama Stadium. With this in mind, I was quite surprised to see him have a decent first 15 minutes. He soon reverted to type though and got my goat. But I guess the truth is that he didn’t do that much wrong really. Hmmm. Two games in a row that I’ve said that. Am I going soft in my old age? As I said before, the real test will come when we lose, but perish the thought, are J League refs becoming not quite so useless? Presumably not. This has probably just been a blip. We’ll see I guess.

So a workmanlike win, which didn’t dazzle, but provided a bit of fun during the match, and plenty of satisfaction after the match. I don’t think there’s much to be learnt from this game, so let’s just move on to Sunday away at Machida. If Hasebe can get one over the league’s current most irritating manager, that will be great. I missed this match last year due to sickness, so if we get beaten, you can all blame me. I wonder if we’ll see Oshima back again? If we do, I worry for him against dirty, dirty Machida. Machida are one of two teams that are ahead of us in the league at the moment (both of them have played an extra game though…), so if we can win against them we can guarantee that we’ll finish the week at least one spot higher in the table. Fingers crossed that can happen!

 

Team

GK 98. YAMAGUCHI Louis
DF 5. SASAKI Asahi
DF 2. TAKAI Kota
DF 35. MARUYAMA Yuichi
DF 13. MIURA Sota (Yellow card 17')
MF 8. TACHIBANADA Kento
MF 19. KAWAHARA So
MF 17. ITO Tatsuya
MF 14. WAKIZAKA Yasuto
MF 23. MARCINHO
FW 20. YAMADA Shin

Subs

GK 1. JUNG Sung-Ryong
DF 4. JESIEL (on for TAKAI 61')

MF 6. YAMAMOTO Yuki
FW 9. ERISON (on for YAMADA 61')
MF 16. OZEKI Yuto (on for WAKIZAKA 82')

FW 18. SEGAWA Yusuke
FW 24. MIYAGI Ten (on for MARCINHO 82')
DF 31. VAN WERMESKERKEN Sai
MF 41. IENAGA Akihiro (on for ITO 74')

My Frontale Man Of The Match

In the stadium they gave this to Kawahara which was kind of unusual as usually it goes to a goalscorer. Flashscore gave it to Tachibanada, which is also unusual as they always give it to a goalscorer. (Flashscore also gave our lowest score to Yamaguchi which seems a little harsh given that he had no shots to save). Sofa Score gave it to Miyagi who played only ten minutes of the game. So basically, your guess is as good as mine really. Who knows? Oh, maybe it should go to…

WARUNTA - it was his night in the stadium, (Paint it Purple!), and that meant that we all got a Warunta hooded blanket and given that it was cold and I love freebies, let’s say that Warunta was at least the man of the night, if not the match.

Goals

WAKIZAKA (Frontale) 50' 1-0
MIYAGI (Frontale) 90+2' PEN 2-0

Highlights

Vs FC Tokyo (away) 29/3/25 J League match 7

 

FC Tokyo 0 - 3 Kawasaki Frontale

Another Tamagawa Classico and it was another fun game for Frontale fans. As I’ve left it a bit since the game to start writing this, and as I spent the night of the game over-imbibing in the company of home and away fans, the details are all a bit hazy now. But hopefully I have just enough memory of the day left to be able to at least give you some kind of insight that you wouldn’t have got from watching the match online. Probably most of it will be poking fun at Nakagawa though. Let the poking begin!

Us -

We perhaps seem to have gone back to the early season thing of having a very average first half and then taking the brakes off in the second. Have to say, I don’t mind if that kind of thing continues. The first half of this match was quite unremarkable for us. Those with a better view than us right down the other end of the pitch might point to Takai’s ruled out goal as being something at least slightly remarkable. But from where we were, we weren’t even aware that the ball had gone in as there didn’t seem to be much in the way of celebration, complaint or VAR. Recent line ups have probably made Hasebe’s first choice preferences a little clearer. And… they are pretty similar to Oniki’s. On this occasion we got to see Oshima start again. Maybe Hasebe is using him in a little bit of a different way to Oniki. In the past, we’d wait ages for Oshima to recover from his latest injury, he’d be back in the team for a few games and then out again. Maybe Hasebe is using him more sparingly. We saw him against Shanghai Shenhua, he was absent for the trip to Okayama, and then back in for this game. If managing his minutes helps him stay more injury free, that will be great. He had a pretty good game again, so I guess the real challenge facing Hasebe is to work out how to make the midfield work when Oshima is not playing, as it was a total mess away against Okayama. (But so were the attack, and the defence too…). I think this back four represents what Hasebe considers our best back four and you can’t really argue with that at the moment. Jesiel back on the bench was a nice surprise, but Maruyama and Takai seem to be working well together. Kawahara didn’t start this game which I guess means he’ll start against Shonan. Ienaga was on the right, did well again and isn’t showing any signs of slowing down like he did at times last year. I’m very happy with the rotation that Hasebe is doing from match to match right now. I think this would be what he'd say he thinks is our best eleven. The only position where I think he might have a dilemma is choosing between Yamada and Erison, as both have been doing…ok. They haven't been bad, but neither has been doing amazingly well so it's quite hard to choose between them right now. But rotation works for me and I hope it works for them. I never liked the whole thing of sticking with the same players forever until they break down, one by one. I don’t have much else to say about us in this game. It was nice to us crank it up a bit in the second half. I enjoyed the goals a lot. The first was quite hilarious in the way that it just dribbled over the line. In the ensuing celebratory melee, someone high-fived me in the eye. It was a small price to pay and I’m pretty sure it wasn’t intentional. If it was, I got the upper hand as with the subsequent two goals I managed to not get high-fived in the face by the same person. High-five me in the face once, shame on you. High-five me in the face twice, shame on me. Ito seemed very pleased to have scored and is fast becoming a fan favourite for his passion. He also was apparently irritated by what was perhaps the worst foul throw I have ever seen. Like the tired old git that I am, I often find myself bleating in a whingy voice ’foul throw referee! I can’t believe they didn’t notice it…’. On this occasion the throw was so appallingly bad there was no way anyone could miss it, and the natural reaction was to burst out laughing. Apparently Yamada complained to the ref about the decision which is some prize winning brass balls behaviour. It was around 12 minutes into the second half if you missed it and want to check. It was also quite amusing when about ten minutes later, two of our players tried to take the throw in simultaneously from different positions with different balls. I like the fact that as we were clearly on the up at that stage we wanted to keep things moving. Let’s hope for more throw in giggles caused by our team being relentlessly up for attacking in the future. Oh, and one last word to say that Yamaguchi’s save with his face was pretty brutal. Can’t believe he got up immediately and was ready for the following shot. Well done to him!

Them -

At one stage last year, when the Oniki to Kashima rumours seemed to be being denied, I wondered if maybe we’d be seeing Oniki in charge of FC Tokyo this year. Although that didn’t happen, there was a hint of Oniki in the fact that Tokyo dominated possession but for the most part didn’t seem to threaten that much. Don’t get me wrong, I thought they were well in it in the first half, but a lot of the time they were on the ball was accompanied by Oniki style sideways passing. They had a decent amount of chances, but aside from the face save one, I can’t remember any that came that close. Perhaps this was in part due to them playing my perennial hate figure Nakagawa up front. There was something extremely amusing about seeing Nakagawa standing next to Takai. Takai is 192cm, so I suppose that is almost double the height of FC Tokyo’s Donald Trump-alike. It looked a bit like a heartwarming father and son scene, the ‘father’, who in this case was much younger, towering over the ‘son’, and occasionally letting him have the ball briefly before teaching him a life ain’t easy kind of lesson and taking it off of him. The image was further enhanced by the fact that Nakagawa seemed to be waddling looking like he was a toddler that had recently filled his nappy. Ironically, [Please add your own joke about Nakagawa being 70 years old here. I’m writing this in a bit of a hurry]. I know it’s not very becoming to just be mean about someone on the internet so I should probably stop doing it. But he did do that sliding on the knees goal celebration in front of our fans, when scoring against the club he played for as a youth player. And those kind of things are quite hard to forget. So with that in mind, I’ll make a joke about his hair, which just keeps on getting more ridiculous year by year. When he first came on to warm up it looked like someone had a glued a freshly washed and pressed white handkerchief onto the middle of a totally bald head. I don’t know if he actually is balding, but when you see that whiff of hair that looks like the top curl of a soft serve ice cream you’ve got to think that something funny is going on. As this is all a bit like a personal bullying campaign, let’s spread the net further and make some wisecracks about the stadium music instead. I was trying to put my finger on the ‘vibe’ that was being created by the techno version of ‘The Final Countdown’ and was still pondering it when we moved into the house version of ‘Can’t Take My Eyes Off You’. It wasn’t until Abba’s ‘Gimme! Gimme! Gimme! (A Man After Midnight)’ came on, that I realised, when my wife said that it felt like a hen night DJ’s playlist. Good to see that Tony from the local Eikaiwa has another string to his bow so now doesn’t have to solely rely on the income from his ‘Laydeez and Jennelmen’ announcing duties. This wouldn’t be a Tamagawa Classico post if I didn’t mention ‘You’ll Never…’. The lack of gusto in their fans' rendition always amuses, but the absolutely suicidal decision to fade out the karaoke backing track halfway though the first verse, presumably imagining that the crowd would be belting it out by that stage, resulted in a complete silence, which initially bewildered, then became very amusing. I presume that was why the music stopped, but it ended up appearing more like a technical error. Also somewhat surprising was that after the game Tony introduced the day's highlights video. Fair play to them for showing our goals, but given that they didn't score, this basically meant that our fans delightedly cheered every highlight, given that they were all either our goals, or FC Toyko missing chances. With the fact that this is supposed to be a football blog in mind, maybe I should write something about their football? They didn’t deserve to lose 3-0. That’ll do.

Ref -

So here you are, the section where the real bitching comes out! Fukushima was the ref in this game. When we had him for the Kashiwa away game I was quite irritated by his refusal to book anyone and his general awfulness. In this game he again didn’t book anyone and… I thought he had a really good game. I’ve got no complaints really. Of course I moaned at the time about plenty of things, but that’s the point of going to the game, isn’t it? I was really impressed with the way he dealt with a bit of handbags from Ienaga and a Tokyo player. Wasn’t sure about the decision that he didn’t give previous to the incident, but that’s because it didn’t go our way. He seemed to easily diffuse what could have become a bit of a boiling point. And after that decision Ienaga was very charged up and that worked out well for us. So yeah, kind of unusual to praise the ref for doing the same thing that I criticised him for doing in a recent post, but it just felt like I didn’t have much to moan about, and that is a very rare thing. I guess we did win though, so maybe if we didn’t I might be moaning a bit more. You will know that I have reached the stage of true enlightenment when I can accept that a ref had a decent game even after we’ve lost.

Next up, Shonan at home on Wednesday and then Machida away on Sunday. It’s a busy schedule so hopefully we’ll see some rotation but hopefully the same kind of result that we got in this game. We have four games in between Shonan at home on the 2nd and Verdy at home on the 20th. So a game every three days, roughly. I’m already peed off about having to write so many blog posts. But they’re a bit easier to write after wins, so please let’s keep that up as long as possible! 

Team

GK 98. YAMAGUCHI Louis
DF 5. SASAKI Asahi
DF 2. TAKAI Kota
DF 35. MARUYAMA Yuichi
DF 13. MIURA Sota
MF 10. OSHIMA Ryota
MF 6. YAMAMOTO Yuki
MF 41. IENAGA Akihiro
MF 14. WAKIZAKA Yasuto
MF 23. MARCINHO
FW 20. YAMADA Shin

Subs

GK 1. JUNG Sung-Ryong
DF 4. JESIEL

MF 8. TACHIBANADA Kento (on for OSHIMA 78')
FW 9. ERISON (on for YAMADA 78')
MF 17. ITO Tatsuya (on for MARCINHO 71')
FW 18. SEGAWA Yusuke (on for IENAGA 86')
MF 19. KAWAHARA So (on for YAMAMOTO 86')
FW 24. MIYAGI Ten
DF 31. VAN WERMESKERKEN Sai

My Frontale Man Of The Match

Hmmm, I’ve realised I’ve given this no thought whatsoever till this moment and no-one is jumping out to me, so I guess it was an all round decent performance. Would do the usual cop-out thing and give it to the whole team, but instead, let’s go a little left-field and give it to…

HASEBE Shigetoshi - Brought on Ito and three minutes later he scored. Brought on Erison and five minutes later he scored. We’ve all heard of super-subs, but maybe Hasebe could be a super-subber.

Goals

YAMADA (Frontale) 55' 0-1
ITO (Frontale) 73' 0-2
ERISON (Frontale) 83' 0-3

Highlights

Vs Fagiano Okayama (away) 16/3/25 J League match 6

Fagiano Okayama 0 - 0 Kawasaki Frontale

Well I guess you could never say that 2025 Frontale is dull and predictable. Although perhaps our football has at times been like that. After walloping Shanghai Shenhua and progressing in the ACL, I guess some people might have thought this would be an easy victory. But of course that wasn’t the case. At the same time, the reputation of Okayama being dull cloggers, extremely defensive and really physical might also have been a common prediction. So maybe this game might have been more like Kyoto at home part 2. Well, that didn’t quite pan out either, did it? Okayama would have been worthy winners, so coming away with a point is a big positive for us. As I write this I’m desperately trying not to fall asleep on a train to Matsuyama. The fact that I’m on a train to a new city is however helping matters when I think about how I feel about this game. Had it come at home and I had to go to work tomorrow, I might have been a bit peed off. But with the holiday only just starting it’s hard to get angry about what was admittedly quite a poor performance. As I’m still quite busy this month, this post is once again kind of brief. But that is also in part due to there not being many positive things to write about in this match.

Us -

A similar team to the one against Shanghai but with no Oshima, which makes complete sense. Yamamoto came in for him and to be honest didn’t do that well. But exactly the same can be said about pretty much everyone. Marcinho had a bad day, and just couldn’t really get going. Wakizaka was pretty much non-existent. Every one of our players was giving the ball away for fun. Normally I’d moan about it being a terrible pitch or a different type of ball here, and whilst some players’ comments seems to be suggesting there was something a bit weird about the pitch, Okayama didn’t seem to have any trouble with it. And maybe a weird pitch doesn’t explain why we often just kicked the ball straight off the side of it. We were definitely having an off day, almost to a man. Our passing was horrible. Time after time we lost the ball under not much pressure whilst trying to build from the back. Nothing stuck up front either. The defence, from the point of view of the result, stood firm, but it was very much a surprise it did, and this was perhaps more due to the opposition than us. The first half we were out possessed 60-40% and were out shot 12 to 2 and didn’t get either of ours on target. In the second half we rallied slightly shooting eight times but still Okayama out shot us 10 to 8, our 64% possession contributing to our improved shot count but also perhaps contributing to the fact that we let them shoot ten times. We did finally get that magical first shot on target though. It came in the 82nd minute and sadly was also our last shot on target. Clearly this wasn’t a great day for us, and it does seem that we’re going to have an up and down 2025. Don’t think I’m pinning it on Hasebe though as in this match the players clearly weren’t up to it. If it wasn’t for an amazing save from Yamaguchi we could easily have lost. And probably would have deserved to. So with that in mind, coming away with a point is a very good thing, I think.

Them -

At the station there was a sign welcoming people getting off the Shinkansen to Okayama, the sunniest city in Japan. Naturally it pissed it down almost constantly from when we arrived till late on in the second half. Okayama were always going to be dull, right? Except they weren’t. They were really good and nothing like the bores I’d been told they might be. Perhaps really good is over-egging the pudding slightly as thankfully, they were as bad at shooting as we were at retaining the ball and getting out of our own half. But full credit to Okayama. If you told someone who knew nothing about the J League that one of these teams came up last year and the other was the champions a few years ago they’d almost certainly get the teams the wrong way round. Also, as Okayama are unbeaten at home this year, maybe a draw’s a good result? At the same time they’ve lost to YFC, and also to Urawa who seem to be a bit shite so perhaps a draw isn’t a good result? One thing’s for sure, the league is all over the place this year. Seems like there are plenty of teams winning and losing games they shouldn’t, so maybe that bodes well for it being an exciting season. And somewhat strangely, I thought this was a kind of exciting game. Perhaps not for the right reasons, but at least an exciting 0-0 draw when we play shit is better than some of the other more likely and considerably more depressing outcomes.

Ref -

In spite of having some preconceptions of the ref, I can’t say he got that much wrong in this game. I thought the yellow cards he gave us were a bit harsh, but when again I would, wouldn’t I? He and his linesman did appear to miss Lucao booting Maruyama in the head, but I haven’t watched it back so I might be wrong about that. This point should probably have been in the ‘them’ section , but Lucao seemed like a player who when he was a youngster always practiced ball skills and weight training but never had any friends to practice passing with or enough space to set up a goal to practice shooting. He was a beast and we couldn’t really deal with him, but thankfully he couldn’t pass or shoot for toffee, (at least in this match). Maybe it was the pitch... Anyway, shockingly no real complaints or comments about the ref apart from a weird gesture he did a few times, both arms aloft and opening and closing his hands as if he was performing an air puppet show. Kind of weird, but if I can’t complain about his reffing that’s got to be a good thing.

So a point gained in what was an entertaining game of extremely low quality. I must say, it’s nice to visit a new stadium and once again go complete when it comes to visiting all the stadiums in J1. It’s also good when you can walk to the stadium from the station. The ground wasn’t as bad as I might have expected. There’s a running track but the views were decent enough. The away section did wobble quite a bit when fans were jumping though which was slightly disconcerting. As was the rhythmic squeaking sound you could hear under the stand when that was happening. But presumably as Japan is somewhat earthquake ready country, the wobble is ok as it means it’s not going to fall to pieces and fall down. I had a fun time. And now we all get a nice break! No games for almost two weeks. The next match will be the Tamagawa Classico away version on the 29th. I think we need a rest so the break is welcome. Perhaps it will also give Hasebe some time to work with the players and tweak things a little further. There have been highs already this year, but an at least equal amount of treading-water-just-as-bad-and-dull-as-last-year games too. Fingers crossed our new manager can tip the balance a little further towards the former over the coming months!

 

Team

GK 98. YAMAGUCHI Louis
DF 5. SASAKI Asahi
DF 2. TAKAI Kota
DF 35. MARUYAMA Yuichi
DF 13. MIURA Sota
MF 19. KAWAHARA So
MF 6. YAMAMOTO Yuki
MF 17. ITO Tatsuya (Yellow card 43')
MF 14. WAKIZAKA Yasuto
MF 23. MARCINHO
FW 9. ERISON (Yellow card 41')

Subs

GK 1. JUNG Sung-Ryong
MF 8. TACHIBANADA Kento
MF 16. OZEKI Yuto (on for YAMAMOTO 62')
FW 18. SEGAWA Yusuke (on for KAWAHARA 84')
FW 20. YAMADA Shin (on for ERISON 62')
FW 24. MIYAGI Ten (on for MARCINHO 75')
DF 31. VAN WERMESKERKEN Sai
FW 41. IENAGA Akihiro (on for ITO 62')
DF 44. CESAR HAYDAR

My Frontale Man Of The Match

 

Pretty much crap all round in this match but given that without his intervention we would have lost, it goes to…

YAMAGUCHI Louis - one amazing save, clawing the ball back with his right hand just as it was about to cross the line. Bravo!

Goals

Not today... (actually, considering the way the game went, that's probably a good thing)

Highlights

Vs Shanghai Shenhua (home) 12/3/25 ACL 2024/25 last sixteen, second leg

Kawasaki Frontale 4 - 0 Shanghai Shenhua

Now that’s more like it! After what were probably the two worst games of Hasebe Frontale, (well, that probably goes without saying as they were the only two defeats, but I feel that the awfulness of Kyoto at home and Shanghai away needs to be emphasised a bit), we’re back to 4-0 wins again. Of course our first Hasebe game was a 4-0 win in the ACL which we followed up with a 4-0 win in the league. So logically our next result will be… hmmm, I doubt we’ll be winning 4-0 away in Okayama. But it’s nice to dream, isn’t it? Everything points to the Okayama game being more reminiscent of the Kyoto game sadly. But let’s not let any realism get in the way of what is another positive post! It’s going to be a short one as this month is pretty hectic for me. So let’s get this done and out of the way in the usual style.

Us -

A greatly improved performance with lots of stand-outs. Oshima being back in the team was a big surprise and you’ve got to say that it probably contributed to our victory. In my usual way, I didn’t notice Oshima that much, but I’ve come to associate this with him having an excellent game. I do quite often notice when our midfielders play badly, so Oshima just smoothly doing the job ends up passing me by. This probably singles me out as being a footballing imbecile, but if that’s the price to pay for great performances I’ll happily go along with it. I feel like with Oshima in the team, nominally alongside Kawahara, we didn’t suffer from the thing we have when Kawahara plays with Tachibanada, where both players are aiming to play in the same position. The interchange between the two of them was a lot smoother, with Oshima usually being a bit further forward, but the two swapping position a bit more fluidly when necessary. I think the same could be said about those first two 4-0's where Tachibanada or Kawahara played alongside Yamamoto. I think much like was the case with Tachibanada and Joao Schmidt, it should be one or the other of Tachibanada or Kawahara and not both of them. Hopefully Hasebe feels the same way. You can’t really argue with Erison coming back in ahead of Yamada too. Yamada is not having the best of seasons so far. And with Erison there, the attack seems a lot more varied. Erison was constantly winning the ball and laying it off for others. Yamada isn’t as good at winning the ball and doesn’t usually pass it. At least not recently. So although it may be an unpopular opinion amongst Frontale fans, I think Erison is better up front right now. Although you wouldn’t know it from looking at the player scores on Flashscore, which I feel are getting increasingly ridiculous week on week. Erison had a great game. As did Sasaki, who scored an amazing goal to ease the tension early on. It was slightly reminiscent of his first goal for us against Kashima. Not particularly in the way he scored it, but more in the ‘what the fuck happened there?’ delight that followed it. He also put in an amazing pass for Erison's goal, which was another lovely finish. Finally, I feel I should praise Yamaguchi a bit as he finally had something to do in this game and he did it well. I was quite surprised how good he is at catching the ball. I know this sounds ridiculous but there were definitely times when I think a lot of keepers would have punched or parried but the ball ended up sticking to his gloves. Well done Yamaguchi! To be honest, I could probably praise every player individually for one reason or another, so let’s just round up this part by saying well done everyone. A really good performance which will hopefully put a spring in our step for the next few games, away at Okayama and then… damn it, we have an international break. Not really sure why it’s necessary for the league to stop when there are international games as Moriyasu has clearly demonstrated that even if you’re playing semi-pro in the Maltese third tier you are more likely to get a call up than if you’re playing in the J League. I guess we could maybe do with a break, so that could be one positive, but if we do manage to get the job done away at Okayama it would be a shame to let some good form dwindle away.

Them -

Shanghai brought quite a lot of fans with them so fair play to them for that. Frontale Cafe and the club shop was full of them before the game which suggests that they are nice folks too. I thought they gave us a bit of a tough game early on but their threat decreased as the game went on. I feel a bit sorry for the two players who were brought as their first changes as we immediately scored after their introduction and then went on to get another a few minutes later. I feel considerably less sorry for Teixeira and Saulo Mineiro who whinged their way through the game. It was particularly amusing to see the former complaining to the ref after we scored our fourth as it was clearly him who’d given the ball away to us to facilitate the goal. I guess that’s what you’re told to do when you’re young. If you make a mistake, own up to it. Oh sorry, I mistyped. If you make a mistake, immediately moan and complain about everything other than your own actions. In terms of karma being served, it reminded me a bit of when that little shithead Oscar faked injury to get Ienaga sent off but then had to have a little cry as his team had lost the game. I guess the comparison doesn’t quite work, but I just wanted to call him a shit just one more time as I think he’s retired now.

Ref etc. -

I initially thought the ref was doing pretty well in this match. And to be honest, I’m not going to moan about decisions as I don’t think we got stiffed in this game like we possibly were in the first leg. (I still haven’t watched a replay of our disallowed goal and still don’t intend to). Our disallowed goal in this game was disappointing, but then again, we did have two others confirmed by VAR, so I’m not going to complain. It was particularly good to see Ito’s goal given the thumbs up as he’s already had one ruled out by VAR this year. My one slight whinge might be that once again in the ACL, the ref blew up early. Normally a couple of seconds doesn’t really make that much difference I guess, but I remember the announcements in my Orient season ticket days when the tannoy would always say something like ‘the fourth official has signaled that there will be a minimum of three minutes of additional time’.  Perhaps instead it’s a maximum in the ACL. In the previous leg, cutting even five seconds of the game off was a blessed relief, but it was a bit annoying to see the ref blow up just as Erison raced clear, and even more annoying when I watched the replay and found that he did it early. Oh well, eh? One final official comment, I loved the linesman down in front of us. I didn’t love him for decisions, but instead loved him for the fact that he looked constantly bewildered, as if he was that guy from Quantum Leap who’d moments before been dropped into the situation and was still trying to work out when, where and who he was. My favourite part was when the ball left the pitch and he just held his flag directly above his head with both hands for an interminably long time, waiting for the ref to decide which way he should give it. I quite like imagining it as something like when that taxi driver ended up being interviewed on the panel of a BBC news program because he had the same first name as the guest they were expecting. The ‘linesman’ turned up hoping to buy a ticket on the door, went to the wrong place, got let in and was handed a flag. More power to him! I think that I too would probably also have been too embarrassed to say anything and would have just given it a go.

Next up, as mentioned before, a potentially spirit squashing visit to Okayama. At least if it does end up being a game like the Kyoto one was, we have the consolation that we’re doing an away trip. To get another pair of 4-0’s would be lovely, but I think I’d probably settle for it not being quite as mind-numbingly dull as the Kyoto game. What a way to finish this post. Bravo!

Team

GK 98. YAMAGUCHI Louis
DF 5. SASAKI Asahi
DF 2. TAKAI Kota
DF 35. MARUYAMA Yuichi
DF 13. MIURA Sota
MF 19. KAWAHARA So
MF 10. OSHIMA Ryota
MF 37. ITO Tatsuya
MF 14. WAKIZAKA Yasuto (Yellow card 42')
MF 23. MARCINHO
FW 9. ERISON

Subs

GK 1. JUNG Sung-Ryong
GK 21. ANDO Shunsuke
DF 7. KURUMAYA Shintaro
MF 8. TACHIBANADA Kento (on for KAWAHARA 85')
MF 16. OZEKI Yuto
FW 20. YAMADA Shin (on for ERISON 78')
FW 24. MIYAGI Ten
FW 30. SEGAWA Yusuke (on for WAKIZAKA 85')
DF 31. VAN WERMESKERKEN Sai
FW 32. KANDA Soma
FW 41. IENAGA Akihiro (on for ITO 78')
MF 77. YAMAMOTO Yuki (on for OSHIMA 72')

My Frontale Man Of The Match

No shortage of candidates to give it to and also the possibility of wussing out and giving it to the whole team as we’ve qualified for the bizarre next stage which will be held in Saudi Arabia (naturally). But to keep things simple, I’ll give it to…

SASAKI Asahi - amazing goal and great assist too.

Goals

SASAKI (Frontale) 35' 1-0
ERISON (Frontale) 64' 2-0
ITO (Frontale) 68' 3-0
MARCINHO (Frontale) 90+1' 4-0

Highlights

Vs Shanghai Shenhua (away) 5/3/25 ACL 2024/25 last sixteen, first leg

Shanghai Shenhua 1 - 0 Kawasaki Frontale

Well that was pretty shit, wasn’t it? I missed the first half as I was at work and just about made it home for the start of the second and… nothing happened. Well, apart from us gifting the opposition a goal and handed ourselves a defeat for the second time in five days. Apparently we had a shot. I can’t remember it. We had no shots on target in the whole game. But a lovely title winning 64% possession. I never like to comment much after watching a game online as I don’t think I have anything worth adding, This is probably even more true when you consider I missed the first half. It seems that I’ve cursed Miura by saying he’s been great this season. I don’t think a single one of his crosses made it past the first defender. I’m not very confident about the second leg. Actually, how do you dial that down one notch? What’s one level lower than ‘not very confident’? Maybe, ‘we’re fucked’? Let’s end with two statements of contrasting levels of optimism. Seeing as our first choice team and second choice team have both been shite for the last week, let’s be optimistic and say that the perfect mix of the two will be the one that works well and can win us the second leg. Guess Hasebe just has to find that mix but doesn’t have  a lot of time to do it. And then on the other side of the optimism coin, let’s point to the fact that we had less shots in this game than we did in the one against the same opposition when we played for 85 minutes with 10 men. So choose which way you fancy going when it comes to optimism, and I’ll see you back here after the second leg next Wednesday.

(Oh, are you wondering about our goal that VAR ruled out? I haven't even bothered watching a replay and can't imagine I will).

Team

GK 98. YAMAGUCHI Louis
DF 31. VAN WERMESKERKEN Sai
DF 2. TAKAI Kota
DF 35. MARUYAMA Yuichi
DF 13. MIURA Sota
MF 19. KAWAHARA So
MF 77. YAMAMOTO Yuki
MF 37. ITO Tatsuya
MF 14. WAKIZAKA Yasuto
MF 23. MARCINHO (Yellow card 43')
FW 20. YAMADA Shin

Subs

GK 1. JUNG Sung-Ryong
GK 21. ANDO Shunsuke
DF 5. SASAKI Asahi (Yellow card 90+3') (on for VAN WERMESKERKEN 59')
DF 7. KURUMAYA Shintaro
MF 8. TACHIBANADA Kento
FW 9. ERISON (on for YAMADA 80')
DF 15. TANABE Shuto
MF 16. OZEKI Yuto (on for YAMAMOTO 85')
FW 24. MIYAGI Ten
FW 30. SEGAWA Yusuke (on for ITO 80')
FW 32. KANDA Soma
FW 41. IENAGA Akihiro (on for MARCINHO 46')

Goals

TAKAI (Frontale) 76' OWN GOAL 1-0

Highlights

Vs Kyoto Sanga (home) 2/3/25 J League match 4

Kawasaki Frontale 0 - 1 Kyoto Sanga

Oh blimey. Back to Earth with a bang after the highs… ermmm…. after the excitement… ermmm… after the relief (that’ll do) of Wednesday’s game. This was an awful match ruined by a useless referee which should have been a 0-0 with both teams being docked points for being shit. Maybe the absolute worst preparation possible for Wednesday’s ACL away game. Or perhaps it will prove to be the kick up the backside we need. After a promising start to the season we’re back to being pretty dodgy. Some things never change. Whoever the manager is, whoever the players are, we always struggle against Kyoto. If the poor game wasn’t bad enough, there were also some absolutely idiotic comments on the Frontale J League forum to irritate me. But I’ll try to spare everyone’s discomfort and get this out of the way with as little pain and effort as possible.

Us -

First of all credit to Hasebe for the rotation. I think it was the right thing to do and definitely shows a break from the past. With a big game coming up on Wednesday and six games in the first 19 days of the season, (I knew the schedule was bad, but when I counted the days I realised quite how stupid it was), it’s clear that we shouldn’t be using the same players for all the matches. (I would mention what Oniki would have done here but I think we should probably move on and stop talking about him). Even disregarding the upcoming game I thought we still should rotate a bit as people are clearly dipping from their best already. Also I thought that Erison deserved a start up front after scoring the winner against Avispa. So, so far this is quite positive isn’t it? Probably though the player who is most out of sorts this year is Tachibanada, and for some reason he was kept in the team. Poor Tachibanada. Ever since he was made captain a few years ago, (presumably to try to stop him from leaving), his performances have dived off a cliff. And in this game he made another awful mistake, basically playing a perfect through ball for a Kyoto attack. Apparently he was trying to pass the ball back to Sung-Ryong. It was nowhere near getting there. I feel really bad for SR as he hasn’t played any games this year and then his potential clean sheet was lost due to circumstances completely out of his control. He’d made some good saves in the game but had no chance with the goal. Fair play to Hasebe for not taking the psychopath path and removing Tachibanada in the next set of subs, but it’s probably a good thing he took him off later. I don’t think he should be starting as long as he’s in the terrible form he is. He hadn’t had a very good game before his clanger anyway. It seems again that Tachibanada plus one other defensive midfielder approach is not a good idea. I don’t think two defensive midfielders work for us at all to be honest, and we played best this year when we had one player there with two in front, where the player staying back occasionally went forward and one of his teammates stepped in to cover. I’m thinking of Kawahara there with Yamamoto in front. In this match the midfield was a bit of a waste of time. Nothing happened there. Two players sitting next to each other doesn’t help us attack. And Yamauchi ahead doesn’t really seem the answer there either. I know I keep saying it, but I’d like to see Ienaga there if we’re not using Wakizaka. But anyway, there’s not much else to mention about us in this game as we were a bit rubbish. Even though we had 14 shots I don’t think we’d have scored yet if we were still playing. Erison did a good job up front winning the ball but had no support really. Verhon and Ito (on the left in his preferred position) didn’t do much. The fact is we never looked like getting anything other than a 0-0 out of this game. And in that way, not much has changed since last year. Some final conclusions for this part regarding Hasebe’s first choice players. I think it’s now clear he prefers Yamaguchi over SR. I think both have been let down by their teammates so can’t really say who should be there. I think it’s also becoming apparent that Hasebe probably favours Ienaga when fit on the right and Yamada up front. So some might say that he didn’t take this game seriously enough with his rotation. Presumably the same people would also criticise him for his team selections in the ACL saying he’s not taking that seriously either. I think the pecking order is becoming clear, but the fact is even when the first choice players were brought on in this match, we didn’t look any better. It was exactly the same really. So I think we have other more pressing issues to sort out. It’s still early on in what most of us probably thought would be a season of transition. And Hasebe has had a stupidly busy fixture list since he got his feet under the managers desk. The players left for the airport directly after this game so the intensity continues. Perhaps changes will come when he has a bit more time. I think the disappointing thing is that we’ve dropped off so far from the first few games of the year. However, maybe they were false dawns and we need to wait a while. I hope something is coming though, as the last three matches have been extremely reminiscent of last year.

Them -

Ah, Kyoto! When you hear the word Kyoto, what do you think of? Beautiful temples? Geisha? Tea ceremonies? Zen gardens? Bamboo forests? Or dull clogging anti-football? For me it’s becoming the latter. Kyoto came into this game with one plan and that was to boot us all over the pitch in an emulation of their managers legendary power harassment training style. Actually trivia fans, this was our second match in a row where we came up against teams managed by people who’d previously been dismissed for power harassment. Lovely! It’s a bit unfair to say they only had one game plan though as they rolled out a second one later on in the match after we’d gifted them a goal. That second plan was to relentlessly time waste, rolling around on the floor, dwelling endlessly on goal kicks and particularly annoyingly, changing a sub at the last minute after the player initially chosen to be subbed had dawdled, (hang on, dawdling isn’t right. It sounds much too fast and purposeful), to the edge of the pitch before the sub was switched to the player who was standing at the exact spot on the pitch that was as far as possible from any sideline. In Raphael Elias, it’s kind of strange to see a player with such a distinctively soulful moustache taking part in such clogger tactics. Almost as if you went to a Lionel Richie concert expecting some smooth pop and found out that he is now doing a side project that blends the dumbest mosh pit hardcore with power electronics. This is all just sour grapes anyway. They had the game plan that we knew they would have and once again we couldn’t deal with it. Their fans had traveled in numbers to support them. Double digit numbers admittedly, but in numbers all the same. And when the final whistle came all 57 of those away fans were justifiably proud of the battling (mainly kicking…) performance they’d put in. If we hadn’t gifted them a goal, perhaps they still would have won as they had as many shots on target as we did. But blimey, this was an ugly game where the real winner absolutely fundamentally was not football.

Ref -

It seems that the pool of golden boy refs is getting smaller every year due to retirements, but the J League’s current chosen one Yamamoto Yudai was back in town. Here are some words from previous posts on games he’s had with us:

‘Yamamoto is a useless attention seeking waste of space of a ref’

‘myriad of mistakes [from] my most disliked ref of the season so far’

‘Yamamoto, whose every action managed to irritate me in this game.’

‘keeps the game flowing, by always dishing out one level less of punishment than is deserved’

‘My game notes are mainly his name and ‘absolute…’, ’total…’, 'unbelievable...' or 'absolute total unbelievable...' followed by four letter expletives’

And you can pretty much just copy those for this game. You could say Tachibanada cost us the game, but I’d say Yamamoto should take at least 50% of the blame. When one team is coming to foul, a referee wanting to let the game flow whatever happens will obviously favour them. There was an absurd lack of yellow cards in this game. I know it’s a new directive from the J League to not give them out so easily but it’s clearly going to lead to teams fouling incessantly. It wasn’t only Yamamoto who was to blame though. His linesmen were equally useless. How the ref and the linesman could come to completely different decisions for something that had happened directly in front of both of them, I don’t know. I suppose the silver lining in that situation is that perhaps at least one of them was right. But wild inconsistency in decisions again. What some refs will give as a red, others don’t even think is a foul. Elbow in the back to Erison with no attempt to get the ball, not even a foul. And then as the attack continues the slightest touch from Erison on a Kyoto defender who is apparently mortally wounded by the contact, well of course, blow the whistle and give them a free kick. There definitely seems to be a tendency in the J League for refs to treat foreign players differently when it comes to physicality. If a bulky Brazilian is fouled, well clearly it must be a dive as they are so big and strong. If the same player makes a challenge, clearly it’s a foul as they are too big and strong. An offside was given against Erison who was clearly in an offside position but had stopped before the attack started and was walking back away from the goal as the attack continued on the other side of the pitch, nowhere near him. Erison was never going to get anything from Yamamoto in this game. I don’t know if it would have been the same if Yamada was playing. I presume so, given that Yamamoto likes to ‘let the game flow’. He even likes to let half time flow. When Erison was fouled at the end of the first half, he refused to let the physios on, (as I think he did in the whole of the game actually. Little did we know that Yamamoto is actually a qualified doctor who can diagnose from just a quick look), and instead blew up for half time. By the time Erison was back on his feet Yamamoto was already back inside the stand presumably high-fiving his colleagues on another classic Yamamoto performance. As much as I moaned about Kyoto’s physical anti-football style, it’s a legitimate tactic, so if they want to do that, fair enough I guess, and it was effective on this occasion (and many previous ones against us too). But the referee went so far as to not only enable it but actually actively seem to encourage it. Good riddance Yamamoto. Hope we don’t see you again this season.

So yeah, a pretty grim game. As I said above, we didn’t deserve to win. We probably didn’t deserve to draw, but equally Kyoto didn’t deserve either of those outcomes either. It was an ugly and pointless 90 minutes. We’ve had a bit of luck so far this season so maybe this was where karma came in and luck went against us. But I’m not sure we can say we were unlucky. If you never look like scoring it’s unlikely you’re going to win. It’s still early days and I think everyone would agree that we have a more important game coming on Wednesday. So if we’re not useless for that game, I guess we’d all accept the lessons we learned in this match (if indeed there were any lessons to be learnt. Maybe don’t pass the ball to their striker with your defence pushing forward? Don’t let the ref Yamamoto near a football pitch ever again? Maybe that one’s out of our hands…). It’s easy to point fingers at the opposition and the ref but the fact is we weren’t up to it in this match. Next up, two ACL games, first away and then at home against Shanghai Shenhua. Then after that we are away at Okayama. Of course the first two games are crucial, but I think the third is also pretty important as we’re starting to stutter in the league. At least it will be a new stadium to tick off! And maybe we might have got our act together a bit by then. Fingers crossed.

Team

GK 1. JUNG Sung-Ryong
DF 5. SASAKI Asahi
DF 44. CESAR HAYDAR

DF 7. KURUMAYA Shintaro
DF 15. TANABE Shuto
MF 19. KAWAHARA So

MF 8. TACHIBANADA Kento
MF 28. PATRICK VERHON
MF 26. YAMAUCHI Hinata
MF 17. ITO Tatsuya
FW 9. ERISON

Subs

GK 98. YAMAGUCHI Louis
DF 2. TAKAI Kota (on for CESAR HAYDAR 46')
MF 14. WAKIZAKA Yasuto (on for YAMAUCHI 57')
FW 20. YAMADA Shin (on for TACHIBANADA 77')
FW 23. MARCINHO (on for ITO 57')
FW 24. MIYAGI Ten

DF 31. VAN WERMESKERKEN Sai
FW 41. IENAGA Akihiro (on for PATRICK VERHON 57')
MF 6. YAMAMOTO Yuki 

My Frontale Man Of The Match

Despite this game being a massive steaming turd of a match, I feel I have to recognise a couple of players.

ERISON & TANABE Shuto - the former did a very different job up front that we get from Yamada, winning the ball and looking to lay it off to others. Sadly this didn’t work in this game but maybe we could try playing both of them together as that seems to be the screamingly obvious option right now. And Tanabe, who was insanely criticised online had a really solid game I thought. Of course he’s going to struggle to get past Miura who’s been perhaps our best player so far this year, but I’m really happy Tanabe seems to be progressing.


Goals

OKUGAWA (Kyoto) 49' 0-1

Highlights