Vs Tochigi SC (home) 26/8/26 Emperor's Cup second round

Kawasaki Frontale 3 - 1 Tochigi SC

I always enjoy the Emperor’s Cup games. Well, maybe that’s not the case during or after some past games. So perhaps it would be more accurate to say that I always enjoy anticipating Emperor’s Cup games. There’s always a little bit of excitement about who will be in the team. It’s a chance to see some new faces. I say a chance because quite often we’ve gone with only a few changes and the whole process has been quite dull. I guess going into these games a manager has two choices. You can play the normal players and sometimes lose in humiliation, or rotate the line up and sometimes lose in slightly less humiliation. I’m glad on this occasion we went for the latter and even managed to avoid the losing part. Given that we’ve drawn every game in the league so far, there’s a definite feeling that we adjust to the level of whoever we’re playing. For a while it looked like that might happen again. Well maybe that was the optimistic way of looking at it when we went behind to a J3 team. To be honest though we dealt with this match fairly comfortably on the whole. But don’t forget, we usually win our first match against J3 or University team in this completion and then go out in the next round to a J2 team. This year we’ll be playing Tegevajaro Miyazaki in the third round. Apparently it’s away. I quite want o go, but recognise that this is a kind of stupid idea. We’ll see…

Fair play to Tochigi SC for bringing a decent amount of fans. Kyoto Sanga didn’t bring that many more. And good on them for taking the lead. You can probably guess who I’ll blame for the goal, but before it got to the stage where Yamaguchi started his dive after the ball had already entered the net, we had had a series or increasingly ridiculously unlucky ricochets as we struggled to clear the ball. It was a nice finish from Tochigi’s Otabor though, a player who I saw play for Grulla Morioka plenty of times. One other bit of Yamaguchi bashing I need to include was the absolutely insane time wasting he did when he dithered over a goal kick which got turned into a corner by the ref. It was clearly going to happen if he didn’t get a move on so quite why he decided to delay further even as the ref clearly counted and I shouted to him to hurry up, I don’t know. This cock up meant that Kan who was waiting to come on for his debut didn’t actually manage to touch the ball as the substitution was delayed as we had a corner to defend. 

Maruyama was back in the team but only lasted till half time. I don’t know if this was tactical or due to an injury. Uremovic started and grew into the game I thought. Maybe his Frontale future is looking a bit brighter. Yamaichi came on for his debut late in the game which was nice. He missed most of last season due to ‘illness’. Was never really sure what that was. Nagane played right back and looked pretty good as we might expect after his involvement last year. Mochiyama played the Wakizaka role and did a decent job. Would have liked him to play a bit further forward alongside Derik, who was another debutant, but we got some player rotation so we probably can’t moan about the completely unsurprising tactical inflexibility. Derik had a good game I thought. He likes to put himself about a bit. His first real involvement was a bit of a shocker of a miss, but he improved and assisted for one of the goals and was a general nuisance. It was nice to see Konno score as he’d had a bit of a quiet first half, the ball just never seeming to go anywhere near him for some reason. Ozeki got two goals which is great and did some good stuff, but also made a few cock ups, one of which lead to their goal, and seemed to want to over complicate things sometimes. Hopefully he’ll focus more on the good stuff he did and start making a real challenge for a starting spot. I realise I’ve mentioned a lot of players here but for the first time this year there was someone who actually deserved the man of the match award so check that out below. It might be surprising. 

What else is there to say? An unknown ref who didn’t seem to make any horrendous errors, but obviously booked the big Brazilian as always tends to happen. No VAR, an absolute delight! I suppose I need to mention the usual weird Emperor’s Cup pre-game music. I think this year they might have asked AI to make them some music with the prompt of there being lyrics about being ‘Ready!’ and telling us to ‘Go!’ They cycled through a few genres but the same limited lyrical theme kept coming up. Quite weird, quite amusing and definitely more interesting than the usual never ending funky rock loop they have gone for in the past. One final highlight, the local school brass band and cheer group at half time were great. As they were last time. I dunno why I like it so much but I think it’s always fun to see people dancing whilst playing brass and wind instruments. 

So, next up JEF at home on Saturday. Whether we can take anything from this match into that one, I don’t know. Whether anyone who came into the team for this game will feature in that one, I don’t know. I doubt it, but who knows? I’m pleased that Hasebe did the right thing as far as I’m concerned when it came to the players he picked for this match, so hopefully he’ll continue to do that going forward. We’ll see. After that, it’s a quick turn around before Machida away on Wednesday. I really hate Machida. Presumably they’ll beat us, but of course I hope they don’t. 

Team 

GK 1. YAMAGUCHI Louis
DF 2. MATSUNAGANE Yuto
DF 28. MARUYAMA Yuichi
DF 22. Filip UREMOVIC
DF 13. MIURA Sota
MF 19. KAWAHARA So
MF 16. OZEKI Yuto
MF 18. KONNO Kazuya
MF 20. MOCHIYAMA Kyosuke
MF 23. MARCINHO
FW 97. DERIK LACERDA (Yellow card 16')

Subs

GK 21. HAYASAKA Yuki
DF 4. PEDRO ROMANO (on for MARUYAMA 46')
MF 8. TACHIBANADA Kento
FW 9. Lazar ROMANIC (on for DERIK LACERDA 59')
MF 14. WAKIZAKA Yasuto 
MF 17. ITO Tatsuya (on for MARCINHO 69')
MF 25. YAMAICHI Shuto (on for MOCHIYAMA 69')
DF 29. YAMAHARA Reon
DF 31. KAN Noriharu (on for KONNO 90+3')



Man of the match

The first time this season I’ve felt even slightly inclined to give this and I never would have expected I’d be giving it to…

MARCINHO - recently has seemed to have increasingly less ‘final product’ but in this match he did the usual running fast thing but actually managed some decent passes on top of it. Hopefully this is him getting back into his best form!

 

Goals

OTABOR (Tochigi) 29' 0-1
OZEKI (Frontale) 45' 1-1
KONNO (Frontale) 50' 2-1
OZEKI (Frontale) 56' 3-1

Highlights

Vs Sanfrecce Hiroshima (away) 22/8/26 J League match 3

Sanfrecce Hiroshima 1 - 1 Kawasaki Frontale

Our 33.3% record is still intact! Sure, when it comes to consistency, you might be also be able to point at Machida, Kashiwa and  Kashima, (played three won three), but when we come to play them, you’ve got to be confident that we’ll bend things our way and keep our perfect drawing record going. At the same time, you could point to the perfect records of Urawa and JEF, (played three lost three). The weird thing is that our next league game is against JEF and I just imagine that our perfect draw record will more likely be smashed by a defeat to them, than by a defeat to Machida in the following game. We’re so weird this year. I can’t work out if we’re alright or terrible. I think a bit of both to be honest. Certainly our shooting remains awful. It was quite fun to come back from a goal down against Sanfrecce who previous to this match had been scoring for fun, and ruin the day of the majority of fans inside the Piss Swing stadium. With another game coming up soon, (Emperor’s Cup at home on Wednesday), let’s get this post done as quickly as possible.

Pretty much the same players again, pretty much the same approach again, pretty much the same outcome again. We’ve certainly play kind of well in periods of matches, but our inability to take the relatively rare good chances that we make is a real problem. When Marcinho was through on goal there was an inevitability that he was going to blast the ball over the bar and that’s exactly what he did. Ito too. As has been the case for the last few years, for some reason the actual shooting chances we make rarely fall to the guy who’s on the pitch whose main job it is to score. I can’t explain tactically why this happens and I really can’t understand why successive managers over successive seasons have either not noticed it or have been unable to do anything about it. I still stand by what I said about the apparently unnegotiable presence of Wakizaka on the pitch for every single minute of every game not helping us when it comes to tactual flexibility. In this match it was even more stupid than it has been in previous games. It seems inevitable that after a period where we can’t get much going, Hasebe will do his semi regular recent change of bringing in Ozeki and moving Wakizaka to the right. He can’t really play there, (I reckon even the Wakizaka lovers would agree with this), but he is just seems to be eternally unsubbable. Even in this match where he could barely walk towards the end of the game. Maybe Hasebe makes a plan and nothing will allow him to deviate from it. That’s the only explanation I can come up with for why an obviously injured and knackered Wakizaka, playing out of position to the extent of being more of a hinderance than a help, was overlooked and Tachibanada was taken off as our last change. Wakizaka was even on the side of the pitch where Hasebe was sitting so presumably it’s not a problem with his eyesight. He didn’t have a particularly good game, (again), but I can’t imagine he’ll ever get dropped. Unlike Miura who was on the bench for this match. It was definitely a good idea as much like in the half season, Miura hasn’t started at all well this year and last year it took him being benched to get him back to his normal ways. When he came on in the second half he started pretty brightly and I was delighted. But there was one horribly vivid memory I have of him strolling back after an attack which resulted in nothing, and as Sanfrecce attached, it was left to Osa and a midfielder to do their best to cover for Miura. So maybe he needs a little bit longer on the bench, eh? But anyway, as I said, I can’t really explain what’s going on. Apart from the obvious bit where if you can’t shoot for shit, you’re unlikely to be able to score. I felt like we were the team more likely to win it towards the end, even if we did have one injured player on the pitch. This match saw the debut from the bench of Rin Honma, a player who’s still at university but is with us on one of these special contracts. I’m a bit confused why Hasebe, after choosing Mochiyama for the first game of the season, now seems determined to not play him even from the bench. But in any case, Honma did look quite lively. Once again, it’s just a shame that all of these players, (plus plenty of others too), are all competing for the one striker spot. Us playing with one striker also seems to be something that’s unnegotiable.

A few words about Sanfrecce and the ref. Once again, when we play them in this stadium they came as a package. I don’t know why the J League persists in getting a local lad in for every game we play in this stadium and I also don’t know, (but I can guess), why the local ref seems to always bottle it when it comes to giving a red card to a Sanfrecce player. Local lad Takasaki completely ignored the high shin-level raised boot tackle on Ito in the play off game, not even giving a free kick as far as I remember, and in this game we had Sutani, not actually from Hiroshima this time, but from neighbouring Shimane prefecture instead, who didn’t spot a foul on Marcinho and gave a throw in instead. Then we had the joy of an over five minute VAR delay. Of course he finally came to the conclusion that he’d accidentally missed the foul but decided that in spite of Marcinho being about to shoot as he entered the box and with the covering defender having no chance of getting there on time, it wasn’t a DOGSO. Probably this was because it was early in the game, was one of Sanfrecce’s legendary grandad trio of centre backs and, because J League refs are FUCKING USELESS! I can’t understand how it could be a yellow card and a free kick. Surely if there was contact and it was a foul it should have been a red. But I guess Sutani didn’t want to upset his neighbours. And I suppose you could say that Marcinho being though on goal doesn’t actually really count as a goal scoring opportunity… By the way, is it just me or does Shiotani look a bit like a baby who’s been left alone with the felt tips and has drawn on a moustache and beard to his own face? Maybe that influenced the ref too. The look on Shiotani’s face after he got the yellow suggests that he knew he’d got away with one, I think. I thought the ref was horrendous, but expected nothing else. so it didn’t come as a great surprise. What did come as a great surprise was the fact that the Sanfrecce fans also thought he was terrible. I’d never realised they were the kind of fans who just want to see correct decisions being given, even if they go against their own team. It was very honorable of them to boo the ref for consistently ruling in their favour. Bravo Sanfrecce fans! That is what they were moaning about, right? The Sanfrecce keeper whose name I insist on mispronouncing as OUCH!-i seemed pretty angry too. After we scored he spent the rest of the match moaning to the ref apparently claiming that there was a handball for our goal. A quick look at the replay for that shows quite how baffling this opinion is. Even after the final whistle he was still going at it. Presumably he was hoping that the ref would take another look at the goal and replay the final 35 minutes of the match. Oh, and Romanic’s yellow card was a joke. As you’d expect from a local ref trying to help out his mates. (I’m constantly told that of course the refs aren’t corrupt, and I’m not saying they are. But they definitely aren’t accurate as far as I’m concerned. And when you give local refs games in their local stadium with presumably their local team, I think you’re not making it any easier for them as when they are utterly useless, (as Sutani is in every match to be fair), it’s way too easy for idiots on the internet (Hello! That’s me!) to moan that they local guy is doing local things).

Yeah, well, I haven’t got a clue what’s going on with us. As I’ve long been saying, at least we can enjoy these baffling performances with horrible shooting in some different cities this time round. Who knows, maybe we’ll win a game soon? I suspect we will probably lose before we win though. We can say that we’re still unbeaten but this result saw us drop down the table one spot. Three points from three games isn’t great and whilst even if we draw every match, we’ll probably get a lower mid-table finish and should probably see us safe, it would be an extremely irritating season if we failed to win even a single game. A winless JEF at home in the league next weekend would seem like the perfect opportunity to pick up our first three point haul, but as they’re in terrible form and the game will see Erison back at Todoroki, clearly they are going to beat us and he’s going to score. Before then, we have Tochigi SC at home in the Emperor’s Cup on Wednesday. I’m not sure what kind of team will play this game. Given that the U21 league has now started, (I watched it on a tiny screen whilst in the pub so am not going to make any comments on it), maybe some of the players we might in our wildest drams have expected to take part might be rested for the next U21 game instead. But I do like these kind of games, so am looking forward to it. Hopefully it won’t be a draw…

 

Team 

GK 49. Svend BRODERSEN
DF 29. YAMAHARA Reon
DF 4. PEDRO ROMANO
DF 3. TANIGUCHI Hiroto
DF 5. SASAKI Asahi
MF 8. TACHIBANADA Kento
MF 6. YAMAMOTO Yuki
MF 17. ITO Tatsuya
MF 14. WAKIZAKA Yasuto 
MF 23. MARCINHO
FW 9. Lazar ROMANIC (Yellow card 72') 

Subs

GK 1. YAMAGUCHI Louis
DF 13. MIURA Sota (on for SASAKI 59')
MF 16. OZEKI Yuto (on for ITO 59')
MF 18. KONNO Kazuya
MF 19. KAWAHARA So (on for TACHIBANADA 81')
FW 20. MOCHIYAMA Kyosuke
DF 22. Filip UREMOVIC
FW 34. OSA Ryuki (on for MARCINHO 59')
FW 36. HONMA Rin (on for ROMANIC 73')

Man of the match

No, I’m still not going to give this. 

Goals

KATO (Sanfrecce) 29' 1-0
YAMAMOTO (Frontale) 58' 1-1
 

Vs Kyoto Sanga (home) 15/8/26 J League match 2

 

Kawasaki Frontale 2 - 2 Kyoto Sanga

I’m delighted to be able to say that we are STILL UNBEATEN! There you go! However, that might be all the positivity over and done with. Looking from the other direction you could also say that we’re still winless. It is absolutely astonishing that we are in 13th and no lower after the start to the season we’ve made. Of course we’ve only played two games. And I suspect that these two games were against teams that most people would expect to pick up points against this year. And who do we have coming up next? Just a team that are second in the league at the moment with a 100% record, an average goals scored per game of 4.5, and with only one goal conceded so far. We conceded more goals in four minutes of the second half against Kyoto. But with Sanfrecce’s 100% record and our, ahem, 33.3% record at stake, something’s got to give. Will we be able to drag them down to our tedious level? Actually, that would be quite funny. But quite unlikely, I think. Maybe we’ll suddenly get a bit better at taking chances. Whatever happens, at least we’ll have a nice city to go out in after what will presumably be a return to getting humiliatingly defeated.

This game felt a little better than last week. Certainly the first half was pretty positive. There were definitely echoes of the Verdy game though with us possessing and attacking but not really threatening that much. Ito was back on the right and looked somewhat back to his great early Frontale form. I know in the past he’s said that he’d prefer to play on the left but maybe when he thinks about it, it might be a lot better for his morale and his career if he stuck to the right. We even scored in the first half! Looking back it does appear that Miura was shooting and not crossing though. But if part of him once again having a terrible start to a season is that his shots are so off target that they end up being extremely hard hit and unintentionally pin point crosses, maybe that’s one positive thing we can say about his poor form. What on earth does he do in the break between seasons? There was definitely a feeling that if we didn’t take our chances whilst we had the upper hand we would probably get the usual consequences. But for once we scored! Obviously things weren’t positive enough for us to actually get more than one goal though. Luck didn’t seem to be on our side with us hitting the post and bar and shooting narrowly wide. But a lead was a very welcome thing, even if it just suggested that we’d be spending the rest of the game grimly trying to hang on to that slender advantage.

If only! Hasebe weaved his half time magic and by the 58th minute we’d conceded twice and were behind. To be honest though, I’m being a bit harsh. Their first goal was a pretty good one. Apparently we were starting to prepare Sasaki to come on for Miura and didn’t manage to complete the sub till we’d conceded two and were behind, which just seems to be say so much about us right now. If Hasebe had singled that area out as a problem, as presumably anyone who’d noticed Miura in the first half had, not sure why he decided to wait till the 59th minute to make the change instead of doing it at half time. Once again, up against it whilst paying a team that will probably not do much to threaten most opposition teams this year. We were back level not long after the sub, from what initially looked like an amazing header from Marcinho but on watching the replay it became clear that it was either a massive deflection or 100% an own goal. I suspect from Marcinho’s slightly confused lack of celebration he might not have touched the ball at all. At this stage it seemed clear what was gong to happen. Like-for-like subs right up until the 85th minute when Hasebe decides to cut loose and go fully crazy by playing more than one player up front. But astonishingly that’s really not what happened… 

 

I guess I have to apologise to Hasebe from presuming he’d follow his usual pattern. Instead he implemented some tactics that he must have been working on at the training ground. Oh, sorry, typing error there. That should have said some tactics he’d been working on in a cheese dream. Uremovic came on and… played at right back. He seemed as surprised as the rest of us. Taking off Ito meant that Wakizaka was moved out to the right, the position where he’s even more ineffective than he has been in the middle so far this year. (Hasebe, you do know that he doesn’t have to play every minute, right?) So our right side was Wakizaka in front of Uremovic. If Kyoto knew what they were doing, they really should have immediately shifted all of their focus to attacking the part of the pitch where no-one really knew what they were doing. Thankfully they didn’t seem to want to do that. The Uremovic experiment didn’t last long, but was entertainingly amusing whilst it did. Realising that it had perhaps been a bit of an ask to use someone who hadn’t played a minute of football for ages and get them to bomb up and down the wing playing in a position where they had no experience, Hasebe decided to switch Uremovic and Romano and ask Romano to do that instead. This was also wonderfully entertaining and seemed quite a bit more effective than anyone might have thought. The highlight of the game for me was Romano’s first throw in. His throw in style really looked like he was about to one-hand-overarm-fling the ball forward. It was a true laugh out loud moment and was amazing. We didn’t go on to get a winner. We had plenty of good chances. Maybe we’re unlucky. Maybe we’re not good enough. Probably both. I don’t know which of the players who aren’t making the match day squad are injured. I can’t really explain why Hasebe would go with the same group two games in a row and pretty much the same starting line ups. Who knows what he’ll do for the next game? There definitely seems to be plenty of players who don’t really seem to be justifying their place in the starting line up. At the same time there is a still lingering feeling that it doesn’t really matter who you pick with these turgid tactics as most of the time we’re terrible and only occasionally, with absolutely no apparent reason, we play a bit better. I guess I should mention that Miyagi now seems to be seriously injured after stretching for a ball late on. He looked in a lot of pain, so I can only imagine it’s a serious one. Also Hasebe said that the reason Yamahara came off was because maybe something wasn’t quite right. There was some optimism that a new fitness coach might help us avoid getting quite so many injuries so it would be disappointing if we ended up with two in the second game. Guess it’s preferable to players getting injured in training which seemed to happen endlessly last year.

A few words about the opposition and the ref. Firstly on this occasion with the announcement about thanking the opposition fans, they could easily have mentioned them all by name. Their support was tiny. Maybe they’re all saving themselves for the ACL or something. If you watched online you probably know better than me, but I’ve heard that on DAZN there was a Kyoto fan who was shown picking her nose and eating it. I have no idea how old they were, but it would certainly be amusing if the answer was that she was in her early twenties. There was something kind of impressive in the action that Kyoto’s Alex Souza managed to cram in to the short time that he was on the pitch. He got injured in an attack, left the field for treatment looking like his game was up. Managed to make it back on to the pitch and immediately committed a foul, got a yellow and injured himself again. An impressively intensive contribution! Popovic is kind of annoying, but there’s no point getting annoyed by him as he’ll presumably have left in a few months as normally he just joins a club, stays for a little while and then pees off. The ref was Nakamura, who’s been on a rollercoaster as far as I’m concerned in recent years. I don’t have too much to complain about on this occasion, although I did make a note to check something around 42 minutes and it did seem like he made a bit of a stupid decision against us. But hell, we’ve all made some stupid decisions relating to Frontale recently right? I went to both of our opening matches. An absurd amount of people seem to have bought Wakizaka shirts. Hasebe, well he’s made plenty too! So yeah, guess I can’t moan too much about the ref. And I even have some sympathy for them now. The absurd amount of things that they are supposed to be counting seconds for now is very confusing. And I think it’s different lengths of time for different things too. I will say though that different refs have considerably variable interpretations of how long a second lasts. Nakamura’s ‘second’ must have been somewhere between 1.5 and 2 seconds I think. Maybe he uses the ‘one Mississippi, two Mississippi method but struggles with the pronunciation a little. I suppose if you count the seconds more slowly it means there’s less chance of you actually having to take some kind of action when too much time is taken, so that might be the thinking behind doing it. 



Ugh… Hopefully recalling this game to write this post won’t send me to my sick bed for four days like it did when I wrote the last blog post. Considering I have been sick for the majority of the week, you might expect that the game, even though it was a draw, would be the best thing that happened this week. I’m not sure I can go that far as even thought it was fairly entertaining, the absolute squandering of the talents we have available undercuts any kind of good feelings. Perhaps the new player announcement videos were the highlight. There’s a very good bit where they show the number first, then flash up a few pictures of past players who’ve worn that number before showing the player who’s now wearing it. Aside from Romano’s throw in, this video was definitely the best part of the week and luckily we’ll get to see that at every home game! What a surprise, nostalgic old git likes nostalgia. I guess we should all appreciate nostalgia considering we don’t have much to get excited about at the moment. Next up Sanfrecce Hiroshima away on Saturday. Of course the game itself will be awful. so I’m looking forward to having a nice trip and not worrying about football. Wonderful! Then the following Wednesday, a home Emperor’s Cup game! That should actually be fun! Well, not judging by past experience I guess, but I’m trying my best to be hopeful. 

Team 

GK 49. Svend BRODERSEN
DF 29. YAMAHARA Reon
DF 4. PEDRO ROMANO
DF 3. TANIGUCHI Hiroto
DF 13. MIURA Sota
MF 8. TACHIBANADA Kento
MF 6. YAMAMOTO Yuki
MF 17. ITO Tatsuya
MF 14. WAKIZAKA Yasuto 
MF 23. MARCINHO
FW 9. Lazar ROMANIC

Subs

GK 1. YAMAGUCHI Louis
DF 5. SASAKI Asahi (on for MIURA 59')
MF 16. OZEKI Yuto  (Yellow card 80') (on for ITO 76')
MF 18. KONNO Kazuya
MF 19. KAWAHARA So (on for YAMAMOTO 76')
FW 20. MOCHIYAMA Kyosuke
DF 22. Filip UREMOVIC (on for YAMAHARA 80')
FW 24. MIYAGI Ten (on for MARCINHO 80')
FW 34. OSA Ryuki


Man of the match

No one no one no one no one no one not one single one.

 

Goals

ROMANIC (Frontale) 43' 1-0
FUKUDA (Kyoto) 54' 1-1
RAFAEL ELIAS (Kyoto) 58' 1-2
MARCINHO (Frontale) 64' 2-2

Highlights

Vs Tokyo Verdy (away) 9/8/26 J League match 1

Tokyo Verdy 1 - 1 Kawasaki Frontale 

So begins a new season. It goes without saying that after the absolute mediocrity of the last half season, there’d definitely be something to work on and room for improvement in the break before the new season proper kicked off. We signed some players. Not many, but some. Two Brazilian strikers and one Brazilian centre back. Of course one of these stickers was presumably to replace Erison who perhaps felt dissatisfied with the situation at Frontale and left for JEF. The fact that we now have plenty of numbers up front and at centre back hinted that perhaps we might be seeing some kind of new approach. So naturally I anticipated the team announcement for the first game with some excitement. I only really have myself to blame for that I guess. Probably shouldn’t have been so optimistic. A couple of tiny changes to what was basically the starting line up from the start of last season. And exactly the same approach. Hip hip hooray.

Thankfully after seeing the starting line up I managed to temper any kind of anticipation I might have had so didn’t end up crushingly disappointed. And in a way, I could also say that our total tedium in this match was a useful thing for me as I was intending to trim down these blog posts a bit and if there’d been something exciting to write about I might have had to make a bit more effort. As I’m always the first to admit, I don’t really understand tactics so I’m going to try to steer away from talking about them so much. I will say though that I do understand utterly pointless tedium football as I’ve become so accustomed to it over the last year or so and that was very much on display in this match. 70% possession so lots of the ball. Almost absolutely zero attacking threat. Our late equaliser was in some ways deserved as Verdy looked as shit as us, but at the same time was utterly undeserved as we hadn’t troubled their keeper for the rest of the game. This is going to be a very long and extremely boring season. 

Maybe some positives are that the away kit looks nice. Pedro Romano looks decent. And… erm… that’s it. Unless you go to games looking forward to watching pointless passing in which case you have a lot to look forward to. Negatives, plenty. Fucking hell Hasebe, you had the first season where you didn’t want to rock the boat considering we were in the late stages of the ACL so didn’t change anything. Then we had the half season where we had a free hit and plenty of opportunity to change something and we didn’t change anything. And then the break between another eight place finish and this season where we once again we changed nothing. What’s he doing? Kengo on the bench next to him must feel a bit like his potential successor picking up some tips before he takes his job. I truly hope Kengo doesn’t take any tips from Hasebe though, as all he seems to be able to do is repeat the same thing eternally. Quite why we have five payers in the squad vying for the one striker spot, I don’t know. We’ve got seven players who can play centre back and we’ll seemingly only ever use two of them. I always imagined that the person who signs the players for the club communicates with the manager but I’m starting to think he’s making purchases according to email instructions he’s still getting from his last job or something. If we’re not doing at all well in a game Hasebe’s response is some good old like for like subs, bringing on the players he thought weren’t good enough to start the match. To give him credit he did make a tactical change in the 85th minute with his final sub. To take all the credit back, pretty much everyone in the stadium apart from him must have been able to see how badly we were playing, how much we needed to change something and how insane it was to wait until the game was almost over to do it. I know he’s a nice guy and everything but his eternal optimism when it comes to post match thoughts where he pretty much says we did well but need to score more is absolutely grating on me and it’s only the first game of what will almost certainly feel like a very long season. Fucking hell. Hasebe the baker is constantly praising his assistant bakers for measuring and combining the ingredients perfectly and doesn’t seem worried that no one in the bakery ever thinks of putting the cake in the oven. Hasebe the fashion expert has put together, through wonderful use of layering, a sensational outfit and has accessorised perfectly. Oh, but he didn’t think he’d need to go as far as dress the bottom half, so the model is walking around half naked. Hasebe the hobbyist has built a magnificent train set in his loft but isn’t going to bother with buying any trains. Hasebe the musician has rehearsed for weeks with his band and is now in perfect condition to not bother turning up to play the gig. But in all of these cases he’s reasonably pleased with how the half finished job has turned out. 

A few words on the ref as it would be remiss of me to not slag him off. After watching a World Cup with plenty of dubious decisions it was delightful to get back to the J League and see that the refs are just as shit as they have always been. Even among J League ref apologists, I think the name Mikuriya is one that fills people with dread and so it proved to be again. I came up with a very NSFW nickname for him that doesn’t really work that well. but does absolutely suit him down to the ground. If you’re interested in knowing what it is, please ask. The rules saying you need to take throw ins, goal kicks and make subs quickly from the World Cup are now in evidence in the J League, which I’m not sure is a great idea as the poor refs aren’t even really up to actually refereeing to the old rules so to put more on their plate is a bit unfair. Obviously Mikuriya thought we were delaying on one of our throw ins and gave it to them, even though we were trailing at the time so wouldn’t have made much sense to time waste. Making keepers not waste time on goal kicks is an interesting rule. And one which seems like it’s a bit pointless if you only start counting after the keeper has crawled on his hands and knees to retrieve the ball, dropped it a few times, had a couple of drinks, and possibly a light meal before putting the ball on the spot. The fact that the Verdy keeper was wasting so much time in the second half without any kind of censure made it all the more enjoyable that he conceded extremely late on. Also, I think we need some kind of paranormal investigator to have a look at the game, as every time a Verdy player was about to be changed they were suddenly struck down by a phantom condition that meant they needed lengthy treatment. However you feel about these new rules’ implementation at the World Cup, it was always going to be just one more thing for the useless bastards in charge of the J League to mess up. Oh, and finally, Ito's yellow card was a joke, but that's to be expected with Mikuriya. There truly is nothing to look forward to. Apart from the 2027/28 season if we manage to be able to start that one in J1.

Such a pointless game. Such a boring game. Such a predictable game. The finger clearly has to be pointing at Hasebe at the moment. On this showing we’ll be extremely lucky to finish in our usual 8th. Probably much closer to 18th. And for the final crucial game of the season where we’re battling to avoid relegation Hasebe will probably still be going with the same formation, players and tactics and will afterwards comment that we did really well passing the ball sideways back and forth in our own half and that we’ll have to work on actually shooting before the next match. Fucking hell. At least we’ll have some fun away games this time round! 

 

Team 

GK 49. Svend BRODERSEN
DF 29. YAMAHARA Reon
DF 3. TANIGUCHI Hiroto
DF 4. PEDRO ROMANO
DF 13. MIURA Sota
MF 6. YAMAMOTO Yuki
MF 8. TACHIBANADA Kento
MF 18. KONNO Kazuya
MF 14. WAKIZAKA Yasuto 
MF 17. ITO Tatsuya (Yellow card 68')
FW 20. MOCHIYAMA Kyosuke

Subs

GK 1. YAMAGUCHI Louis
DF 5. SASAKI Asahi (on for TACHIBANADA 76')
FW 9. Lazar ROMANIC (on for MOCHIYAMA 61')
MF 16. OZEKI Yuto (on for MIURA 76')
MF 19. KAWAHARA So
DF 22. Filip UREMOVIC
MF 23. MARCINHO (on for KONNO 61')
FW 24. MIYAGI Ten (on for YAMAMOTO 86')
FW 34. OSA Ryuki


Man of the match

You’ve got to be kidding me.

 

Goals

MIZOGUCHI (Verdy) 46' 1-0
ROMANIC (Frontale) 90+6' 1-1

Highlights

 

New player songs 2026/2027 season

Have just about got this up before our new season kicks off. Most of these are for the (not many) new players we signed in between that rotten last half season and now. Some are for players who had a song last year, but not at the start of the season. And for some reason we have a new team song called 'Champione'. Bit optimistic that, but you've got to admire the positivity. By the way, Yamamoto's song seems to have changed. Where you used to sing 'la', we now are going to sing 'na'. That update was pretty crucial, I'm sure you'll agree. 


4. PEDRO ROMANO



Pedro Romano
Pedro Romano Vamo Pedro
Pedro Romano
Pedro Romano Vamo Pedro

Original song:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ywFoBur6waE


21. HAYASAKA Yuki



Hayasaka Yuki
Hayasaka Yuki
Goal o mamorinuke
Hayasaka!

Original song:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-3RyqCAJkRU


31. KAN Noriharu



Kan Noriharu
Kan Noriharu
Kan Noriharu, o o o o 

Original song:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=i6eRLVDxoXM


32. HAYASHI Shunsuke



Hayashi Shunsuke
Laa la laa laa laa
Hayashi no chikara o misetsukero

Original song:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=of02XzNFq7Q

34. OSA Ryuki



Oh o o oh o Osa Ryuki
Oh o o oh o Osa Ryuki

Original song:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3_5gxPRusYg 

93. KAYKE QUEIROZ



Kayke Queiroz
Omae ni muchu
Get goal
Get goal

Original song:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-yXpgBUshz8


97. DERIK LACERDA



Derik go
Derik go
Derik Lacerda go

Original song:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0rvqWa8Mnsg


New club song

Champione



Naa na na na na na naa na na naa na na na naa
Naa na na na na na naa na na naa na na na naa
Oh o o o oh oh o o o oh
Oh o o o oh oh o o o oh

Original song:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ocvKNTMy_ls





 

Vs Sanfrecce Hiroshima (home) 6/6/26 J League enthralling 7th place play off second leg

Kawsaki Frontale 0 - 1 Sanfrecce Hiroshima (1-3 on aggregate)

After 20 games and a few penalty shoot outs we’ve ended our league campaign in magnificent style with a pair of defeats and a final league position of eighth. Exactly where we finished last year. And the year before. And the year before. If you want to go back as far as when we troubled the top third of the league you need to rewind to 2022. A lot has happened since then, but clearly not when it comes to where we finish in the league. To be honest, I think it’s a miracle we even cracked the top half this year. We’ve had some truly awful games. (Im actually considering running my end of season poll but with just one question, ‘Worst game of the season?’). I can’t remember a year when we’ve had so many stinkers. But surely there must have been some exciting games too, right? Ermmm, maybe the first game of the year. Since then, not really. Of course there have been extenuating circumstances. We’re always unlucky with injuries, (maybe every team thinks this…), but this year things seem to have gone to a whole new level in that respect. I don’t think Hasebe has ever been able to pick from a squad with less than five long term injuries to important players. Whether he knows who his best eleven is, is another question. Regardless of this, and perhaps in order to reward him for not finishing in a lower position than in the last the four years he was given a new contract a few days before the game. I remain utterly confused by him. I don’t know if he’s absurdly unlucky or infuriatingly clueless. I really can’t tell if either is true. Without a doubt though, I’m in no hurry for the next season to start. About the only thing of any interest for me is seeing if the new kit is an improvement on this year’s one. (It wouldn’t be that hard for it to be). There are a few talking points on the external kind of things that were going on around this game. I’ll mention them later but I guess I need to at least say something about this absolute turd of a match, which perfectly matches the numerous other absolute turds of matches we’ve been forced to endure this year.

The first leg provided us with a Hiroshima born and based ref who, well I never, gave almost everything to Hiroshima. This time we had Kasahara, who although he doesn’t seem  to have any geographical ties to or bias towards Hiroshima, does absolutely hate us, so I didn’t hold out much hope. Add to this the always discouraging spectacle of us not being able to fill the bench without including multiple goalkeepers. The squad is in bits again. When you consider that this bullshit half season had been created to fill the gap whilst we transition to a season that fits in better with the international football calendar, it’s pretty annoying that for our final game of the season we had numerous players absent due to them going to add some numbers to the National Team’s pre World Cup training. It’s nice that even though the National Team manager, (who, I’m sure I’ve said this before, is a dead ringer for Pob, as far as I’m concerned. I bet Pob doesn’t burst into tears every time he hears the national anthem though…), absolutely has no interest in picking players from the J league as there are plenty of another awesome Japanese players who are making regular five minute cameos from the bench in the second tier of Maltese football, the league has still found a way to fuck up what they were trying to build up as a massively exciting climax to this season. After all, the tension of not knowing whether we’d finish seventh of eighth was absolutely gripping me in the run up to this match. There were some other absences too. There are rumours that Romanic was slightly injured. With Erison the rumours are that he’s leaving, so presumably the chairman wanted him left out in case he got injured and any financial benefits of a potential transfer disappeared.   Not sure what happened to Kanda, but it probably was also one of the two previously mentioned scenarios. So basically we had an awful ref and a real patched together match day squad, so we were probably never going to score twice. Would have been nice if we’d tried though. The first half saw us have one shot and concede. The second half was better. Well, in that we had more shots and didn’t concede. But to be honest the whole game was immensely frustrating. Wakizaka was a disgrace again, perfectly summed up by some early ‘contributions’ where he (maybe) dummied the ball (probably just didn’t notice it), leaving it for a player who was absolutely nowhere near where the ball was going. Maybe he’s got his eye on the all star game that’s coming up which he was unbelievably selected for. (I think if people weren’t judging him on his reputation and instead looked at how he’s played for most of this year, he might struggle to get in a Frontale 2026 half season all star 11 selection. Of course we again went with the same fucking shitty formation and tactics. When it came to shaking things up from the bench we obviously didn’t have many options, so only made three single player changes. They didn’t change much. But how could they be expected to when most of their colleagues were already on the beach. Miura had a stinker. Tachibanada, as has been the case recently, looked tired and a bit off the pace. Marcinho did his recent usual Maricinho things. Mochiyama was constantly coming back into defensive midfield to try to get involved, perhaps because Wakizaka had left a fucking massive hole in the middle whilst he ambled away from any kind of action. Here’s what I wrote at half time:

Only thing worse than this thick as shit ref is our ability to get the ball out of our own box without fucking up. Shocking first half with absolutely nothing from us and lots of peril at the back. Plenty of players on the beach already. Wakizaka strolling around the pitch trying to avoid the ball. Yamaguchi made some saves but then let the ball go straight through him for the goal. Did that thing he always does of starting to dive only after the ball has already passed him. Three goals needed, pretty much no options from the bench and pretty much no threat so far. One shot to their 16! If every shot we took in the first half went in, we’d still be trailing in the tie.

We were absolutely terrible. Hiroshima were awful and if they had even a little bit of shooting ability we could have lost by double figures. 

To slightly detract from the Frontale criticism, Sasaki Sho is just an arsehole isn’t he? Probably don’t need to write anything more about that as it’s totally evident. No wonder he gets on so well with Moriyasu! Let’s turn our attention to the ref. Absolutely useless. Both of our yellow cards were a joke. Maruyama’s was probably for his reaction to the ref giving a free kick for a foul that simply didn’t exist, the honourable Sanfrecce player only getting contact after he’d already started throwing himself towards Maruyama and ultimately to the floor. Ito’s yellow just absolutely wasn’t one. At the same time, nothing for their time wasting, and for kicking the ball away or throwing an extra ball onto the pitch to waste more time, or for injury feigning, or delaying free kicks from being taken, or dithering over every little thing they had to do when the ball wasn’t in play. And the there’s the no penalty decision at the end of the match. Kasahara didn’t give it initially because he seemed to not even notice it. Not a massive surprise because he’s useless. When it got referred to VAR it was clear that it was a penalty. I don’t think you’re allowed to step on another players foot, are you? The prick got called to the monitor, had to watch it numerous times and unbelievably still didn’t give it. I mean, it didn’t matter, but we were basically robbed of a goal in both games by awful VAR decisions. If both had been given correctly we would have had extra time. Oh fuck that, carry on with your shitness Kasahara, extra time was the last thing I wanted. But actually Kasahara, I’ve changed my mind, don’t carry on. Do the league a favour and get yourself a new job as far away from football as possible you utterly clueless shithead.

Ahhhh, and relax. Which is exactly what I’m going to do for the next couple of months. Enjoy life without having to watch our awful matches with the unluckiest man in the world in charge of the team and the most football ignorant and business loving man in the world in charge of the club as a whole. At the final whistle we didn’t hang around for the end of season ceremony. I have no desire to even be present when the chairman opens his mouth. The rumours about Erison leaving for JEF or Nagasaki were a bit of a surprise but certainly explained where he’s gone recently. Considering he was our star striker and top scorer this season and we’re happy to get rid of him, presumably to save some money, you’ve got to worry about where the club is going. Certainly things haven’t been great up front but this is almost certainly more to do with our horrible tactics than anything else. The recent emergence of Mochiyama presumably presented a much cheaper option for Mr. Money at the top of the club. His understanding of football is so deep that he thinks if someone scores three goals in one match, (against the second bottom team in the league), he will continue to do so in every consequent game. I suspect Marcinho will go too as he’s our biggest earner. Miyagi will step in in that position, although he’s never played as well there as he did in the 65 minutes he played in his preferred position. On one occasion, apparently never to be repeated. But yet again, another bargain option! Think of all the money we’re saving! I’m quite concerned where Sasaki has gone recently, and I’m sure there are some other players who I’ve forgotten who might not be up for signing on for another year of the crap we’ve just had. Yoshida is probably coming up with another genius idea as we speak. One in the vein of the Chanathip or Gomis signings, to create a buzz and sell shirts and not really have a chance to do anything on the pitch. Keep that lovely cash rolling in. How about we make a bold bid to sign Taylor Swift? I hear she has a big following. She doesn’t need to get on the pitch so it doesn’t matter if she can’t play football. As long as she’s in the squad we can make the merch and we’ll be able to cash on on the shirt sales! Lovely! Yoshida probably is a big fan of Elon Musk and has decided he is on a mission to Doge Frontale to oblivion, cutting things all over the shop without even an inkling of what might happen. He’ll probably be really surprised when attendances drop if we keep getting progressively shitter. He had no idea people could choose not to buy tickets and come. He thought it was an obligation. To be fair, it has definitely felt like something like that this year. A duty or a compulsion. Definitely a chore. It’s quite good for me that I have so much antipathy towards our chairman. That way I can remain reasonably balanced about Hasebe. I’m not particularly sure he’s very good, but it’s great to have someone else to blame for everything that goes wrong at the club. Sadly as he’s the guy at the top I guess he’s quite hard to get rid of. I wonder if he was useless at Fujitsu too and that was why he got fobbed off onto us. It seems insane that we have someone in charge who knows nothing about football and seemingly has no interest in football. If he resigned that would be the exact thing that is needed to put a spring in the step of everyone at the club. Go on, we’ve suffered a lot this year. Give us just one little thing to get excited about. 

So that’s it for this cursed half season. At least when the proper season starts we’ll have some fun away trips to do. I’m thinking of cutting out some of the more mind numbingly dull Kanto away games too. There are definitely better things for me to do than to go to the absolute shithole wastelands of Kashima and Urawa away. As I said above, I’m toying with the idea of doing an end of season survey. I’m absolutely not going to do the player round up or the season round up posts or the stats. There’s just nothing to say that I haven’t already said. This was a disastrous season where it seems no lessons were learnt because every time we were in an absolute hole we somehow fluked a result and got out of it. We could have used the season to experiment and try new things, but the only thing we really tried was how to plumb new depths. I suppose we saw a few new players, but I'd say this was more because of the lack of options due to the massive and perennial injury crisis rather than for any interesting or progressive purposes. The league seemed very weak this time round. This probably explains how we managed to finish in fourth in the East section. What a joke! We’ve been woeful! And that seems like exactly the right word to sum up this year and end this post, so let’s write it one more time and leave it at that. Woeful.

Team 

GK 1. YAMAGUCHI Louis
DF 29. YAMAHARA Reon
DF 2. MATSUNAGANE Yuto
DF 28. MARUYAMA Yuichi (Yellow card 24')
DF 13. MIURA Sota
MF 19. KAWAHARA So
MF 8. TACHIBANADA Kento
MF 17. ITO Tatsuya (Yellow card 65')
MF 14. WAKIZAKA Yasuto 
MF 23. MARCINHO 
FW 20. MOCHIYAMA Kyosuke

Subs

GK 21. HAYASAKA Yuki
GK 49. Svend BRODERSEN
FW 15. MYOGAN Toya (on for ITO 82')
FW 18. KONNO Kazuya (on for MOCHIYAMA 74')
DF 22. UREMOVIC Filip
FW 24. MIYAGI Ten (on for MARCINHO 64')
MF 26. YUI Kota
DF 27. KAMIHASHI Ryota
DF 30. NODA Hiroto

 

Goals

NAKAMURA (Sanfrecce) 44' 0-1

Highlights
 

Vs Sanfrecce Hiroshima (away) 30/5/26 J League enthralling 7th place play off first leg

Sanfrecce Hiroshima 2 - 1 Kawasaki Frontale

It’s a shame that the first game I’ve missed this season is this absolutely crucial match. Oh, well actually this was just the first leg I guess. And actually thinking about it, it’s actually completely insignificant really, as the victors on this tie get the glory of finishing seventh whilst the defeated team have to put up with the humiliation of finishing eighth. 20 minutes into the match I was delighted we’d been unable to get tickets as we were completely shitting the bed, and 2-0 down. At the final whistle, well, it was still all a bit pointless, but was nice to at least get one goal back. As I never write much when I don’t actually attend a match, I’ll just use a couple of brief paragraphs to whinge and then get out of here. So here we go.

I was surprised to Yamaguchi in goal again. Maybe after the Machida game you could have said he deserved to keep his place. But he didn’t really do much against Mito and we were saved more by our opponents’ lack of composure in front of goal than by any skills from our keeper. After conceding twice in 20 minutes I was all ready to get back on the Yamaguchi moan train again, but to be honest, he did alright. I’m not completely sure he stopped anything that wasn’t fairly easy to stop and I’m not sure he was beaten by anything unsavable, but I think we’ve just got to accept that we’re going to concede goals for fun whoever is in goal. So basically no real moans here. To be honest, I thought we did alright in this match and there were definitely periods where we looked like we were significantly better than them. But we did lose though and the stats were largely in their favour. Was lovely to see evergreen cheat Sasaki Sho absolutely fuck up for our goal. Particularly after he’d cheated not too long before his brain fart. Perhaps in keeping with the general lack of meaning of this match, I didn’t get too upset about anything really. We weren’t great, neither were they. The score was reasonably reflective of the game, especially when you consider how many decent chances we wasted. If we’re on our game in the second leg I don’t think we’ll have any trouble dispatching them. That’s a big if though as times when we’ve been on our game have been quite rare this year and even when we are there’s a high chance well drop a five minute goal-conceding disaster into the middle of an otherwise solid performance. So all to play for. But whether we actually play for it is another matter.

Maybe the only thing I actually want to moan about, aside from the pitch which looked pretty bumpy on the TV screen is… have a guess… yes, you’re right, it’s the ref! Looking back through previous posts about games we’ve had with Takasaki has proved that him being shit in this match was absolutely par for the course. Even when we won 4-0 in one those previous games I still felt the need to mention the ref’s absolute lack of skills. He’s a young guy, only 33, so clearly is a bright young thing in the J League ref community. He’s also absolutely useless. The thing that pissed me off the most was him giving Marcinho a yellow for something that wasn’t even a foul and this pissedoffness was massively multiplied by the fact that before the yellow he’d totally ignored any intrusive thoughts about giving a card when some arsehole tried to break Ito’s ankle. To double down he also didn’t allow our physios on to the pitch. I think there was definitely a case to be made for it being a red but we should probably count ourselves lucky we even got the free kick. Oh, Takasaki, you’re so shit. And the fact that you stand out as being especially shit in a league where the normal level is shit, probably means that you’re are extraordinarily shit to a super level of incompetence. Watching the game in the pub I made a, (hilarious I’m sure you’ll agree), joke saying he’s probably either from Onomichi, Kure or Fukuyama or is a massive YFM fan because his decisions were so biased. I did a quick Google and discovered that he actually is from Hiroshima! Pretty unbelievable that he can ref a game with his local team playing. Maybe the J League is certain that any kind of bias is ultimately squashed by his general shitness. Maybe to return the favour we could have Kengo ref the next match. Although Kengo would probably do everything fairly anyway. Takasaki though can fuck off.

Next up, Sanfrecce at home next weekend. I think it’s quite hard to get excited about this game but maybe the biggest incentive for the players would be to try to win it to piss off Takasaki. He’d probably cry into his purple pillows if we overturned the deficit. After that, a sweet few months where we can rebuild some kind of excitement or enthusiasm or alternatively completely forget about football. Either sounds fine to me. 

 

Team 

GK 1. YAMAGUCHI Louis
DF 29. YAMAHARA Reon
DF 2. MATSUNAGANE Yuto
DF 28. MARUYAMA Yuichi
DF 13. MIURA Sota
MF 6. YAMAMOTO Yuki
MF 8. TACHIBANADA Kento
MF 17. ITO Tatsuya
MF 14. WAKIZAKA Yasuto 
MF 23. MARCINHO (Yellow card 35')
FW 20. MOCHIYAMA Kyosuke

Subs

GK 49. Svend BRODERSEN
MF 19. KAWAHARA So (on for YAMAMOTO 9')
FW 18. KONNO Kazuya (on for MARCINHO 69')
DF 22. UREMOVIC Filip
FW 24. MIYAGI Ten
DF 32. HAYASHI Shunsuke
FW 34. OSA Ryuki (on for ITO 69')
FW 38. KANDA Soma (on for TACHIBANADA 88')
FW 91. Lazar ROMANIC (on for MOCHIYAMA 69')

Wanker of the match

An absolute gimme. It has to go to...

TAKASAKI Koji - absolutely useless referee. Should be ashamed of himself.

 

Goals

NAKAMURA (Sanfrecce) 11' 1-0
KATO (Sanfrecce) 20' 2-0
ITO (Frontale) 43' 0-1

Highlights