J.League 2023 Season Preview #4: Consadole Sapporo & Urawa Reds
Will Consadole Sapporo escape mid-table mediocrity? Can Maciej Skorza revitalize Reds?
Welcome to the third season preview newsletter for the 2023 J.League season!
J.League 2023 Season Preview #1: Yokohama FC, Albirex Niigata, & Kyoto Sanga
J.League 2023 Season Preview #2: Gamba Osaka, Avispa Fukuoka, & Vissel Kobe
J.League 2023 Season Preview #3: Shonan Bellmare & Sagan Tosu
J.League 2023 Season Preview #4: Consadole Sapporo & Urawa Reds
J.League 2023 Season Preview #5: Nagoya Grampus & Kashiwa Reysol
J.League 2023 Season Preview #7: Kashima Antlers & Sanfrecce Hiroshima
J.League 2023 Season Preview #8: Kawasaki Frontale & Yokohama F. Marinos
We’re starting from the J2 runner’s up (Yokohama FC) and then finishing off with last season’s J1 champions (Yokohama F. Marinos). I’ll be covering a lot of topics for each team from transfers, tactics, my personal questions for the teams, and of course league finish predictions. Please don’t take my league predictions too seriously as although I do take a lot of time thinking about it, my (awful) performance last year should tell you how wildly unpredictable the J.League can be…
Let’s get started!
Consadole Sapporo
Last Season (2022: 10th Place)
Consadole Sapporo finished in mid-table, well 10th to be exact, for the 3rd time in 4 years (for better context, 2019: 46 points, 2021: 51 points, 2022: 45 points). 2023 will be Mihailo Petrovic’s 6th season in charge of the Hokkaido club and… they haven’t really progressed much at all despite the glittering future that was shown to fans in the 2018 season (the Austrian’s first season in charge) where they finished 4th and runner’s up in the League Cup. In 2022 Consadole Sapporo had a very topsy-turvy season with dominant wins alongside devastating losses. There was a point in the late summer where Sapporo were only 3 points above relegation but Consadole went to finish the season strongly with 5 wins in the last 8 games of the season.
Transfers
Gabriel “GX10” Xavier (sorry, he was GX18 at Sapporo...) has left the club, sadly (I hope some J1 or even J2 club picks him up, he’s still quite good). Also, Riku Danzaki continues his curious career by joining Motherwell FC in Scotland... ¯\_(ツ)_/¯
Tomoki Takamine is a big loss and Yuki Kobayashi is a big plus, but otherwise I don’t have much to add on top of my winter transfers newsletter, a pretty average transfer window for Sapporo?
Squad Composition
3-4-2-1
Like Gamba Osaka, there is another big showdown between the posts with incumbent Takanori Sugeno facing a stiff challenge from Gu S.Y., who had actually benched Sugeno in the 2018 and 2019 seasons before the Korean had to return home for military service. The defense picks itself, especially with Takamine leaving. Shunta Tanaka and Daihachi Okamura have become very important players in the past few seasons.
Akito Fukumori is likely to start on the Left… mostly by default. It seems as although his mobility issues have only gotten worse, there isn’t anyone else who possesses his passing range from the back. Daiki Suga has covered there in the past but Sapporo would then lose out on his tireless running and (somewhat profligate) shot taking further up-field.
With midfield mainstays, Yoshiaki Komai and Kazuki Fukai definitely missing the opening games of the season (both due to ACL injuries suffered last fall), it'll be up to their new signings like Seiya Baba and Yuki Kobayashi to play alongside or displace Takuma Arano in the center of the park. At wingback, Sapporo will continue to rely on Lucas and Daiki Suga, with Takuro Kaneko and Ryota Aoki occasionally filling in there as needed.
With the acquisitions of Yuya Asano and Supachok, things get quite crowded in the attacking trident. I feel like given how Mischa operates we could see Yuya Asano at Left Wing Back (pushing Suga down into Left Center Back) or as a Striker (wrong Asano you’ve got there, Mischa!). At present, I don’t think either will displace Kaneko nor Aoki but it’s the lone striker position that has the biggest question marks for me. Kim G.H. is more of a traditional #9 compared to the other options but he’s never started a league game yet despite arriving last summer. Tsuyoshi Ogashiwa is probably more of a supporting forward/wide attacker rather than a lone striker and Taika Nakashima, while he did look promising early in 2022, had some injury troubles and is still very raw.
Playstyle
The Wingbacks are essential to Sapporo’s playing style, Lucas is consistently one of the best dribblers in the J.League alongside the likes of Takuro Kaneko (who sometimes fills in there) while Daiki Suga is very direct even if not nearly as tricky as his Brazilian teammate. Suga is very trigger-happy, he’s more of a quantity rather than quality shot kinda guy.
Sapporo’s ball possession is predicated on a lot of movement and rotations between all members of the team, with defenders making deep runs into the opponent half to support the attack and other players (at times desperately, at times forgetting to) filling in those holes. When it works, it’s very hard for opposition defenses to deal with but when opponents in-turn man-mark their defenders in the build-up then Sapporo usually have no choice but to throw it away long as the Center Backs aren’t very press-resistant and can’t dribble themselves out of trouble.
In defense, Sapporo usually conduct a man-to-man marking all over the field but poor pressing from up top has led to teams easily bypassing them. This was due to the fact that their strikers last season were guys like Shinzo Koroki and Gabriel Xavier, both not quite defensively attentive despite their other good attributes.
Sapporo make up for a lack of defensive structure (especially in transition) with using lots of players who are extremely mobile and work hard. So while they are able to keep the number of shots relatively low due to their intensity when players aren’t quick enough it cascades into Sapporo conceding very high quality chances due to the huge gaps between their lines and spaces for opponents to run to.
Also, their man-marking scheme leaves them susceptible to opponents being able to pick up loose balls as Sapporo don’t usually have a “spare man” in defense to sweep them up. No matter how strong Daihachi Okamura is in defensive duels (and Hiroki Miyazawa before him), they still need support which has been rather lacking.
Storylines & Prediction
Main Questions
Who starts at Left Center Back? The incumbent Akito Fukumori? Or will Toya Nakamura or Seiya Baba take over sometime during the season? Daiki Suga has been used there in the past but that negates his strengths for not much in return so while it may happen I don't think it's a good idea.
Gu S.Y. vs. Sugeno for the starting goalkeeper spot? The Korean pushed Sugeno out of the team before having to leave for military service back in 2020, during which Sugeno went to have some of his best (individual) years at Sapporo with save after save guarding them against relegation troubles.
Who starts up top? Will there be a clear top goalscorer this season like Tsuyoshi Ogashiwa or Kim G.H. or will everybody pitch in a little bit like last season? Or will Ryota Aoki somehow magic out double figures?
Predicted League Finish
Top 3: 1st~3rdUpper mid-table: 4th~7thMid-table: (8th) Vissel Kobe, (9th) t.b.a., (10th) Sagan Tosu, (11th) t.b.a.Lower mid-table: (12th) Gamba Osaka, (13th) Albirex Niigata, (14th) Shonan Bellmare, (15th) Consadole Sapporo
Relegation Strugglers: (16th) Avispa Fukuoka, (17th) Kyoto Sanga, (18th) Yokohama F.C.
The optimist will look at the end-of-season form and be like "Mischa's at the wheel, let's go, Sapporo are rising to the top"! The pessimist will look and say "that end-of-season form was mostly against teams who didn't have much to play for and it was a lot of xG overperformance so I don't think this is necessary a huge real improvement". It’s clear that Sapporo don’t have the money to push the club further up the table and the upper management are completely fine with Mischa as long as the club aren’t relegated. With only one team getting relegated I’m 100% certain it won’t be them, no matter how shambolic their defending can look at times. I have them as 15th as I believe teams around them are better now, but I won’t blame you if you think they’ll finish 10th again.
Links
Urawa Red Diamonds
Last Season (2022: 9th Place)
I am just taking the below, word-for-word, from my season review:
Urawa Reds endured an extremely rough start to a season that had initially promised a lot following their Emperor’s Cup win alongside their trouncing of ex-Champions Kawasaki Frontale in the Super Cup (basically the J.League version of the Community Shield) that kicked off the 2022 season.
At the halfway point, they were in 14th, hovering just 2 points off the relegation zone. However, I also mentioned that I wasn’t too worried about them [in my mid-season review], they are/were a good team that just couldn’t score even though they were clearly creating good chances on average.
And yeah, after the midway point of the season they won 6 of their next 10 and were pretty safe from relegation by September as they started scoring more in line with the chances they were creating (from
0.82 goals per game
from1.28 xG per game
vs.1.53 goals per game
from1.49 xG per game
). On top of that, they pretty comfortably won their way to the final of the Asian Champions League. The semifinal game against Jeonbuk should have been put to bed long before penalties on the quality of chances that Urawa created… again a recurring theme of this season.However, poor losses against Cerezo in both the league and cup started a downward spiral in the league yet again with Reds upper management seemingly losing confidence in Ricardo Rodriguez. Following the heavy defeat against Marinos on the penultimate matchday, it was announced that they were ending their contract with the Spanish manager.
Transfers
It looks like the Giorgos Giakoumakis move has fallen through as he seems to prefer going to Atlanta United in the MLS. While I imagine they had other targets (like Thiago Santana?) it looks like Urawa will have to make due with only Toshiki Takahashi as their main striker transfer aside from the return of Shinzo Koroki. After a short term visit alongside a few other Urawa Reds youngsters, Yuta Miyamoto has gone to join Deinze in the Belgium 2nd division. The heavily rumored Kasper Junker loan to Nagoya transpired while Yusuke Matsuo has gone to Westerlo in Belgium.
After a protracted transfer saga Marius Höibraten finally joined the club as it looked like Takuya Iwanami was leaving for the Middle East. The fact that Iwanami was still included in the "squad announcement" in early January possibly pointed to him staying but 5 days later he stopped practicing with the team as he got ready to move. ~A few weeks later~ ... Iwanami was reported to be staying at Urawa as negotiations broke down with the foreign team. ¯\_(ツ)_/¯ I had to re-write this section so many times over the past month… With things looking pretty crowded at Center Back, there could still be time for Iwanami to leave for another club, whether that's in the J.League or some other foreign club.
So lots of rumors and negotiations but ultimately not much more to talk about in addition to my winter transfers newsletter a month ago.
Squad Composition
4-2-3-1
I imagine Shusaku Nishikawa will keep guarding the goal but Zion Suzuki will continue to play cup games and challenge him (or else I could see Suzuki moving on loan for playing time). With Takuya Iwanami leaving staying and Marius Höibraten joining, I imagine Alexander Scholz will move over to the right unless he partners up with the returning Tomoya Inukai while Höibraten gets acclimatized to his new team. At Full Back it will remain Hiroki Sakai on the Right and Ayumu Ohata on the Left. Takuya Ogiwara returns from a good two-year loan spell at Kyoto Sanga and will be a more direct threat compared to Ohata who is more of a passer.
In central midfield it’s Atsuki Ito and Ken Iwao’s partnership that solidified last season. David Moberg (he of many step-overs) will be on the Right while on the Left can be any one of Tomoaki Okubo, Takahiro Sekine, and Takahiro Akimoto. Up top will likely be Bryan Linssen who will hope to finally get his Reds career into gear as he got injured immediately after joining last summer while Toshiki Takahashi joins after a good season in J2 for Roasso Kumamoto and Reds legend Shinzo Koroki returns as a back-up after spending the past season on loan at Consadole Sapporo. Behind the striker as a #10 or possibly as a #8, if the midfield shapes up a bit differently than usual, is likely Yoshio Koizumi while Okubo can fill this hybrid role as well.
Playstyle
All that I've read from pre-season media talk so far has referred to very general ideas about maintaining possession, winning the ball back close to the opponent's goal, and dominating the game. The Urawa players have also talked about the things they are working on (article in Japanese, obviously) in the pre-season. All these things are in line with how Urawa, as a team, as a organization, wants to play football so I am not surprised by Skorza prizing these values as that's exactly what they hired him for. Still, without too much insight/materials on Skorza in finer detail available to me, I'm just going to talk about Urawa's players instead.
While Urawa under Ricardo Rodriguez excelled at building-up from the back (many scenes of which I've captured in my previous season reviews), they still struggled to take it a step further in scoring goals from these possession sequences. Nearly 40% of their goals in 2022 came not from open-play but set-piece or penalties. A big challenge on Skorza's To-Do list is to improve Urawa's chance creation in the final 3rd.
Like in the above graphic, Alexander Scholz’s ball-carrying from the back was an extremely important part of Urawa’s build-up as he could pull attention towards him and then make passes into the spaces left behind by opponents.
Atsuki Ito and Ken Iwao became the default Center Midfield pairing as they worked well together in positioning themselves to help progress the ball up from the defense. Sometimes one of them (or Hirano) would drop to split the Center Backs as well.
I was happy but a bit surprised Ken Iwao decided to stay at Urawa despite Ricardo Rodriguez leaving but it’s quite clear how integral of a signing he has been despite his advanced age as shown below. There definitely can be a discussion for how »important« or »valuable« Iwao’s actual contribution was in these build-up sequences (in reality we could use expected threat (xT) or VAEP models for this kind of thing) but the fact that he was so involved in some capacity, so often is still noteworthy.
Further up field we have Tomoaki Okubo and David Moberg’s excellent dribbling ability. I’ve become quite a fan of Okubo in particular as he has slowly been getting better as a creator too (passing & crossing) alongside his mazy dribbling techniques. This past season he has also played centrally at times to good effect and it might be something we’ll see more often as Ataru Esaka left and Yoshio Koizumi is the only remaining #10 type player in the squad. If Okubo can add more goals to his game then he can become one of the best attackers in the league.
Koizumi’s role has changed too as he started out on the Left a lot (but still inverting to give space to the Full Back) or dropping much deeper to make Urawa look more of a 4-3-3 shape alongside Ito and Iwao. We might see this kind of 4-3-3 a lot more in 2023 as well.
On the defensive side of things, one thing Skorza will want to take a deep look at is their set-piece defending as Urawa conceded a whopping 28% of their goals from these situations.
Storylines & Prediction
Main Questions
There is already a good foundation of playing-out-of-the-back from Ricardo Rodriguez’s time but can new manager Maciej Skorza build on top of that to coach better attacking 3rd patterns for Urawa to score more (open-play) goals?
Can Bryan Linssen come through to become the double-digits goal scorer that Urawa sorely need? Will Toshiki Takahashi elevate his performances to excel at the J1 level? Or will Shinzo Koroki roll back the years to become top scorer? Will Urawa rue not being able to sign an additional striker in the winter transfer window?
Will this be the season that Zion Suzuki usurps Nishikawa’s place between the sticks? Can his future performances push him into the national team picture for the Asian Cup or the next World Cup?
Predicted League Finish
Top 3: 1st~3rdUpper mid-table: (4th) t.b.a., (5th) t.b.a., (6th) t.b.a., (7th) Urawa Reds
Mid-table: (8th) Vissel Kobe, (9th) t.b.a., (10th) Sagan Tosu, (11th) t.b.a.Lower mid-table: (12th) Gamba Osaka, (13th) Albirex Niigata, (14th) Shonan Bellmare, (15th) Consadole SapporoRelegation Strugglers: (16th) Avispa Fukuoka, (17th) Kyoto Sanga, (18th) Yokohama F.C.
Outside of the big question marks over striker, this squad is otherwise very settled and ready to go. As I’ve mentioned in the past 2 seasons, there’s plenty that I’ve liked about Urawa Reds but I’m still hesitant to say that they’ll break into the top 6 this season, let alone top 3, as Maciej Skorza first needs to show me he can get this team to start scoring some open-play goals. Also, it’s not just about Reds as there’s a gigantic scrum of so many different teams vying to get that last ACL spot. So optimistically 4th, pessimistically 10th… so I think 7th place makes sense as that would be somewhere between those two ranks.
Links
That’s it for now!
For other J.League season preview content I’ll point y’all over to…
Next time I will be going over Nagoya Grampus and Kashiwa Reysol in Season Preview #5.
Thanks for reading!