J.League 2023 Season Preview #7: Kashima Antlers & Sanfrecce Hiroshima

Will Daiki Iwamasa prove skeptics wrong and lead Kashima Antlers to a title? Can Sanfrecce Hiroshima keep their fantastic 2022 momentum going to fight on multiple fronts in 2023?

Feb 14, 2023

Welcome to the seventh season preview newsletter for the 2023 J.League season!

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 (subject to change as I continue writing more previews). Please don’t take my league predictions too seriously as although I do take a lot of time thinking about it, my performance last year should tell you how wildly unpredictable the J.League can be…

Let’s get started!

Kashima Antlers

Last Season (2022: 4th Place)

It’s all gone belly up in Kashima. Rene Weiler was fired in August despite Antlers still in the top 3 (although they had been without a win in the 5 games prior to the sacking) due to “differences with the upper management” and Daiki Iwamasa, who was installed as a coach just a few weeks prior, was given the full time gig until the end of the season. The team from Ibaraki prefecture was in the mix for the title for nearly half a season but a horrendous loss of form in the 2nd half of the season, saw Antlers only win 3 (three!) games since my mid-season review in mid-June! Their slide down the table only stopped at 6th as they drew an extraordinary amount of games (taking over from early season Tosu/Sapporo it seems) rather than outright losing them. Antlers fans were not happy as the season continued (and certainly let the manager know about it) and Daiki Iwamasa was/is under a lot of pressure, especially after the poor performance against Ventforet Kofu in the semifinals of the Emperor’s Cup where Antlers finally extinguished any hopes of silverware in 2022.

J.League 2022 Season Review: Kashima Antlers

Transfers

No further ins since the previous newsletter. As I talked about in the Avispa Fukuoka newsletter, Itsuki Oda has left Antlers.

Winter transfers newsletter: Kashima Antlers

Squad Composition

Official squad announcement

4-4-2 // 4-4-1-1

My biggest question mark for this squad is who starts in goal. A few years ago it looked like Yuya Oki was finally going to usurp long-time goalkeeper Kwon Sun-tae but a string of poor performances at the tail end of the 2021 season meant the Korean veteran returned between the posts. This continued in 2022 under both Rene Weiler and Daiki Iwamasa until Oki got his chance again in September… but only for two matches as suddenly a new challenger appeared in the form of Tomoya Hayakawa. Hayakawa would go on to start the last 5 games of the season so without much information from their pre-season camp, I think he’s the most likely starter in 2023.

With the return of Gen Shoji and Naomichi Ueda, it seemed like Ikuma Sekigawa’s place in the team was threatened but Shoji’s pre-season injury means Sekigawa has some more time to make an appeal. I think Ueda will play Right Center Back while Sekigawa will be on the Left but we’ll see how it looks on opening day. The Full Back positions are well established with the cavalier Koki Anzai on the Left and the defensively solid Keigo Tsunemoto on the Right. It’s fun to see a more traditional ‘one attacking, one defending’ Full Back duo but I do feel like Tsunemoto has improved his attacking instincts (especially crossing) during the 2022 season by my eye (and the data, below) so it’s not so cut-and-clear. From the pre-season games it appears that Kaishu Sano has often been played at Left Back so maybe we’ll see a change to the status quo of the past two-ish seasons?

Courtesy of Ben Griffis’ “Soccer Prospect Research & Radar Creation” app

The central midfield duo should continue to be Diego Pituca and Yuta Higuchi but Kaishu Sano has been making waves in pre-season camp (in defense or midfield) so there’s every possibility that Higuchi might be pushed out wide as well. Out wide it should be Tomoya Fujii on the Right and Caike on the Left. Shu Morooka has also been playing out wide in pre-season so he might be an impact sub there.

In the #10…-ish position should be Yuma Suzuki who has been excellent since his return to Japan but had a laborious 2nd half of the 2022 season as he didn’t have Ayase Ueda to finish the chances he was creating. This should be solved in 2023 with the acquisition of Kei Chinen, who is most likely the starter, as well as the return of Yuki Kakita (finally!) and Itsuki Someno from loan spells. I am also hoping that 2023 is the year that Ryotaro Araki makes his comeback after an extremely disappointing injury-hit 2022 season after sparkling in 2021. Kashima could just line-up with Suzuki up top and Araki behind him.

Playstyle

For those that watched Kashima Antlers last season, you would typically point to their extremely direct attacking style of play. They have many physical players all over the pitch, boot the ball high and/or wide, and try to keep themselves compact to overwhelm opponents if they lose the ball. It was a “lump and squish” kind of strategy.

With players like Yuta Higuchi and Kento Misao (converted into a Center Back for the 2022 season) they had very accurate long passers who could aim for a variety of teammates, like Caike, the ever-drifting Yuma Suzuki, or their Full Backs who like to keep the width and cross. Yuma Suzuki was one of the best attackers in the J.League in the past with his all-round game contributing to 7 goals, 10 assists, and many more chances created using both his physical attributes (extremely good in the air) to latch on to long balls and intelligence to play incisive passes in the final 3rd.

I’m a bit wary of how easy it is to break past Kashima’s lines and get behind the defense. As we saw last year they didn’t press high a whole lot, which gave opponent teams time to pick out a long ball fairly easily and since none of their goalkeepers are the “sweeper” type it does make them a bit vulnerable in these situations. From around the mid-3rd of the pitch, Kashima usually tries close down their opponents, with the central midfielders moving out wide to try and trap the opponent in tandem with their wide players but so often this leaves giant spaces in front of their defense if/when they can’t win the ball in these situations. In general, I find them very poor in defensive transitions because they are always trying to move the ball up the field really quick and wide, which can mean players have a lot of ground to cover when they do in fact lose the ball (or may still be on the move to support the attack in the first place) and their initial quick “squeeze” counter-press (the extreme version under Rene Weiler as shown in the above diagram) doesn’t work. Antlers are another team that provides an example of how defense and attack are different sides of the same coin and you have to consider how one phase affects the other.

Storylines & Prediction

Main Questions

It was a brutal half-season in charge for Daiki Iwamasa as his Antlers team put up a relegation-team-like record and fans consistently booed him in particular. Can he turn things around in 2023 or will he be the first J.League manager casualty of the season?
Can Kei Chinen or Yuki Kakita provide the goals that dried up after Ayase Ueda left?
With Gen Shoji out for possibly the first few games, can Ikuma Sekigawa and Naomichi Ueda quickly form a solid Center Back pairing?
It seems Tomoki Hayakawa will continue to keep his place in goal that he earned at the tail-end of last season but can Yuya Oki or veteran Kwon Sun-tae win back the spot during the season?

Predicted League Finish

~~Top 3: (1st) t.b.a., (2nd) t.b.a, (3rd) t.b.a.~~
Upper mid-table: (4th) Cerezo Osaka, (5th) FC Tokyo, (6th) Kashima Antlers, (7th) Urawa Reds
~~Mid-table: (8th) Vissel Kobe, (9th) Nagoya Grampus, (10th) Kashiwa Reysol, (11th) Sagan Tosu~~
~~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.~~

As usual Kashima have a genuinely strong squad but my main hang-up about them is Daiki Iwamasa, their manager… On the other hand maybe this will be like how I misjudged Kevin Muscat’s half-of-a-season in charge of Marinos in 2021 and predicted them to not even finish in the top 4 for 2022. The main difference being that Kevin Muscat still had a helluva lot more experience as a top-level manager compared to Iwamasa who, prior to being given the full time gig at Antlers, had short spells as coach/manager of a university and lower league team. With how awful they looked last season under Iwamasa (with cracks that had already started appearing under Rene Weiler, admittedly), I am going to have to say that Antlers won’t finish within the top 5 for the first time since 2012… by finishing 6th. I get a feeling that Antlers will be mid-table (or worse!) under Iwamasa, he’ll then get fired, then someone takes this collection of good players and actually manages to get them playing coherently to shoot back up the table by season’s end.

Sanfrecce Hiroshima

Last Season (2022: 3rd Place)

Michael Skibbe deservedly won the Manager of the Year award after a terrific debut season with Sanfrecce Hiroshima. He led the team to appearances in the finals of both domestic cup competitions, winning one of them alongside a strong 3rd place league finish, their best since 2018 and the championship winning teams of the early 2010s. Largely taking a squad that remained unchanged since the maligned Hiroshi Jofuku era as they had no outright transfers, the only arrivals being players coming back from loan (Gakuto Notsuda and Takumu Kawamura) or recruited from university (Taishi Senba and Makoto Mitsuta), Michael Skibbe rapidly transformed this team into a quality team. As a result, Skibbe didn’t change the shape of the team (3-4-2-1) but drastically increased the intensity of the team on and off the ball.

J.League 2022 Season Review: Sanfrecce Hiroshima

Transfers

No further changes since the previous newsletter.

Winter transfers newsletter: Sanfrecce Hiroshima

Squad Composition

Official squad announcement (January 5)

3-4-2-1

Keisuke Osako will continue in goal and slowly but surely force himself into the national team picture after getting snubbed for the World Cup squad. The Center Backs are also pretty set with Sho Sasaki, Hayato Araki, and Tsukasa Shiotani all retaining their positions since last season. I do worry about Sasaki and Shiotani’s ages and I was surprised they didn’t keep Osamu Henry Iyoha as with his aerial and left-footed passing ability he seemed like the perfect replacement for Sho Sasaki but I guess loaning him out to a J1 club (Kyoto Sanga) to see how he does at this level makes sense. Jelani Sumiyoshi will also hope to usurp someone’s position in the coming year or two as well.

At Wing Back, Sanfrecce should have new signing Takaaki Shichi slot in at Left Wing Back and this might mean veteran Yoshifumi Kashiwa moves over to the Right. I was pleasantly surprised by how well Kashiwa played last season as I thought with Skibbe’s style of football meant that he’d be left behind but he went and became one of their better players. I am reading some reports that he’s injured though and apparently it is Shuto Nakano who will be filling in for him at Right Wing Back (even though he is usually a Center Back). For those with a sharp memory, he came on for Tomoya Fujii in that position in the first game of the 2022 season. In a contrast of fortunes, Shunki Higashi didn’t have a great 2022 season due to injury and form issues. He might also play more centrally in midfield or behind the striker as well.

I still feel like Sanfrecce need a much higher quality central midfield partner for the excellent Gakuto Notsuda. Someone more on the level of ex-Sanfrecce player Hayao Kawabe (who's doing pretty well in Europe) but I don't feel Taishi Matsumoto, Takumu Kawamura, etc. are near his quality at all. Toshihiro Aoyama is yet another year older and I don't imagine he'll play a whole lot.

Further upfield in the “shadow striker”/”floating #10”/”attacking midfielder” positions will be Makoto Mitsuta and Tsukasa Morishima! They are both extremely good (even if Mitsuta can be a little too trigger happy at times) but Sanfrecce don’t have a whole lot of quality back-up in that position besides Ben-Khalifa dropping down a line, although we could see Ryo Tanada explode onto the scene in 2023.

At striker, it’s likely Nassim Ben-Khalifa or if he’s dropped into the attacking midfield role then it’ll be Pieros Sotiriou. The Cypriot’s had a bit of a slow start but two goals to flip the score in injury time in the League Cup final last year would have endeared him to quite a lot of fans and earned him a bit more leeway until he starts producing more consistently in the league. Also, from the latest reports I’m reading everybody except Ben Khalifa is injured so the Swiss might just start by default.

Playstyle

Sanfrecce under Michael Skibbe showed a remarkable intensity on-and-off the ball compared to previous years. They used Wing-Backs a lot as direct outlets for through balls out wide but also for combination plays with the players closest to them to get the ball into good spaces for crosses and cut-backs.

This is from fairly early in the 2022 season but you can imagine who fills in for who now in 2023.

In support of the wingbacks was usually Makoto Mitsuta and/or Tsukasa Morishima, depending on which wing they are closest to. Their clever movement (making runs ahead of the wing backs out wide, finding spaces between the lines, etc.) wrecked havoc on defenses.

Sanfrecce as a whole love taking shots, in terms of volume they were only behind Marinos last year but in comparison to the 2022 league champions the average quality of those shots were nowhere near as good, which may be something of a concern.

Of course, taking lots of shots is still a good thing as it puts a lot of pressure on opponents (force defenders to jump out of their lines more and thus create space behind for example) and may possibly offer counter-pressing opportunities. Still, this is an aspect of their attack that they can improve to get into that optimal top-right green zone.

A high press as their primary form of defense became quite synonymous with Sanfrecce in 2022. However, it wasn’t perfect and opponent teams figured out that they could use Sanfrecce’s aggression against them by manipulating Sanfrecce’s Center Midfielder(s) around and receive in the vacated space or between the lines. In the season review I noted:

Another thing to notice was the general theme of Sanfrecce’s opponents widening the gap and getting in between Sanfrecce’s midfield and back line (something I also noticed while watching the Emperor’s Cup final live at Nissan Stadium in October). Opponents would spread out and/or drop players into the back line to force one or both of the double pivot to move around to cover Sanfrecce’s wingbacks pushing really high up or jump forward to press an open player, which then opened gaps to switch play as there’s barely any cover available in the center and opposite wing. Deeper in Sanfrecce’s half, opponents would try to create gaps between Sanfrecce’s Center Back trio to force one or two wide away from the box.

Mitsuta has pushed up against Mawatari to even up the numbers against Urawa’s back line. However, Morishima and Notsuda are keeping an eye on Ito and Koizumi so can’t easily jump out to stop Hirano.

Opponents had a hard time getting shots off against Sanfrecce but when they were able to break past them, they were able to get off a lot of high-quality shots. This is rather typical of a very intense pressing side as we’ve seen in other leagues.

When it came to opponents trying to escape from Sanfrecce’s press with long balls, they were regularly thwarted by one of the most aerially dominant Center Backs in the league in Hayato Araki. While next to him are Tsukasa Shiotani and Sho Sasaki who, while good defenders in their own right, are looked upon to do a lot of the passing to get the ball up from the back-line.

Storylines & Prediction

Main Questions

Squad depth is still a concern. Can this team handle the Asian Champions League? On one hand they won't have to worry about it for quite a while due to the scheduling changes… and means they can still sign more players in the summer depending on form/injuries in the squad when Sanfrecce get to that point in the season.
In the winter transfers post: I talked about how thin their back-line is but I suppose they are very confident in Shuto Nakano and Taichi Yamasaki being able to fill in straight out of university?
Is there a more regular goal scorer who can reliably get in the double-digits? Will Sanfrecce keep spreading the goals around the team like last season or will Pieros Sotiriou live up to his promise?

Predicted League Finish

Top 3: (1st) t.b.a., (2nd) Sanfrecce Hiroshima, (3rd) t.b.a.
~~Upper mid-table: (4th) Cerezo Osaka, (5th) FC Tokyo, (6th) Kashima Antlers, (7th) Urawa Reds~~
~~Mid-table: (8th) Vissel Kobe, (9th) Nagoya Grampus, (10th) Kashiwa Reysol, (11th) Sagan Tosu~~
~~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.~~

My main concern is their squad depth issues that haven’t really been addressed and it’s a worry because this team relies on fitness and aggression. I imagine they’ll lean on their university/high school graduates of whom I don’t have much info on so I can’t judge their readiness unfortunately. Sanfrecce’s league form did take a bit of a tumble in the last few months of another long arduous season.

On the flip side, they looked like they were more focused on the cup competitions rather than the league, especially as the big losses versus Kawasaki Frontale and Vissel Kobe came only a few days following a cup victory (and Imazu was sent off early in the Kobe game as well which is obviously a factor). I suppose Sanfrecce also do have the summer transfer window to make any squad adjustments before their Champions League campaign kicks off in September (due to ACL scheduling changes from this year onwards), so they definitely do have a lot more time to prepare their squad than I initially thought.

Sanfrecce and Skibbe’s tactics won’t be a surprise to anybody anymore as opponents would have had gone over the footage of those games with a fine comb to figure out how to exploit weaknesses. Nevertheless, I still think they are a very good team and will be in the title-race for most of the season. The real test will be how they can keep up their form and fitness once the ACL campaign spins up in the final months of the season along with other domestic cup competitions that they might be involved in.

Mitsuta and Morishima both scored the most goals but a decent chunk of them (especially for the former) were extremely good finishes rather than them getting into consistently good goal scoring positions from which most players will reliably score from. People that have followed me on Twitter or read my season reviews over the past year know how much I like both players but I’m here to always be skeptical. Can Mitsuta and Morishima keep their hot streak in front of goal? Will this not matter to Sanfrecce anyway if Sotiriou and other players simply pick up the goal-scoring slack instead? We’ll find out!

I will take the more optimistic view and say that Sanfrecce will fight it out for the title but ultimately miss out and finish in 2nd. I won’t count them out of another domestic title too! How they fare in the Champions League is a much bigger mystery…

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 Kawasaki Frontale and Yokohama F. Marinos in the final Season Preview #8.

Thanks for reading!

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