Quick J.League thoughts: Matchday 23
Avispa Fukuoka vs. Yokohama FC, FC Tokyo vs. Kyoto Sanga, Consadole Sapporo vs. Sagan Tosu
For those that missed it (probably most of you), I wrote a short Twitter thread on some of matchday 22’s games as I didn’t have time to write a newsletter. This week, I do! I watched more than the three games below but this is what I’ve got for matchday 23 (and a passing mention of previous games of the teams I talk about below).
Let’s get started!
Avispa Fukuoka [2] - [0] Yokohama FC
Avispa Fukuoka claimed a fairly easy win against struggling Yokohama FC. The Kyushu side have been low-key climbing their way back up the table with five (5!) straight wins, which earned Shigetoshi Hasebe the “Manager of the Month” award this past week.
With Yosuke Ideguchi back from injury, his midfield partnership with Hiroyuki Mae has really blossomed in the past two months or so. Their other players coming back from injury along with the acquisition of Masaya Tashiro means that their squad is pretty set and has a reasonable depth to it. A real key player for Avispa has been Douglas Grolli who has been an absolute rock at the back. Even in the times when opponents are able to get into the final 3rd, the “end-game boss” of Grolli is still there to avert any danger in the box.
Some examples of their defending from matchday 21 against Shonan Bellmare below:
But anyway, to talk about the actual game from this past weekend. I really liked Avispa’s first goal, it shows what they are all about: hard work. Shion Inoue had started to drive up the field for Yokohama FC to go on one of their coveted counterattacks but Yamagishi and Mae pounced on him in a flash to win the ball back. From there Mae had the vision to then find Sato open in space as Hayashi had already moved forward. I’ve talked about Ryoga Sato a few months ago, I’ve liked his movement but he wasn’t producing a whole lot of end product… yet. He’s kept at it and now he’s scored both goals in a comfortable win for Avispa, hopefully a sign of more good things to come from him?
My concerns about Yokohama FC haven’t abated. While they are occasionally able to pull upsets like against Frontale and Vissel Kobe through sheer determination and taking meager opportunities well, overall they are just not a great team. Players like Towa Yamane, Kotaro Hayashi, Ryoya Yamashita can do an OK job fulfilling their roles (especially Yamashita purely for his speed alone) but Yokohama simply don’t have that extra bit of quality even when they do get into good positions to create danger. This is why I’m absolutely perplexed about them letting Tatsuya Hasegawa go off on loan to Tokyo Verdy.
All-in-all a comfortable result for Avispa, rising up to 7th in the table and still in the running for both domestic cup competitions as well! I still remain cautious about them though, as Avispa are still a team that play right along the fine margins of the game with a lot of their victories coming from narrow scorelines that could have gone either way. Their defense is still very good but the fact that they score so little means that even if Avispa play a “perfect” defensive game, weird stuff happens in a football game that can derail all that effort. Throughout league games this season, they have scored a maximum of two goals in any single game. Can they keep it up with 1-0, 2-0, 2-1 victories to keep themselves above mid-table or possibly more depending on the form of the teams above them?
FC Tokyo [2] - [0] Kyoto Sanga
I trekked over to the Ajinomoto Stadium for this game on another blazingly hot summer night here in Tokyo.
Tokyo were the better team overall but did managed to get the opening goal in the short period where Kyoto were putting FC Tokyo on the back-foot so it was slightly lucky it came when it did. As usual, Kyoto pressed like maniacs and there were a few wobbles here or there but Tokyo also used this to their advantage to create quick vertical attacks.
I thought Kei Koizumi was excellent in this game. I talked about how poor FC Tokyo were with caring about the gaps between the lines in the game against Cerezo the previous week but things looked much better vs. Kyoto. Koizumi and Matsuki both were much quicker to react to Kyoto players showing for the ball between the lines and snuffed out a lot of potential opportunities for Kyoto to progress forward. Of course, Tokyo’s press worked better also because Kyoto are just simply a much worse side than Cerezo in the build-up and in-possession in general, but it is nonetheless a positive sign.
Kota Tawaratsumida, the teenage Left Winger for FC Tokyo, had an… alright game. Even if the execution went poorly, I can understand the choices he made in various attacking moments. As a specific facet of his decision-making, I do think he can improve on when to release the ball. The concern I have of him, which I think puts a cap on his potential “ceiling” as a player, is that he doesn’t have an elite level of acceleration to really burst past players in the initial touches upon receiving the ball in transition moments. Several promising counterattacking moments went to waste because he just simply wasn’t quick enough to get past Kyoto’s defenders. On the other hand, when starting out from a stationary position on the wings, he’s got good technique to take players on and drive into the box. Even with Jaja Silva’s arrival I imagine he’ll still play a decent amount. I would like to write up an actual scouting report on him in the near future as my thoughts on him are still not fully concrete yet.
Speaking of Jaja Silva, he had quite a lively cameo yet again. Some shots and typical Brazilian flair, combining well with Adailton with that weird “sixth sense” Brazilian players seem to have with each other. It’s still way too early to completely judge him yet though. It is nice that he’s quite a bit younger than the usual Brazilian J.League imports and helps lower the average age of the squad.
Taishi Brandon Nozawa has started in goal in the past two games. Nozawa is much more of a sweeper keeper, coming off his line far quicker behind Tokyo’s high defensive line. His shot-stopping has been decent but I feel he can be a bit uncertain on crosses and his handling of aerial balls. Nozawa seems OK with his feet, not amazing, as there were a few nervy moments under Kyoto pressure in the 1st Half. In general, the youngster is much more of a fit for playing it out the back than Slowik because he’s more willing (or enthusiastic?) to play it short to his Center Backs and actively showing to receive the ball from his defenders in the build-up phase. I would like to continue watching more of him to get a clearer picture.
Keigo Higashi scored his first goal in four (4!) years. A big reason for this drought is that he had been filling in as a deep-lying midfielder for most of the past two years but it’s not a great return no matter how you look at it. He celebrated like he won the World Cup though, spending an extremely long time lapping up the attention around the stadium. It was well-taken goal, and an obviously emotional moment for him, and he was just about fine on the day so I’m not going to hate on him for that unnecessarily. Teruhito Nakagawa making his return from injury is timely and hopefully Tokyo can push Ryoma Watanabe back into the #10 position. In other news, Trevisan will be a big miss (through yellow card accumulation) against Marinos as his aggression and physicality would’ve been an asset against Lopes and Nishimura, especially in the air where Trevisan excels.
Kyoto are… still not very good. My opinion hasn’t changed at all from my previous newsletters. I don’t think they’ve changed all too much of how they play since the last few times I’ve written about that despite their continuing mediocre results. They will likely not go down this season as they are able to beat (or just simply not lose against) the teams around/below them but next season will be a real test especially with the caliber of the J2 teams that will most likely join/re-join J1 in 2024.
Consadole Sapporo [1] - [1] Sagan Tosu
Sapporo were their typical selves, pressing hard and getting the ball quickly up the pitch when they won the ball. With Akito Fukumori back in his first start for ages (who’s started to play more in midfield with the more athletic Toya Nakamura preferred in the back-line instead), Sapporo were able to ping the ball around from side-to-side and split Tosu’s team into two halves, spreading their lines apart vertically and creating lots of gaps for late-arriving Sapporo players to receive the ball in support. This game turned into a festival of turn-overs and transitions as both teams sought to escape from their opponents pressure by playing the ball quickly and vertically to penetrate the high defensive lines.
For all the progress Sapporo were able to consistently make though, they got stuck trying to find ways into the box with the same quickness, which let Tosu’s players track back and pack the box. Similar to the game against Kashima in the previous matchday, Sapporo are really missing Takuro Kaneko who is one of the few players that are able to create chances out of nothing through their own individual (dribbling) quality. Lucas is the next closest threat but he’s been played on the right-side as a right footed player so doesn’t have the same impact of being able to cut inside. Putting that aside, a lot of Sapporo’s attacks end in crosses where in the box awaits players like Ogashiwa, Komai, Suga, Asano… not exactly the types to win a header.
In the game against Kashima Antlers in the previous matchday, they had similar issues, perhaps exacerbated by the fact that they were going up against a notoriously miserly Kashima defense led by Ueda and Sekigawa who are very hard to beat in the air. The one striker that Sapporo do have that’s good in the air, Kim G.H., hardly ever plays because he’s simply not good enough at the pressing Sapporo needs from their 1st line of defense. It’s a similar problem that Tosu have where even when Togashi (or to a lesser extent, Atsushi Kawata) was fit, Yuji Ono has usually been the player to lead the line as he’s better at pressing and his movement fits more with what Tosu wants from their striker.
Tosu really struggled with Sapporo’s intensity and their only way forward, especially in the 1st Half, was from Park IG’s accurate medium-to-long range passing, and even then Iwasaki and Naganuma wilted under pressure after receiving the ball. Cayman Togashi actually started this game, a plan to use his ability to hold up the ball and lead the line more as a traditional #9. However, he was dealt with fairly easily by Daihachi Okamura who simply overpowered him in duels throughout the game.
There were a few instances where Tosu broke free to play through-balls behind Sapporo’s high defensive line including one very good opportunity in the 15th minute when Iwasaki ran clear to enter the left side of the box. Excruciatingly, the pass across was too quick for Togashi to tap-in inside the 6 yard box. It’s these fine margins where Tosu either get the luck or not which decides their games as they don’t consistently create enough chances to win while their back-line allows plenty of shots for Park IG to face.
Until So Kawahara scored the equalizing goal, Tosu had gone over an hour without even taking a shot… (even if you count the 15th minute chance in the previous paragraph as a “shot”) Tosu weren’t able to use Sapporo’s man-marking against them like Kashima had in the previous week, where Antlers scored in the opening 10 seconds of the game by pulling Sapporo’s defenders away from the center.
I think people know about Tosu’s financial situation and my rather balanced take on Tosu in the past few years at this point where I won’t have to keep saying “oh but they are still punching above their weight, doing decently well for their money’s worth, are tactically interesting to watch, etc.” every time I say something negative about them. They still have more than enough quality to not get dragged into the relegation fight, even if their numbers across a variety of metrics are one of, if not the worst in the league (as I mentioned in my mid-season review). They are also out of both domestic cups so there’s not a whole to fight for in the remainder of the 2023 season. I say this despite the fact that, bizarrely with the weird inconsistent form of the teams above them, Tosu are still somehow only 6 points off 5th place!
I’m not exactly thrilled with Sapporo either, after sitting fairly comfortably in 7th, they haven’t won a league game since that crazy 5-4 last gasp win against Kashiwa Reysol in the beginning of June! What you see is what you get with Consadole Sapporo and while they are another team that won’t get dragged into the relegation fight… at least this year, there really hasn’t been much progress. Sapporo’s front office seem fine with languishing in mid-table mediocrity with Mischa at the helm in what is now the 6th season under the Austrian’s guidance. I’m fairly sure I’ve said this same spiel every year I’ve covered Sapporo on my blog/newsletter. The bare minimum year-in year-out is for Sapporo to stay in J1 and occasionally entertain or horrify in equal measure with the style of football they play.
Thanks for reading!