Featured match in 2021 season, top2 1st place Kawasaki Frontale vs 2nd place Nagoya Grampus. Because of COVID-19 schedule, two games took place in a low, on 29th of April and 4th of May. J League | Match Report | NAGOYA VS KAWASAKI Matchweek22 | Japan Teams Kawasaki netted 7 times in two games though Nagoya conceded only two goals in 12 games before playing against Kawasaki. Actually Kawasaki’s attacking was unstoppable but Nagoya didn’t play their football as usual. Hence, this results happened..
Kawasaki hasn’t lost any games after 2 games against 2nd place club Nagoya Grampus. Will all clubs allow Kawasaki to win the league without loss? Kawasaki just finished 14 games, it’s not only half way( totally 38 games this season). So it’s not predicted other clubs places. But only Kawasaki seems to run on the champion road.
Who could stop them? Yokohama F Marinos could be one of the clubs which has the potential to win the game against Kawasaki. They lost the opening match against Kawasaki, but Daizen MAEDA who shows good performance this season was substitute and Marcos was out of members. After No.10 was back, Marinos hasn’t lost 10 games in a row.
KOBE drew with Kawasaki in the last game, and new two big foreign players joined KOBE. Ayub Masika and Lincoln Corrêa dos Santos. They already show their high potential to be the best player in the league. What’s more, Andrés Iniesta who is one of the best player in the world is finally back!!
It was clear that Nagoya had initiative in the beginning of the first half(The data of 1st half stats proved it). They gave Kawasaki strong pressure with brave. Their aggressive pressure made Kawasaki Center-back players away from Nagoya area. It was apparently different from the last game.
1.Their distance from Kawasaki players were closer when they were in defense. In the last game especially in the first half, Nagoya kept the distance between Kawasaki players and them. This time they approached to attacking players close enough, then it made Kawasaki struggle to find space and make their good rhythm. They affect both Nagoya’s attacking and defending situation.
3. YAMASAKI was out from the pitch after the first 30 mins last time because he couldn’t do anything against Kawasaki defenders last time, but this time he held the ball sometimes. It doesn’t mean that his skills were suddenly improved. Other players were always close to him when the ball came to him, then they quickly picked up the ball and delivered the ball to other attacking players immediately.
Kawasaki completely failed to have initiative and they didn’t keep possession with free like last time, but the first goal was for Kawasaki! Their set pieces were actually possibility before the first goal. Finally they netted in 31 mins. The high ball rom left Corner-kick by Ao TANAKA was delivered to JESIEL who should be marked by MARUYAMA, and his header netted the goal against Nagoya.
NARUSE completely stopped MITOMA in the first half, but MITOMA didn’t miss the chance created by NARUSE’s fatigue. MITOMA delivered the cross from left side, YAMANE whose position is right wide back hit the ball at near left post. His shot netted the beautiful goal for Kawasaki. YONEMOTO was watching him but he stopped chasing him at the middle of penalty area. But no one can’t blame YONEMOTO because no one predicted YAMANE run there and scored the goal.
I had never imagined he made kind of mistakes before this could happen. He didn’t check where Langerak was and passed the ball to the place which no one was at, then the ball went over Nagoya’s goal line. It was meaningless to discuss who made this mistakes, but I’m worried that MARUYAMA’s condition. It’s easy to imagine how much his fatigue was piled up because NAGOYA was the club which spent long defending time in all games. Before ACL, there are many improvement points in Nagoya’s team management, especially something for players fatigue.
Am I only the person who wanted to see KAKITANI more time? He showed us one of the best performance last game. He is the player who makes his tempo with touching the ball. So long play time makes his performance better though he can make chances even for a short time.
Anyway chances come to Nagoya when KAKITANI is on the pitch. That substitute management should be also improved if Nagoya wants to win the league.
KAWASAKI DMF | Ao TANAKA and JOAO SCHMIDT
Kawasaki has many strong points such as phantom positioning, strong individual skills and so on. And one of them is wide range defense provided by Ao TANAKA and SCHMIDT.
Ao TANAKA improves his physical abilities, especially wide range running. If opponents fail to stop his free running, it will be difficult to defeat KAWASAKI.
