So, when will Japanese teams take this tournament seriously? Last time a Japanese team won it was like 9 years ago. So tired of the excuses.
There's like 15M USD to win in J League this season. But that's not an excuse for the group games early in the season. It could be a factor later on.
Usual self ain't so bad. In 2015 after two matchdays it looked like 1 game won, 1 draw and 6 defeats for Japanese sides. Two of them advanced from the group after that.
Endo and maybe Konno needs to be replaced. Honestly, the high salaries paid to players like Nakazawa, Nakamura and Endo,etc. needs to be reviewed. They are taking up young players' spot and some of these money can be better spent.
Don't see what the big fuzz and all the negativity is about. It's not like any of the teams have screwed up big time yet. Gamba's 1-4 loss against Jeju, which as far as I know is a rather weak K-League, was a big surprise, but they won 3-0 in Australia. So they still got 3 points from 2 games, and have every chance to qualify. I would say they are right on track. Urawa are flying high, and should qualify with ease. Kawasaki will have to grit it out with Suwon for that 2nd place. Obviously the 1-1 draw in HK is not good, but most likely the results against Eastern will not mean anything in this group anyway. Kashima lost in Thailand, but so have alot of other teams done. And the Thais held Brisbane to a 1-1 draw IN Australia, which no matter how you look at it is a good result ( despite the Aussie teams underperforming badly so far). But I can't really see any of the teams in that group cause much problems for Kashima in the long-run, and expect them to qualify with ease. I would be much more worried if I were a K-League (8 points out of 24 possible) or A-League fan (1 point out of 18 possible)....
Gamba's squad is pretty thin imo. Dont' really think them or Kawasaki can make it. I don't know why Endo is still playing. At his age, he obviously can't last long in a match.
I am starting to think maybe his success in the 14 &15 were due to Usami and Endo still performing well rather than his coaching ability. Then again, he managed to win the 2nd leg against Jeonbuk in 2015 without Usami there.
Kashima 3-0 Brisbane Roar. Don't understand Yuma Suzuki being Motm, his heavy touches at times ruin Kashima's counterattack at times.
I guess that's what you call a tale of two halves. Frontale was completely unable to cope with Evergrande's pace and power in the first half and were lucky to escape trailing by a single goal. Then they went back out and completely dominated the hosts with some good old Kazama-taka, finally breaking through after a ridiculous hand ball in the box by a Guangzhou defender in stoppage time. One takeaway as a Frontale fan is that I think the club was right to promote Oniki, who brings a streak of pragmatism while building on the foundation laid by Kazama. Bringing in a manager from the outside would have rendered the existing institutional knowledge moot and essentially wasted the past five years. Evolution over scrap-and-build. As far as this match goes, I think Oniki sort of outtricked himself with the tactics, with Itakura pairing with Neto in the double-six and Igawa at right back in place of Tasaka, who suffered an injury in training. In the manager's defense his hands are tied by the slew of injuries as well as the suspensions to Nara and Rhayner, but the lineup made it difficult to play their game and Igawa was beaten easily on the counter for the Evergrande goal. To his credit, Oniki is much more astute with midgame tactical adjustments than his predecessor, which paid off when Frontale turned the match around. Inserting Tatsuya Hasegawa at left back for an injured Igawa was a creative and surprisingly effective wrinkle.
Honestly speaking, if Oniki had not brought a team full of bench players against Eastern, Kawasaki would be level with Suwon and Guangzhou at 5 points now. Now Kawasaki has to wait for these two teams to slip up rather than being able to control their own fate by themselves.
The Eastern draw was indeed a fiasco, but after all Frontale still have the return legs vs Suwon and Evergrande. They are winnable matches.
Still felt that the Eastern match was poor planning by Oniki tho. Nevertheless, i give him credit for his tactical changes in the second half. The Suwon away match might be the most trickiest match of the remaining three matches left.
If you go by results, Oniki does indeed have an egg on his face. But it's hard to argue that it didn't make sense to rotate for that match, given the scheduling, opponent, and the new players who needed playing time. Ultimately they really should have taken care of Eastern given the players in the squad.
Around half the entire starting 11 in the match was bench players, he could at least put 1,2 starters more in the match to get a goal or two then substitute them out after half time.
Eastern anyway has been more tough than previewed. Excluding the first game against Guangzhou (with two men down for a hour), they got a 1-1 draw and a 0-1 home defeat.
Shusaku Nishikawa is a joke. Urawa should ban him, otherwise they could not win J-lwague champions, say nothing of ACL
He may have performed quite badly in this match but then there aren't much better than him in Japan imo. Also, Gamba is most probably out of ACL, Jeju and Jiangsu will most likely get out of the group.
I think the idea was that Frontale would be able to rotate 3-4 players out without suffering a drop in quality, by virtue of having acquired a bunch of good-not-amazing players in the offseason, e.g. Hiroyuki Abe, Michael James, Rhayner. With all of the long- and short-term injuries that has sadly not come to pass, and we're yet again stuck with duct tape solutions like Igawa at RB, Kurumaya at LCB, Abe as false 9, etc. The return leg vs. Evergrande at Todoroki will be pretty interesting. Felipão was already making in-game adjustments to counter Kengo in particular, so I'm intrigued to see what Oniki has up his sleeve to preserve his playmaker's freedom to control the game's tempo and not get marked out of the game by e.g. Paulinho.
That's all he could do, they didn't have any defender on the bench. It's too early to make comparisons with Kazama.
Despite being third in the table, this group is winnable for them imo. Gamba is the only team aķt this point that I think will definitely go out. Choi Yong Soo has done a good job with Jiangsu Suning. Japan need to produce good coaches as well not only good players.
It is way too early to write Gamba off. A win in their away-match vs Jeju, which is definitely possible and I would say even rather likely, and they could be back in pole position for that 2nd place. If they lose away against Jiangsu as well they could be in trouble though, but still, Jeju has to win against Adelaide too. There are a ton of different scenarios that could play out in this group yet. Actually the only team that should be definitely written off after 3 rounds is FC Seoul. Of course, it's not likely we'll see Brisbane, Eastern or Adelaide progress either, but a good result for those 3 clubs in the next round and then everything is turned upside down again.