Gamba Osaka defeated Sanfrecce Hiroshima 3-0 with a brace from Usami and a goal by Nagasawa. So the final will be Urawa Reds vs Gamba Osaka.
World Cup hero Sogahata saved a penalty to send World Cup finalist in the semifinals of Emperor's Cup. The Antlers will face Yokohama in the first semifinal. F-Marinos defeated Gamba 2-1 after 90 minutes. Okubo scored against his new team and he has the chance to finish his time at Kawasaki with a trophy. Frontale will face Omiya in the other semifinal. Shonan put a very good fight, but in the end Omiya managed to win 4-2 after extra time. Shonan with a man down as well.
Kashima vs Sanfrecce Kashima had only a corner (4:48) during the whole match and that was in the additional time. They went for a long corner and Sanfrecce had a quick break after that, but Anderson Lopes's shot didn't found the target. Only in Japan you can still see these things. How to not love this football from Japan? Not wasting time to win a football game. It's a game to play, not to waste time or to see players protecting the ball near the base line to go out. Or to see goalies keeping the ball to them after they concede from a PK or to see keepers wasting time during the goal kick ( The refs gives them a yellow, but you will never see the second and of course the red) or to see Cristiano Penaldo diving like a third division player. The fu.cki.ng televisions should require to the clubs and players to play more fair and not to do these sh.it things so often. Omiya vs Shonan Marinos vs Gamba Tokyo vs Kawasaki
Emperor's Cup 2016 Final Lineups Kashima Starting: Sogahata; Shoji, Yamamoto, Nishi, Ueda; Nagaki, Shibasaki, Endo, Ogasawara; Doi, Akasaki Bench: Kushibiki, Hwang, Ito, Fabricio, Nakamura, Misao, Suzuki Kawasaki Starting: Jung; Taniguchi, Tasaka, Kurumaya, Eduardo; Noborizato, Oshima, Nakamura, Elsinho; Kobayashi, Okubo Bench: Arai, Itakura, Moriya, Nakano, Miyoshi, Morimoto, Otsuka Kanazaki is ill and out of the squad for Kashima, while Eduardo Neto is suspended for Kawasaki.
World Cup runner-up did the double in Japan this season. What a season for them despite they were great only in the first part of the season.
Congrats to the Antlers, such a tough and resilient team. Glad we went out with heart and playing Kazama football, looking forward to next season.
I'm not sure Kazama would be as effective for a national team without adapting his implementation methods. His Frontale team was horrible the first year, with fans accusing him of using the club as a landing spot for his sons and former players from Tsukuba. As it turned out, it was the other way around, with the "Kazama kids" being used to communicate the vision for his desired playing style and training methods in a season which they essentially wrote off in terms of results. Methodologically speaking, Kazama demonstrated that professional footballers can improve their individual technical abilities immensely through daily, directed practice, contrary to the established notion that skill on the ball is essentially static after graduating from the academy. It seems silly now, but Yoshito Okubo was never really a consistent goalscorer pre-Frontale. This idea of "player development" at the pro level is a pretty important one in the NBA, for example, with coaches dedicated to the function, but seems oddly neglected in the footballing world. Players are left to figure individual issues out on their own - the example of Shinji Okazaki's technical improvement comes to mind. The obvious implication is that the infrequency of national team camps would preclude the same kind of continuity in training. On the other hand, the coach can choose the players he wants for a national team...
Today quarterfinals were played: Cerezo Osaka 2-0 Omiya Ardija. Vissel Kobe 1-1 Kashima Antlers (5-4 after penalties). Kawasaki Frontale 0-1 Kashiwa Reysol. Yokohama Marinos 1-0 Jubilo Iwata. Semi-Finals: Vissel Kobe vs Cerezo Osaka. Yokohama Marinos vs Kashiwa Reysol. With both league's title contenders losing, Kashima lost their chance for a domestic double, while Kawasaki lost their chance of a domestic trouble. Cerezo Osaka is still competing for a domestic double (league cup and Emperor's cup).
Marinos vs Cerezo in the final. Reysol player Cristiano did this after the game: (1:33) The interesting thing from this situation is that Reysol wants to sign the player which was hit by Cristiano, the South Korean defender Park.