Barry writes Urawa Red Diamonds 1-0 S-Pulse
Abe 42
Att 35,877
Line Up
GK Hayashi
DF Yoshida
DF Hiraoka
DF Jong a Pin
DF Lee
MF Muramatsu
MF Brosque (20, 54)
MF Kawai
FW Takahara
FW Omae
FW Takagi
Subs used
Franca on for Takahara (63)
Kobayashi on for Lee (64)
Ito on for Yoshida (85)
Report
While the home team oozed mediocrity throughout, yet another red card crippled any hopes of overturning a goal deficit. Urawa set out their stall by sitting back from the outset and giving us all the possession we wanted while attempting counter attacks. This kind of anti football appears to be our Achilles' heel, and we created very little, whether with eleven or ten men.
Even after Brosque got himself sent of again, Urawa kept it tight, (deep / passive / boring) and we never looked like equalising. The game was effectively in stalemate for long periods. A tactician's wet dream, a casual punter's trigger to reach for the remote. With the home team having taken their chance, and when countering producing more than us, a defeat (a first away in the league there since 2006) was fair.
We drop to third on goal difference after Hiroshima beat Kobe earlier in the day, and Sendai will be going into their game tonight looking to extend their lead at the top to five points. No need to panic, we've won as many as anyone and everyone else save for Sendai (and Tosu!) have either lost three or four. That said, a win next week against Yokohama F. Marinos is essential to get us out of this mini slump and back on track.
Fingers crossed Sendai blow it against midtable Nagoya!
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Evening update. Sendai didn't blow it. They thrashed Nagoya 4-0 and go five popints clear. In the highest scoring game of the day, Kashima smashed Consadole back to J2 (too early to say that? probably not) with a 7-0 walk in the park. Interestingly, all seven goals were scored by different players. Fancy.
I have much to say about my worries about S-Pulse, hopefully I'll write it soon, however writing about soccer in English is a bit hard for me:)
ReplyDeleteSo sincere and realistic comment by Afshin. When we see that how well he sees our problems and says it publicly, I become really optimist about our future!
ReplyDeletehttp://www.afshinghotbi.com/en/article/?q_id=2611
So, from making sense out of google translate, I gather Ono is injured. Barry, do you have any news on this?
ReplyDeleteThank you.
Sorry for the slow reply, something important came up this weekend. All I know is that Ono is injured again and not likely to be back for a few weeks. There's a break now for a month anyway, apart from the Nabisco, so a good time for him to recuperate. :)
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