Review: Avispa Fukuoka 2-1 Cerezo Osaka (J1 MD2)
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This was the first away game of the season. Cerezo Osaka faced Avispa Fukuoka in Section 2 of the Meiji Yasuda J1 League, aiming for their first win of the season. The starting line-up was changed for two players from the opening game. Satoki Uejo entered one of two FW positions, and Kakeru Funaki was in a left side back.
Cerezo took possession at the beginning. In the 8th minute, Uejo dropped Riki Harakawa"s pass and Hirotaka Tameda took the first shot. In the following, they had a big chance in the 23rd minute. From Ryuya Nishio"s vertical pass as a switch, Tameda became a starting point, and Uejo, who came out for Funaki’s pass, went past the opponent DF and shot with his left foot, but it was blocked by GK Takumi Nagaishi, who used to play in Cerezo. Right after that, another chance came from the left side. Leo Ceara jumped into a cross of Harakawa, who took the back of the left side from Funaki"s pass, but it was cleared by a DF just before the shot.
After that, the build-up gradually stagnated, and the pace of the match shifted to Fukuoka. In the 38th minute, the left side was broken through and they faced a decisive pinch, but the opponent"s shot went off the target and nothing happened. Then, in the 40th minute, Cerezo got a scoring chance. Starting from Tameda, Funaki"s cross was met by Leo Ceara with a header at the end, but it did not swing the net.
In the second half, they wanted to raise the gear even further, including player substitutions, but they conceded a goal right after the start due to a build-up mistake in their own half. For a moment, there was an unpleasant atmosphere, but Cerezo immediately launched a counterattack. In the 53rd minute, Leo Ceara carried a ball by himself and made a powerful shot, and one minute later, Hiroaki Okuno threw a shot that hit the post directly. Keeping the momentum going, they caught up to tie in the 59th minute. Continuing from the opening game, Seiya Maikuma, who had been playing on the right side back as a starter in this match, dribbled into the center and made the last pass to Uejo in the center. Uejo successfully overtook an opponent DF and fired a powerful left-footed shot that pierced the top left corner of the goal.
From here, Cerezo"s attacks became even more active. As in the opening game, after Tokuma Suzuki and Shinji Kagawa were sent in the pitch they dominated the match even in the middle range. In the 77th minute, they connected passes on the right side from Kagawa’s starting point, and in the end Kagawa again reacted to Maikuma’s cross and made a skilful shot from one trap. It was almost a scoring chance but regrettably it was blocked by the good save of GK. After conceding the goal, the defense team managed to endure despite being threatened several times by counterattacks, but conceded another goal in the 88th minute from a cross. As both of manager Akio Kogiku and Kagawa said after the match, “It is a shame that we conceded a goal when we had a good flow”, since they were almost about to reverse the score as a game development, it was a regrettable conceding.
The game was over as it was. It was a match which they aimed for the first victory of the season, but on the contrary, it ended in the result of suffering the first defeat of the season. Including the build-up, a standing position issue was seen a little bit in the first half, but just like the opening game, it is a harvest that they fixed the problem and grasped the flow of the match in the second half. Currently, they are going through the process of “growing pains”, but they will carefully examine the harvests and the issues that they have found from the opening game and this section, to obtain the 3 winning points in the next section.
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