Match Report: J1 Round 15: FC Tokyo vs. Shimizu S-Pulse

J.League Division 1 Week #
	First Half 1 – 0Second Half 1 – 1 Final 2 – 1
June 27th 2009, 7PM Kickoff at Kokuritsu Stadium (Shinjuku, Tokyo) Attendance 28,987
GK 20 Shuichi Gonda DF 25 Yuhei Tokunaga DF 4 Bruno Quadros DF 6 Yasuyuki Konno DF 5 Yuto Nagatomo MF 28 Takuji Yonemoto MF 10 Yohei Kajiyama MF 18 Naohiro Ishikawa MF 22 Naotake Hanyu FW 9 Cabore FW 13 Sota Hirayama	Starting Members	GK 29 Kaito Yamamoto DF 25 Daisuke Ichikawa DF 3 Naoaki Aoyama DF 2 Arata Kodama DF 4 Kosuke Ota MF 23 Shinji Okazaki MF 8 Takuma Edamura MF 7 Teruyoshi Ito MF 13 Akihiro Hyodo FW 11 Kazuki Hara FW 18 Frode Johnsen
74′ 40 Tatsuya Suzuki (for Naotake Hanyu) 85′ 33 Kenta Mukuhara (for Cabore) 89′ 24 Shingo Akamine (for Naohiro Ishikawa)	Substitutes	42′ 6 Marcos Paulo (for Takuma Edamura) 73′ 10 Jungo Fujimoto (for Akihiro Hyodo) 83′ 15 Shinji Tsujio (for Daisuke Ichikawa)
7′ Yohei Kajiyama (PK) 62′ Naohiro Ishikawa	Goals	58′ Frode Johnsen
17′ Sota Hirayama 26′ Yohei Kajiyama 42′ Shuichi Gonda 66′ Yasuyuki Konno	Cautions	6′ Akihiro Hyodo
	Ejections

Report

The blue and red express continues to roll up the J.League table as Tokyo played a tough game of soccer against a Shimizu squad that was much improved from that of two weeks ago.

Once again, Tokyo started the game off with an early goal to take the lead and momentum.  This time it came off of a PK that Cabore earned when he was egregiously tackled on the far left side of the Shimizu penalty box.  Kajiyama took the kick and sent it rocketing to the left post past the keeper for an easy 1-0 lead.

After that, as if he felt that he had given FCT an unfair advantage, the referee seemed to favor Shimizu for the rest of the match; S-Pulse took 20 free kicks in the match compared to Tokyo’s 11.  Furthermore, Tokyo recieved no less than 4 yellow cards during the match.  Despite this, Tokyo’s defense did a terrific job of stopping any Shimizu attacks; in partciular Bruno made a terrific tackle late in the first half to stop what appeared to be a dangerous drive.

Tokyo continued to dominate in the second half as well, but Shimizu brought the game back to a deadlock when their goalkeeper fell over while walking the ball out (I’m actually pretty sure that an FCT player bumped into him but I could have been mistaken, causing play to stop and the referee to come over and check on him.  This break in the action allowed Shimizu extra time to move its men down the field, and Johnsen was able to sneak an easy one past Gonda.

Five minutes later, Naohiro Ishikawa took a deflection off Kajiyama of a pass from Hirayama and proceeded to thread the goddamned needle, rocketing a shot that slipped just above the goalkeeper’s outstretched hand and slamed in and under the crossbar for the score.  Nao is now the second-highest scorer in J.League with 8 goals, first among Japanese players.

From then on it was simply taking control of the field and depriving Shimizu of any opportunities to even the score.  While Tokyo missed several opportunities over the course of the game that could have easily made it a 3-1 or even 4-1 game, this was a well-earned victory and if Nagatomo’s postgame speech was any indication, team spirits couldn’t be higher.

Quotes

“I feel like I’m seeing more shooting opportunities than I used to.  In the first half there were some chances, but in the second half the play just opened up and I felt like there were a lot more options.  My game is definitely becoming more interesting lately.” ~ Naohiro Ishikawa

“In the first half we moved the ball around a lot but we weren’t able to move the ball forward as much as I would have liked.  On defense we fell into some dangerous spots a few times but we successfully forced Shimizu to give up the ball.  Overall we were able to get thigns done so all we can do is look at what we need to correct from today’s match.”  ~ Naotake Hanyu

“One of the important points we looked at heading into this season was whether we could break  the kind of zone defense that Shimizu used against us so effectively last year.  Because we scored three points against them in the Nabisco match, the players came into this game with confidence.  I’m happy that 28,000 fans came to help us start our summer counter-attack.” ~ Hiroshi Jofuku