[Match Report] J1 Week 29 FC Tokyo 4-0 Kashiwa Reysol

J.League Division 1 Week 29
	First Half 1- 0Second Half 3- 0 Final 4-0
June 7th 2009, 1:04PM Kickoff at Ajinomoto Stadium (Chofu, Tokyo) Attendance 28,235
GK 20 Shuichi Gonda DF 25 Yuhei Tokunaga DF 4 Bruno Quadros DF 6 Yasuyuki Konno DF 33 Kenta Mukuhara MF 28 Takuji Yonemoto MF 10 Yohei Kajiyama MF 18 Naohiro Ishikawa MF 22 Naotake Hanyu FW 24 Shingo Akamine FW 13 Sota Hirayama	Starting Members	GK 33 Takanori Sugeno DF 25 Yusuke Murakami DF 3 Naoya Kondo DF 13 Yuzo Kobayashi DF 7 Hidekazu Otani MF 28 Ryoichi Kurisawa MF 34 Kota Sugiyama MF 37 Masato Yamazaki MF 41 Junya Tanaka FW 15 Minoru Suganuma FW 9 Hideaki Kitajima
71′ 27 Soutan Tanabe (for Ishikawa)76′ 14 Hokuto Nakamura (for Hanyu) 87′ 19 Yohei Otake (for Hirayama)	Substitutes	HT 36 Masato Kudo (for Yamazaki) 59′ 11 Popo (for Tanaka) 71′ 2 Kamata (for Sugiyama)
44′ Akamine 55′ Hanyu 62′ Hirayama 69′ Ishikawa	Goals
	Cautions	40′ Katajima 77′ Kamata
	Ejections

Report

So, let’s take care of the elephant in the room.

Naohiro Ishikawa, currently tied for the league scoring title (15 goals), went down hard in the process of scoring Tokyo’s fourth goal of the game and was immediately removed by stretcher.  There’s a bit of debate as to whether or not he was fouled by the Kashiwa player… I don’t really think it was anything extreme and it’s the kind of play that could have happened to anyone, which is saying a lot given how rough Kashiwa played over the course of the match.

So, here’s what we know:

-Ishikawa was taken from the pitch to the locker room, where they iced his knee and wrapped it.

-According to postgame comments by Kajiyama, Ishikawa was walking (albeit panfully), under his own power, without crutches.  He was taken by ambulance to a hospital for observation and sent home, and is to receive a full exam today (Monday).

-Ishikawa posted to his blog on Saturday night.  “I have no regrets about the play… I hope that the injury is light, but I’ve had a knee injury before so I have a feeling… I hope that feeling is wrong, though.”

-Reports posted to Twitter on Sunday indicate that Ishikawa stopped by Kodaira Ground in order to receive treatment and was walking without crutches or a wheelchair.

-According to Nikkan Sports, Nao said to reporters “I could swear I heard something in my knee when I fell… I immediately got the sense that it won’t be easy to heal quickly, but we’ll see what the doctors say tomorrow.”  Such a sound could be indicative of ligament damage; a torn ACL would require surgery and 6-9 months of recovery, putting Nao’s hopes of playing in the 2010 World Cup at risk.

-Matsu of The Rising Sun predicts, after looking at the injury video, that Nao sustained a hyperextended knee as opposed to ligament damage.  Such an injury would take at least 2-4 weeks of recovery.

The absolute sunshine-and-rainbows optimistic view is that it’s a hyperextension and Nao could possibly come on as a substitute in the Nabisco Cup game.  Worst-case is that he’s out for at least the rest of this season and the first 2-3 months of next season, and he’d need an absolute miracle to play in South Africa.  In any case it’s an absolute tragedy and the team (and supporters) will have to rally together.

Let’s not let this injury take away from the good parts of the match: Tokyo played a physical game and controlled an equally-physical Kashiwa squad.  Akamine, Hanyu, and Hirayama all had great goals (particularly the defying physics that lead to Hanyu’s score).  Hanyu’s total effort was one goal and 3 assists… but yeah, the air was certainly much, much different after Ishikawa was taken off the field.

Here’s the rest of the highlights from the game.