Intro
FC Ryukyu finally defeated Renofa Yamaguchi FC at home for the first time in their history. The game itself was not as nearly as exciting as the result since the weather conditions, and roster selections, really slowed the pace of the match. Despite the 3 points for Ryukyu, they were unable to move up in the table. Though they had a shot to jump at least one spot had Uehara hit that goal in the second half.
Match Day 32 Highlights
Man of the Match
FC Ryukyu GK Dany Carvajal. Dany earns his second man of the match in a row after shutting out Renofa. Dany has been in superb form since Kyoto and made some crucial saves last night to guarantee FC Ryukyu all three points.
Review of the Keys to Victory for FC Ryukyu
1. Speed. Likelihood 4. As mentioned in the intro, this match was slow played and neither Kawai (sub) nor Abe (healthy scratch) could influence the game.
2. Exploit the open space in the Mid Field. Likelihood 4. FC Ryukyu were able to find acres of space to operate in the Renofa half yesterday. The problem was, they did nothing with it as the offense as a whole really stalled.
3. Defend the crosses into the box. Likelihood 2. FC Ryukyu did a decent job of this but Renofa were with out their talisman Iury.
Match Day Prediction
I predicted a goal bonanza so naturally it ended 1-0 with very little offense from either side.
Takeaways from Match Day 32
1. Numerous changes to the starting 11 resulted in very little offense for FC Ryukyu. While Ryukyu registered 8 shots on net, few of them actually troubled the Renofa goalie. For this game, Ryukyu started Ren Ikeda up top with Uehara on the bench, and Abe being left off the roster altogether.
Ren put in a shift but couldn’t find the back of the net with his best chance coming from a header. Ryukyu really should’ve started, or gone to Uehara, sooner than they did and it was even more surprising to see Uehara come on in place of Koizumi, who was our best playmaker on Sunday.
I think the problem was that many of the mid-fielders expected Ren to run into the spaces that Abe normally would have occupied and you could see that with some of the errant passes near the 18-yard box.
2. There seems to be no improvement for Ryukyu on set pieces. You could see many of the outfield players huddling up to discuss who would do what on the set piece but when you cannot get the ball past the first line of defenders, what’s the point?
3. This was probably a good game to get some of our returning players some minutes. Motegi made his first start in quite some time, Tanaka returned to play a full match, and Shinji Ono made his first appearance in over three and a half months. It could be said that the true reward for this game was not just the 3 points, but earning those points without our full compliment of starters.
Match Day 32 in J2
Avispa Fukuoka’s home loss to Matsumto has allowed V-Varen Nagasaki to close the point gap to just 2 with 10 games remaining. Niigata and Kofu both earned wins to at least keep them in the conversation for the promotion race.
Conclusion
Though it wasn’t pretty, it was an important result for FC Ryukyu on Sunday. FC Ryukyu have now achieved double-digit victories this season, 3 shy from their 2019 total of 13, but still need to earn 13 more points over their next 10 games to match the 2019 point total.
FC Ryukyu will face the number 2 and 3 placed team in the table when they head to Fukuoka mid-week before traveling to Nagasaki on the weekend. Any positive result in either match would be nice, with the best chance for points probably coming against Fukuoka. Avispa have only scored 4 goals in the past 6 games with their defense only surrendering 3 goals during that span so we could be facing another low scoring affair on Wednesday.
I’ll see you tomorrow with the Match Day 33 preview.
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