Intro
There are plenty of questions, and even more concerns, for FC Ryukyu heading into the match this week against Matsumoto Yamaga. Sitting just four points off the lead, FC Ryukyu have only won one game in their past five, two in their last eight. Ryukyu are slowly slipping out of contention and need a bounce back win against Yamaga, a team they lost to just a couple of weeks ago in the Emperors Cup. For Yamaga, it is the almost the same as they’ve only managed one win their last eight league games, but that was almost two months ago. If anything, Ryukyu seem ripe for the picking against a side eager to climb out of the relegation battle.
- Weather Forecast & Match Day Info
- Previous Match Highlights
- Team Previews
- FC Ryukyu
- Matsumoto Yamaga F.C.
- Keys to Victory
- Prediction
- Round 20 in J2
- Conclusion
1. Weather Forecast and Match Day Information from FC Ryukyu
This match will be played behind closed doors and it is highly likely, barring a lifting of the state of emergency here in Okinawa, that Ryukyu’s next home game on July 11th will also be played behind closed doors. Weather forecast seems inline with most of the games we play down here.
Click>>> Match Day Info from FC Ryukyu
2. Previous Match Highlights
3. Team Previews
FC Ryukyu: My how the mighty have fallen. Ryukyu were on a torrid pace to open the season, and are still technically in the hunt for promotion, but the season has been derailed by injury and some lackluster performances as of late. Ryukyu are now going to be without Ren Ikeda for 10-12 weeks as he recovers from a fractured hip he suffered against Giravanz Kitakyushu in Round 18 when he went up for a challenge and landed hard on the fall. Add his name to the ever growing list of players who will be sidelined multiple months for FC Ryukyu. Are we the hardest hit team with injuries this season? Maybe not.
Let me just say, I really don’t know where this team is headed. We’ve hoped to elicit a positive response in the face off all this adversity but it comes in fits and spurts and not on a consistent basis. If Ryukyu can win the game this week it will leave them with a 4-3-3 record over their past 10 games compared to 8-1-1 in their opening 10 games. The midseason dip every year is a real thing down here. Part of it can be chalked up to injury, but not at all of it. We saw the same thing happen in 2019, though we weren’t battling for promotion then, which forced Ryukyu into the transfer market for reinforcements. That did result in picking up Koya Kazama and I hope that we can be that lucky if need to go that route this year.
Which once again begs the question; is it finally time to deploy Kazaki Nakagawa? I thought at the start of the season that Ikeda and Kazaki would be pushing each other for playing time in the central attacking midfield role but Ikeda seemed to have won the job outright with Nakagawa only making one appearance for the club this season. Last week we saw Shintaro Shimizu move along side Abe up top in a 4-4-2, and those two looked good up there together despite the lack of goals, so we should expect more of the same this week. Hopefully Ryukyu has worked out the kinks in this new formation with a full week of practice, and if not, will we finally see Nakagawa at least make the bench?
Matsumoto Yamaga FC: I’ll start out with the fact that Yamaga have scored 2 goals in their last 5 league games while conceding 12 in that same span. They lost four games in a row before eking out a 0-0 draw with Omiya Ardija last week. They’ve only scored 4 goals on the road all season, though 3 have come in their last 5 road matches, and have only 1 road win on the year. And they’ve conceded 15 goals both at home and on the road. Those kind of stats would normally make me extremely confident that Ryukyu could walk all over this side, but not anymore.
Matsumoto changed their lineup, and their goal keeper, at least three different times their last five games. After a 3-0 defeat to Tochigi, which could’ve been worse, they changed to a 3-5-2 and swapped out Murayama for Kakoi in net. The result was another three goals conceded to Fagiano Okayama. They kept the same formation, and set of players, for the Zelvia match the following week and that was an unmitigated disaster ending in a 5-1 defeat where Matsumoto had a player sent off early on.
Yamaga opted to switch things up once more against V-Varen Nagasaki with a 3-1-4-2 formation, and by reintroducing Murayama in goal, and looked better than they did the previous three rounds. They conceded an early first half goal but nearly leveled it in both the 85th and 87th minute. Their most recent game at home to Omiya Ardija also saw Yamaga going back to the drawing board and switching up their formation to 3-4-2-1, but this game was nothing more than two sides trading semi-good chances with neither able to secure the knockout blow.
Yamaga have some dangerous players in former Ryukyu man, Shuto Kawai, and forward Kunitomo Suzuki, but they are not a side that regularly threatens the goal. In fact, they’ve been shutout eight times this year. But I said the same thing when Ryukyu played Okayama last round and things didn’t turn out as expected.
4. Keys to Victory for FC Ryukyu
The Scale: 5- An almost certainty it will occur 4-Fairly-Certain it will happen 3-Somewhat Certain it could happen 2-Very Unlikely that it happens 1- Requires a Miracle for it to happen
1. Just score more goals than Matsumoto. Likelihood 3. That’s it. Nothing more.
5. Prediction
Hoping for 1-0 to Ryukyu but I’ve been wrong many times before. Season Record 6-4-9.
6. Round 20 in J2
(5) V-Varen Nagasaki versus (2) Jubilo Iwata headlines the matchups this week with (3) Albirex Niigata hosting (10) FC Mito Hollyhock. This week’s free broadcast on YouTube will feature the league leaders (1) Kyoto Sanga FC hosting one of the hottest teams in J2 right now, (11) Fagiano Okayama, who have knocked off two of the top four teams in the league in consecutive weeks. Click>>> J-League Int’l YouTube Channel.
7. Conclusion
Nothing uplifting or motivating to close this preview out. Just do the job and move on down the road.
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