S-PULSE 2-2 MATSUMOTO YAMAGA FC
IAI Stadium Nihondaira, Shizuoka

S-PULSE GOALS Taki 43, Kusukami 45+3
YELLOW CARDS
RED CARDS 
ATTENDANCE 4523

LINE UP
GK Nishibe
DF Kamata, Tatsuta, Futami, Mizutani
MF Kawai, Musaka, Iida, Kusukami
FW Taki, Douglas

SUBSTITUTIONS
Kitagawa on for Douglas (71)
Kaneko on for Kusukami (80)
Nishizawa on for Iida (84)

REPORT
A tale of two halves?

S-Pulse attacked from the very first second against a team which had obviously come to rely solely on counters. Shimizu had their chances but Matsumoto took their two first chances in the 21st and 23rd minutes with two soft goals out of nowhere. Nonetheless S-Pulse went back on the attack with resolve and first had a goal disallowed for offside before at last Taki and Kusukami struck in the dying minutes of the first half with two similar fine middle range shots.

The second half was even further dominated against an opponent turned completely negative. At the turn of the 80th minute S-Pulse thought they had finally broken the deadlock with Kitagawa’s goal only to see it disallowed for elbowing.

It was a game played in miserable conditions and S-Pulse courageously fought but could not show anything in the end for all their domination. The positive aspect is that they did not get discouraged and did well to come back from being two-nil down. On the other hand they will have to win their last two games to be able to qualify for the play-offs.

Next game will see a tough home game against Urawa Reds. Let us hope for fine weather and a full stadium!

NEXT GAME
Meiji Yasuda J1 League
Match day 9
Shimizu S-Pulse vs Urawa Red Diamonds
Sunday April 28th, 4pm
IAI Stadium Nihondaira, Shizuoka