J2 League

Match 23

Shimizu S-Pulse 3-2 V-Varen Nagasaki

Saturday July 1st 8:00pm

IAI Stadium Nihondaira (Shizuoka)

S-PULSE GOALS Carlinhos (14), Inui (28), Kitagawa (9o +1)

YELLOW CARDS Nishizawa (12), Inui (9o +7)

RED CARDS

PENALTY KICK

ATTENDANCE 9900

LINE UP

GK Gonda

DF Ibayashi, Suzuki, Kitazume

MF Inui, Shirasaki, Miyamoto, Nishizawa, Nakayama

FW Oh Se-Hun, Carlinhos

SUBSTITUTIONS

Santana on for Oh Se-Hun (62)

Kishimoto on for Nishizawa (62)

Kitagawa on for Carlinhos (62)

Ronaldo on for Miymoto (65)

Takahashi on for Nakayama (70)

REPORT

We got out of a jail of our own making by the skin of our teeth!

A gripping tale of two halves and extra time!

Such an important win but we are going to lose some fans through heart attacks!

We dominated most of the first half and could have even killed the game early enough.

Nagasaki had their chance in the 7h minute after a cross from the right-hand side, our weak point of the day, was met too poorly causing Gonda no trouble.

In the 14th minute Carlinhos opened the score after our side had played around the box before finding a dent in the defense for Carlinhos to exploit with a fine shot from the middle slightly inside the box.

But in the 20th minute the same Carlinhos could not convert a fine move from 4 meter away from the goal when he shot directly at the goal keeper who saved his side all day long when the score could easily have been doubled.

But in the 29th minute a corner kick was headed down to Inui who had no problem to calmly fire from close range.

We should have scored again in the 35th minute when a cross was met only to miss the goal by centimeters.

In an indication of what would happen in the second half, Nagasaki came very close to score in successive instances in the 44th and 45th minute when S-Pulse were only saved by Gonda and some luck.

In the 55th minute a Nagasaki forward almost managed to lob Gonda.

In the 62nd minute a completely flat-footed S-Pulse defense too easily allowed Nagasaki’ s forwards to play around them and score an easy goal with not a single S-Pulse player coming near to the ball.

5 minutes later a cross around our left flank was poorly cleared on no less than 4 consecutive attempts before conceding a silly soft goal.

In the 81st minute Nagasaki’s goal keeper proved his class by palming a way a great shot from15 meters. The next minute he saved again his side from a very close-range attempt by Kitazume.

We were getting really desperate but never gave up and in the first minute of extra time we ran deep into the Nagasaki box only to see Santana’s reflex shot bounce on the bar but Kitagawa had followed and anticipated well to slot in the rebound for a win out of nowhere although on the day we had amply deserved it!

From now on it will be like a Cup Final Game at every match starting from Wednesday in Sendai. We are in for some nail-biting times!

NEXT GAME

J2 League

Match 23

Shimizu S-Pulse vs Vegalta Sendai

Wednesday July 5th 7:00pm

Yurtec Stadium Sendai (Sendai)