SHIMIZU S-PULSE 2-1 KASHIWA REYSOL
IAI Stadium Nihondaira, Shizuoka

S-PULSE GOALS Tese 38, Kitagawa 41
YELLOW CARDS  Futami 26
RED CARDS 
ATTENDANCE 13,100


LINE UP
GK Rokutan
DF Iida, Seok Ho, Freire, Futami
MF Takeuchi, Kawai, Kaneko, Shirasaki
FW Tese, Kitagawa


SUBSTITUTIONS
Duke on for Kitagawa (70)
Ishige on for Kaneko (78)
Matsubara on for Futami (85)


REPORT
The jinx is finally broken!

And the Golden Week made quite a many fan miss an exciting match! But the ones who came had good reasons to linger on in the Stadium in unrestrained celebrations!

Team Manager Jőnsson had to rotate players due to the heavy schedule imposed by the coming World Cup. Freire came back after injury and added steel to the defense. Matsubara, Ishige and Crislan were replaced by Futami, Shirasaki and Tese.

The first half saw an increasing pressure by Reysol but the defense held firm. It then all happened within 3 minutes: in the 38^th minute a hard-won corner kick allowed Kaneko to sweetly find Tese’s head giving no chance to the goalkeeper. In the 40^th minute the midfield tried to be too clever and gave away the ball for Christiano to fire his trademark long range shot which beat a masked Rokutan who was caught on the wrong foot. In the 41^st minute Tese secured a ball from the defense to pass it to Kitagawa who ran past three defenders through the middle to neatly beat the oncoming goalkeeper.

The first 30 minutes of the second half saw S-Pulse throwing everything at Reysol and should had scored the deliverance third goal, especially when Futami headed against the post and Tese fired a point blank shot a few meters from goal into a desperate defender.

The last 15 minutes saw Reysol incessantly assaulting S-Pulse’s goal but intelligent substitutions helped keeping the ship afloat notably with Duke, being increasingly used as a Super Sub, adding his height to the defense, holding the tired midfield secure with his incessant running and still finding time to attack when at least one of his forays should have helped grab the third goal. But all in all had it not been for Goalkeeper Rokutan, undeniably the Man of the Match, who at the very least saved his team three times with desperate lunges the result could have been different!

In the end S-Pulse deserved their long awaited home win and will go to Hiroshima next Wednesday with high hopes!


NEXT LEAGUE GAME
Meiji Yasuda J1 League
Match Day 12
SANFRECCE HIROSHIMA vs SHIMIZU S-PULSE
Wednesday May 2nd, 19:30pm
Edion Stadium Hiroshima, Hiroshima