This reporter watched Kawasaki Striker's home match against Kashiwa Reysol on Sunday (28th). Although Kawasaki Striker's performance is not satisfactory this season, the atmosphere at home is still first-class. In the end, Kawasaki Striker defeated Kashiwa Reysol 2-0 with the support of more than 20,000 fans, with Yuki Kobayashi and captain Kenpei Noboribetsu scoring a goal each.
It takes about 20 minutes to walk from Musashi Kosugi Station to Kawasaki Striker's home stadium, the Rikkyo Land Arena, and the team held a carnival outside the stadium before the match, where former players such as Kenko Nakamura and Dae-Se Jung showed up to meet with the fans, and because Kashiwa Reysol is located in a city that is only about an hour's drive from Kawasaki, a lot of the visiting fans chose to come in to support the team, which added to the atmosphere of the stadium.
Kawasaki Frontale, who had lost three straight matches in all competitions, were determined to get back on track with a Ka-Wa-Sa-Ki chant. Yuki Kobayashi scored in the penalty area in the 21st minute, but Kashiwa Reysol's fans continued to wave flags and even jumped around in the stands, making their voices as loud as those of the hosts. However, in the first half of stoppage time, Kenpei Denri shot into the net after colliding with his teammates near the top of the penalty area, helping the hosts to finish the first half with a two-goal lead.
After the change of sides, the home team attacked one after another, which made the fans feel happy and cheered. Towards the end of the match, Pellegrino could not break the egg even with the substitution of attacking players such as Jaeger-LeCoultre and Douglas. As the legal time dwindled down, the home fans became more and more excited. Apart from holding up the flags with different players' names and team logos, some people even used the blue illuminated cheering sticks, which made a beautiful scene!
Kashiwa Reysol's supervisor Masaaki Ihara said that the team made a few mistakes in the first half, which made the game difficult for the opposing team and admitted that the team's ability to score goals was not enough, saying that the team will improve in the future: There was a period of time in the second half when the team played very well, but we couldn't put the ball into the net, which showed that the team's ability to score goals was not enough, and we'll try to improve this every day in the coming days. Kobayashi, who started the first match of the season in his first appearance in the league, said that he had to compete with his teammates to participate in the tournament and hoped that he would get more chances to play in the rest of the season.
