February 19, 2022. Toyota Stadium
Saturday’s Nagoya Grampus game went about as well as a first game of the season could. The home stadium was full of enthusiastic supporters. The roof was closed, and the home team got a dominant win. Most importantly, it provided hope for the rest of the season. But, the opening minutes of the game sure didn't indicate a dominant performance.
Early in the game, Nagoya looked slow, and Kobe looked hungry for a goal. For the first twenty minutes or so, Nagoya defended effectively but had virtually no attack. The announcers speculated that the Grampus players may be a little sluggish because many of them are recovering from an outbreak of the coronavirus.
At about sixteen minutes in, I called that there would be a Nagoya goal from a counter-attack. At 23 minutes, I was almost proven right when Nagoya scored a goal as the result of a tackle in the Kobe side of the field. The goal was finally made by Sho Inagaki after a bit of passing and a blocked shot. It wasn’t a beautiful goal, but it was a hard-fought goal, and greatly satisfying for players and fans alike.
The second goal was satisfying in a completely different way. Not all own goals are created equally, and this one was of the embarrassing kind. The defender, Gotoku Sakai, looking to clear a pass ended up kicking the ball right into the goal as if he were a forward receiving the cross. The look of frustration on his face was genuine and unfortunate, but it was a goal that Grampus fans gladly accepted.
While that was the last goal, the last significant play of the game was a red card, when defender Takahiro Ogihara committed a blatant(though not dangerous) foul to stop a Nagoya scoring chance. From there Nagoya defenced competently for the last 20 minutes and walked away with a comfortable and promising opening victory to the 2022 J-league season.
They showed that they can win on a day when they start off with low energy, and hopefully they have shown that they are a scrappy and opportunistic team that can defend competently and capitalize on chances that the opposition gives them.
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