There's always been something that bothered me about Yokohama that I never could quite put my finger on. Maybe it's the fact that there wasn't really any backlash for the club when they released Naoki Matsuda. It's not a slight against Marinos fans......they got it. There was some real outrage towards the manager and the club brass. The media and the league kind of played it off. When Matsuda died, it seemed like he never got cut from Marinos......like he just decided that he wanted to help Matsumoto Yamaga and he was really excited that Kazushi Kimura was leading the team to the title. Even though Kimura brought down the hatchet.
Or maybe its the fact that they get the "benefit of the doubt" on the field. From the games I watched, it seemed like the referees had installed the "Shunsuke Bubble" because he is a national treasure. Or the "Nakazawa bubble" because he is a national hero. So I looked at the stats and found that they were the second least adjudicated team in the league while receiving the second most free kicks in the league (second only to Nagoya Grampus.....defending league champs...not defending 8th place team). Compare that to 13th place Omiya who had similar offensive numbers but 156 less free kicks and you have to wonder.....if the roles were reversed, how much better would Yokohama be?
Maybe it's because it seems like Yokohama wastes alot of talent. Kazuma Watanabe was a bright young star for them two years ago. Kimura comes in and benches in favor of the one-dimensional Masashi Oguro. Sounds like a familiar story considering the team had the rights to Yasuhito Endo, Seigo Narazaki and Naohiro Ishikawa and let them go. FC Tokyo should be really excited about watching Andrew Kumagai play for them in 5 years.*
From the Flugels debacle to the absolute gutless collapse of the team after Matsuda's death, it seems like Karmically there should be some real suffering in Yokohama land. But there isn't. every year it seems like the team just flaunts it's disdain for cosmic justice.
Did I mention that their big signing for 2012 was Marquinhos? 36 year old, 7 teams in 9 years Marquinhos? To replace Watanabe?
Did I mention that? I'm not degrading the signing because he is well travelled or aproaching the end of his career....that's fine. He still seems capable of scoring and probably would have been a good signing for them last year instead of Oguro.
No......my problem with him is this. He left Japan. After a huge earthquake and a ton of disaster befell the town that he played for and the town that he had his most success at (Sendai and Kashima), he left a place where he made a ton of money and a team who was trying to solidifying itself as a J1 team, who went out on a limb and signed him after his former coach questioned his desire to play and his professionalism.
He decided it was too much to stay and went home. A very human thing to do and something I don't blame him for.
He left Japan and Sendai. And that's fine and understandable.
Just don't come back.......at least don't come back if you don't plan on playing for Sendai.
Marquinhos at 36 playing for Yokohama a second time? It seems wrong to me. Like you're poking karma in the eye. But what do I know?
The other signings were reasonable for depth, nothing overwhelming but nice pickups for the future. The best of the group is probably U-23 striker Manabu Saito, who comes back from a loan stint in Ehime. Saito had a respectable 14 goals in 36 games and usually was the only threat for the southern squad. A more publicized signing was that of U-23 sideback Yusuke Higa from Ryutsu Keizai University. He probably isn't ready now but will look to push young left back Takashi Kanai out of the starting spot and line up next to Nakazawa.
29 year old career J2 player Seitaro Tomizawa comes in to be an emergency backup at the centerback position. An odd choice for both the player and the team. Another longtime J2 starter, Kosuke Nakamichi comes into challenge for a starting spot in the center of the field. After a good 2010 helped Fukuoka to acheive J1 status, a disastrous 2011 saw Nakamichi leave Fukuoka and head back to Kanagawa. Yuji Rokutan also comes over from Fukuoka to presumably be the third keeper.
Competent but underwhelming X and O man Yasuhiro Higuchi comes in after Kimura was let go because of a failed promise to get the team into the ACL. Higuchi coached Omiya to a 13th place finish in J1 in his only stint in the top flight. He finished in the bottom half of the table in his stints at Montedio Yamagata (8th and 9th out of 13 teams in 2006 and 2007 ) and Yokohama FC (16th out of 18 teams in 2009). Higuchi is fine when things are going as planned, his problem comes when things go wrong. He was very cautious during his time at Omiya and was very averse to playing younger players. That's probably not a good sign for players like Ono, Higa, Saito, and Andrew Kumagai, but great for Marquinhos and Oguro.
I think the team will probably hover around the top again before losing steam and settling in the middle. I'm tempted to say they will fall to the bottom with the core aging another year, but fate (and the officials who remember yesteryear) never seem to let Yokohama stray too far south of mid-table. 2012 prediction? 9th place
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