The 94th Emperor’s Cup had the first quarter-final matches on Saturday 11 October, where, ahead of other three matches to be held on Wednesday 15, J1’s Nagoya Grampus and Shimizu S-pulse went head to head.

Pick-up Match

Nagoya Grampus (J1)   2-2 (1st 0-0, 2nd 2-2 Extra 1st 0-0, Extra 2nd 0-0, PK 3-5)  Shimizu S-pulse

With one key offensive player missing for both clubs, Nagoya’s Taguchi Yasushi for SAMURAI BLUE Japan national team duties and Shimizu’s Novakovic doing the same for his country Slovenia, it was Shimizu who took the initiative of the match early. After moving around the ball in the midfield, Musaka Mitsunari attacked the right flank in the 14th minute and provided a pass to Omae Genki who fired a shot unguarded. Then in the next minute, Takagi Toshiyuki received a long feed from their own end and took it by himself to try his own shot. But both were off target and failed to open the score sheet. Meanwhile, Nagoya in the 20th minute had Matsuda Riki somehow put a low ball to the goal but judged as off-side. The first half ended 0-0.

In the half time, Oenoki Katsumi, Shimizu’s head coach, provided extra motivation to his players saying “we will go home with a win,” and they started accelerating their offence in the second half. In the 57th minute, Honda Takuya robbed the ball early and passed a throw ball to Ishige Hideki, whose shot was saved by goalkeeper Narazaki Seigo. Shimizu apparently started overwhelming Nagoya’s defence. Then in the 65th, finally Shimizu succeeded in scoring the first goal of the match when Takagi Yoshiaki let the feed from Takagi Toshiyuki in the left flank into the goal. Two minutes later, Takagi Toshiyuki showed a superb sprint for another goal to extend the lead to two.

Nagoya, however, could not just fade away in front of their home crowd. In the 72nd, Honda Yuki ran up the left flank and sent in a low cross, which went untouched until Ogawa Yoshizumi left-footed it to the back of the net. The goal fired up the Nagoya players even more. In the 82nd Tanaka Marcus Túlio flicked the ball onto Nagai Kensuke and he beat the goalkeeper one-on-one for the equaliser. The score remained 2-2 until the time-up and the match went into the 15-minute-a-half extra time. Both clubs showed all they had to play the extra 30 minutes, but the match did not see the winner at the end. In the following penalty-kick shootout, while Shimizu had all five kickers succeed, Yada Asahi, Nagoya’s fourth, failed to make his own to finally give Shimizu the ticket to the semi-finals.

Match detail (Japanese version only)

Head Coaches and Players Comments

NISHINO Akira, Head Coach (Nagoya Grampus)
Shimizu came out more aggressively than we expected. We were looking for counter attacks, but we struggled with the strong pressure they put to our back line. After we tied the match, we couldn’t create chances in our front line. As we didn’t have many options left, we moved our players around. By having Túlio in our offence, we wanted to take risks for more goals, but we couldn’t utilise him as much. It was a positive sign for us to be able to play tough even when they controlled the match well and the match became more like a shooting contest.

Nagai Kensuke (Nagoya Grampus)
We should have attacked better, but we came back from two goals behind and showed our pride. But what we wanted to do was not just showing our offence after being behind. We should have been more offensive even before we allowed a goal. Me personally, I could get involved in our offence by touching the ball more after we changed our formation to two strikers in the second half. From there I could play a role in our offence, so I will keep doing it more and try to get involved in goals. We lost in the Emperor’s Cup, but we still have seven more matches to play in J. League. We will try hard to move up in the table as high as possible.

OENOKI Katsumi, Head Coach (Shimizu S-pulse)
I am happy that our players played hard until the last minute and we got a win. It would have been best if we had held onto the initial lead until the end. It’s a little disappointing that we couldn’t stop their size and quickness. We are four centimetres shorter on average than them, so before the match, as well as being careful of Nagoya’s counter attacks, we wanted to be better in our mobility. Actually, I think we could do that, so if we had finished out our chances with a few more goals it would have been an easier match. We played 120 minutes and it was a tiring match, but this win will boost our confidence. We take this momentum to our tough league matches, and also want to win the rest of two matches in the Emperor’s Cup.

HIRAOKA Yasuhiro (Shimizu S-Pulse)
It was the game we should have won 2-0 and finish the game confidently. But in the second half we built a good offense in the run of play for scoring two goals and most importantly advanced to semi-final. I kicked PK as 5th kicker. It was my first time for PK as professional player. My team mates told me “Just relax” and Nagoya’s player just missed the goal and I was take up the kick rather easily. It was good to score it. It gave us confidence for winning two straight game in official matches and surely give us momentum.  

Quarter-final matches

The 94th Emperor’s Cup

2014/7/5（Sat）〜2014/12/13（Sat）
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