Pick Up Match

Montedio Yamagata (J2) 1-0 (1st 0-0, 2nd 1-0) Giravanz Kitakyushu (J2)

The 94th Emperor’s Cup had the rest of three quarterfinal matches on Wednesday 15 October, and Montedio Yamagata won the J2 contest 1-0 against Giravanz Kitakyushu with forward Kawanishi Shota’s goal to claim the semi-final spot for the first time in their history.
As the win of this match would bring the first ever semi-final ticket to them, both teams worked hard not to get behind. The match remained scoreless until the interval, and the team who caught the offensive pace in the second half was Yamagata.

In the 61st minute, as Yamagata were aiming for the final four for the second time since the 90th Cup in 2010, midfielder Kim Byeom Yong, who was showing aggressive moves on the left flank since the first half, cut into the middle of the box and fired a middle-distance shot. Six minutes later, defender Ishii Shigenori threatened the opponents by his own shot, followed by Kim’s in the 68th, Kawanishi’s in the 72nd and forward Diego’s in the 74th.
In the 79th minute, after midfielder Ito Shun’s lay-off from Miyasaka Masaki’s pass on the right fell to Kawanishi, Kawanishi then cut inside to fire a left-footed shot and stabbed it into the left corner of the opposing net. “I had no doubt it went into the net at the moment I took the shot,” said Kawanishi after the match.

Yamagata enhanced their momentum after taking the 1-0 lead and kept it afterwards. In the additional time, Miyasaka struck a middle-ranged shot but failed to extend their lead as it was denied by the opposing goalkeeper.

Giravanz, who have kept their form sitting fourth in the J2 table, aimed at the first semi-final berth as another Kitakyushu team since Shinnihon Seitetsu achieved the feat in the 64th Cup in 1984. Despite struggling with Yamagata’s solid defence, defender Watanabe Masaki in the 25th and forward Hara Kazuki in the 31st minute launched shots, and forward Ikemoto Tomoki threatened the opposing goal with a right-footed strike in the closing minutes of the first half.

However, as Kitakyushu had their league matches every four days and arrived in Yamagata on Monday to avoid the effect of the typhoon, they appeared to lose their momentum in the second half and allowed the opposition to attack into their own end. Their tenacity seen in the past matches in the third round against J1 Yokohama F. Marinos and in the fourth round against J1 Ventforet Kofu did not emerge in this one, and the match ended without any more come-back effort by Kitakyushu. 

Please see the detail of the match here. 

In other matches, the two-time champions of the 88th (2008) and the 89th (2009), J1 Gamba Osaka recorded a 2-0 win over J1 Omiya Ardija, and Chiba defeated J1 Cerezo Osaka 1-0.
With those results, Yamagata face Chiba at Yanmar Stadium Nagai, Osaka, and Gamba Osaka meet J1 Shimizu S-pulse, who had sealed a semi-final berth, at Ajinomoto Stadium, Tokyo. Either Yamagata or Chiba, who win the next contest, will be the first finalist out of J2 since FC Tokyo clinched the final of the 91st Cup in 2011.

Comments

ISHIZAKI Nobuhiro, Head Coach (Montedio Yamagata)
I’m glad that we could advance to the final four of the Emperor’s Cup for the first time. The Cup takes place along with league matches, so it’s tough for us to switch our mind-set. But I saw players definitely showed their winning spirit. We still had more chances to get goals. We need to create more ideas to break through the opposing defence that sits back, and further improve playing accuracy in order to win the following league matches. In the semi-final match, we face Chiba. Either of the J2 teams, Chiba or us, will get through to the final. We have league matches before that, so the first thing we aim at is to get a spot of the J1 promotion playoff. We try to keep our momentum from today’s win to the upcoming league match.

FW KAWANISHI Shota (Montedio Yamagata)
I’m relieved that we won today. I believed we can get a goal if we play our game. (About the goal), that was the angle that I was trying to take a shot at. I couldn’t find any chance until then, but Ito laid the ball off well to open the space. Advancing to the semi-finals is the boundary that we needed to break someday. As we won the spot, we want to aim for the championship, and hopefully we can make new club history. We still have the league playoff and will work hard to move up more in the both campaigns.

HASHIRATANI Koichi, Head Coach (Giravanz Kitakyushu)
Because we advanced to this spot, we wanted to go to the next for the sake of our fans and Kitakyushu people, but we unfortunately couldn’t do that. I don’t make excuses for the game. This is what we have. Talking about the moment of the lost goal, if we could’ve put more pressure, the shot wouldn’t have gone that way. We could have stopped it. But players didn’t give up attacking to get a goal until the end and did a good job even after the league and the Emperor’s Cup matches continued with only three-day break between matches. This time, we could prove that the Emperor’s Cup final eight and final four are not something that we watch on TV but something that we are capable of playing in. From this point, it gets a lot more difficult. We cannot go up further without any improvement. I hope Yamagata win the next round and advance to the final.

FW IKEMOTO Tomoki (Giravanz Kitakyushu)
It was a very tough match. Most of time we allowed the opposition to dominate the match. Even so, we tried to keep the ball up front to create chances, but actually didn’t have any in the second half. We gave up second balls that made the game tough for us, and I feel we are not good enough in our offence. . It’s a good thing that we could reach here so that many people paid attention to us. It’s important for us to make something out of this exposure in the future. We still have league matches, so we will try to keep putting up good results to make the season good in the end.

Other Results

Wednesday 15 October
Gamba Osaka（Ｊ１）　2‐0（1st 0-0、2nd 2-0）　Omiya Ardija（Ｊ１）
Cerezo Osaka（Ｊ１）　0‐1（1st 0-0、3nd 0-1）　JEF United Chiba（Ｊ２）

Saturday 11 October
Nagoya Grampus（Ｊ１）　2‐2（1st 0-0、2nd 2-2、Extra 1st 0-0、Extra 2nd 0-0、PK3－5）　Shimizu S-Pulse（Ｊ１） 

Semi-Final Matches

The 94th Emperor's Cup

Saturday  July 2014 〜 Saturday 13 December 2014
More Information