Pickup Match

Kyoto Tachibana High School　0-4（1st 0-2、2nd 0-2）　Kyoto Sanga F.C. U-18

These two teams have lost three straight matches since the opening of the season and been placed at the bottom of the standings. The captains call each other a “special opponent”. Kyoto Tachibana High School (Kyoto) and Kyoto Sanga F.C. U-18 (Kyoto) battled against each other for the first victory of the season.
Two minutes after the kick-off, Kyoto Tachibana’s Yamamura Ryuhei picked up the ball on the left side and provided a pass into the space behind Kyoto Sanga’s defenders. Iwasaki Yuto rushed there, received the feed and fired a shot. Kyoto Tachibana also created more chances after that by attacking from both sides, but none of them finished with a goal. Hayashi Daiki recalled that stretch of the match afterward, saying “We couldn’t score a goal when we were supposed to score, and we started losing our momentum.” On the other hand, Kyoto Sanga didn’t miss their opportunity, as at the 32nd minute Onishi Yuki received the pass from Okugawa Masaya and scored the first goal for Kyoto Sanga. Three minutes later, Onishi struck again and helped Kyoto Sanga to widen the lead. 

Kyoto Tachibana had a few more chances at the beginning of the second half, but Kyoto Sanga’s GK Tochika Masaaki, DF Asada Syogo and the rest of the defenders didn’t allow Kyoto Tachibana to fire back. Moreover Kyoto Sanga’s tenacious defence let their offence come alive again, same as the first half, and Okugawa at the 68th minute and Monji Kosei in the additional time scored respectively to ensure Kyoto Sanga’s first win of the season. 

Comments from coaches and players

YONEZAWA Kazunari, Head Coach, Kyoto Tachibana High School
Getting balls more in the middle field would have given us more opportunities, but we failed to do it. When they were attacking our goal, we tried to defend as a team. But they fed good passes between our defenders and they were crucial for us. We spent a lot of time defending. Even when we picked up the ball, we didn’t have good transitions, and we started to have less and less attacks. We can’t win in the Inter-High School qualifiers in summer if we play like this now. So we have to improve our plays before we head into the break of the Premier League.

NAKANO Katsuya, Kyoto Tachibana High School
That’s was a complete defeat. Everybody including myself couldn’t play the way we wanted. We couldn’t score when we had to, and that shows in the final result. We allowed the first goal, and that made it worse. We have been losing matches, but we are still doing some of the plays well. We want to keep our head up and stay confident even if the final results haven’t been good for us. We have nothing to lose. We will keep playing our best one match at a time.

KAWAKATSU Hiroyasu, Head Coach, Kyoto Sanga F.C. U-18
Finally we are starting to play as a team. Before we didn’t play well for weeks, and we needed something to spark ourselves. Players are confident and sometime it brings us a good result and sometimes it doesn’t. We wanted to balance that out and worked on it past week. That gave us a good result today. But we still have areas to improve, so we will do that and keep playing the rest of the matches. 

ONISHI Yuki, Kyoto Sanga F.C. U-18
We haven’t won a match so far, and we were at the bottom of the standings. Also we have many friends at Kyoto Tachibana. All those things made us feel like we never wanted to lose this match. It could have made us too excited, but we stayed calm and we made ourselves feel like we were the challengers. That led to the win, I think. It was mentally tough when we kept losing. Now I feel good after the first win. 

Other Results

Higashiyama High School　1-1（1st 0-0、2nd 1-1） Vissel Kobe U-18
Cerezo Osaka U-18　1-2（1st 0-0、2nd 1-2）　Nagoya Grampus U18
Higashi Fukuoka High School　4-0（1st 1-0、2nd 3-0）　Toyama Daiichi High School
Gamba Osaka Youth　1-1（1st 0-0、2nd 1-1）　Sanfrecce Hiroshima F.C Youth

Higashiyama High School (Kyoto) played quite evenly against Vissel Kobe U-18 as they defended well and scored the first goal of the match. They allowed Vissel to tie the match late and barely missed the victory, but acquired one point after finishing it with a draw. Two teams in the upper half of the standings battled against each other, when Cerezo Osaka U-18 (Osaka) met Nagoya Grampus U-18 (Aichi). Ikeniwa Ryoya and Kawasaki Kentaro both scored for Nagoya to win the close match 2-1, which placed Nagoya at the top of the standings. Higashi Fukuoka High School (Fukuoka) took on Toyama Daiichi High School (Toyama) at home and cruised to an easy 4-0 win as Akagi Tsubasa scored a hat trick. Gamba Osaka Youth (Osaka) and Sanfrecce Hiroshima F.C Youth (Hiroshima) both played for a winning streak but finished with a 1-1 draw.