The third round of the 95th Emperor's Cup All Japan Football Championship will be held on 10th and 14th October.

Of the 12 matches of this round, the match between Shonan Bellmare and Matsumoto Yamaga FC is the only one in which two teams of Meijiyasuda J1 League play against each other. It is Shonan’s first year since they came back to J1 and are working very hard to keep its 9th place so far, even though they haven’t kept a clean sheet and got any wins in their previous 5 matches in the league, and one of their main players ENDO Wataru got injured are some things to consider for them.

However, they do not have a bad against Matsumoto recording 1 win and 1 draw against them in the league, and that makes the team confident to get a good result in the match against them this time.

On the other hand, Matsumoto has just got its third win by beating Shimizu S-Pulse in the 13th Section of the J1 Second Stage. Their annual standing is 16th which means they are in the relegation zone, but they are in a good vein of form with only 1 defeat in their 5 previous league matches.

Another highlight of this match is the coaching; Matsumoto’s SORIMACHI Yasuharu used to lead Shonan from 2009-2011, and Shonan’s current Coach Cho Kwi Jea supported him as an assistant coach during that time.

So far, some of prefectural selected teams have been doing well in this Emperor’s Cup. Fujieda MYFC (Shizuoka), for example, played against the J1 club team Shimizu S-Pulse in the second round. They lost 2 goals in the first 15 minutes, but OISHI Tsugutoshi and EDAMOTO Yuichiro scored goals to equalise. They then scored an additional 2 goals to beat Shimizu 4-2. They are now facing another J1 team Montedio Yamagata for the next match.

Fujieda’s player Edamoto says, aiming at giant-killing for the second time in this year’s competition. “Because we have kept training day by day, we could come up to here. We want to go higher.”

Likewise, FC Machida Zelvia (Tokyo), who plays in J3, has got 2 wins in this competition. They beat Grulla Morioka (Iwate) 3-0 in the first match, and kept a clean sheet in the second match against J1’s Nagoya Grampus winning the game 1-0. In the league competition, they are now in the second place making the most of their consistent defence keeping clean sheets in 5 out of 10 previous matches.

Avispa Fukuoka, on the other hand has come up to the third place in J2, by keeping clean sheets in their 4 recent matches. Only one goal in this match is expected to decide the result. Which team will get the first goal to take the lead of this game?

There are other interesting matches coming up in the next round: Kashima Antlers and Mito Hollyhock are both from Ibaraki prefecture and Vegalta Sendai (J1) and Omiya Ardija (J2) are expected to be exciting. The matches for moving on to the fourth round seem to heat up the competition more than before.

On 11 October, the rest of second round match between Yokohama F・Marinos and MIO Biwako Shiga (Match number【40】) will be held. It was suspended on 6 September due to the poor pitch condition caused by heavy rain.

The second round match of Yokohama F・Marinos and MIO Biwako Shiga of the 95th Emperor’s Cup: Match information (Japanese version only)

The 95th Emperor's Cup All Japan Football Championship

Sat. 29 August 2015 - Fri. 1 January 2016

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