The Pirates of Ibaraki...Verdy 1 - Ehime 2

 Pieces of Eight.!The Pirates Of Ibaraki!

Opening Day at Komazawa yesterday and a glorious day of sunshine unfortunately not matched by what was on the pitch. All the merchandise that was available for the All For Verdy day against Mito was now available for free against Ehime. Free T-shirt, free scarf, free flag for the kids. Good work Verdy! Not so good was the printing on the back.....funny though as if you`re gonna have a spelling mistake you might as well make it a good one in my book.
The game was marked with a minutes silence before kick off in memory of all the victims of the earthquake. I`d like to say it was perfectly observed but to be honest it wasn`t. A bloke behind me was chatting away about his missed lunch and what he was gonna do with his kids for lunch, oblivious to what was going on, his just one of the mish mash of conversations in between the pockets of silence. Pretty disappointing but what can you do?
The game kicked off with Kawakatsu again going with Fukatsu in central defence with Tomisawa as defensive midfield with Kobayashi. Doi was on the bench suggesting he`s close to coming back with Goal Machine on his own up front. The game started with Verdy on the back foot and Ehime doing their best to unsettle the Verdy defence through strikers Josimar and Saito. The front pairing were to prove a real handful for the Verdy backline all day. Iio had just curled an effort wide when Ehime opened the scoring. Captain Tomisawa lost the ball just inside the Verdy half and the ball came to Saito who easily held off at least three Verdy challenges before slotting past Shibasaki in the Verdy goal. 1-0 to Ehime and worse was to come quickly for Verdy. Again an Ehime goal was follow a Verdy chance, Kawano this time firing wide from just outside the Ehime box. In the resulting passage of play Saito burst through the Verdy defense only to be felled by Kota Fukatsu in the box. Debatable penalty, the Ehime forward was probably looking for the call as he was already falling when the contact came.  Fukatsu recieved a yellow card and Josimar made no mistake from the spot beating Shibasaki`s dive to the right.

Crap Pirate

Verdy were to pull one back in the 35th minute through Tsuchiya following Kawano`s free kick from the right. The ball was swung into the six yard box and Tsuchiya was able to slide in to toe poke the ball home just in front of Hagihara in the Ehime goal.
Following this Verdy dominated possession but were unable to seriously test the Ehime keeper. Hiramoto had a free header in the box but could only direct it weakly into the arms of Hagihara. Kawakatsu tried to change things up bringing on Maranhao who was to flop to the ground on more than one occasion all to no effect. In fact it was Ehime who came closest to adding to the goal tally with a shot from Josimar smacking back off the cross bar. The game came to a conclusion with Verdy still pressing but it was one of those games where it seemed that Verdy could play all day and still never break through the Ehime defence.
As I said in one of the previous posts, we lost but I don`t really mind. The weather was good, the beers were cold, my son enjoyed himself, I caught up with some friends. That`ll do me.
Next up it`s Tosu away and then FC Tokyo. Two tough games and zero points if the Boys don`t get going quickly!! Onwards and Upwards the Boys march on!!