Petrovic impressing in Sapporo

Consadole Sapporo have been one of the surprise packages in J1 so far this season, with Mihailo Petrovic showing once again that he knows exactly how to get a team working as a unit… (日本語版はこちら)

Sanfrecce Hiroshima are clearly the surprise package of the J1 season as we head into the World Cup break, and the turnaround Hiroshi Jokuku has brought about in last season’s 15th-placed side to leave them nine points clear at the top of the table has been remarkable.

He is not the only experienced manager to have made an instant impression at his new club, with Kenta Hasegawa also slipping straight into his groove at FC Tokyo and ensuring they are the side closest to the Purple Archers after 15 games.

The work of Mihailo Petrovic at Hokkaido Consadole Sapporo is equally impressive though, and the 60-year-old has not wasted any time instilling his possession-based football in a team that was sitting 15th on just 12 points after 15 games of the 2017 season.

Shuhei Yomoda ultimately steered the club comfortably to their joint-best finish of 11th last term, and he seemed a little harshly treated when Consadole decided to replace him with Petrovic ahead of the 2018 campaign.

With Yomoda kept on as head coach alongside Petrovic, however, the team have gone from strength to strength this year, and despite a 4-0 humbling away to Kobe last weekend – their first defeat in 12 games, and one suffered with nine men after the sendings-off to Kim Min-tae and Hiroki Miyazawa – they sit fifth in the standings, level on 26 points with Cerezo Osaka and just one behind reigning champions and third-placed Kawasaki Frontale.

The players know there’s still a long way to go though, and talismanic striker Jay Bothroyd made it clear after the 0-0 draw away to Tokyo on 13 May that the team have no intention of resting on their laurels.

“I think there’s still another level we can play at,” the Englishman said after making his return from a two-month injury lay-off.

“I don’t like to get too carried away, it’s only 13 or 14 games so there’s another 20 games left and this is not the business part of the season – the back end is, the middle is – and that’s when we need to be in this kind of form.”

The 36-year-old was quick to acknowledge the impact Petrovic has had in building on last year’s success, but was keen to stress that the team’s improvement actually started at the end of the previous season.

“Of course he’s brought in a different mentality – we’ve got a different strategy, a different style of play. But I know at the back end of (2017), the last 13 games we won 10, drew one, lost two [actually won seven, drew three, lost three].

“We know we’re a good team, but this year Misha’s got us playing out from the back, attacking football, and I think it’s improved players individually. Last year we were more direct whereas this year we’re building up well, making chances, doing link-up play.”

A key reason that modified approach is working so well is the continued improvement of Chanathip Songkrasin, with the 24-year-old going from strength to strength after arriving in Sapporo at the same time as Bothroyd last summer.

“Last year we played on the counter from defence, whereas this year we don’t only play defensively but also in an attacking style by building passes,” the Thailand star said after the Tokyo game. “You could possibly say there’s more of an attacking ‘switch’.

“In the first year maybe my teammates didn’t expect quite so much of me, but this year there’s increased trust and I get more of the ball, and I think I’ve been able to do reasonably well in terms of making chances.”

As well as that the diminutive playmaker has also found the net three times, although he insists that’s an area he wants to improve further upon.

“I think my weak point is still scoring goals,” Songkrasin, who suggested he would be keen to make his loan from Muangthong United permanent next year, added. “From now on I want to work hard in order to contribute more goals.”

As always in a Petrovic side, however, the results are ultimately a team effort, with every player fulfilling an important role and seeming to relish carrying it out for their manager.

The Serbian has always been a popular figure amongst those who play under him, and it is hard to find any who have a bad word to say about the man who lay the foundations for Sanfrecce’s success and then delivered Urawa Reds’ first piece of silverware for nine years.

Yoshiaki Komai, who also played under Petrovic in Saitama, has four assists to his name since joining him in Hokkaido, for instance, while Koji Miyoshi has three, as does Akito Fukumori – who seems to have been given the ‘Makino’ role as an attack-minded defender, as well as posing a real threat from dead ball situations.

Petrovic once commented while under pressure at Urawa that he would never quit, and that if he was fired he would not waver in his philosophy but merely continue playing the kind of football he believed in at another club – laying the foundations and convinced it would reap rewards over time. It is still early days at Sapporo, but the manager shows no signs that he has given up on that aim, and the players under his guidance appear as trusting of his methods as ever.

Pouring forward under Postecoglou

Yokohama F.Marinos have been one of the most assertive sides in J1 this season, and while they haven’t picked up as many points as plaudits things look sure to improve as the players adapt to Ange Postecoglou’s methods… (日本語版はこちら)

They may be hanging around at the wrong end of table in 15^th after last Saturday’s 1-1 draw away to Nagoya Grampus, but Yokohama F.Marinos’ start to 2018 has certainly been eventful.

Whether it’s been seven-goal first-half rollercoasters, 17-pass moves producing goals, or their sweeper-keeper being lobbed from 50 yards, the Nissan Stadium side have provided plenty of entertainment thus far in the 2018 season.

Points-wise they have picked up just 13 from their first 13 games, and uncharacteristically they have the second-worst defence in J1 having conceded 21 times already (they only let in 36 in the whole of the 2017 J1 campaign), but on the flip side the attacking style introduced by Ange Postecoglou has seen them score as many as league-leading Sanfrecce Hiroshima and reigning champions Kawasaki Frontale (17).

“It’s a bit disappointing,” Postecoglou said of his team’s failure to hold on for the win after scoring first against Grampus.

“In the first half I thought we controlled the game, and although we let them back into it a little in the second we had three or four good chances at the end and it’s disappointing we couldn’t take them.”

Placing a focus on the attack epitomises the 52-year-old’s approach to the game, and his early-stage Marinos have certainly lived up to the expectations placed on him to introduce the possession-based, positive style he employed in his previous job in charge of the Australia national team.

While Marinos have only managed to win three games so far opposing players have been full of praise for the way they are playing, with Atsuto Uchida expressing his awe at the way 40-year-old Yuji Nakazawa operated such a high line in Kashima Antlers’ 3-0 loss on 28 April, while another former J1 champion was hugely impressed after his side took on Nakazawa and co. earlier in the season, commenting, “that is football!”.

The always-forward-thinking stance has, of course, played a part in several of the goals the side have conceded so far – most glaringly Taishi Taguchi’s second from distance in Jubilo Iwata’s 3-1 win on 2 May – but at the same time it has led to left back Ryosuke Yamanaka being the team’s biggest assist provider with four.

It always looked like they would need time to adapt to Postecoglou’s particular style, and the manager himself was eager to stress before a ball had been kicked that he would initially need to focus on laying new foundations.

“If you look over the last three years, they’ve really changed the squad tremendously,” he said at the J.League’s pre-season press conference.

“The age demographic has come down considerably – it was a fairly ageing squad and now it’s a fairly young squad – so I think there’s a good foundation there for us to continue to build on.

“We want to be an aggressive, attacking team and to do that you’ve got to be fit and play at a certain tempo, so we’ve concentrated on that in training. That’s the foundation and from that we’ll build and give the players more idea tactically of how we play.”

They certainly haven’t been helped too much in that aim by the heavy schedule in J1 so far this year, and it’s far from surprising that a team getting to grips with such a high pressing style has struggled to produce consistently positive results when playing two games a week every week.

Postecoglou dismissed fatigue as a factor in the defensive errors that produced the hectic 4-4 with Shonan Bellmare on 21 April, but you have to think things will become easier once the schedule calms down a little. After the break for the World Cup there will be a handful more midweek games in July and early August, but the final third of the season will be far less strenuous, and with a full week to recover from and prepare tactically for each game they shouldn’t have any trouble climbing up the table.

First up they have a couple of home games against fellow slow starters Gamba Osaka and J1 new-boys V-Varen Nagasaki to close out the pre-World Cup section of the season, and they’ll want to head into that break in as good a position as possible in order to attack the second half of the campaign in a positive frame of mind.

Postecoglou could, of course, have been heading to Russia himself with the Socceroos. He was adamant ahead of the season that he had no regrets about stepping down before leading his country at a second World Cup, however, and was now fully focused on leading his new team to glory.

“I felt that was the time for me to move on and try a new challenge,” he said. “I didn’t know what that challenge was going to be – as a coach you leap into the unknown and you kind of hope it all works out – and from my perspective it’s worked out really well. I’ve landed in a good place and who’s to say the next four years can’t be better than the last four?”

If he’s given that long then Marinos certainly look like they will have every chance of adding to the A-League and Asian Cup titles already in Postegoglou’s cabinet.