FC Gifu fell to a 0-2 home defeat against Avispa Fukuoka last Sunday evening, by Stuart Smith.

FC Gifu starting XI (back row, from left): Kai, Tsukagawa, Fujitani, De Vries, Sievers, Junior Barros; (front row, from left): Baba, Yanagisawa, Miyamoto, Kawanishi, Takeda

 

 

In the first half it was a fairly even affair, with both teams canceling each other out until Fukuoka forward Yang Dong-hyen bundled in the opening goal from close range. Gifu tried to get back into the game, and Tadashi Takeda almost scored a sensational equalizer, but his 30 meter shot came off the crossbar, and Kenji Baba headed the follow up over.

 

In the second half, Gifu pushed forward more, but Avispa Fukuoka substitute Hisashi Jogo doubled his team’s lead with a breakaway goal, and that was enough to seal the game for the visitors.

 

After the game, manager Makoto Kitano said: I’d like to say thank you to the supporters. We had a lot of attack minded players on the field, but couldn’t score. I think that is down to me, so I need to find a way to blend these players in the right way. Fukuoka set themselves up well against us, and showed us respect. I thought we had the correct players and system, but it didn’t work out that way. I really want to win at home in front of our supporters, I’ll do my best to make it happen next time.

 

After they scored, we needed to calm down a bit and re-focus but I wasn’t able to influence that enough. We’ve been practicing in training on our defensive shape, and we’ve improved a bit. I think the first goal was a bit unfortunate for us, but we have go over what happened and make changes where necessary.”

 

 

Captain Tadashi Takeda commented: “I got the feeling that Fukuoka felt this was an incredibly important game considering that we best them last time – they felt that they could not afford to be beaten by us twice. We used the space fairly well in the first half, but their goal made our game plan a little more difficult to execute. In the second half, we changed the way tried to build up from the back. Last week against Nagasaki we came from behind to win, so of course we had the belief that we could turn it around in this game as well, but their second goal was difficult to recover from.”

 

 

Midfielder Kota Miyamoto said: “The result is everything. We didn’t take our chances when they came, but Fukuoka took theirs. That was the difference today. We understood that this was an important game given where both teams were in the league table. We’ve been doing better recently, so it was disappointing not to be able to put together consecutive wins. We can’t afford to lose in Kanazawa next week, we need to take at least one point from our game. To that end, we need to have a very a clear meeting where we work out the best way to approach the game.”

Gifu’s next game is on Saturday, August 17 when they take on Zweigen Kanazawa in the Hakusan Derby.