FC Gifu finished off their home fixtures for 2019 with a 3-1 defeat against Ventforet Kofu, a defeat which confirmed the club’s relegation from J2, by Stuart Smith.

 

Before the game, there were a variety of events to try and keep supporters positive and entertained. The entire “FC Gifu family” were in attendance – Stadium DJ’s Hiramatsu-san & Kuze-san; SKE48’s Ayaka Ota and Ruka Kitano; supporter manager, actress & model Nene Ito; ambassador and singer Shiori Nagao; and performance group Matsuri NINE.

Also, we welcomed Ventforet Kofu mascot Vent-kun to Gifu, and he participated in a penalty shoot out – with a rugby ball!

As for the game itself, it was a very important one for both teams – Gifu needing points in the relegation battle, Kofu needing points for their playoff push.

FC Gifu starting XI: Back (from left): Kentaro Kai, Kou Yanagisawa, Ryan De Vries, Frederic, Masanori Abe, Victor; Front (from left): Kenji Baba, Takefumi Toma, Shohei Mishima, Shota Kawanishi, Tohma Murata

 

In the first half it was fairly even. Tohma Murata & Kenji Baba came close for the hosts, while Masanori Abe cleared a Peter Utaka shot off the line, and Victor made two excellent saves.

 

After half time, Peter Utaka gave Kofu the lead, but Shota Kawanishi pounced on an errant backpass to draw Gifu level. Despite going for the win, Gifu conceded two more goals and Kofu came away with the win – and ensured that Gifu will be playing J3 football in 2020.

 

After the game, Makoto Kitano said: “Because it was the last home game we wanted to give it a go. We put more ball players in the starting lineup, but Kofu were just stronger than us. We’ve got one game left, and we’ll go out and try to win it.

 

Relegation is confirmed now, and I think that there were certain games that we simply had to win, but couldn’t, and that really contributed to our relegation. I do think we improved certain areas during the season, but I don’t think we had the mental strength to overcome our situation. We tried to change a lot of things, and I did feel a sense of unity amongst the players begin to build, but unfortunately the results didn’t follow in such a short time.”

 

Captain Masanori Abe: “I’m the captain and the longest serving player and so I feel very responsible for this. We wanted to give the supporters things to be happy about, but we couldn’t.

 

Throughout the season, when we conceded first in games we found it really tough to put it behind us and move forward. That kind of feeling, plus the fact that we found it difficult to score goals as well, made this a very difficult situation. Personally, I tried my best to lead the team and kept trying to encourage the team. But we couldn’t fix our mistakes despite working on them in training and trying to work through our problems.”

 

 

Gifu born midfielder Shohei Mishima: “We didn’t win enough of our individual battles, and that meant we couldn’t get it together as a team. We have to reflect on what we did and didn’t do.”