Gamba Osaka went to Todoroki Stadium looking to delay the inevitable crowning of the champions as Kawasaki Frontale edged ever closer to a championship, and the away team could do nothing about the wave that swept over them, scoring five goals - including three from Gamba Osaka graduate Akihiro Ienaga - and taking the win and the title.
It's not that Gamba were bad, but Frontale were quite brilliant. Effusive and dynamic in attack, Masaaki Higashiguchi in the Gamba goal actually had a fine game and could do nothing about the goals, while making some fine saves to stop the home team scoring more!
The encouraging thing to take out of this for Gamba was the fact that the starting XI included three recent youth graduates from the Under-23 team in Ryu Takao, Yuya Fukuda and Yuki Yamamoto and, despite fighting a losing battle, Gamba manager Tsuneyasu Miyamoto continued to put faith in his youngsters, bringing on Shoji Toyama, Dai Tsukamoto and Shuhei Kawasaki during the game, also.
A scoreline best forgotten as Gamba bring through the youngsters and head for that 2nd place target and onto the Emperor's Cup semi-final draw and the 2021 Asian Champions league!
Team - Higashiguchi, Takao (Toyama, 84), Kim, Shoji, Fukuda (Tsukamoto, 74), Fujiharu, Yajima, Yamamoto (Kawasaki, 69), Kurata (Okuno, 69), Usami (Watanabe, 69), Patric
It's not that Gamba were bad, but Frontale were quite brilliant. Effusive and dynamic in attack, Masaaki Higashiguchi in the Gamba goal actually had a fine game and could do nothing about the goals, while making some fine saves to stop the home team scoring more!
The encouraging thing to take out of this for Gamba was the fact that the starting XI included three recent youth graduates from the Under-23 team in Ryu Takao, Yuya Fukuda and Yuki Yamamoto and, despite fighting a losing battle, Gamba manager Tsuneyasu Miyamoto continued to put faith in his youngsters, bringing on Shoji Toyama, Dai Tsukamoto and Shuhei Kawasaki during the game, also.
A scoreline best forgotten as Gamba bring through the youngsters and head for that 2nd place target and onto the Emperor's Cup semi-final draw and the 2021 Asian Champions league!
Team - Higashiguchi, Takao (Toyama, 84), Kim, Shoji, Fukuda (Tsukamoto, 74), Fujiharu, Yajima, Yamamoto (Kawasaki, 69), Kurata (Okuno, 69), Usami (Watanabe, 69), Patric