In front of 22,000 fans, the Asian Champions League holders, Gamba Osaka, were sent back to west Japan after being thumped 4-0 by a lively Kawasaki Frontale at the Todoroki stadium yesterday. Under blue skies, the team from Osaka will be ruing some half chances in the first half. If they had have taken some of them, the game could have had a quite different outcome. However, the home side got the breakthrough on the stroke of half time with Chog Tese, Frontale’s North Korean striker, finding the net in front of the disappointed away fans.
The second half saw Kawasaki’s players stronger in the tackle and using the width of the pitch to great effect, especially the right side where Juninho (full name, Carlos Alberto Carvalho Dos Anjos Junio!) was causing the Gamba defence all sorts of problems. Deservedly, the Brazilian effectively ended the game with a sweetly taken shot for Kawasaki’s third.
Kawasaki move up to third in J-League, behind Kashima and Nagoya, and with two games to go and only three points behind, Frontale are in with a chance.