J-League update: why Albirex Niigata were on our radar...........
Feb 28, 2023
I have spoken much across the opening two rounds of the new season in Japan about one team that had come up from the second tier with some eye-catching numbers and the potential to do really well and hit the ground running, writing ahead of Matchday 1........
Albirex Niigata are the newly promoted team who have piqued my interest. They are back in the top flight after five years in the second tier and look to have the game and potential to hit the ground running. Which is appropriate, as they work hard, rotate heavily (more than any team in Japan) game on game and are very possession based and only Manchester City in world football have more touches per game amongst major leagues. The only constant is goalkeeper Ryosuke Kojima who played all 42 league games in 2022, their title winning season. Through which they set, if not two records, then a pair of standout stats, they were 12 points clear of the team in 3rd which is the biggest gap since Shonan Bellmare won with a ridiculous 101 points in 2014 and they finished 9th in their first season at the higher level. Albirex also had a +38 goal difference, only two teams have come close to that in recent years, Reysol in 2019 (7th in JL-1 in 2020) and Shimizu S-Pulse in 2016 (14th in 2017). That trio all bucked the trend of promoted teams largely struggling and two thrived and all three remained in the top flight until SSP were relegated last season, so a good chance that Albirex can have similar joy. They have not made the mistake that a lot of promoted teams make of feeling they are not good enough and having to change what made them successful in the first place to thrive, you don't ! This is true in most leagues and for my Brentford stat of the day, the Bees are 8th in the EPL and the team that drew with Arsenal last weekend featured 10 (9 starters) who were part of the Championship promotion team. If ain't broke don't try to fix it!
I spoke about their opener and how it had played out before their second game .......
Albirex start with back to back road games and after a trip to Osaka to play Cerezo last week, they go out further west to Hiroshima, to play Sanfrecce, who finished third last season, but they sometimes struggle against weaker teams at home and who drew 0-0 as host to Consadole Sapporo last week.
Albirex led, then came from behind to draw 2-2 and there was so much to like about that performance. They had plenty of the ball, as we expected, with 62% possession and "won" attempts, ITB and on target and attempted 718 passes, which was the most by any team in JL-1 last week and by some way and more than double the number that many teams tried. They are a very interesting newcomer and it will be fun to track how far they can go this season.
They won 2-1 at Sanfrecce, led by 2 at the break, by when they had also hit the woodwork twice and whilst the bare stats might suggest they rode their luck, they were happy to sit back and dare Hiroshima to score twice in the second half, so those numbers are misleading.
The whole point of reproducing these notes on here is to highlight just what you can find out with a little hard work and what we are looking for in the daily newsletter, teams to watch, follow, ignore, oppose, those that have potential or may have peaked, basically, anything of interest, especially, if we know it before anyone else!
Good luck!
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