Match Review: FC Nippon vs Singapore Vikings FC

• GK Takaki NAKAMURA
• DF Yuki Ichikawa
• DF Tomonari Abe
• MD Jaume Ferrer
• MD Seiji TACHIBANA
• MD Kengo Sawada
• MD Enrique Sanchez
• ST Mokchan Kim
• -- Jun Nishiyama
• -- Seito Yachimoto
• -- Shin Kamigochi

• -- Yuta Shimada
• -- Jason CHUA
• -- Shoya MIYASHITA

Seesaw game

Nippon added a few new talents and excitedly started the Friday night game against the Vikings. The initial 10-15 min of the first half was Vikings' pace. As usual, they leveraged their powerful strikers, used many long feeds to short cut the crowd in the midfield. Nippon was forced to stop a couple of great attempts including an accurate shot (which was buried in the net) from a cross from the left side which resulted in an offside. Nippon tried to regain the pace by using some short passes, but due to the high pressure of Vikings, they struggled to breakthrough and instead, had to try many long balls which wasn't most effective. During the first half, the ball went back and forth with a few opportunities on each side, but the great line work was shown from both defense it ended without any goals. The second half was pretty much the same. Although both teams were slightly tired because of the high pressing game in the first half, the weather was cool and nice, so both managed to keep the momentum and kept putting pressure on each other. Therefore, no surprise that the game became relatively simple (i.e. both team used a lot of long feeds from the defense line rather than using short passes). Vikings #14 fired a beaming middle but it hit the cross bar. Nippon was close to score in the last 10 min from a throw in, but the header couldn't catch the target. The last attempt by Vikings was denied by the keeper and the game was set. Scoreless draw. Each team had a chance to win the seesaw game, but they ended up sharing 1 point. MVP of Vikings: #14 who tirelessly feeded effective passes and fired excellent middle range shots, creating a lot of dangerous situations MVP of Nippon: Jun Nishiyama who stopped 2 goals with his belly and so many potential threats

• David Lee GK
• William Johnsen DF
• Tomas Dubsky MD
• Ethan Lim Jun Wen MD
• Mike Hoej Soendergaard MD
• Thomas Domino Andersen MD
• Ales Melechovsky ST
• Joe Wright --
• Frane Sedlar --
• Peter Boe --
• Henrik Birkeland Klok --

• Matthias Berthelsen DF
• Mathias Groenbech --

The only thing missing was the goals.

Fair play to Nippon for putting up a fight to keep the ball out of the net. We played a solid game with plenty of chances hence the ball wouldn't go over the line. Good luck to Nippon for the rest of the season.