A Week of Upsets and High Scores Within the J1- League of Japan

I don't know what it is about this past week's fixtures, but one can't help but be confused as well as a little excited about this 2022 J1-League season. The season has only been in full swing for about three months with so much action and drama experienced in between. I still believe that this past week of football action has everyone shook. As a football agent who constantly has to keep up with the games, teams and monitoring players performances, I am a little confused at some of the results that I got to witness this past week.

To start off, the upset of the week is undoubtedly the game between Shonan Belmare and Kawasaki Frontale. To any Japanese football fan or enthusiast, this should have been an easy game for Kawasaki right? Well, let me be the first to tell you that Belmare weren't prepared to backdown from this fight. It was a home game for them and they showed up with a winners mentality. They annihilated Kawasaki with a 4-0 victory! Imagine that! The current league champions were served a slice of humble pie by the team sitting on the 17th spot on the 2022 log.

I was in disbelief during that whole game. Belmare played like a team who had nothing to lose. It was an excellent display of football. They showed hunger! Games like that always remind us as to why the game of soccer is so special. The fact that a team perceived as having no fighting chance, surprised everyone who watched, by embarrassing the current league champs with no retaliation points. It doesn't get any better than that.

Another notable fixture as a spectacle of the week was the match up between Kashiwa Reysol and Hokkaido Consadole Sapporo. This was a game between number 6 and 10 on the log. One would have expected Reysol to win, but not in the manner that they did. They blew their opponents right out of the park! The game ended with Reysol winning the match 6-1. By the time they had scored the fourth goal, the Consadole fans were dead silent and you could tell that they just couldn't believe what was happening to their team. The Hokkaido side was amazing last season, so to see them being beaten in such a manner, shocked everybody.

From results such as these, it's interesting to see how this season will unfold. Kawasaki has already been dethroned as number 1 on the log. Ibaraki based Kashima Antlers are currently occupying the top spot on the J1-League log. Yokohama F. Marinos, Kashiwa Reysol and Cerezo Osaka aren't too far behind as well. What we can appreciate though, is that all of these teams a playing some entertaining football. they all have this beautiful mixture of foreign talent collaborating well with the local Japanese players, and that is what makes them formidable forces on the pitch.

- Khangelani Zila Mbekela

Sports Agent