Ah, the sun is shining, the grass is green, and we've got ourselves a titanic tussle between Kashiwa Reysol and Yokohama F. Marinos. Ladies and gents, this match is just bubbling over with potential.
Bracing the goal for Kashiwa is Kenta Matsumoto who's been making saves like they’re going out of style with a healthy 6.83 rating. Yokohama's own brick wall, William Popp, isn't far behind, sporting a 6.67 rating with 13 saves to his name. Two stellar forces against goals, this will be interesting to see.
Now let's roll out the big guns. Yan Matheus and Élber have been making waves for Yokohama, while Anderson Lopes snuck in a couple of goals. Really doing the team proud, these guys, even if their goal stats have a bit of amnesia.
On the sunny side of Kashiwa, we've got top dogs like Kohei Tezuka and Taiyo Koga, who could probably pass a soccer ball through a doughnut hole. Then we’ve got Diego; zero goals but hey, he did send a shot towards the goal. See, they're not total strangers to the goal, they’ve just been playing hard to get.
We've got some historical baggage here as well. Yokohama handed Kashiwa their lunch twice; a 4 - 0 shellacking last time they met and a 2 - 1 prior to that.
Looking at recent results, both teams seem to have tripped over their shoelaces. Yokohama lost three of their last five games, and Kashiwa has been playing an invisible game of catch with the opposing teams’ keepers, scoring zero in three of their last five.
Ever the joker, regular season record doesn’t tell us a whole lot, does it? Yokohama’s record is a bowl of alphabet soup: 12-5-14, while Kashiwa seems to be playing tic-tac-toe with theirs: 8-11-12.
After taking a magnifying glass to our fine teams, I am leaning towards Yokohama F. Marinos pulling out a win here. Given their head-to-head history and the fact that Yokohama players have managed to sneak in a few more goals recently, the odds are tilting slightly in their favor. It might not look like much on the surface, but sometimes in soccer, it’s the team that blinks least that wins. Don't expect a goal avalanche, it's probably going to be close.
Albert’s Prediction: Yokohama F. Marinos by 1