Go Kuroda and Machida Zelvia take Japan's J1 League by storm
Japan’s league leaders are every bit the surprise package they appear to be
Unfortunately, my profession comes with a requirement to spend an amount of time on LinkedIn that is greater than the ideal, which is none.
As such, I see a fair bit of stuff throughout the week from people who work “in and around” football, as they say in football.
I’ve worked in or near the football industry before and I did so with a degree of pride and excitement. But when I came to move jobs, football didn’t enter my thinking in any regard other than making sure work didn’t impede my ability to be involved in my own time.
Where once I would have moved heaven and earth to work in football, I’m now at a point in my career at which any suggestion that I might enjoy a project because it’s linked to sport, even to football, can be batted away. Away from work, football is my life. During the day I want no part of it.
That the preceding paragraphs popped into my brain when I spotted that someone I respect had done something very cool is significant evidence that head and heart are in agreement on this one.
Presumably, that’s because I like experiencing weird quirks such as…
Go Kuroda and Machida Zelvia take Japan's J1 League by storm
It wasn’t reigning champions Vissel Kobe who sat at the top of Japan’s J1 League table when it reached its first international break of the 2024 season.
It wasn’t Kashima Antlers, the team with more historical top-flight wins and points than anyone else in the country.
It wasn’t five-time champions Yokohama F. Marinos, part of the City Football Group stable, and it wasn’t Kawasaki Frontale, who finally won their first title in 2017 and followed it with three more in the next four years.
No, the leaders of the Japanese first division in March 2024 were Machida Zelvia. Four matches into their debut J1 season, Zelvia were unbeaten along with Sanfrecce Hiroshima, Cerezo Osaka after four matches and Gamba Osaka after three.
Gamba were the only team to have taken points off the newcomers, who held on to a draw in their first top-flight match despite the sending off of Osaka-born Keiya Sento.
Junya Suzuki scored Zelvia’s goal from the penalty spot and has been their most impressive player so far, effectively ever-present at right back and a model of consistency throughout the opening month of the season.
After drawing in Osaka, Zelvia set about making their presence felt and returned three wins from their next three matches. Nagoya Grampus fell first, beaten 1-0 on their own turf thanks to a goal from Shota Fujio. At 22, Cerezo Osaka youth graduate Fujio is a youngster by the standards of the typical Zelvia matchday squad.
Zelvia’s first J1 win at home was a 1-0 triumph over Kashima. The scorer that day was Yu Hirakawa, a relative veteran in the Zelvia set-up despite his modest years. He’s from Kashima, but not that one.
The third consecutive win came against struggling Hokkaido Consadole Sapporo. Fujio scored the opening goal in a 2-1 win at the Sapporo Dome. The second was added in the middle of the second half by Ibrahim Drešević, an international centre back from Sweden who switched to Kosovo in 2019 and has 25 senior caps to his name.
27-year-old Drešević was Zelvia’s big post-promotion signing from Türkiye’s Fatih Karagümrük. Before his stint by the Bosphorus, he played for Heerenveen and Elfsborg. Like Suzuki, Drešević immediately made his defensive mark in a newly minted J1 outfit.
As domestic football returns, Zelvia have every chance of extending their fabulous start. Their next two matches are both at home, first against Sagan Tosu and then against Sanfrecce in a potential collision of unbeaten records.
The season already feels full of promise. Zelvia were promoted as J2 champions in 2023, finishing twelve points clear of Júbilo Iwata, but their table-topping start is unexpected. Their first J1 season follows what was only their eighth consecutive year in the second division.
The only other second-tier season in their history was in 2012, when they were relegated under the management of Ossie Ardiles.
FC Machida started life as a senior football club in 1989. The city of Machida is in the western part of Tokyo, surrounded on three sides by the Kanagawa Prefecture where Kawasaki and Yokohama can also be found. It’s considered Tokyo by some and very much not Tokyo by others.
The history of the club actually dates back to 1977. Since then, it’s developed into a centre of excellence and football school of significant repute. The city is regarded as something of a talent spring as a result.
The ‘Zelvia’ suffix was added in 2009 and the club has inched towards the first division ever since. It hasn’t been plain sailing. In the seven years before finishing first in the J2 League, Zelvia bounced from seventh to sixteenth, to fourth, to eighteenth then nineteenth, up to fifth, down to fifteenth and back up to the top to finally win it.
If that trajectory sounds unusual, consider the path to 2024 walked by the man who took Zelvia to the promised land. Go Kuroda, from Sapporo, has added three top-flight wins to the J2 title within the first month of his first season at the highest level.
Kuroda never played football to any noteworthy level and is in his first role in senior football. He was appointed as Zelvia’s head coach at the age of 53, and took them to promotion in his very first season in the professional game.
His previous job was in high school football. He was appointed in 1994 having completed a sports science degree and he coached the same team until his extraordinary elevation to the second division in 2023 and, subsequently, to J1 just a year later. It’s a quite astonishing journey and one that’s worthy of the attention afforded to it by Zelvia’s flying start.
Remarkably, Kuroda elected to bring a player with him. Zento Uno is now 20 years of age and enduring a delayed start to his career as a first division player because of injury. Two years ago he was playing under Kuroda for Aomori Yamada High School.
Uno’s team-mates include Suzuki, Fujio and Drešević as well as some more signings made ahead of the 2024 season. New club captain Gen Shoji joined from Kashima Antlers in January but has endured a stuttering start at his new club.
Kuroda was able to bring in a couple of essential loan additions but also secured permanent moves for South Korean international attacker Na Sang-ho – formerly and briefly of FC Tokyo – and Paris-born goalkeeper Louis Yamaguchi, who remains some way down the pecking order behind the impressive figure of Kosei Tani, the 23-year-old first choice, and as-yet-unused understudy Koki Fukui.
Zelvia’s top scorer in J2 last season was Erik, a Brazilian forward approaching his 30th birthday. He previously played on loan for F. Marinos while on the books at Palmeiras in 2019. He scored eighteen times in his first season in Machida, firing his team to the title as the league’s second highest scorer, but is watching from the sidelines as he recovers from a serious knee injury.
Sadly, Na joined him with a knee ligament tear of his own just a quarter of a match into the season. Kuroda has started the subsequent games with Fujio in the team along with Se-hun Oh, one of the new loanees immediately thrust into the thick of it with Zelvia’s options thinning out from day one.
Given their past, the background of their head coach, the significant injuries already sustained by important players and other low-level personnel issues that have hampered Kuroda’s planning, Zelvia’s start to the 2024 season has been astounding.
They won’t win the league. Chances are they won’t even be close. They might even be off the top by full time at the Machida GION Stadium against Sanfrecce Hiroshima in their next match. Realistically, it’s all downhill from here. That doesn’t have to be a negative. Zelvia have given themselves a wonderful chance to achieve something special this season.
But a fairytale it ain’t. Since 2018, the club has been owned by CyberAgent, a monolithic digital advertising corporation based in Tokyo with which it now shares a president. Susumu Fujita founded CyberAgent in 1998 and it continues to grow. In 2023, it amassed reported sales of more than £2 billion.
The impact of Fujita and CyberAgent on Machida Zelvia has been demonstrably successful on the pitch but it does nothing for the romance of the story. Still, does that really matter when the team is flying as high as it is?
Whatever happens in Machida from this point forward, Zelvia have reached the first staging post of 2024 as an unbeaten J1 team at the pinnacle of Japanese football with a coach who lacks professional football on his CV. That alone makes it a tale worth following.
But what will really make it a fascinating story is what happens when their fortunes change. Erik’s return mid-season might give them a boost just as much as a first defeat could knock Zelvia right off their axis altogether. Such is the history of the club and Kuroda himself that we have no idea whatsoever how they will respond.
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“I don’t really consider myself to be a ‘ground-hopper’, because I consider the element of box-ticking to be a fundamental part of that lifestyle, and I have no real interest in that. I like going to football grounds that I’ve not visited before.”
Amen, Ian King. I’m frequently and unabashedly critical of groundhoppers. Being involved at a non-league football club, I see the aggressively pointy end of their entitled hobbyism. Unfortunately, my experience of the subculture is pretty unpleasant. But I’d hate for you to think that means I don’t like pottering around a new ground myself.
Salty beef extracts
Tragedy chanting is yet another symptom of a deeply sick society (Unexpected Delirium)
The Nottingham Forest points deduction was never going to be accepted by anyone (Unexpected Delirium)
Voices of Football: Peter Brackley & The Changing Nature of Broadcasting (Unexpected Delirium)
Tourist Rap (The Football Fan)
Tranmere’s Nigel Adkins: ‘I still feel like an 18-year-old on the training ground’ (The Guardian)
The sorry tale of Arsenal’s Emile Smith Rowe (i)
Leicester City are paying the price for trying to join the Big Six (i)
Google DeepMind’s new AI assistant helps elite soccer coaches get even better (Technology Review)
Dessert
Admiral: 50 Years of the Replica Shirt is a new book celebrating the replica football shirt and the company that kicked off a fashion phenomenon. It looks damned pretty to me.
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