Léo Ceará and Yuma Suzuki: Kashima's new power partnership in pursuit of the title
Kashima Antlers target the top with the best strike force in Japan
The J.League’s most prolific champions have faced some new threats to their supremacy in the last ten years.
Kashima Antlers have won the title eight times in all. Unlike Sanfrecce Hiroshima, who’ve also claimed eight Japanese national championships, all of Kashima’s have been in the J.League era.
Their last title was in 2016 and two teams have won back-to-back titles in the intervening years. Both Kawasaki Frontale and current champions Vissel Kobe immediately followed their maiden championships with a second. Frontale did it again to make it four titles in five years. Yokohama F. Marinos claimed titles six and seven in 2019 and 2022.
Kashima haven’t finished in the top two since 2017 and it seems their tolerance for mediocrity has run out.
After the 2024 season ended with a fifth-placed finish, outside the AFC Champions League places despite the Antlers being only three points off second and seven behind champions Vissel Kobe, they added the J.League’s second-highest goalscorer to their ranks and stuck him up front with Japanese football’s most notorious force of personality.
Yuma Suzuki is Kashima to the core and a leader far beyond his 28 years. He joined the Antlers as a junior in 2003 and graduated to the first team set-up a decade ago. Save for a hiatus in Belgium in his early twenties, he’s been there ever since.
Suzuki stands out by design. With a wiry frame, bleached hair and shorts hitched up his thighs like a nappy, he is a player at peace with the spotlight.
He’s played more than 200 league games for the Antlers and the hallmarks that have emerged are easy to love. Suzuki works hard because he wants it all. He’s an individual within a unit, ego channeled for the aims of the team, always.
The Chiba-born striker is a skilled technician and instinctive scorer but friction between Suzuki and long-standing Japan manager Hajime Moriyasu might have put paid to any hopes of an international career. The player's spiky personality is the catalyst for the grit in his game and a true asset for Kashima – his Kashima.
Suzuki was their top scorer in 2024. Only four players in the league scored more than his 15 goals and only three registered more assists. He’s not prolific as much as effective by attrition. Over the course of a season he’s an industrious, consistent performer who offers more than goals but exceeds his expected goals (xG) too.
There was a brief moment in 2024 when nobody at the top of J1 seemed to want the title. Machida Zelvia faltered. Kobe were yet to steel themselves for the surge that triumphed in the end. It was Hiroshima who made a move before falling short but there was, fleetingly, the notion that Kashima might still be in the picture.
It’s easy to wonder whether a more lethal partner for Suzuki could have elevated Kashima to title contenders. Perhaps that was part of the thinking that brought Léo Ceará to Ibaraki in the blockbuster transfer of the winter.
Suzuki’s new strike partner
30-year-old Brazilian centre forward Léo Ceará joined Kashima in January after a stellar second season with Cerezo Osaka. He’s been in Japan on a permanent basis since signing for F. Marinos in 2021 and has scored consistently throughout, winning the title in Yokohama in 2022.
Ceará was the second-highest scorer in the league last season; only he and fellow Brazilian Anderson Lopes scored more than 20 goals in 2024. Ceará racked up 50 shots on target and scored with 21 of them. He was one of only four forwards in J1 to feature in every league game. None played more minutes.
Where his new partner is a streetwise operator with the will of a honey badger, Ceará is all power and polish. He’s a striker and a striker alone, and he’d happily kick through concrete if it put the ball in the net.
Yet Ceará is cultured, no doubt. He’s a fabulous finisher with deftness as well as heft, demonstrably the perfect profile for a centre forward in the modern Japanese game.
So named after the state in which his home city of Fortaleza is situated, Ceará came through the ranks at Vitória in Bahia before loan spells in both Brazil and Japan and his subsequent relocation to Yokohama.
Two years there and two years in Osaka later, the Brazilian turned 30 as a Kashima player and, they hope, one of the last pieces of their puzzle.
Toru Oniki, the mastermind of all four of Kawasaki’s titles but also the manager during their more recent fall from grace, has firepower at his disposal few others in his position can even get close to matching.
Yu and me, we’re in this together now
Even before seeing it in action, there was something intoxicating about the thought of Ceará and Suzuki working in combination. Their styles, their characters – it smells almost too good to be true.
In 2024, Kashima scored 0.65 goals per 90 minutes more than their opponents with Suzuki on the pitch. They scored 1.35 goals per 90 with him than without. He was fouled more than 100 times, a league high by miles, and has a terrific record from the penalty spot.
His new partner didn’t have the same all-round impact for Cerezo but contributes where his work is felt more directly.
Only Anderson Lopes had more shots and more shots on target last season than Ceará, while Suzuki was twice as nice in terms of interceptions and tackles won, defensive measures that the new signing typically delivers against less than his new colleague.
Crucially, Oniki’s front two is made up of last season’s second- and third-highest goal contributors (goals and assists combined) in the whole of J1. Their personalities and playing styles should dovetail well, both on paper and on the evidence of previous J1 seasons.
Kashima have responded superbly to an unexpected defeat at Shonan Bellmare in the first game of the 2025 season, winning their next three matches.
Their first home game was a 4-0 win against Tokyo Verdy and Oniki saw his attacking strategy play out perfectly.
Ceará scored twice. Suzuki added two more, the first from the penalty spot. Kashima laughed in the face of xG and Verdy could do nothing to prevent a heavy defeat against a clinical performance from the opposition’s fresh front two.
Suzuki scored another penalty against FC Tokyo a week later to help his team to nine points from a possible nine at home so far this season.
Kashima’s title dreams depend on their strikers
Ceará hasn’t quite hit top speed in an Antlers shirt but there’s a long season ahead and hopes in Kashima remain high.
The Brazilian has set his sights on the title and offering no resistance to Suzuki’s role as penalty taker is a positive early sign that the pairing, full of smiles together early in the campaign, can continue to be among the league’s best.
“It feels like a big club and gives off the impression of a champion,” Ceará told J.League’s media team. “[The target is] to win titles in every league and tournament we participate in.”
After four matches of the 2025 season, four J1 teams are unbeaten. Shonan, Kashiwa Reysol and promoted Shimizu S-Pulse would be surprise contenders but Sanfrecce Hiroshima’s start is a statement of intent.
After signing last season’s third-highest scorer, Ryo Germain – yet another Brazilian – from relegated Júbilo Iwata, they were able to extract the considerable talents and significant stroppiness of Valère Germain from his contract at Macarthur in Australia’s A-League.
Having lost Yuki Ohashi to Blackburn Rovers in the middle of last season, Sanfrecce have bolstered their attacking options which also include Sota Nakamura, a 22-year-old wide forward who’s impressed in flashes in the early part of 2025.
Oniki wants a fifth J.League title and Kashima have backed their new manager to go and get it. Having a deadly duo up front will be the key if the former Frontale boss can reclaim his crown.
In Suzuki and Ceará he has a strike force who’ve scored a ton of goals between them and have both won J1 before. They’re capable. They’re exciting. They’re fun to watch. They should work as a partnership – firecracker and finisher in tandem.
Kashima Antlers aren’t the favourites to win the title. Sanfrecce and Vissel Kobe are at rather shorter odds and not without reason. But the Antlers aren’t an outside bet either, and they couldn’t have made a much more suitable acquisition to enhance their chances.
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