How many teams have actually a purpose in the Japanese football ladder? Out of the 60 professional squads, probably some of them are looking for that. You have someone who needs to avoid relegation (whether it’s J1, J2, or J3), you have others aiming at a higher division, and others trying to win something (whether it’s been a long drought or you’re looking for the first-ever).
Azul Claro Numazu have been definitely into this category, especially after a long time spent in the mid-table of the third tier. The newly-instated playoffs and relegations to the JFL put spice into J3 – and Numazu have woken up. And this came from a change in the dugout, with the arrival of a legend for the Prefecture (and the whole Japanese football movement).
Masashi Nakayama has been a key-figure for the J.League, but it wasn’t automatic to think of him as a head coach or a good manager. Maybe people were expecting him to keep playing until his 60s like Kazuyoshi Miura is probably thinking about. Instead, he decided to take a step back and now Azul Claro Numazu are one of the most entertaining team to watch in the whole league.
The 2024 table sees them in the runners-up spot, and it’s hard to imagine they’ll keep this pace until the end of the season… but if there’s a league where miracles are more possible than anywhere else, that’s the J3 League. And when we’ve seen already the likes of SC Sagamihara, Iwate Grulla Morioka, Iwaki FC, and Fujieda MYFC reaching the second tier, is it so out of the blue to imagine Azul Claro at least in the playoffs run?
From Arsenal to (almost) the J2
The history of Azul Claro Numazu is unexpectedly long – since the Numazu Koryo Club (originally Numazu Arsenal) was born in 1977, taking over Azul Claro Numazu in 2006 to have a unique club and the aim of reaching J.League soon. The club climbed the Tokai Football League divisions – winning the second one in 2012 and the first in 2013. They even applied to join the inaugural season of the J3 League, but they were rejected.
And while Grulla Morioka and Renofa Yamaguchi were preferred to them, Azul Claro Numazu kept growing – joining the Japan Football League in 2014. The club gradually improved, reaching fifth in 2015 and third in 2016 (actually second for points, but Ryutsu Keizai University won one of the two stages) – and this meant promotion to the pro-world, where Azul Claro Numazu surprised everyone.
In their rookie campaign in the J3 League, Ken Yoshida and his players have impressed everyone – Takuma Sonoda scored 19 goals, 3,000+ average crowds were seeing the games, and Azul Claro were actually almost promoted (they played runners-up Tochigi in the final game, and they were leading the table, before drawing and coming third). This was followed up by a fourth place in 2018.
Yoshida then was still around until 2019, but then stepped down and left the dugout to Masataka Imai, who just kept the club floating into the mid-table of the third division (12th, 14th, 15th). This while promoting anyway a few players – Ryo Watanabe is now at Cerezo Osaka, Ayumi Niekawa joined then Urawa Red Diamonds, and Junya Takahashi is doing his best with Montedio Yamagata.
Gon with the wind
It’s incredible that – almost for all the steps aiming at the pro-world – Nakayama was there in the history of Azul Claro Numazu. But indeed his legend status doesn’t come just from this adventure, but rather from his whole adventure as a football figure in the Shizuoka Prefecture. He’s born there (but in Fujieda – how ironic…), he played (almost) his whole career there, and he wrote the history of the Japanese football movement.
Masashi “Gon” Nakayama is a class 1967, and he was supposed to be a… defender? When he was playing at the University of Tsukuba, he instead moved to the striker position, under the advice of senior team-mate Kenta Hasegawa. He joined Yamaha Motors in 1990, living also the salarymen life – and when J.League was inaugurated, he received an offer from Shimizu S-Pulse. He refused, wanted to stay at Júbilo Iwata.
A hernia could have pushed him to retirement, but a surgery in Germany put him back on track and, as they say, the rest is history. He scored 247 goals with Júbilo, winning 11 trophies in the process, and building the “golden era” of the club. He scored the first-ever goal of Japan at the FIFA World Cup finals, in 1998 against Jamaica. He was the chairman of the J.League Players Association, and then left the club in 2009.
At the age of 42, he didn’t want to retire. Many clubs wanted to sign him – if not, for his massive popularity. Consadole Sapporo signed him and kept him around for three years, despite his health wasn’t the best. At 45, in his final press conference, he never used the word “retirement”. In 2015, though, he joined Azul Claro Numazu – thanks to an old friend, Masakuni Yamamoto.
The former head coach at Júbilo Iwata – when “Gon” was playing there – back then became the chairman of the board of Azul Claro Numazu. Nakayama signed and will never play an official game for the club, but he’ll stay nevertheless six more seasons in the roster, reaching 53 years old. When he retired, Nakayama was already coaching the U-18 for the last two years.
He then came back to Júbilo to be an assistant coach, also rumoured to take on the job itself. Instead, in January 2023, he debuted as a head coach, but with Azul Claro Numazu – and the first year was positive – yes, they came 13th, but with 51 points, with 48 goals (the best since 2017), and a net goal difference finally not negative (first time since 2018). So why an Azul Claro fan could look at the future with optimism?
Hope in the bay
First of all – stability. We rarely saw a club being this stable, especially when you’re going down the ladder of Japanese football. Azul Claro had just three different managers in 10 years. Yoshida retained his spot as the head coach for five seasons, but Imai stayed two and a half, while Kazuhito Mochizuki was the manager in JFL and then came back to lead the team in 2022 for a few months.
Second in line – attendance. There’s an improvement, since that jumped to 1,981 in 2023 (to make a comparison, it was 3,029 back in 2017), despite being in Shizuoka, where you have already Júbilo, Shimizu S-Pulse, and Fujieda MYFC. Third but not least – the J2 license. After a long fight with the Club Licensing Board, Azul Claro saw that granted last year.
Then the way the played is very aggressive – and the group is young, minus a few senators. And if some have stayed there for a long time – like Kazuki Someya and captain Tatsuya Sugai – others are well known faces in J.League-sphere and joined the club in the years. From recently Manabu Saito to Kengo Kawamata in 2022, reaching Teruyoshi Ito – who’s turning 50 years old in August, and still plays for the club (last match in October ‘22).
If you complete everything with the growth of players like Takumi Hama, Kotaro Tokunaga, Tatsuya Anzai, Yuma Mori, Kyota Mochii, and the arrivals of youngsters like Hagumi Wada (a Mitsuhira-esque character, seven goals in 10 J3 games in 2024) and Takumi Tsukui (who joined permanently from Marinos after a year on loan), Azul Claro Numazu can finally look with a positive outlook at the future.
J. League Regista 