For a long time, Japanese football has been in constant development, but no previous benchmarks. It became harder and harder to judge how much the development was going well since former players weren’t still part of that management level. We waited for a long time for some protagonists to take over (and avoid the Keisuke Honda approach, more flashy than actually ground-breaking).
Although the last passage by Honda wasn’t a positive one, the long wave has finally hit the shore. Players who featured in the 1998 and 2002 FIFA World Cups have mostly retired; you could say the same for the 2006 and 2010 editions. While some of them preferred to find other ways to stay in football (e.g. YouTube) or leave the sport completely, some of them might come in handy in managing Japanese football in the future.
Yoshikazu Nonomura became the first J.League chairman with a past on the pitch exclusively throughout the pro-era. Nonomura, class 1972, played with JEF United Chiba Ichihara and Consadole Sapporo, before becoming the chairman of the latter club in 2013. He took over Mitsuru Murai, and he was applauded for his work as well with the Sapporo-bound club, whom Nonomura took back to J1 in a stable way.
The same will happen soon with Tsuneyasu Miyamoto, who is bound to become the next president of the Japan Football Association. As Nonomura, it’ll be the first time a former player will hold such a seat. This should be official in March 2024, when JFA will ratify his nomination – he ran as well unopposed to succeed Kozo Tashima, 66 years old and ready to leave after eight controversial years.
Why did the JFA need to change?
Let’s start with a simple assumption: prolonged leadership is never good, even when it’s democratically established. No one gets accountable, people start to rely on the one man in command, and not growing up as individuals. Instead, change leadership occasionally shares responsibility and accountability among different people, especially in a collective mentality like the one Japanese society has.
The failed bids for several tournaments – including the 2023 FIFA Women’s World Cup – surely are the epitome of how East Asian football hasn’t been able to secure tournaments to host, but Japan and JFA should have led the process. Instead, besides Tokyo 2020, Japan has rarely hosted tournaments in the last 15 years. Even the FIFA Club World Cup – hosted seven times between 2005 and 2016 – became a playground for the West.
Changing Toshima seems the right move BECAUSE of his involvement with the AFC and the FIFA Council. Despite these positions of power, Toshima has achieved very little for Japan – even running for AFC president seemed impossible. The last relevant tournaments arranged in Japan for national teams were the 2004 AFC U-17 Asian Cup and the 2007 AFC Asian Futsal Cup. The next one will be the 2026 Asian Games in Aichi & Nagoya.
JFA has been a bit weak – especially towards West Asian countries in assigning tournaments and passively resisting both Chinese and Saudi money rises. Despite being the most relevant nation in this sport – both for men’s and women’s football, especially regarding the quality of players – Toshima has done very little to impose Japan even on the continental scene. This MUST change.
Why is Miyamoto the right man?
Born in 1977 in the Osaka Prefecture, Miyamoto rarely left Kansai while being in Japan. He paid attention to his future, continuing to study at Doshisha University (Kyoto) in the Faculty of Economics and finalizing his degree at 24. He speaks good English, and a bit of French (learned from Patrick M’Boma and Claude Dambury), and even took the time to learn some German while playing abroad.
As a player, Miyamoto tied himself mostly to Gamba Osaka. And he did it before Gamba could become the juggernaut we know today. He even flirted with a possible experience abroad already in 2001, when West Ham United wanted to sign him (but he couldn’t get a work permit due to the low number of national team caps). He stayed in Osaka from 1995 to 2006, winning the first J1 title of the club in 2005.
Miyamoto then played for Red Bull Salzburg and came back for a small stint with Vissel Kobe, retiring at 34 years old – Vissel offered him a renewal, but he wasn’t playing at all. Nevertheless, his charisma was well-known also for his stint with the Samurai Blue – captain from 2002 and famous for asking the referee to switch penalty-box in the middle of a penalty shootout in the quarter-finals of the 2004 AFC Asian Cup against Jordan… because the pitch conditions were terrible.
He opted to attend the FIFA Master, the first Japanese player to do so. He became a special “editor-in-chief” for a football magazine, writing some columns in 2013. And aim at getting a coaching spot – which took some years. He re-entered Gamba Osaka, becoming first a youth coach, then taking over the U-23 team in J3 (2017-18), and finally being the head coach for the first team (2018-21), coming as runners-up in 2020.
What we can (and should) expect
Why is it so important? Well, for many reasons. Ageism shouldn’t work on one side or another, but 47-year-old Miyamoto will be the youngest JFA president since WWII. He knows well the JFA – he’s been holding the seat of General Secretary – and he’s big goals in sight. Not only strengthening the national team but also trying to bring back a major competition to Japan (e.g. the 2031 FIFA Women’s World Cup).
Exhibit A – a former Japan national team player, who wore the captain’s armband, can better understand how Japan should evolve. Miyamoto studied a lot, but he can match it with a unique experience. To make a comparison, Toshima played indeed, but for just three years in the JSL (Japan Soccer League) in the early 80s. A completely different world, although Toshima had some courses in West Germany at that time (and Toshima will have another seat to fill, the one as chairman of the EAFF).
Exhibit B – Miyamoto transpired internationality, through the FIFA Master and the experience with Red Bull Salzburg, his curiosity towards foreign languages. Today Japan is one of the countries that struggles the most with even just English – let alone two more languages. For sure, Miyamoto will represent a new tendency for Japanese football.
Exhibit C – Attitude, and you can’t buy that one. Miyamoto has been one of the few to captain every Japan team from the U-15 to the senior squad. Not an easy feat, though Miyamoto achieved, showing his leadership skills, which will be super useful in the evolution of Japanese football.
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