2025 Regista Awards: J2 League

The J2 League has given us another incredible year in 2025, and it isn’t over yet – with the play-offs final ready to be played this weekend. Nonetheless, we can definitely put together some pieces from what happened, with Mito HollyHock and V-Varen Nagasaki going up to J1 for the 2026-27 season, while Ehime FC, Renofa Yamaguchi and Roasso Kumamoto will drop to the third division.

To review the season, we assembled a small panel to pick the possible options, then saw the votes coming through polls by our readers and followers:

• @JTalkETJon
• @kanazawadreamin
• @JFootballAnaly1
• @nellosplendor

The J2 League has confirmed its craziness factor with an incredible last round, and with some verdicts that surprised us:

• Vegalta Sendai remain in the second division – after losing the play-offs final in 2024, they missed the post-season completely.
• Kataller Toyama put together, somehow, one of the greatest escapes of all time, avoiding the drop back to J3 in the last minutes of the last game of the season.
• JEF United Chiba and Tokushima Vortis are playing this weekend for the last spot in the 2026-27 J1 League season.

But first, a recap of what’s been happening in 2025 through our Regista Awards.

Best Team | Mito HollyHock (76,9%)

I’ve written so much about Mito and their miracle, but sometimes the size of this achievement can’t escape the readers’ wish and their hearts. I often mentioned how Mito would have been an easy relegation candidate, but boy, I was wrong! HollyHock achieved this incredible promotion, being the ONLY side in the second division with no foreigners, and the fifth-youngest roster.

Mito put together a series of eight consecutive wins (the longest of the season) and a 15-match undefeated run (the second-longest of 2025), which were definitely enough to sprint towards a promotion campaign. The youngest age and the roster composition impeded HollyHock from winning the games in which they were behind (only one out of 11), but kept winning once they were ahead (25 times: 20 wins, 4 draws, only one loss).

That’s something to address for next year, especially in J1.

Flop Team | Hokkaido Consadole Sapporo & Oita Trinita (46,2%)

I guess there are two different cases here. We talked a lot about Hokkaido Consadole Sapporo and what’s going on at the club. GM has been released, Petrovic left, and many historical players were released. Fans were not enough, and Sapporo were dead last on Round 4, and they never ranked higher than 9th. It wasn’t a team built to thrive, let alone chase an immediate return to J1. But there’s something worse somewhere else.

Take Oita Trinita: the return of Tomohiro Katanosaka failed, and now they’re drifting away. They never risked relegation, but they ended up 16th in the table, just one point shy of Roasso Kumamoto (who got relegated). Oita had the worst conversion rate of the whole league between shots and goals, and fielded the fifth-oldest line-up of the season (30,8 years old!). It’s tough to look at some positives here.

MVP & Best Foreign Player | Matheus Jesus, V-Varen Nagasaki (53,8% & ?%)

Just as for Mito HollyHock, it’s very hard to add something that hasn’t been said on these pages around the no. 10 from V-Varen. Matheus Jesus won twice last year – “Best Foreign Player” and “Best Signing”. He retained the former and won a new award – MVP. It wasn’t too hard to achieve that, given that the Brazilian scored 19 goals, was the top scorer, and he’s now fourth all-time in the top scoring charts of the club (42 goals).

Despite V-Varen winning promotion, Matheus Jesus has been the only one from Nagasaki to bring some awards home. It might be because he’s been so good that he’s hard to miss for a fan’s eye, and Nagasaki squandered several chances to close the deal sooner than the last match. After 18 goals last year, Matheus Jesus confirmed to be above the level of J2 – can he do it again in J1? We’ll find out soon.

Best Goalkeeper | Hayate Tanaka, Tokushima Vortis (60%)

That’s not just an award for Tanaka himself, but for Tokushima Vortis as a whole. Since Kosaku Masuda took over as a coach, they’ve become a solid side to face. And Tanaka has been a fundamental part of that, given he’s been one of the just three players to feature in every single minute of this season. In those 38 matches, he kept 19 clean sheets – more than anyone else, both in absolute terms and in percentage compared to the games played.

With only one match left (but what a game: the play-offs final), the 26-year-old keeper is very close to debut in J1. And his growth is closely tied to Masuda, since both Beñat Labaien and Tatsuma Yoshida barely used him in 2023 and 2024, often preferring the flamboyant José Aurelio Suárez. But then Tanaka became the starting keeper in July 2024, Suárez left for Chiba, and Tanaka never left that spot.

MIP | Arata Watanabe, Mito HollyHock (54,5%)

I think it’s the first time that I’m seeing someone within the Regista Awards polls to be nominated in three different categories. Watanabe didn’t win the MVP and the Best Signing categories. Still, he definitely made an impact within Mito HollyHock that wasn’t forecasted when he left Oita Trinita for free 12 months ago. We wrote about it already in an article specifically dedicated to his renaissance back in August.

Best Rookie | Rion Ichihara, RB Omiya Ardija (66,7%)

Technically, Ichihara debuted in 2023, when RB Omiya Ardija was not backed by Red Bull, and the squad had an abysmally poor season that ended with a terrible relegation. Back then, he put together several minutes, but he was mostly a backup – certainly not the status that he’s now, both in Omiya and in general as a prospect. Among the U-20 players, he’s second for minutes played this season.

Rion Ichihara has also been closely followed by the J. League with a vlog, and there’s no doubt he’s one to watch for the future. He’s just 20 years old, he’s already been named captain in the last matches of the season, and he’s also been the skipper of Japan at the recent FIFA U-20 World Cup. The future is on his side, and it’s the job of Red Bull to keep him around as much as possible.

Best Signing | Tomoki Takamine, KV Kortrijk (BEL) » Hokkaido Consadole Sapporo (58,3%)

We have already written about Takamine’s rebirth in Sapporo and his immense ties to Consadole as an organisation; you can read more about it here.

Best Wish | Nelson Ishiwatari, Cerezo Osaka » Iwaki FC (50%)

This pick is a testament to two different phenomena: the solid youth ranks that Cerezo Osaka have, and the way Iwaki FC have developed players in J2 (they’re indeed the youngest roster in J2: 24.0 years old on average). Naoki Kumata, Soichiro Fukaminato, Masato Sasaki, and Sosuke Shibata: they all came from tough times at their clubs, or no pitch time. Instead, they became an important part of the team.

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Iwaki FC had another stellar season and came close to a play-off spot, and the reason lies as well in Nelson Ishiwatari’s performances. The midfielder closed the 2025 season with 29 games and four goals, a way better year than the one he had in Ehime last year. I’m sure Iwaki would be glad to keep him around, but he could be a very nice addition for Cerezo Osaka in the rotation for the 2026-27 season.

Best Goal | Keito Kumashiro, Hokkaido Consadole Sapporo-Roasso Kumamoto, MD12 (66,7%)

That’s a good way to talk about the good of Keito Kumashiro and the terrible ending of Roasso Kumamoto’s season. The story of the young striker as a prodigy is pretty well-known at this point: born and raised in Kumamoto, the 18-year-old forward scored already five goals in just 299 minutes last season. Which was mad… but he improved in 2025, netting eight goals in just 21 matches. Among them there was this masterpiece in Sapporo.

He receives the ball, and his stop is troubling, but somehow Kumashiro makes it a chance to shoot from 30 meters and surprise Sugeno in goal. You can’t come up with a goal like this; you can only think it if you have “it”. Roasso Kumamoto spent just three rounds of the 38 in J2 in the relegation zone, yet they’ll play in J3 next season. You have to wonder if Kumashiro will stick around because he’s from the area or if he’ll move on.

Best Manager | Naoki Mori, Mito HollyHock (78,6%)

It’s incredible how Mori has already let us know that he won’t continue as a head coach, but he’ll rather take over at Mito HollyHock as “Sports CEO”, after all the roles he already had in the club. Daisuke Kimori will take his head coach spot, but there’s no doubt that what Mori has done has been nothing short of biblical – we talked about it here.

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Thank all our panellists for featuring here, we can’t wait to see them again in action in 2025. The Regista Awards for the J3 League are already readable here, while the ones for the top-flight are coming in a week or two. Thanks again for following this yearly appointment!