October 23rd, 2022 – Niigata. It’s a day of celebration for the home side – Albirex are finally going back to J1 after a long purgatory, and they played a wonderful season. Albirex will win 2-1, courtesy of a double by Shunsuke Mito, one of the many options that an illegal front line could provide. The opponents? Machida Zelvia, who finish the season 13th and were also on a winless run 10 games.
That was the last match also for head coach Ranko Popovic, who’s now coaching Kashima Antlers, but who’s been heavily tied to Zelvia – having managed for four seasons in two different stints. But Zelvia, until then, they were a mid-table J2 club, who sometimes surprised everyone and other times just disappointed. In their eight seasons J2-run, they’ve been both close to promotion and relegation.
Skipping to 2024, who would imagine that the third squad in Tokyo (at least on paper) would have been a title contender, reaching J1 for the first time by winning J2 in a landslide, and even initiating partnership with foreign clubs? Their agreement with Olympique Lyon is just one of the recent steps that Zelvia took to develop their club and make it more marketable.
And now, after 2/3 of the season, J1 might actually see them winning it all. Zelvia have been leading the table for 20 of 27 matches played until now. A dominium that few expected, but that’s been more than justified. Machida Zelvia have a solid team, a great coach(ing staff), and the depth to go all the way. Only time will tell if that’s really a miracle or not, because the foundation for these results have been there.
J.League, anything can happen
Let’s remind ourselves something first: it wouldn’t be the first time a newly-promoted team gets the title. This happened already twice, although those two specific examples looked very different for several reasons. Kashiwa Reysol in 2011 and Gamba Osaka in 2014 – as newly-promoted teams – stormed the table and won the title, both making it in the last match of the season.
Those are two very different occurrences, though. Kashiwa Reysol have maybe done it with a classical “lightning in a bottle” frame: they just got promoted after winning J2, new core with a lot of young players, and famously the 2011 season got disrupted by the terrible Tohoku Earthquake. From there, Kashiwa took the Top 3, and then flew away with the title in the last stint of the season, with nine wins and one draw in the last 11 matches.
And if Kashiwa are not royalty material in the J.League-sphere, Gamba surely are. The Kenta Hasegawa era brought them back from J2 immediately, but the title won by the Osaka-bounded club was way more surprising due to results. After 14 matches and a 3-0 away defeat in Tokyo, Gamba were 16th on the table, but by scoring 48 points in the successive 20 games – despite drawing in Tokushima in the last match – Gamba won it all.
Zelvia definitely looks like something in the middle – team with a smaller history, but there’s a solid economical backing behind the project, brought by CyberAgent – a digital company from Shibuya. Furthermore, Go Kuroda has been an institution for Japanese football (more than Nelsinho was when he actually won it all), and their coaching staff also has Kim Myung-hwi (the architect behind Sagan Tosu’s run in recent years).
From depression to title hopes
Nevertheless, no one expected Machida Zelvia to be here. Sure, the financial backing let them dream about – for example – signing Peter Utaka a couple of years ago. But we’re way ahead to that right now. And it’s a big jump from a decade ago, when they were looming in JFL and J3 League after a first season in J2 – in 2012, that ended with a relegation.
Once they conquered back a spot in J2, Zelvia really had a rollercoaster in terms of performances. On their first season back in the second tier (2016), they missed the play-offs because of goal difference. 16th in 2017, they missed again the play-offs in 2018 (despite coming fourth, but didn’t have a J1 license). Then two bad seasons, 5th in 2021 (but no playoffs that year due to COVID), and then 15th in 2022.
The man to change the trajectory was Go Kuroda, the success wizard for Aomori Yamada High School’s program. He was there from 1994 to 2022, winning three national titles and bringing up players like Gaku Shibasaki and Kuryu Matsuki. There were many doubts around his passage from the high school world to the pro one, but Kuroda dismantled them in the first year coaching the club.
We haven’t talked about it last year, but Zelvia didn’t win J2 last year – they destroyed the competition. And whoever won the J2 with 5 or more points of advantage on the runners-up, rarely struggled in J1 (to have some examples from the last decade: Shonan 2017, Kashiwa 2019, Albirex 2023). And Machida are following the same path in the top-flight. Although last Winter transfer window helped a lot…
Are they for real?
The easy answer is a big fudging “yes”. The 4-0 home win against Jubilo Iwata is another sign of force, but they’re keeping a good rhythm in general. And this was kinda expected after seeing who the club brought in last Winter. Kosei Tani in goal, Gen Shoji, Junya Suzuki and Kotaro Hayashi in defence. Then Kai Shibato, Keiya Sento and Shunta Araki in the midfield; last but not least, Na Sang-ho, Oh Se-jun and Shota Fujio up front.
And if this wasn’t enough to have a proper statement, the club had its own movement also in the Summer. Despite bringing him just last year, Daigo Takahashi left on loan to Oita Trinita. Yu Hirakawa took the English chance and moved to Bristol City before the Olympic Games. Meanwhile, Zelvia brought in one improvement per each department. Even rotation players like Takaya Numata or Jurato Ikeda were let go on loan.
On the arrivals department, Yuki Soma came back from Portugal and immediately signed for them; Ryohei Shirasaki is a useful back-up in the midfield; and last, national team member Yuta Nakayama left Huddersfield to join Zelvia, after having gotten already Daiki Sugioka. This depth is unusual for a newly-promoted team; and if you put also one of the best coaches of Japan and rivals eating each other points in the mix, you can see that Zelvia’s run to the title is possible.
Will they win it? They have surely a solid chance of coming into the last match day with that chance. Neither Kashiwa nor Gamba closed it before the last game, but Zelvia could even seal the deal without sweating. No one is particularly shining, but everyone is giving their best to seal the deal – e.g. no one scored more than 10 goals, but all forwards put in at least one goal in J1.
The calendar shows only two really complicated games: Zelvia are playing away in Hiroshima on Matchday 32 and they have the last game in Ibaraki against Antlers. Surely they’d like to close the title contention before this dangerous away game. And anyway, they’re not fluke – they’re here for the long run.
