Sagan Tosu have started again their route in Japanese football from a different division for the first time in 14 years. After the relegation from J1 – which was official in October 2024, in their 13th season into the top-flight – it was time for a reboot. And the first game were a bit difficult – two defeats against Vegalta Sendai and Júbilo Iwata -, but we know how Sagan Tosu have been able to find talent either on the market or in their youth ranks.
Just look at the 2025 roster: Daichi Suzuki scored already in J1 and he’s just 18 years old. Fuchi Honda is currently injured, but he took over the no. 10 and he showed already he could be a threat at a higher level. Some of the youngsters who won the Prince Tamakado Cup back in 2022 – Fumiya Kitajima, Yoshiki Narahara, Keisuke Sakaiya – are all in the first team, as well a class 2007 (!) like Shion Shinkawa.
But there’s more – Sagan Tosu have been excellent with keepers. Akihiro Hayashi reached the national team through his performances with Sagan. Shuichi Gonda revitalised a career that seemed dead in 2015. When he left, a young Yohei Takaoka became the starter before joining Yokohama F. Marinos. And last but not least, Park Iru-gyu became a favourite among neutral J.League fans for his sweeper-keeper style of play.
And there’s a man behind this success, who we could even call “The Goalie Whisperer”. He wasn’t meant to be in Japan, but Gilberto Vallesi – the current Head of Goalkeeping at Sagan Tosu – found a new professional trajectory in Japan. We sat down with him to discuss how his story shaped out in the J.League, the work behind the scenes with the goalkeepers, and a small peak at how the 2025 season will be for the club.
Gilberto, first of all thanks for your time. I feel like it’s good to start from your Italian journey and why you took a chance of coming to Japan.
I’d say that happened almost by a random chance. When I was working in Ascoli Piceno, I got contacted by a sporting director who had already an experience within Ascoli – Francesco Marroccu. I got this proposal back in 2017 and I decided to accept it.
We can imagine it wasn’t easy to adjust culturally – in the end, Japan and Italy are very different. Which things impressed you the most about the Japanese society and football world?
It’s definitely a new challenge to accept an abroad experience – I never did it. I don’t want to hide that money played their part as well – I got to earn more than what I was actually earning back in my home country. But then I had a very good time in Japan. In the end, I came for one season and I ended up staying three years.
What’s sure is that the culture is different – but for the kind of person I am, I found a nice overlap for my character. That’s the final feedback: I’m a pretty quiet person and I like tranquillity, so the rhythm here fits me very well.
You were involved with Sagan Tosu between 2017 and 2019, with the club that had three different head coaches – Massimo Ficcadenti, Luis Carreras and two separate stints under Kim Myung-hwi. Those are three very different personalities – did that translate into the approach to day-to-day work?
There were surely some differences, although I worked mostly with the goalkeepers and the academy, but surely there were diverse one from each other. I noticed more of a difference with my second stint at Sagan Tosu, because some of the Japanese players who were playing at Sagan entered the technical staff. So it wasn’t so much a question of having a Japanese head coach or not (for example, Kenta Kawai was a very thoughtful individual).
You came back to Italy after the end of the first stint with Sagan Tosu, then the club came back with a new proposal. Knowing how the first experience went and after a few years spent back in your home country, was it easier or harder to accept Japan a second time?
I had to check with my family. I mean, the environment at Sagan was pretty good – people knew from my first experience in Japan and that’s why they pitched me to come back. I knew I was going to have a good time – I had a good consideration of them when they were playing. The doubt was around my family, also because coming back to Italy right when the COVID-19 pandemic hit made difficult to properly work in my home country.
Some clubs were not doing super well, so that’s why I was also motivated to accept the second stint to Sagan Tosu. If you think about it, I was anyway going to coach in a J1 club – of course I miss my family and we have some arrangements with the club (for example, I can come back twice a year for a period of two weeks). And in the end, I’m not just coaching, but I’m also the academy director and I’m overseeing the technical area.
We have to ask you about a few goalies you coached. Gonda was reborn under him and went back to the national team. Park Iru-gyu became a keeper who should have been considered for the national team (bummer that Moriyasu didn’t consider him for the role). Also Takaoka grew a lot. If you had to spend some words about each of those profiles, what would you say?
They have some resemblances, don’t they? Gonda and Park were surely similar as human beings, while Takaoka was shy and reserved. I had a good time with all three of them, but about Park I’d say his calmness is his strength. Anyway, all three of them wanted to improve, very dedicated to work, and they had also self-training after the regular practice.
About Gonda, I’m very happy for him. He came back to the national team, and he even performed with Shimizu S-Pulse. About Takaoka, he’s having a good experience in the MLS (with the Vancouver Whitecaps) and he won a J1 title with Marinos. He even came to visit me in Italy, and we talk to each other from time to time.
About Gonda’s progress, when I arrived, I knew he had some problems with his trainer – because Shuichi is anyway a strong character. Maybe there were problems in the past and that’s why I got the call in the first place – surely, Ficcadenti was there, but I had never worked with him (it was Marroccu who knew Ficcadenti).
Unfortunately the relegation arrived last year, but how would you rate your second experience with Sagan Tosu? And what do you expect for the club after the return to J2 after such a long time?
It’s not a small pace, because we’re very followed at the stadium – we had 14,000 people watching the last game with the relegation already decided. When Fernando Torres was playing for Sagan Tosu, even 20,000 people were at the stadium. So there’s a nice following and we’re confident they’re gonna push also this year. Of course, the second division will be a different experience.
To be honest, for my job, it doesn’t change that much. I work on the Academy and the project stays like it was thought about. Some first results already came through – for example, we had this 16 years-old keeper coming through in the youth ranks and he was added to the senior team in 2024. That’s a great result and now we hope that others will rise from the youth sector.
Speaking of young players, are there other names you’d like to pitch as the ones to be watched for the 2025 season?
Surely we had a lot of changes and we’re still waiting to see how the starting eleven will be – we just played two friendlies (author’s note – it was the end of January). Some of them will be closely watched – for example, Daichi Suzuki, who debuted already in 2023 in the J.League Cup and then played a few matches last season, even scoring against Machida Zelvia at home.
The nice thing about Japan is that Daichi, in Italy, would play at the Primavera level. He wouldn’t play for the pros, but here, he can actually do that. And that’s amazing for us.
We want to thank Gilberto for his time, Sagan Tosu for their availability, and Alessio Mariani for facilitating this interview (you can read his story as well here). Let’s see what this J2 season will bring to Sagan Tosu!
