If you look at the whole history of Sanfrecce Hiroshima, you might feel a bit confused. Until 2008 – the year in which they got relegated to J2, but they also won their first trophy ever (the Japanese Super Cup) – you could easily label the club as a mid-table reality with some highlights. Four years after, they lifted their first J1 title and started a dynasty that lasted five years, winning three top-flight titles and much more.
Not just that: they started also delivering players to the national team, some of them went abroad (whether it was Europe or the Middle East), and even when they struggled a bit, they found a way to make themselves relevant. In recent years, with the four years tenure of Micheal Skibbe, Hiroshima went back to the top, winning two J. League Cups, and the 2025 Japanese Super Cup. Furthermore, they reached the Top 4 in each campaign under Skibbe.
But there’s more than that. Take the players they developed in recent years:
- Takumu Kawamura came back from a loan to Ehime FC and became such a force that he moved to FC Salzburg in Austria.
- Satoshi Tanaka was coming out from a disappointing first European experience, grew stronger as a holding midfielder in Hiroshima, and now joined Fortuna Dusseldorf in a second European pursuit.
- Hayao Kawabe rose through Hiroshima youth ranks, ending up in Switzerland and Belgium before inheriting the no. 6 from club legend Toshihiro Aoyama.
- Yuki Ohashi moved at a lightning speed from joining Hiroshima after a few years at Shonan Bellmare to play a role for Blackburn Rovers in the EFL Championship.
And who knows how many from the current squad could actually have a European opportunity. But to do that, you need a developer, someone who’s the right fit to nurture all this talent. And that’s where Bartosch Gaul came in play, joining Sanfrecce as the new head coach once it was clear that Michael Skibbe was going somewhere else (he took over at Vissel Kobe). 38 years old, Gaul has a long history within youth football with multiple Bundesliga clubs.
We sat down virtually with the head coach just before Hiroshima played their fixture in Malaysia against Johor Dahur Ta’zim, in what could have been the first leg of an elimination and now risks to be just as an asterisk on the way the Final Eight of the 2025-26 AFC Champions League. Enjoy!
Mr. Gaul, thank you so much for your time. It’s been a long road for you from being a U17 assistant manager at Schalke 04 until Hiroshima and this new beginning. If you remember those times – starting at S04 – how much has changed for you in the way you experience and live football?
I also tried to think about it… I think it’s the normal human growth process that you learn every time. And I want to learn and to be open-minded – all these years, this was one of my main goals. And I’m sure that it’s also the base at the moment now, especially in a new culture so far away from home.
From when I started, a lot of things changed. For example: Schalke was a great experience of seven years with Norbert Elgert, who’s very experienced in youth football. And you can’t read a book or something like this about it because it’s down to life-experience. Mainz was interesting as well, because I learned a lot about playing philosophy and how a game model could be, but also how important it is to have a model to follow for youth or the academy.
In the end, I spent 14-15 years between two clubs – that was very important for me. And then I had a tough time in Poland, to be honest. Maybe the hardest time in my career in football; it was a very difficult political situation. The surrounding was not so good. Financially, it was very difficult. Many different aspects were very challenging, and it was the first time for me in my career.
This also why I opted to look for a different position in another club, like RB Leipzig, to see a new perspective, reflect on some things about myself and to use the break a little bit. I learned a lot of things, which are very beneficial at the moment here in Japan with Sanfrecce Hiroshima.
Your journey talks about Schalke 04, Mainz 05, Gornik Zagbre and lastly RB Leipzig. I’m very curious about your first approach to Japan, because I know you coached some Japanese players before. Many will remember how Atsuto Uchida moved from Kashima Antlers to Schalke 04, but you coached directly some Japanese players at Mainz 05 II (Kaito Mizuta) and at Gornik (both Kanji Okunuki and Daisuke Yokota). What’s been your vision of Japan in football throughout your journey as a coach before moving to Japan?
It was a very interesting experience in Europe to work with Japanese players, because I think that they’re fantastic from a mental standpoint, because you could work with them. They want to learn, they listen to every advice you give them. Nonetheless, they’re also good on the technical side: Japanese players are really hard-working players, also physically. Technically, they are on a very good level.
I had some solid experience with them in Gornik, for example, because there was no scouting system, to be honest. I told them that we needed to find something because financially we were not in a good situation, and Japan could have been an interesting market for us. Through Lukas Podolski’s network (when he was in Kobe), we found someone. And I was always interested in the Japanese market.
About Hiroshima, I was surprised. I thought about it, and what could be pros and cons for this option… but I was sure that it could be the right way, and also my life values could fit the Japanese way of life. I found a lot of good points to start the journey here in Japan. And I was positively surprised about the structure of the club, the league, and how professional football is here. The stadiums are full, there is a lot of positive energy in the stadiums.
I think Japanese players are actually undervalued: they are too cheap, because they are too good for the level of European football.
I have to ask also about the German line of succession I’m seeing in Hiroshima. I know that there was a friendly between Gornik and Sanfrecce back in a training camp in Turkey in 2023, and back then the coach was Michael Skibbe. Now he left for Vissel Kobe, but I wondered if you had any contacts to get further knowledge about Hiroshima or is he just going to be your opponent soon in one of the matches of this pre-season tournament (a.n. March 27)?
Yeah, we’ll play against each other in the next weeks, but we’re just opponents on the pitch. This will be our first meeting after the contact in Turkey you mentioned. But I never asked him because I didn’t know if he left because of his decision or the club’s – so for me it was more a question of respect. Don’t contact anybody – this was the first point.
The other one was that I wanted to get my own feeling and not to know something from the person who was here, because an opinion is always influenced by personal feelings and so on. I needed to form an opinion free from bias, I’d say.
You told Transfermarkt that of course the cultural factor played a role – Japan gave you a good impression right away. I have the luck of talking with you after a few matches and I wondered if you what you “smelled” in the pre-season has been confirmed by actual games or maybe you discovered something more about Japanese football that you didn’t imagine.
Yeah, as I mentioned before, I was very surprised, especially in pre-season. I knew the Japanese players had a good quality, but I was amazed by the technical quality of the players in small-sided games, and also in technical exercises. For example, in Europe, you tell the players: “Okay, this exercise, we make it for 3-4 minutes”. And then in Japan, after three minutes, they still haven’t lost the ball. Therefore, two minutes were enough (laughs).
But it’s not just about the technical aspects, but also about the professionalism of the club, especially in our communications before I came to Hiroshima. They were perfectly prepared, and I’ve never seen it in Europe, to be honest. I was also in touch with some German clubs (third and second division), plus some first division clubs in Poland, and nobody was so prepared like Sanfrecce. Therefore, it very interesting for me and nice to see what they knew about me.
After the J.League started, it’s a bit different, because some teams play with a technical brand of football, trying to build up the play, but you have also strong teams with solid Brazilian players, especially strikers, and it’s not so easy to defend it every time. My belief is that, if I want to develop players, I have to play with the ball and not just against it.
And then, sure, you have opponents with whom you have to fight on the second ball and stop counter-attacks; that’s also the reality of football, and the league is really tight. You see it every week in the results. But I think it’s an interesting league with high potential players, good quality players. And you see it every time in every transfer period: take how many went to Germany, and how fast they’re adapting to Bundesliga or 2. Bundesliga.
Specifically about Hiroshima, you told Transfermarkt that you learned how changing everything from scratch can be dangerous and I feel that can be applied at what we’re seeing in Hiroshima. 3-4-2-1 is still there, great role by the wing-backs, good scoring ability – which goals do you have for the season, once the “100 Year Vision League” will be out of the way? I’d ask you as well about the AFC Champions League Elite, but I know the match-up against Johor Dahul Ta’zim is just around the corner.
We have a good roster, but the others are strong as well. About the AFC Champions League, we want to reach the next round, because it’s a very nice competition – that’s a solid test for the players, and it helps developing them and the club. Around the “100-Year Vision League”, someone mentioned the chance of not having pressure… but I think in professional football, pressure is good and it should be there. We don’t play just friendly matches; we want to win every match and see how far we could come.
The ”now” timeline is more important than the future; I don’t like to think about where we want to be in May or June. For me, it’s more important to play every match, every situation, because in football, everything can change during a game. I always tell the players: “Let’s not speak about the future. Let’s speak about the moment and the now”. This is my philosophy, since I spent a lot of years in youth football.
I know professional football is about winning, but I told it every club which reached out to me: “If you just want to win a match and it doesn’t matter in which philosophy, and if you don’t want to develop young players, then I’m the wrong coach, to be honest”. Nonetheless, in Hiroshima, it was clear that they want to have the balance. They want to develop players, and sure, they also want to win matches and hopefully win a title. This was a very interesting balance for me.
I’m very interested in the players you’re coaching now. The roster is very good, and I feel there are a couple of names who could have a European future tomorrow (e.g. Akito Suzuki, Keisuke Osako, Yotaro Nakajima, and Shuto Nakano – for example). I know a coach tends not to do this, but is there a player who’s surprising you the most because of his quick development or capability in reading the game quickly?
To be honest, we have a lot of fantastic players, bulks of talent. As you told, for example, I think Nakajima is a very interesting player and with a high potential; that’s not just because of his football skills and understanding, but also because of his special character, I’d say. We also have Shimon Kobayashi: at the moment he’s injured, but he’s also an 18-year-old, and I also like his personality as a young player.
There are also other examples, like Akito Suzuki, who was captain in Shonan, so he’s also in for his personality, besides his football skills. You mentioned Shuto Nakano, but also Shunki Higashi, very interesting players, not just because of football skills, but also due to their physical abilities, and I think we have a lot of youngsters, but also middle-aged players, and we also have some very good older players.
Sometimes, when I speak to the people in Germany and I tell them that our centre-backs are respectively 37 (Tsukasa Shiotani) and 36 years old (Sho Sasaki), they tell me they’re old… but I answer: “Yeah, maybe for Germany, but in Japan they might be five years younger”, because the players are so fit! I’m not sure if they’re younger or not, but they feel like it. It’s a very interesting mix in the team structure, because the senators can also support the young players and so on.
Last question, I promise: the connections between Germany and Japan. There’s a strange situation in there, because German head coaches have been very successful in J1 (many of them won at least one title), but not so many players have been there (just seven in J1, and the one with the most caps is Svend Brodersen, the Kawasaki Frontale goalkeeper).
Two final thoughts about this: a) do you think that similarities between German and Japanese culture have helped maybe the coaches to have a more immediate impact, and do you feel the same? B) would you recommend to some German players to actually try out the J.League as a championship?
Now that I’m here, I know the league more, and it’s interesting for me. Sometimes I think that the people in Europe are thinking: “Oh, if I play a third division in Germany, then it’s not a problem for me to play the J1”. This is the biggest mistake, because the quality is higher and there’s more intensity than people could imagine. I think there are a lot of similar aspects, especially also in the culture, but there are also some big differences.
Cultural overlaps between German and Japanese players? Yeah, maybe the Japanese players are five minutes earlier than the German ones, but there’s a lot of similarities. I could imagine some German players here, but not everybody. And for me, the nationality is not so important in terms of transfers: whether the player comes from Japan, Brazil, USA – whatever, the player has to be first open-minded for this adventure.
He has to be open-minded for the culture, for the league, and so on, because sometimes it is a little bit more specific. In my opinion, if you are not open-minded as a coach or as a player here, then you will lose. Otherwise, you have a good chance, because then you can bond with the players and also to the Japanese staff. And then it’s beneficial for both sides, because it’s not just them learning from us, but we can also learn a lot in terms of experience, structure, and behaviours from them.
We want to thank Bartosch Gaul for granting us this interview – it was a nice talk and it seems that German football will leave again some marks, with Sanfrecce Hiroshima hopeful to lift more trophies and keep developing their talents. Hopefully more interviews like this one will come on JLR!
