After the Storm

Summer 2020. While the whole world is coping with the first wave of COVID-19 and Japan must reinvent its football schedule to bring home a tough season, three teams are taking the interest of neutrals. Kawasaki Frontale are playing the best season ever; Blaublitz Akita are just annihilating J3 opponents… and in J2 the fight at the top is interesting, but a team is doing better than them.

Giravanz Kitakyushu have just come back from J3, having won the title the year before. At the end of August, the squad has racked up nine consecutive wins. They’re fun to watch, they play offensive football, they’re young… and they’re first at the end of the Summer, after winning away in Ehime. It’ll last four match days before an incredible drop of form will push Giravanz back to fifth place by December (and no play-offs).

Three years later, the reality became different. Giravanz went back to J3 another time, and despite having a decent squad and a solid manager in 2023 (Kazuaki Takasa has been mostly underrated), they suffered a terrible slump. They ended up in last place – just like in 2018, when relegations from J3 were not possible. They flirted with a JFL-J3 play-out, which luckily didn’t happen. 

2024 must be different for them because Giravanz might not be your typical J2 team – the region of Kitakyushu is smaller than Fukuoka and Kyushu is full of teams -, but the stadium, their recent history and the players they often bring to the table demand a different year in this season’s J3.

A “new wave” in Kitakyushu

It’s the first time we’re properly talking of Giravanz on these pages, so it’s better to explain a bit about them. Their adventure started in the Kyushu Soccer League, after inheriting the history of Mitsubishi Chemical SC, who were founded in 1947 and were in the KSL since 1973. When their activities stopped in 1999, the Kitakyushu region felt the need for a new football life, starting “New Wave Kitakyushu FC”.

In parallel with their promotion from JFL – which happened in 2009 -, the club took suggestions for a new club name and “Giravanz” won, a mixture of the Italian words “Girasole” (“sunflower”, the flower of the region) and “avanzare” (“going forward”). And their impact with pro football was shocking – still today, Giravanz still hold the record for the worst season in J2, scoring just one win out of 36 games (a home 1-0 win against Tokyo Verdy).

Nevertheless, they then find some stable ground. Eighth in 2011, then ninth in 2012, and even fifth in 2014 – when they couldn’t participate in the playoffs because they were lacking a J1 license. The seventh place of 2015 was the last good result, because then the squad was bottom in 2016, only one point behind newly-promoted Zweigen Kanazawa. And while Kanazawa won the play-outs against Tochigi SC, Giravanz had to endure the relegation.

The Elevator

Many say a relegation can sometimes be healthy to rebuild. It was the case of Giravanz, although it took them a bit to crack the code in the third league. After a few years in J2, Giravanz first came seventh, then last (!) in 2018 – while two other Kyushu teams, FC Ryukyu and Kagoshima United FC, enjoyed their promotion and a taste of the second division. It seemed done and dusted.

Then Shinji Kobayashi came along. The “Master of Promotion” – like we celebrated him in another article a few years ago – fixed the offensive proposal and found a few elements to give value to beyond captain and symbol Tomoki Ikemoto. The 4-4-2 with a double pivot and a good pair upfront worked marvellously both in J3 and J2, with elements like Shuto Machino, Akira Disaro, Daigo Takahashi, Soya Fujiwara, and Shintaro Kokubu emerging.

But then most of those elements left to find luck somewhere else, and Kitakyushu – a small market with an average presence at the stadium of 6,000 at the peak of J3 performances before COVID – couldn’t find good replacements. This spurred Giravanz immediately back to J3, with the second-last place of 2021 – in a season where relegation fights were close and decided to the wire.

Tabula rasa

The trend went on in J3, with Kitakyushu coming 13th in 2022. Kobayashi left his position, but it’s not like Kenichi Amano did better than him. And 2023 was even more impressive as a failure, not only because Tasaka was on the bench, but because Giravanz could count on a couple of diamonds on the pitch: Yuki Okuda was stellar the year before with Tegevajaro Miyazaki, while Ryusei Nose shone at Vanraure Hachinohe.

Neither of them could though invert the trajectory of 2023. While J3 was pretty balanced, at the back Giravanz was terrible from the get-go. They were last on Matchday 9 and never left the last two places, staying in last from MD23 ’til the end. Giravanz ended eight points shy of Tegevajaro, who ended 19th. Shinji Kobayashi had to come back to the dugout in mid-September, but it didn’t change the outcome.

And the great fear came close to realising itself. Giravanz would have qualified for the JFL-J3 play-out, but Reliac Shiga dropped the baton at the last turn, coming third in the final table. This left them out of the chance of playing that game and Kitakyushu avoided the worst. But changes are needed for 2024. And the first was in the dugout. 

After a promising spell with Gainare Tottori, Kohei Matsumoto wasn’t retained and accepted the job in Kyushu. Okada and Nose both left, just like captain Maekawa and veteran Kamigata. Taku Ushinohama will be the main arrival, but the experience of Kohei Kiyama, Asahi Yada, Ryo Nagai, and Koki Otani should do the job to avoid another storm.