It’s tough to imagine that, given the 33 year-run of Japanese professional football, but the J.League has found a way to create a new competition. With the will of switching towards an Autumn-Spring calendar, the J.League needed to fill out the six months before the 2026 FIFA World Cup. And that’s how we got the “Meiji Yasuda 100 Year Vision League”, with two separate categories: one for the J1 and one for the J2 plus the J3.
No relegations, only a place for the 2026-27 AFC Champions League Elite on the line for whoever wins it. A regional round will be played from February to May, with teams divided into an East and a West group. A penalty shoot-out will be used if the game isn’t decided after 90 minutes; a final play-off round will take place on June 6-7 to decide the final merged table.
It’s been a while since J.League tried something new. Notoriously, the return of the infamous “two-stage format” was booed loudly, although J.League kept it for the 2015 and 2016 seasons. Unfortunately, after COVID-19, the Suruga Bank Championship was never resumed (and we all miss it sincerely). But are those the only competition heists the J.League ever tried?
Of course, not. And that’s why we’re here before the start of the “100 Years Vision League”. With a tournament with no sporting value, it’d be strange to do any previews (although I’ll be very curious about the format for the J2 + J3 groups); it would be better to look instead at the past and, funnily enough, poke at which experiments used to look like back in the days.
It’s always about the banks
As we mentioned in our piece on the annual game between the J.League Cup and the Copa Sudamericana winners, it was a bank which propelled the whole thing. And if Suruga Bank put their name on that competition, the Sanwa Bank thought of doing the same in the mid-90s, with a once-in-a-lifetime idea: what if we invite the winner of a major league to play in Japan against the J.League champions?
The Sanwa Bank doesn’t exist anymore today, since it operated until 2002, before merging with two more banks and forming the MUFG Bank, part of the Mitsubishi Group (where would this world go without consolidation in any fudging business?). The “Sanwa Bank Cup” had a brief life, running just from 1994 to 1997, but with some interesting matches, I have to say.
In 1994, for their maiden edition, the juggernaut that Verdy Kawasaki were at the opening stage of the championship had the chance of facing Gimnasia La Plata, who were not the winners of the league, but rather the title holders of the “Copa Centenario de la AFA”, a tournament to celebrate the 100th anniversary of the Argentinian federation. It ended 2-2, with Verdy winning on penalties.
Unfortunately, J.League couldn’t hold as well the Brazilian champions; so when it came to celebrate the 100th anniversary of a commercial treaty between Brazil and Japan, Gremio were invited as the 1994 Copa do Brasil winners, again against Verdy Kawasaki (this time losing to the Brazilians). IFK Goteborg and DC United were the last invitees, winning against Marinos in ’96 and losing against Nagoya Grampus in 1997.
The Three “As”
We had the time of just mentioning it back in our nostalgia article over the Suruga Bank Championship, but the A3 Champions Cup was something. The initiative was inspired by the 2002 FIFA World Cup – with Japan and South Korea hosting it, while China took part in their only appearance on the major stage. Known as well as the “East Asian Champions Cup”, it was a tournament organised by Japan, South Korea and China, mostly involving the national champions.
Logistically, it wasn’t properly set up, since the A3 Champions Cup often tended to overlap with AFC Champions League games. The first three editions were held in February, only to move the 2006 edition to August (not the best if you’re playing in Japan). The competition started with its maiden edition in 2003, when Japan hosted the games by adding the winners of the 2002 J.League Cup.
And well, well… Kashima Antlers won that edition. From there, basically, whoever hosted the tournament had the right to add the winners of their national cup or the runners-up from the league’s previous season. In five editions between 2003 and 2007, K-League teams were definitely the best – winning the tournament three times, while Japan and China took one edition each.
The tournament fell out of favour after 2007, when payments were not carried on. In 2008, the tournament was supposed to happen in South Korea, but no payments were completed, and given the schedule – AFC Champions League plus the Pan-Pacific Championship –, the competition just folded.
Once we were All-Stars
There are so many more tournaments we could mention, but I’d like to close this piece with one thought: have you ever missed an All-Star Game? Well, looking at majors in America, I wouldn’t. The NBA can’t make it a popular thing anymore, the NFL has put one week before the Super Bowl, and even the MLS tried new and newer formats only to end up disappointed.
But Japan had that as well. The “J.League All-Star Soccer” was an annual exhibition with fan voting ruling the world. The old Japan Soccer League had that already, so J.League didn’t want to lose that. J-West and J-East would have squared off with 16 players each, with no more than four players from the same club, and the J.League rounded off some rosters to make it fair.
In the end, the game ran from 1993 to 2007, and it recorded some historical moments. In 1994, that was the last game of Zico’s career; in 1996, it was the only match which ever went to penalties. In 2000, Dragan Stojkovic became the first and only player to ever win the MVP three times. In the end, three players managed to feature nine times: Yoshikatsu Kawaguchi, Kazu Miura, and Eisuke Nakanishi.
In 2008, a slight twist was applied: no more internal All-Star Game, but rather a J.League v. K-League match. It lasted just two years: K-League won the first in 2008 for 3-1, before J.League took revenge in 2009 by scorching the K-League by 4-1. There would be so much more to talk about, but we have to wait and see how the “100 Years Vision League” will be and how we’ll remember it.
