The Backflip Takeover

That’s surely a topic we’re gonna touch as well in another pre-season article, but how many J.League fans had Matej Jonjić coming back to Japan in their bingo cards for the 2025 season? Not so many probably, after his adventures with Cerezo Osaka. But what about a J3 team? That seems even more unlikely. Who made this possible? 

Well, a club in the middle of Japan is the culprit. They had been pushing to climb the ladder for a while, but it struggled to happen. They had to go through a rebranding, a restructure, a drop from the JFL into the hell of the Regional Leagues. They had to lose again the train to JFL twice in the last five years as favorites, before taking it when the odds were against them.

They went through a strange patch once promoted in the JFL – at the beginning of 2024, they had a strange patch of results. After Matchday 9, they were just sixth, far away from the promotion battle. But then something clicked – from Matchday 12 (when they lost strangely away, 5-1 to Atlético Suzuka), they went undefeated, putting together impressive numbers.

They ended up winning the JFL by a landslide, scoring 66 goals in 30 games, and clinching the title with one game left in front of a crowd of almost 10,000. They did in the stadium often used by their Prefecture rivals, who didn’t put together those numbers at home except for one game (the one against S-Pulse) all season long. Trust us – Tochigi City Football Club are here to stay.

No Juice at All

Whether you believe it or not, Tochigi City FC were actually founded in 1947 as “Hitachi Tochigi Soccer Club” – that’s because of big Hitachi factory located in Ōhira, a town of 30,000 people where the club ran their first activities. And it’s not like their initial history was laminated with success, on the contrary…

Almost 60 years of history went by with no heights, until the club decided to merge with the Uva Sports Club. “Uva” means “grapes” in Italian, and they’re a specialty of that region – but the real juice came on the pitch, where Tochigi Uva FC granted themselves a shot at climbing the ladder. In 2009, they came as runners-up in the Japanese Regional Leagues Series and reached the JFL.

Despite this, seasons in JFL were tough ones: 15th (out of 18 teams) in 2010, then 10th, 17th, 17th, 13th (in a 14 teams-league), 16th (out of 16), 15th, and then 16th again. The only real luck for Tochigi Uva FC was that relegations were not too much of an element at that time in the Japan Football League, because other clubs were often getting promoted to J3 and then left a spot open to avoid the drop.

In 2012, Tochigi Uva actually played a promotion/relegation play-out against Norbritz Hokkaido, but avoided relegation at penalties! In 2015 they got last, but Kagoshima United got promoted, and SP Kyoto FC were disbanded. In 2016, they finished 14 points shy of the 14th place, but Fagiano Okayama Next withdrew and Azul Claro Numazu reached JFL. In 2017, the inevitable happened and they got relegated.

Change to Thrive

Where does a club go forward when they average 390 people at the stadium and they have already another dominating force in the region? They might try a rebranding. Tochigi Uva FC did first that on the pitch and behind the desks, bringing in a lot of new players and changing most of the managing staff. Yasuyuki Kishino was the new Head of Strategy, while Takeo Matsuda took over as a head coach.

In 2018, Uva reached the Japanese Regional League Series finals, but came third and failed to go back to JFL. That’s where Tochigi City Football Club came through – the rebranding was an attempt of pushing something new forward. And they made that decision public – involving the local community, who in the end opted for this solution. But rebranding wasn’t the only challenge.

It took a while to leave the Kanto Soccer League. From 2020 to 2023, Tochigi City FC won it twice (2020 & 2022), but in both cases they got third in the final round of the Japanese Regional Series. Funnily enough, 2023 was the year where they didn’t win the Kanto Soccer League, but they got selected as a team to complete the 12 clubs-format of the Japanese Regional Series because of their “100 Year Plan” status.

And so, Tochigi City FC finally made it back to the JFL. They firstly three wins out of three games in the Group Stage, then lost the first match of the final group before winning the other two and SOMEHOW triumph as the winner of the Final Phase. It was a miracle – but now the question was clear: could they face the heat of playing back into the JFL?

Rite of Passage

The answer has been resounding yes. Even when the rough patch of results was still going, Tochigi City were anyway comfortably mid-table. Then the streak of results started, and the city felt it too – the club brought an average of 2,496 people to the stadium. That’s a 540% growth (!), and they were just behind Criacao Shinjuku in terms of spectators (but they have the big advantage of having played ? Times at the National Stadium in Tokyo).

They have the head coach, Naoki Imaya – who played in Switzerland, Australia, and Germany, maturing the sufficient experience to lead the club to a double promotion. They have the players, like Peter Kwame Aizawa, Junichi Paulo Tanaka, Genta Omotehara, Ryo Okui, Kunitomo Suzuki. And they have a nice stadium of 5,000 people – the City Football Stadium – which seems perfect to keep a certain J3 status.

And if you needed further proof, Winter Brought them. Even without Jonjić joining, they added already Kenta Murakoshi, who had some interesting performances with Briobecca Urayasu. They brought back Joe Caletti, the Australian midfielder who was already there for a year back in 2023. They signed a J.Leaguer like Takaya Inui. And most of all, they signed also Toshiki Mori, who’s been an interesting prospect… for Tochigi SC!

And that’s maybe the biggest message of all – there’s been a takeover in Tochigi. Just like it happened in Fukushima between Fukushima United FC and Iwaki FC, the upcoming Tochigi City clearly points at having the supremacy in the region compared to Tochigi SC, who are back into the third tier after eight years. And the derby on March 30th will tell us a lot on this rite of passage.