J.LEAGUE celebrated its 30th anniversary in 2023 and set out a vision that looks to the next 30 years. That vision also includes your mission for the next 10 years, so could you tell us about the concepts behind that mission?

I think that this is something that everyone is feeling, but at the end of the FIFA World Cup in 2022, there was a general recognition that the Japan National Team had really taken their play to the next level. Looking at matches from March last year onward too, it is plain to see that the more the team play, the more accomplished they are steadily becoming. Against that backdrop is a sense of crisis about whether J.LEAGUE in its current form is ready for the future. Players who have returned to J.LEAGUE from overseas are unanimous in pointing out that J.LEAGUE and European football are “completely different sports.” This is part of the sense of crisis that is now beginning to emerge. The top players in Japanese football comprise a group who have become really serious about winning the FIFA World Cup title, and in order to do that, some of them have set their sights on playing for clubs that can compete in the UEFA Champions League, and indeed, some are already core members of such clubs. The next group of players after that is also aiming to play in the big five European leagues, and some players are having success there. There is also another group of players who have not yet spent much time or made a big impact in J.LEAGUE but are already looking to move overseas. This filled me with a sense of crisis and I strongly felt the urgent need to make J.LEAGUE a league where, if players have success here, they will be able to make the Japan National Team and become truly world-class players. This sense of crisis was already there before, but it became even stronger during the first half of 2023.

It is against that backdrop that a number of system reforms are underway in J.LEAGUE. First of all, from next season the number of J1 clubs will increase to 20. How does this increase fit in the future vision for J.LEAGUE?

Since the appointment of Yoshikazu NONOMURA as our new Chairman, J.LEAGUE has established two growth strategies. The first is “60 clubs will shine in their respective hometowns,” and the second is “the top tier will shine as national (global) content.” For the first strategy concerning 60 clubs shining in their hometowns, we are steadily advancing initiatives to increase exposure. At the same time, I think the situation will worsen unless the top tier clubs demonstrate greater leadership. So how should we design systems to raise the level of the top tier across J.LEAGUE as a whole? Well, to achieve this, it was decided that not only do the current top clubs need to grow, but there also needs to be a system that will enable other clubs to have the possibility of making it to the top. By increasing J1 to 20 clubs, each club in the top league will be able to play matches against 19 clubs, two more than previously. In addition, we now have a system in place where Mission Promotion Distribution Funds are provided to clubs in the top half of the league. This means that the system has been changed so that if a club fights hard and makes it into the top half, they will have money to invest for the next stage of growth. From 2024, the clubs can start the investment cycle using the distribution funds.

Another point is the changes that have been made to J.LEAGUE YBC Levain CUP. Until now, the system has been geared towards providing young players with lots of opportunity in the group stages, but now the Cup will become a knockout competition. What is the thinking behind this change?

First of all, Levain Cup will be changed to include not just J1, but also all J2 and J3 clubs, so that all clubs will have the chance to compete. As I just talked about, in the sense that this is a League Cup tournament, it is important to give not just the group of 20 teams in the J1 the chance to fight for the title, but rather provide all teams the chance to become cup winners. That is the kind of competitive environment we were aiming to achieve by changing the format of the tournament. We have also made the system for the distribution of funds more weighted towards J1, which is why we need to open up opportunities in other areas. By creating opportunities for J1 clubs to come to the home grounds of J2 and J3 clubs, our aim is to encourage all 60 clubs to take on new challenges in their respective hometowns, and in so doing create possibilities for fostering more vibrant communities.

These reforms to the structure of J.LEAGUE will open up new challenges and opportunities from 2024 onwards. So precisely how do you plan to create a foothold for the growth of J.LEAGUE, looking to the future 10 or even 30 years from now?

Based on the 2023 results, next year there will be nine clubs that will receive Mission Promotion Distribution Funds. Then comes the task of determining where and how those funds will be invested. As we create a cycle in which the returns from these investments are then reinvested, we believe that in the coming 10 or 20 years it will provide all clubs with a chance to grow. For example, 20 years ago the scale of Kawasaki Frontale’s operation was around 1 billion yen, whereas today that figure is close to 7 billion yen.

The Mission Promotion Distribution Funds system was one where the League champions and other top-placed teams would receive the lion’s share of the funds. From 2024 these funds will be distributed more widely among nine clubs, and so we can see that you are trying to give more clubs an opportunity to aim for the top.

That’s precisely what we are aiming to do. Whereas until now we have distributed the great majority of these funds to the top four clubs that compete in the AFC Champions League (ACL), Chairman Nonomura is determined that in a post-covid world we need to create opportunities for a greater number of clubs. The idea behind expanding opportunities to include more clubs is that it will create a system that makes clubs realise that, “If we can get into that group, we can secure funds for our next investment,” and incentivises them to raise their performance to the next level.

How do you plan to spread an investment-oriented mindset following the pandemic years, during which all clubs struggled financially?

It’s fine for each club to have a different idea or direction when it comes to investment. Each club is engaged in activities to create its own club philosophy, football philosophy, and academy philosophy. Having created these various philosophies, clubs are running themselves on that basis. For example, Ehime FC has made a conscious decision to return to its founding roots as a “club focused on promoting and developing young local players,” and following this philosophy has made the club’s goals clearer. There is an emerging mindset at the club to actively give young players opportunities to play in matches, or to transfer young players to foreign clubs and earn income from transfers. My feeling is that the various clubs’ philosophies and policies are gradually becoming clear.

On this point, player development is an area that will not produce any results without clear investment. With players increasingly looking overseas, it is important for clubs to seek to recoup their investment from transfers. What do you think are the prospects for transfers?

This is indeed a difficult challenge. The first thing we have to recognise is that players cannot develop unless they actually have the chance to play in matches. I can see that recently there is an increasing trend towards actively giving playing time to young players. The Japan Football Association has set out a clear vision called “Japan’s Way” with the ultimate aim of lifting the World Cup. The model set out in Japan’s Way states that “Elite Youth” is a program that specialises in individual development, aiming to continually produce players who make their professional debut at the age of 16 or 17, and for players to be selected for the national team in their teens and have success as professional footballers. With a first World Cup appearance around the age of 20, a second appearance at around 25, and a third around 30, we are seeking to make the Japan National Team stronger by having these three generations of players continuously playing for it. It’s important for J.LEAGUE clubs to continue to develop based on the same principle. Already in J.LEAGUE there are clubs that are looking to give their 17-year-old academy players the opportunity to make their professional debuts. When it comes to which players to use in games, clubs are starting to work on encouraging young local players to play more games and transferring them at the right time to generate transfer income, and I think these kinds of efforts will continue to gain momentum going forward. For the past year we have been engaging in discussions about the ways of earning transfer income also within J.LEAGUE itself. This is something that requires more work, but we are raising awareness, which in time will lead to real change.

However, in recent years there have been more and more young J.LEAGUE players who are transferring overseas at an early age, and even some who go to Europe directly without ever having played in J.LEAGUE. What are your views on this?

First and foremost, J.LEAGUE must take radical action to address the question of how to ensure that J.LEAGUE is a football league that young players choose to be part of. For example, today if you compared J.LEAGUE with 2. Bundesliga, or leagues in Belgium, Switzerland or Austria, the current reality is that the European teams would likely be considered better options. Of course it is somewhat inevitable that players will want to aim for the European leagues, but it’s still essential that we take a look at what is perceived to be wrong with the J.LEAGUE system as it currently stands. It is from that perspective that throughout 2023 we have continued discussions on radically revising the player contract system.
Currently, as we discussed shifting the timing of the J.LEAGUE season, we realised that we would need to come up with new rules, and so we are aiming to have a broad framework agreed and in place by March 2024. One of the problems we have to face is whether the annual salary ceiling of 4.6 million yen for a Pro C contract is really attractive. Until now this contract system has been in place to balance team strength and stabilise club management, but now that J.LEAGUE is entering a more competitive phase, it is questionable whether we really should be operating under financially uncompetitive conditions. When a player goes professional, there is already competition between whether that player enters J.LEAGUE or joins a U23 team in the Bundesliga. The time has come where we must ensure that players want to choose J.LEAGUE, which is why it is so critically important to implement a radical review of the contract system.
At the same time, however, we plan on narrowing down the number of players that clubs have in their squads to an appropriate figure. It’s necessary to ensure that it is not only the J1 clubs that have many players on their squads, but rather to create a mechanism where players who have been dropped from J1 clubs can get a chance to play in the J2 or J3. Assuming that there is a 25-player quota system in place, for example, what we want to discuss is how we could create exceptions for homegrown players, U-21 players and amateur players. Another issue is how to set the foreign player quota for J1, given the fact that the foreign player quota is due to be abolished in the ACL. This is a difficult issue, because it relates to the identity of the club and also how best to develop Japan National Team players.
On the other hand, there is also the question of whether such regulations could be reconciled with the direction we are aiming for, particularly given that we are talking about how to make J.LEAGUE a globally competitive platform. The reason so many players want to go to Germany or Belgium is because they want to prove their abilities on the field. The leagues in Europe have a great deal of diversity, so more and more players want to go over there to prove that they can compete against foreign players. If that is the case, then some people are suggesting that J.LEAGUE should also provide just such a platform. We need to discuss this matter further, looking at it from various angles.

What initiatives do you think are needed to boost quality on the field?

As I mentioned earlier, there was already a feeling that “football in Japan and Europe are different sports,” and so for the past year we have been looking at various data to try and pinpoint just what the differences are. The first difficulty you face is that you can’t really understand anything by looking just at one indicator alone. I think that an individual team could probably determine whether something was good or bad based on some particular kind of indicator, but when it comes to an indicator or index that the whole league should follow, things get more difficult. However, after hearing that one of the goals for the Japan National Team during the 2022 FIFA World Cup was “to aim for a high intensity running ratio (HIRR)* of 10% or more,” in 2023, we worked on a project to make our data and figures match European indices by changing the way we collect data and the figures we use. The results and figures from this project will be announced in the near future. Even so, as for whether HIRR is the best way to measure J.LEAGUE as a whole, good HIRR does not necessarily mean that a team is a top-ranked one. It all depends on who you are playing against. Therefore, my view is that if the club’s philosophy is more strongly expressed, the way they play on the field will also change.

※Refers to the proportion of running distance at speeds greater than 20km/h out of the total running distance of the 10 outfield players.

For example, in the case of Vissel Kobe this season, the team’s prowess in aerial duels for long balls and crosses, as well as its ability to win back second balls, caught people’s eye. Does this mean that it’s okay for clubs to concentrate on different targets or indices?

If you look at teams that are serious about their build-up tactics, one point of focus is how and where a pass should be made to trigger an attack. For example, if you have a player like Kaoru MITOMA, who is capable of getting past defenders, the key is how to pass the ball quickly to that player, when he is in a one-on-one situation and has enough space. You won’t notice these fine details if you are looking at the league as a whole. While we might have HIRR data, like I just mentioned, if all teams tried to align themselves with the standard that the Japan National Team aims for of more than 10%, the best team would be Sanfrecce Hiroshima, with a ratio of 8.19%. Kyoto Sanga F.C. also scores highly. The players at Shonan Bellmare and Saga Tosu are also good runners. On the other hand, the HIRR is lower for teams like Yokohama F･Marinos, Kawasaki Frontale, Urawa Reds and Albirex Niigata, all of which are high-ranking teams, but teams that play pass-heavy football. My point is that each club will have a different strategy and game plan and that is perfectly acceptable.

J.LEAGUE has reached its milestone 30th anniversary and set out a vision for the next 30 years. The ultimate aims are to “make J.LEAGUE the world’s No. 1 league” and “For the Japan National Team, comprised of J.LEAGUE players, to win the FIFA World Cup.” This is a very challenging path that you have set for yourself, isn’t it?

It’s based on a sense of crisis that unless we close in on those aims, J.LEAGUE will have no future. Turning to the FIFA World Cup, we are also placing a great deal of importance on victories by the junior teams in U-17 and U-20 World Cups. Ten years ago the U-20 team couldn’t even make it to the World Cup. This raises question about how J.LEAGUE player development is progressing, so we absolutely need to ensure J.LEAGUE produces outstanding players and to help them win at the World Cup. Playing in the World Cup raises a player’s value and we want those players playing in J.LEAGUE. Once they play in J.LEAGUE, instead of immediately transferring to Europe, we want them to remain here and develop their skills in Japan, get selected for the national team, and then think about transferring. That’s the flow we’re aiming for and how we want J.LEAGUE to be. What we envision is a league where if you try playing overseas but things don’t work out, you can come back to J.LEAGUE, prove your talent, and then gain international recognition again. I honestly believe that.