The Hachi #14: If you like pina coladas
And getting caught in the rain
It’s the last Hachi of April, with a bit of everything! As always, thank you for reading and don’t forget to smash that subscribe button for your regular dose of Japanese sports info.
1. Wet and wild
As I sat down to observe the conditions at Nissan Stadium International Stadium Yokohama on Wednesday night — basically a constant drizzle that would only get heavier — I tweeted my expectation that the upcoming second leg of the AFC Champions League semifinal between Yokohama F. Marinos and Ulsan HD would be “very chaotic or very boring.”
Well, it certainly wasn’t the latter.
Down 0-1 after last week’s first leg in Ulsan, F. Marinos dominated in the first half hour and jumped out to a 3-1 aggregate lead before disaster struck, with Matheus Sales heading in a corner kick to make it 3-2 and Darijan Bojanic converting from the spot after Takumi Kitajima was sent off for a handball in the box, evening the series 3-3 after 42 minutes.
That left Yokohama with 10 men for the entirety of the second half and extra time, during which Ulsan built up a remarkable total of 40 shots and 15 on target, according to the Asian Football Confederation.
Not that the loyal fans behind the F. Marinos goal were discouraged, of course.
Some lucky bounces off the post — and some phenomenal goalkeeping by William Popp, who joined F. Marinos this offseason after helping Machida Zelvia win the J2 last year — sent the game to a penalty shootout.
There, Popp once again shone and all five YFM takers — including Jun Amano facing his former Ulsan teammates — found the back of the net to seal the historic win.
Yokohama manager Harry Kewell — no stranger to continental competition, having won the 2004-05 UEFA Champions League with Liverpool — will now have a chance to win his first major title as a coach if he can steer his team past UAE’s Al Ain, who upset Saudi titans Al Hilal in the West Zone semifinal.
"We're going to enjoy the final," Kewell said of the series, which will take place on May 11 in Yokohama and May 25 in Al Ain, UAE. "You don't get a chance to play many finals in your career, so when you do, enjoy it and play the way that you're born to play."
A win would give F. Marinos their third Asian trophy, following Asian Cup Winners’ Cups in 1992 and 1993. It would also put the J.League co-founders into 2024 FIFA Intercontinental Cup as well as the U.S.-hosted 2025 FIFA Club World Cup, where they’d be the second Japanese club alongside Urawa Reds.
2. Common sense (eventually) prevails
The WE League’s Urawa Reds Ladies were set to contest the final of the AFC Women’s Club Championship Invitational Tournament after finishing atop Group A in November.
Then they weren’t, with a planned final against South Korea’s Incheon Hyundai Steel Red Angels abruptly canceled by the Asian Football Confederation in late March, without any explanation to stakeholders.
The April 12 announcement of details for the upcoming AFC Women’s Champions League — despite the lack of any clarity on the WCCIT — raised the ire of Urawa supporters, who protested the lack of action after their WE League game two days later.1
Soon after, AFC officials met with the Japan Football Association, WE League, Urawa, the Korean Football Association and Incheon, and decided that the game would in fact be back on, with the WE League announcing the decision on Thursday.
The Reds will host the Red Angels on May 10 at Komaba Stadium for the chance to be Asia’s first women’s club champion. But we still don’t have any information on why the AFC decided to cancel the game in the first place, and what the decision-making process says about the confederation’s commitment to the women’s club game.
3. European invasion
It’s been about a year since Japan officially did away with pandemic-era mask mandates and boy, how things have changed. The yen is in the toilet2 and tourists are streaming into Japan by the planeful, with a record-breaking 3 million arriving in March.
Among the selfie-stick-wielding hordes expected to descend upon Japan this summer will surely be a number of dedicated European soccer fans, as the list of clubs making friendly visits in the coming months continues to expand.
Spain’s Real Sociedad are making a whistle-stop tour in late May when they take on Tokyo Verdy at the National Stadium, just days after the conclusion of the La Liga season.
With regular adult tickets ranging from ¥6,600 to ¥16,500 ($42 to $105), the midweek fixture will be a test of Japan midfielder Takefusa Kubo’s drawing power and a throwback to Barcelona’s controversial visit to Japan last year under similar circumstances.
Equally controversial is their choice of opponent, with many wondering why Kubo’s side is lining up against Verdy instead of his former club, FC Tokyo.
The last couple weeks have seen two other big clubs announce Japan tours, with Borussia Dortmund to face Cerezo Osaka (and former black-and-yellow star Shinji Kagawa) in the Eurojapan Cup on July 24 and Ange Postecoglou’s Tottenham to take on Vissel Kobe in Tokyo three days later.
To me, what’s particularly impressive about Tottenham’s announcement is their tour hub, in which they’re already listing activation plans that include meetings with three recognized supporters clubs in Japan and youth workshops. Their game, organized by the J.League as part of the annual J.League World Challenge, should also be reasonably priced and well-managed, much like last year’s visits by Manchester City and Bayern Munich.
More clubs are expected to announce visits in the coming weeks, including an opponent for Sanfrecce Hiroshima, who had previously announced their intention to host a friendly to commemorate the opening of Edion Peace Wing Hiroshima, and a potential Brighton visit that would see Kaoru Mitoma and friends take on Kashima Antlers (or, potentially, another team…).
4. Getting technical
NPB’s Chiba Lotte Marines announced on Monday that they’ve teamed up with sports analytics company Catapult to provide its players with GPS devices.
Players will wear the devices in training, allowing the team to monitor their speed and distance traveled in order to customize practice routines maintain fitness levels and reduce injury risks. Analysis will be managed by staff at Juntendo University, which has supported the Marines since last year.
Wearable tech like this is still relatively rarer in Japanese baseball than it is in soccer and other sports. But as NPB teams become brave enough to embrace such tech, others won’t want to fall behind, as they’re all very well aware that the next Shohei Ohtani or Yoshinobu Yamamoto is a preventable injury away from their posting fee taking a severe hit.
Baseball analytics consultant Yusuke Okada, in his recent article for Nikkei, noted a shift toward NPB clubs hiring more data-literate coaches over the winter:
The common factor in these clubs’ coaching acquisitions is that they’ve promoted people with a grounding in data analysis. It’s different from the path NPB coaches have followed in the past, whether they became coaches after accumulating a strong record as a player or were poached from other clubs’ coaching staffs.
…
It’s been a long time since NPB clubs started purchasing tracking systems like Trackman and Hawkeye that can collect (detailed data). But just buying these machines is meaningless, you need to read and understand the data and give the players feedback. Until now, the people with that ability have mostly been known as analysts, but now they’re taking another step forward and becoming coaches.
5. Watanabe comes home
After six seasons in the NBA with the Grizzlies, Raptors, Nets and Suns, Yuta Watanabe announced that he’ll be returning to Japan this summer and joining a B.League club.
The 30-year-old was an anticipated signing for 2023 Western Conference semifinalist Phoenix, but he failed to catch fire in the desert, averaging just 3.6 points and 13.2 minutes per game in 29 appearances. A trade to the Grizzlies — the team that gave the George Washington graduate his NBA start with a two-way contract in 2018 — didn’t help revive his form, and Watanabe said on an emotional Instagram livestream that he wanted to move back to Japan in order to enjoy the sport again.
"My goal through my 20s was to keep working in America, regardless of the situation. Never give up, no matter what," Watanabe said, per Kyodo News. "It was fun at times but also a lot of hard work.
"I just want to play basketball. I want to step into the game and do what I do in practice. … I grinded through my 20s, but now I hope to play basketball the way I like."
Watanabe, a national team star expected to feature for Akatsuki Japan at the Paris Olympics, will be a massive boost for the B.League as a whole, which continues to enjoy massive growth in its fanbase, and especially for whichever club manages to sign him.
And they’ll get him for a while — Watanabe told a press conference that he intends to stay with his next team until he retires.
6. A different view of Suzuka
Just half a year or so after the 2023 Japanese Grand Prix, Formula One fans made their way back to Suzuka Circuit, with the race transitioning from September to April in order to avoid Japan’s typhoon season and reduce travel between Asia’s GPs.
The race itself was a massive success despite a Lap 1 red flag, with (*sigh, deep breath*) Visa Cash App Red Bull’s Yuki Tsunoda finishing 10th to take a point at his home GP thanks in part to an insane pit stop that let him jump several places in the standings.
But one interesting perspective on Suzuka that I wanted to present came from Amanda Golka, known better to her 441k YouTube subscribers as Swell Entertainment.
I discovered Golka through her reviews of a furry convention and other nerd cons like Anime Expo, but she also covers modern cultural stuff like BookTok, Stanley Cups and Madame Web.
She’s also a major F1 fan — having previously attended the Las Vegas GP — but I was surprised to learn that she had made it out to Japan for Suzuka.
Don’t let Golka’s trademark thumbnail smirk fool you — she definitely had a great time at the circuit and has a lot of interesting things to say about her VIP experience and the atmosphere among the Japanese fans. Definitely made me nostalgic for 2023, and hopefully I can make it out there next year.
7. Getting high
Action sports empire/international soccer club network Red Bull, which reportedly also has a side business selling energy drinks, has helped ski jumper Ryoyu Kobayashi claim an world record that — unofficial as it may be — is incredibly impressive.
Kobayashi, who took gold on the normal hill and silver on the large hill at the 2022 Beijing Winter Olympics, fell a few meters short of his target 300 meters on an temporarily installed jump at Hlidarfjall Ski Resort in Akureyri, Iceland — but still hit 291 meters, absolutely obliterating Austrian Stefan Kraft’s official world record of 253.5.
FIS, skiing and snowboarding’s governing global body, put up a big article explaining why Kobayashi’s attempt won’t count in the record books:
Ryoyu Kobayashi's jumps in Iceland did not take place under competition conditions and in line with the FIS regulations. They showcase an extraordinary athlete’s performance under very special conditions but cannot be compared to a FIS Ski Flying World Cup, as both the start date and the entire project are tailored to a single athlete and therefore ultimately to a single jump/flight.
Red Bull’s own release underlines the extent to which this setup was a bespoke arrangement for the 27-year-old.
After a two-year search, the ideal site was discovered in Hlidarfjall Akureyri in northern Iceland. There, exclusively for the attempt, Kobayashi’s team devoted over two months to sculpting a snow ski jump table on the natural terrain that is 1,115 meters high at the start, descending across an altitude difference of 360 meters with a maximum gradient of 36 degrees.
But this is in the end a marketing exercise, and the circumstances under which Kobayashi’s jump was achieved didn’t stop Red Bull from giving him a ‘World Record’ sign to hold up, ensuring that the waters will be appropriately muddied on social media for years to come (or until Kobayashi breaks the actual world record in competition).
8. From Big Egg to Big Pier
Fans of poor playing surfaces and absurdly giant screens probably have less than a decade to enjoy the Tokyo Dome in all its glory.
Its successor — to be built on the site of the former Tsukiji Fish Market along the Sumida river — is set to open sometime in the 2030s, with the Tokyo Metropolitan Government recently designating an 11-company group led by Mitsui Fudosan and Yomiuri to oversee the redevelopment project, which will cost $5.8 billion.
Per the Yomiuri Shimbun, the “multistadium” is expected to be able to shift between stadium, arena, theater and exhibition hall forms, allowing it to be used not only for baseball but for soccer, basketball, rugby and concert events.
While the stadium’s main residents are expected to be the Yomiuri Giants, the question of what will happen to Tokyo Dome — and the sprawling entertainment complex at its core — remains unanswered, though it’s likely to be redeveloped to some extent.
Will either FC Tokyo or Tokyo Verdy have enough influence by the 2030s to push a long-desired soccer stadium project forward? Watch this space.
Shoutout to friend-of-the-newsletter Alex Bishop, who’s been on top of this story since the beginning and is a great follow for all things woso in Japan.
Nearly ¥156/$1 as I write this