Team Data: Sanfrecce Hiroshima
Team Name:
Team Logo & Mascot:  
Team Flag:
Home Uniform Away Uniform
 
Home StadiumHiroshima Big Arch
Seats 55,000
Team Data:
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Management Corporation: | Sanfrecce Hiroshima Corporation | |
Established: | 24 April 1992
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President: | Masatata Kubo
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Investors: | Consortium of 59 organisations, including Hiroshima Prefecture, Hiroshima City, Mazda Motor Corporation, DEODEO Corporation, The Chugoku Electric Power Co., Inc. and The Hiroshima Bank, Ltd. | |
Address: | 4-10-2 Kannon Shin-machi,
Nishi-ku Hiroshima City,
Hiroshima 733-0036 | |
Hometown Area: | Hiroshima City, Hiroshima Prefecture | |
Home Stadium: | Hiroshima Big Arch (capacity: 50,000) | |
Joined J. League: | 1992 | |
Major Titles: | J.League Champions: 1996, 1998, 2000, 2001
Nabisco Cup: 1997, 2000, 2002
Emperor's Cup: 1997, 2000
Xerox Super Cup: 1997, 1998, 1999
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Sanfrecce Hiroshima is the oldest continuously active team in the J.League, as the historical successor team to Mazda Motor football club, which was founded in 1949. Oddly enough, the team's official publicity department downplays these links. Though many other teams have also distanced themselves from the corporations which gave them birth, in Sanfrecce's case it is a bit difficult to understand, since Mazda has been a fairly generous contributor to the team's development. Perhaps it is more a case of the history being less interesting than the present.
Mazda was not a particularly strong JFL franchise, though the team had a brief flirtation with success just before and after the creation of the J.League, in 1993. The year before the league was created, Mazda Motor finished sixth, and was included one of the original founding teams. The team took the name "sanfrecce, which is an odd combination of the Japanese word for "three" and the Italian word for "arrow". The three arrows is a potent symbol in the Hiroshima area, as it refers to a historical samurai who ruled the area, and who adopted the three arrows as his battle standard. Though the original Sanfrecce team emblem contained visual references to the Mazda legacy, in 2004 the team adopted a new logo which contains more symbolism related to Hiroshima history, including the three arrows referred to in the team name.
Under the tutelage of Stewart Baxter, Sanfrecce Hiroshima had a reasonably successful year in 1993, and then surprised everyone by winning the first stage title in 1994. Sanfrecce subsequently fell to Verdy Kawasaki in the league championship series, but the team was beginning to make a name for itself, behind players like national team striker Takuya Takagi and former Czech national team member Dominic Hasek.
Unfortunately, the success did not last far beyond the departure of Baxter. Scotsman Eddie Thompson took over as coach in 1995, and the team has never been in contention since. Thompson repeatedly argued (and not without some persuasiveness) that the team's problems were largely financial, and the club never provided him with the budget needed to put together a winning team. However, many other observers have noted that Thompson's defensive-minded strategy was ill-suited for the J.League, and point out that more than half of the teams in the league had finances which were even more limited than those at Thompson's disposal. In any event, the team began to lose some of its top players to other teams, and by the time that Thompson left, at the end of the 1999 season, Sanfrecce has slipped down into mid-table obscurity.
Throughout the 1990s, was a difficult team to beat, even when they were not doing well in the standings. The defensive philosophy developed and instilled under Thompson served them well in terms of limiting the opponent's scoring chances. However, after the departure of players like Takagi and Hasek, the Hiroshima offense was always too limited to contend for a title. Hiroshima also faced a problem that has troubled many other club based in western Japan -- a lack of fan support and, consequently, money. Football was slow to gain popularity in the region between Kyoto and Hiroshima, and without fans, the team was not able to hold onto its best players. By 2002, a lack of talent at all positions, as well as weak coaching and some plain-old bad luck sent Sanfrecce tumbling into the second division.
This was naturally a disappointment for a team that had been one of the top clubs in the original J.League (and indeed, has the longest continuous history of any club in Japan). But Sanfrecce responded positively to this development. The shock of relegation forced the team to clean house and dump a lot of their high-priced players. But while Hiroshima has been slow to build a grassroots fan base, they have done a spectacular job of building their youth programme. By the early 2000s, Sanfrecce Hiroshima Youth was aalready turning out members of the U-18 national team by the handful, and when the team was relegated in 2002, they managed to persuade all of the young prospects to stay on. The team focused on developing a solid core of youngsters with strong prospects for the future, while going back to basics in their effort to build local fan support.
This focus on youth and quality paid off, as Sanfrecce rebounded to the J1 in just one season. However, the team seemed unable to take the next step. Sanfrecce still does not have the finances of teams in the Tokyo area or even Osaka, for that matter. Although, the core of the team is packed with players who have seen national team action with the U-20 or U-23 squad at one time or another, they have never managed to function efffectively as a team, in part due to very poor coaching decisions. After struggling towards midtable in 2004, 2005 and 2006, there was another sudden collapse of form in 2007 which saw the team slump into the second division once again.
It will be interesting to see how they react to this disappointment. Obviously, the coaching needs to be improved if Sanfrecce is ever to crawl out of their malaise. But the Purple Archers have a youth system that most J.League clubs would kill for. It appears that most of the youngsters will stay with the team at least for another year. This should allow them to rebound once again after just a single season in the J2. But failure to earn promotion could be a crippling blow, since this would surely send even the youngest of the former youth NT players for the exits. THe team's performance in 2008 may well determine Hiroshima's fate for the next decade..
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National Team
Overseas Players
