J League History: 2004

J.League 2004, First Stage . Team Pts GP W D L GF GA GDif 1 Yokohama Marinos 36 15 11 3 1 26 13 +13 2 Jubilo Iwata 34 15 11 1 3 31 16 +15 3 Urawa Reds 25 15 7 4 4 30 24 +6 4 Gamba Osaka 24 15 7 3 5 31 23 +8 5 Kashima Antlers 24 15 7 3 5 18 14 +4 6 FC Tokyo 23 15 6 5 4 19 19 +0 7 JEF United 22 15 5 7 3 28 23 +5 8 Nagoya Grampus 20 15 5 5 5 24 22 +2 9 Tokyo Verdy 19 15 5 4 6 21 23 -2 10 Oita Trinita 17 15 5 2 8 21 27 -6 11 Shimizu S-Pulse 16 15 3 7 5 20 27 -7 12 Vissel Kobe 15 15 3 6 6 21 25 -4 13 Sanfrecce Hiroshima 15 15 3 6 6 15 19 -4 14 Albirex Niigata 14 15 3 5 7 16 25 -9 15 Kashiwa Reysol 12 15 3 3 9 14 22 -8 16 Cerezo Osaka 10 15 2 4 9 17 30 -13 J.League 2004, Second Stage . Team Pts GP W D L GF GA GDif 1 Urawa Reds 37 15 12 1 2 40 15 +25 2 JEF United Ichihara 28 15 8 4 3 27 22 +5 3 Gamba Osaka 27 15 8 3 4 38 25 +13 4 Kashima Antlers 24 15 7 3 5 23 17 +6 5 Nagoya Grampus 24 15 7 3 5 25 21 +4 6 Yokohama Marinos 23 15 6 5 4 21 17 +4 7 Albirex Niigata 23 15 7 2 6 31 33 -2 8 Vissel Kobe 21 15 6 3 6 29 30 -1 9 Tokyo Verdy 20 15 6 2 7 22 23 -1 10 FC Tokyo 18 15 4 6 5 21 22 -1 11 Sanfrecce Hiroshima 16 15 3 7 5 21 23 -2 12 Cerezo Osaka 16 15 4 4 7 25 34 -9 13 Jubilo Iwata 14 15 3 5 7 23 28 -5 14 Shimizu S-Pulse 13 15 4 1 10 17 26 -9 15 Kashiwa Reysol 13 15 2 7 6 15 27 -12 16 Oita Trinita 13 15 3 4 8 14 29 -15 Championship Series 5 Dec Yokohama Marinos 1 - 0 Urawa Reds Kawai (66') 11 Dec Urawa Reds 1 - 0 (PK 2-4) Yokohama Marinos Santos (76') Promotion/Relegation Series 4 Dec Avispa Fukuoka 0 - 2 Kashiwa Reysol Ono (47') Tanizawa (89) 12 Dec Kashiwa Reysol 2 - 0 Avispa Fukuoka Unozawa (57') Hato (61') Scoring Leaders Rank Player Team Goals (PKs) Shots 1 Emerson Urawa Reds 27 145 2 Masashi Oguro Gamba Osaka 20 (0) 109 3 Marques Nagoya Grampus 17 (1) 60 3 Ryuji Bando Vissel Kobe 17 (2) 66 5 Rodrigo Gral Jubilo Iwata 16 (2) 65 6 Edmilson Albirex Niigata 15 (3) 73 6 Yoshito Okubo Cerezo Osaka 15 (2) 70 8 Marquinhos JEF United 12 (1) 61 8 Ahn Jung-Hwan Yokohama Marinos 12 (0) 77 10 Lucas Severino FC Tokyo 11 (2) 63 10 Magno Alves Oita Trinita 11 (3) 67 12 Tatsuya Tanaka Urawa Reds 10 (0) 61 12 Keiji Tamada Kashiwa Reysol 10 (1) 69 12 Daisuke Sakata Yokohama Marinos 10 (0) 46 12 Daisuke Oku Yokohama Marinos 10 (2) 35 12 Ueslei Nagoya Grampus 10 (2) 110 12 Fernandinho Gamba Osaka 10 (0) 69 J.League Awards, 2004 MVP Yuji Nakazawa 26 Yokohama Marinos Rookie of the Year Takayuki Morimoto 16 Tokyo Verdy Golden Boot Emerson 23 Urawa Reds Coach of the Year Takeshi Okada 48 Yokohama Marinos Best Eleven GK Yoichi Doi 32 FC Tokyo DF Marcus Tulio Tanaka 23 Urawa Reds Yuji Nakazawa 26 Yokohama Marinos Dutra 31 Yokohama Marinos MF Mitsuo Ogasawara 25 Kashima Antlers Daisuke Oku 28 Yokohama Marinos Yasuhiro Endo 25 Gamba Osaka Makoto Hasebe 20 Urawa Reds FW Emerson 23 Urawa Reds Marques 31 Nagoya Grampus Yoshito Oguro 24 Gamba Osaka

After the J.League reached its tenth birthday, in late 2002, League officials no longer had to focus their energies on simply keeping professional football alive, in Japan. Officials were finally able to begin thinking carefully about what they wanted the League to become in the future. At the end of last season, a number of key decisions were made, with the aim of steadily expanding and cultivating a football culture at the grassroots level, throughout the country. The League introduced what they refer to as "the Hundred Year Plan" -- a very ambitious program of organisational development whose clear, though unstated goal is to replace baseball as Japan's national sport. The "Hundred Year Plan" is a bit of deliberately grandiose bravado, since nobody really has any idea of what may occur over the next centurey. Nevertheless, the aim of spreading the passion of football to every corner of the country, and sustaining the effort for a hundred years, gives some idea of the enthusiasm and optimism that characterises the J.League in general. Essentially, the "hundred year" portion of the plan sets very broad objectives with the assumption that the details will be filled in, bit by bit, as years go by. The league wants to encourage growth of the sport at both the professional and amateur levels such that one day, every prefecture in Japan, and every major city, will have at least one professional team and a number of amateur or semipro clubs playing in regional or prefectural leagues. However, in addition to the starry-eyed, long-term goals, there is also a far more specific plan, covering about the next ten years, whose goal is to create a three-division structure containing about 40-50 teams. The first step in implementing the plan involved establishing a uniform format for all league competitions. Among other changes, extra time was eliminated from league contests (at theend of last season), and hereafter will be used only in the knockout round of cup competitions. In addition, the League decided to introduce a single-stage format for the top division. The J2 has always operated with only a single-stage, but apart from 1996, the J1 championship was always decided by playing two "stages", with the winners of each stage playing one another in a home-and-away playoff, to decide the J.League title. This format will be abandoned in 2005, so 2004 marked the last time that stage champions were decided, and the last time that a "Suntory Championship Series" was played. The second step was to expand the top division to 18 teams, which officials though to be an ideal number for scheduling purposes (34 league matches played over a 52-week year). This was accomplished by shifting two teams from the second division (J2) to the top division. The issue of promotion and relegation was handlied by giving the top two teams in the J2 automatic promotion, and having the last-placed J1 team play a promotion/relegation series against the third-ranked J2 team. From 2005, the system of promotion and relegation will revert to its previous format, with the top two J2 teams advancing and the bottom two J1 teams relegated The third step will be to expand the J2, step by step, to around 16 teams, through promotion from the JFL (which is currently an amateur league). Two teams earned promotion from the JFL at the end of 2004, so the initial indications are that this step will proceed fairly quickly and smoothly. The fourth step, which officials indicate may be implemented as early as 2010, will be to trasform the JFL into a third professional division (possibly with a regional segmentation like the North and South leagues in Germany's lower division). It is impossible to say what impact these changes will have, and that is one reason why our strongest feeling, looking back at 2004, is a sense that the league has left its boisterous childhood behind, and is stepping forward into adolescence, with all its changes and uncertainties. But changes to the league structure and tournament rules were just the first chapter in a saga of changes taking place in 2004. Another, perhaps more important transition, came on the playing field, where a number of young and energetic teams began to vie with the "old guard" for silverware. In the league's first eleven seasons, just four teams exercised a near monopoly on titles -- Verdy Kawasaki (now known as Tokyo Verdy), Yokohama Marinos, Kashima Antlers and Jubilo Iwata. Between them, these four teams had won all eleven league titles (and indeed, all but two stage titles), as well as eight of the eleven Nabisco Cup titles. But this season, both Jubilo and Antlers dropped into the middle of the league table while a completely restructured Verdy is still just beginniung its climb back to the ranks of contenders. Only the Marinos remained a dominant force, and though they claimed the first stage title (and eventually, the league championship as well), it quickly became clear that this will not persist much longer. The new challengers are now on the verge of creating a new heirarchy, and one can only hope that the high degree of parity shown over the past two seasons can persist for years to come. As noted above, the old guard had its last hurrah in the first stage, with the Yokohama Marinos claiming the first stage title, Jubilo Iwata finishing a close second, and the Kashima Antlers acting as the deciding influence, defeating Jubilo in the second-to-last match of the stage before losing the penultimate match to Yokohama. However, the second stage provided hints of a very different future, with several teams placing bids to be included in the ranks of the new contenders. The Urawa Reds were by far the biggest story, as they stormed to the second-stage title with the best won-lost record ever from a single stage. However, several other teams including Gamba Osaka and JEF United also made a strong showing. Indeed, Gamba did well enough to finish atop the table in a normal year, and if not for the Reds' record-setting pace, the Osaka team might have claimed its first piece of silverware. Unfortunately, the Reds peaked too early, and were unable to sustain their momentum into the championship series. The Marinos, led by a number of experienced veterans such as Daisuke Oku, Naoki Matsuda and Yuji Nakazawa, came into the championship knowing that if they forced the Reds to fight a defensive battle, they had a chance to snatch the title. Sure enough, the two teams traded 1-0 results at their home stadiums, and the championship series was forced into extra time, and then, to a penalty kick shootout. The Marinos prevailed on PKs and thus prevented the Reds from claiming their first league championship. The "two-stage" period of J.League history came to an end with only four teams' names engraved on the Suntory Trophy. But if 2004 was a sign of things to come, teams like the Reds, Gamba, FC Tokyo and others are likely to establish themselves as new dynasties, once the League moves into the new, single-stage era. The promotion-relegation series was a bit anticlimactic, by comparison with the closely-fought championship series. But then, that may not be surprising when one considers that last-placed Kashiwa Reysol did not have to face the two strongest J2 clubs. Expansion gave Kawasaki Frontale and Omiya Ardija an automatic ticket to the J1, and so Reysol's opponents were the J2's third-ranked team, Avispa Fukuoka. Avispa proved to be no match, losing both legs to Reysol by identical 2-0 score lines. RELEGATED: -- NONE -- PROMOTED: Kawasaki Frontale Omiya Ardija

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