Team Data: Kawasaki Frontale
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Team Logo & Mascot:  
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Home Uniform Away Uniform
 
Home StadiumKawasaki Todoroki Stadium
Seats 22,000
Team Data:
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Management Corporation: | Fujitsu Kawasaki Sport Management Ltd. | |
Established: | 21 November, 1996
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President: | Shinpei Takeda
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Investors: | Fujitsu Ltd. | |
Address: | 1-403 Kosugi-Cho, Nakahara-ku,
Kawasaki City, Kanagawa 211-0063 | |
Hometown Area: | Kawasaki City, Kanagawa Prefecture | |
Home Stadium: | Kawasaki Todoroki Stadium (capacity: 25,000) | |
Joined J. League: | 1999 |
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 | Fronta-kun
The resemblance may not be very clear, but Fronta-kun is supposed to be a dolphin. In explaining the choice, club reminds fans that it is a seaside city -- a point that will raise many an eyebrow since most people are more familiar with the city's long stretch of riverfront exposure on the Tama river, near the team's home stadium. The choice sems to have won favour from the local fans, however. Those who question Kawasaki's seaside roots can just refer to Fronta as a "river dophin"
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Kawasaki Frontale bears a rather dubious distinction; it was the first J2 club ever promoted to J1, but also the first former J2 club ever to be relegated back to the J2. In many ways, the team can plead hard luck for its poor success the first time it made it into the top-flight. Several key players were injured or otherwise incapacitated during that season, yet Frontale still managed to advance all the way to the final of the Nabisco Cup in 2000 before falling to the Kashima Antlers. In truth, Frontale was far better than its record in league matches would suggest, but as it turned out, it would still be fair to say that Frontale got promoted before they were really ready for it.
Kawasaki Frontale has a long history, tracing its roots back to the Fujitsu company team, founded in 1955. The team enjoyed reasonable success in the JSL, and just barely missed being included in the J.League at its inception. Frontale remained around the middle of the table in the JFL throughout the 1990s. In 1997, a year before the J.League second division was formed, the team received its full independence from Fujitsu, and took the name Kawasaki Frontale, qualifying it for inclusion in the J2. The ersatz-Italian name is supposed to mean "in the front" or "top class". Their mascot is similarly ersatz. At first nobody seemed to be exactly sure whether it is supposed to be a dolphin, a shark or a whale. Some suggested a killer whale, but the colour is no match, and Nagoya Grampus already has a killer whale mascot. A few English speaking fans tried to dub them the "Blue Whales" (in imitation, perhaps, of Nagoya's "Red Whales"), but by the turn of the century team literature had clarified that Fronta-kun was, in fact, a dolphin.
Frontale finished second in the old JSL in its final season,1998, and claimed the first league championship in the new J2, in 1999. This also earned the team promotion to the J1 for the 2000 season. However, as noted above, a disappointing performance in the top division saw the team relegated back to J2 at the end of 2000. There were many reasons why the team failed to stick in the top-flight division the first time around. One was the team's excessive dependence on very young players, another the many injuries it suffered. But if you look at the team's subsequent development, it is not hard to argue that the team was not yet ready for prime time. For one thing, Kawasaki citizens had not yet adopted Frontale as their own. Until 2001, Kawasaki had another local club -- Verdy Kawasaki (the forerunner of today's Tokyo Verdy) -- which competed for fan loyalty and even shared the same stadium. Verdy did not do a particularly good job of marketing themselves to locals, and never had very solid "grassroots" support. Nevertheless, until Verdy relocated to Tokyo, Frontale had difficulty building its fan base due to a conflict of loyalties.
In addition, Frontale's mediocre finances forced them to rely on a small number of key players, sometimes with adverse results. For example, in 2001 Frontale acquired a young Brazilian named Emerson Marcio Passos from Consadole Sapporo, who led the J2 in scoring in both 2000 and 2001. With Emerson leading their strike force, Frontale got off to a very strong start in 2001, and seemed to be on their way to regaining a J1 spot. But midway through the season Emerson was lured away by the deep pockets of the Urawa Reds, and the sudden loss of their scoring leader set the team back for several months. When they finally recovered their pace, promotion was a vain hope.
Once it became clear that Frontale was not going back to the J1 immediately, many of the best players skipped town to find a spot on a J1 club. Furthermore, despite a steadily rising level of competition in the J2, many of the Frontale youngsters seemed to stagnate or fail to live up to their early promise. Nevertheless, the team wisely refused to be discouraged by the early setbacks. Rather than panic, or make ill-considered acquisitions in an effort to immediately make the jump, Frontale set out to revive its fortunes by building a solid foundation -- something that took more time than just signing a single high-scoring Brazilian striker. This strategy would pay off in the longer run.
The team began by working hard to win the loyalty of local fans. Sandwiched between two giant cities -- Tokyo and Yokohama -- Kawasaki did not have much of a local identity at first. This was one reason why Verdy opted to move to Tokyo. But careful efforts by the club to promote "Kawasaki Pride" began to take hold by 2003, and as the loyal fan base grew, so did Frontale's competitiveness. They were in the race for promotion until the final week of the 2003 season, when despite a victory over Sanfrecce Hiroshima in the final match of the year, they finished in third place on goal difference. But once again the team shook off the disappointment , and set out in 2004 on a crusade to ensure that they would not be disappointed again. Both the team and its fans really came together in 2004, and stormed through the J2, crushing all competition in their path. It was no contest. Frontale clinched their second J2 title by late September, and coasted into the J1 with almost two months to spare.
By the time Frontale finally made their way back into the top-flight division, they faced much tougher competition than they had in 2000. But this time they had a much deeper roster, a solid and loyal fan base, good finances, and a more appropriate balance of youngsters and veterans. Their first trip to the J1 may have been short-lived, but in the long run the return to the J2 was probably for the best. It allowed the team to build a more solid base in its local community, develop the financial and organizational underpinnings to ensure that the team would remain in the top-flight for many years, and cultivate a youth program and scouting network which would provide a strong flow of talented players into the roster in years to come.
Following an eighth place finish in 2005, Frontale fans knew that they had finally arrived as a J1 team. The next step for team was to move to the next stage of development, and set its sights on winning some silverware. In 2006, the Blue Dolphins' stirring run to the top of the table, at the midpoint of the season, proved that the years spend in the J2 had been well worth it. The team had developed a very balanced game plan, with several talented and high-powered strikers as well as a stiff defence with by far the tallest back line in the League. A slump in September and October knocked them out of the running for the league title, but Frontale finished strong and edged out Gamba to take second place. This performance was enough to earn them a spot in the Asian Champions League (since the first-place Urawa Reds already had secured a berth by winnin the previous year's Emperor's Cup). In an effort to encourage even stronger fan support in 2007, the team went all out in the ACL, and managed to qualify for the knockout round one match prior to the Reds, thus becoming the first Japanese team to get past the knockout stage. This performance earned the team quite a bit of respect, and for the first time the football pundits were describing Frontale in the same breath with other title contenders like Gamba Osaka, Kashima and Urawa.
Frontale's fifth-place finish in 2007 was slightly disappointing, but as history has shown, it is hard for any team to contest both the ACL and the domestic league title without running out of steam at the end of the year. In 2008, Frontale made some more adjustments to their squad, replacing some of the older players in the central defence and bringing together what appeared to be the most formidable front line in J.League history. Veteran Brazilian Juninho, who had led the league in scoring in 2007, was joined by the young and physically dominant Givanildo "Hulk" de Souza, and the Japanese-born North Korean national Chong Tese, who was emerging as one of the international stars of Asian football. In reserve the team had former national team striker Kazuki Ganaha and the small but speedy Masaru Kurotsu. It looked like the Blue Dolphins were finally ready to make a splash.
But the hoped-for scenario failed to materialize. As so often happens in the J.League, the team of big-match players with big egos were unable to work together as a team. In fact, just two matches into the season a huge clash of egos in the locker room prompted Hulk to demand a trade to a different team. The stress was too much for the weak heart of coach Takashi Sekizuka, who had to be hospitalized in April and was eventually replaced as head coach by his assistant. Two months into the season Frontale were in complete disarray, languishing near the foot of the table, and with open animosity reigning in the locker room.
But the team was simply too good to fall apart completely. Once Hulk had been shipped off to Tokyo Verdy (where he created even more disarray, and eventually left to join Porto FC in Europe, in July), the team chemistry began to revive, and as late surge carried Frontale all the way back to second place. This dramatic recovery has instilled even greater confidence in the players, and certainly offered fans a lot of excitement, if not necessaryly producing the payoff that they hoped for at the start of the season. In 2009 Frontale will once again claim a berth in the Asian Champions League, and coach Sekizuka -- having conquered his health problems -- will be back in the driver's seat. Though the disappointment of 2008 is still fresh in the minds of the pundits, and most will probably hesitate to predict a Frontale championship, we suspect that they will once again be among the top candidates for the league title
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