Team Data: Nagoya Grampus
Team Name:
Team Logo & Mascot:  
Team Flag:
Home Uniform Away Uniform
 
Home Stadium Toyota Soccer Stadium
Seats 45,000 Mizuho Athletic Stadium
Seats 28,000
Team Data:
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Management Corporation: | Nagoya Grampus Eight Inc. | |
Established: | 17 July, 1991
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President: | Toyo Kato
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Investors: | Consortium of 20 major local companies | |
Address: | Hisaya YS Bldg. 6F,
5-1-32 Sakae, Naka-ku,
Nagoya City, Aichi 460-0008 | |
Hometown Area: | Nagoya City, Aichi Prefecture | |
Home Stadium: | Nagoya Mizuho Athletic Stadium (capacity: 27,000) | |
Joined J. League: | 1992 | |
Major Titles: |
Emperor's Cup Champions: 1995, 1999
Xerox Super Cup Champions: 1996
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 | Grampus-kun
Nagoya supposedly selected an orca (killer whale) as its mascot due to the similarity between the Japanese word for a gargoyle (shachihoko) and the word for killer whale (shachi). As mascots go, this one is as good as any. At least the significance of a mascot with a killer instinct is appropriate, compared with some of the other mascots selected by J.League teams. Like many other teams, Nagoya decided to expand the character's appeal by adding a female version ("Grampako") and a kid ("Grampus Jr.") in subsequent years, though they do not feature very prominently in team literature
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Nagoya Grampus Eight got its start in the mid 1950s, as the company team of Toyota Motor. However, the ties to its former parent have been greatly reduced, and it is difficult to find any information about the Toyota Motor club in Grampus' official literature. Perhaps that is partly due to the relatively meagre fiinancial support that the automaker provides to Grampus, relative to other "corporate sponsors" (particularly other automakers like Mitsubishi and Nissan). Whatever the case, today's Grampus is a very different animal from the corporate team that proceeded it. Toyota was a reasonably successful JSL franchise, and the team was a top candidate for inclusion as one of the founding members of the J.League in 1993. The team adopted the name "Grampus", which is an archaic British word for the gargoyle-like characters found on old castles -- specifically, the "lion-fish" gargoyles on the top of Nagoya Castle,the city's most distinctive landmark.
For years, the official team name was "Nagoya Grampus Eight", and a variety of reasons were given over the years for using the word "Eight". Some suggested that it referred to the eight arms of an octopus, but since Nagoya adopted a killer whale as its mascot, this explanation makes little sense. Years ago the team website claimed that it referred to the "eight priciples of citizenship in Nagoya City", but since few Nagoya residents have ever heard of these principles, much less knowing what those principles are, the explanation sounds like another exercise in creating explanations for a name long after it has been selected. In general, the public and the press have always simply referred to the team as "Nagoya Grampus", and by the mid-00s the team finally seemed to accept that "Eight" was an unnecessary distraction. Ironically enough, the team chose 2008 as the year to abandon the word Eight, and become "Nagoya Grampus".
Much like the source of their name, Nagoya are a rather mysterious team. Grampus started out as one of the weaker participants, and though many fans in the UK are aware of the team's association with Gary Lineker, the fact is that Lineker was too old and hobbled by injury to make much of an impact. He made only a handful of appearances for Nagoya Grampus, spent most of his time as a "photo prop" posing for publicity shots and making comments to the press, and left Nagoya before the first J.League season was fully over. It was not until Arsene Wenger took over as head coach in1995 and 1996, and Lineker was replaced in the lineup by Dragan Stojkovic, that the team began to enjoy a period of relative success. Nagoya fell just short of a league title under Wenger, and captured the Emperor's Cup at the close of the 1995 season. Nagoya fans hoped that their team might be on the verge of establishing itself as a league power, but the year following Wenger's departure, there was a sharp drop in performance. Despite the success that Toyota had enjoyed in the old JSL, Grampus was destined to be a mid-table struggler for the League's first decade. Indeed, it was shortly after Wenger's departure that the Red Whales began to establish their reputation as the league's most consistent underperformers.
When the Yokohama Flugels disbanded in 1998, Nagoya inherited many of their stars, and on paper at least, they looked like a tremendously competitive club. Many tipped them to win the League title in 1999. However, despite the abundance of talent they were unable to gel as a team, and the only reward they managed to collect was another Emperor's Cup trophy at the end of the 1999 season. For the next three years, the team was repeatedly selected as one of the preseason favourites to win the title. And every year they promptly dashed the hopes of their fans and the reputations of their supporters in the sports press. Clearly Grampus had a great many talented players, including national team keeper Seigo Narazaki, national team volante Motohiro Yamaguchi veteran Yugoslav midfielder and playmaker Dragan Stojkovic, and a string of potent strikers starting with the naturalised Japanese-Brazilian Wagner Lopes and followed by Brazilian national team star Ueslei Perreira da Silva and the tragically short-careered Japanese Olympic star Takafumi Oguro. However, the team always seemed to be less than the sum of its parts.
In 2001, Grampus made a start in reforming their image as perrennial underperformers. Dragan Stojkovic retired at midseason, and the addition of dependable, "blue-collar" players such as defender Keiji Kaimoto and volante Tomoyuki Sakai, marking a break from the team's past reliance on "star" players. Although Nagoya finished third in the overall standings for the 2001 season, for the first time they seemed to play up to their ability, or perhaps even surpass it. Having established themselves as one of the J.League's legitimate contenders, Grampus were hoping to take it one step further, and capture the title that had eluded them for so long. But after a strong start in 2002, the team suffered yet another collapse during the second stage, and once again failed to live up to expectations of its fans, finishing a disappointing sixth over the course of the season. With the pressure building, both within the team and from the long-suffering fans, Grampus was ripe for the sort of explosive incident that can change a team completely, whether for good or for ill.
The conflagration erupted in the middle of the 2005 season, when a clash of wills in the locker room shattered a team structure that had been built up over more than a decade. Apparently the incident was triggered when coach Nelsinho Baptista Junior walked in on some post-match griping by the players. Demanding to know what was going on, he recieved a sharply worded "explanation" from the two players who were able to communicate the mood to him most "concisely" -- the Brazilian strike team of Ueslei and Marques. Taking this as a personal insult and a challenge to his authority, Nelsinho exploded, and demanded harsh punishments for the two Brazilians, but far from being chastened, they simply walked away from the club, daring management to take legal action. Fortunately for both club and players, there were cooler heads in the Nagoya front office. Both Ueslei and Marques were dealt away to other J.League clubs, and though the club was reluctant to undercut their coach publicly, Nelsinho was gone before the end of the season. With only a bunch of rookies and second year players to fill many of the starting spots, Grampus finished well down the table.
However, hope springs eternal in the hearts of football fans, and the one positive thing about this collapse is that it cleared the rubble away and allowed the team to start looking at their basic foundation of their team. Prior to the Nelsinho fiasco, Grampus had always relied on a very "Brazilian" structure to both the coaching staff and the foreign players. But as the incident in 2005 demonstrated, the team had become heavily dependent on the performance of its foreign contingent, while failing to properly develop the many promising youngsters who were coming up through the ranks.
In 2006 the team conducted a thorough housecleaning, set its sights firmly on building a competitive squad based on youngsters developed in-house, rather than high-priced veterans acquired from other teams. Dutch coach Sef Vergoosen lwas placed in charge of the effort, and the veteran coach did a fine job of laying the groundwork for a new, younger team. The results that Grampus achieved in 2006 and 2007 were not only founded on a core of homegrown talent, but also were a far better expression of the team's true competitiveness than ever before. The Red Whales were finally escaping from their old reputation for underperforming. The future was looking bright indeed, until coach Vergoosen returned to Holland at the end of 2007 and took the team's star player -- U-23 midfielder Keisuke Honda -- with him.
At first, Grampus fans were crushed. Just when it seemed that the club might finally be on the road to succcess, they were hit with a huge blow to confidence and morale. But fortunately, the front office had learned some important lessons about team management, and they responded by bringing in a head coach who could restore the team's confidence, pride, and competitive fire -- the legendary Jugoslavia captain and Grampus midfield general, Dragan "Pixy" Stojkovic. Under Pixy's emotional leadership, Grampus got off to a flying start in 2008, and led the league at the midpoint of the campaign. Unfortunately, enthusiasm alone was not enough to overcome the team's still-young and still-undermanned roster. Grampus slipped off the pace in the final three months of the season, and failed to claim any silverware in 2008,. But despite the rather disappointing final results, Grampus is clearly well on the road to recovery, and perhaps not far away from its first J.League title. Grampus also held on to claim one of the three ACL berths for 2009, bringing international club football back to Nagoya for the first time since the turn of the century. There is no question that the Red Whales have finally found their depth, and fans in the Nagoya area can look forward to much better prospects in the years to come.
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