Team Data: Yokohama Marinos
Team Name:
Team Logo & Mascot:  
Team Flag:
Home Uniform Away Uniform
 
Home StadiumYokohama Int'l (Nissan) Stadium
Seats 72,600 (World Cup Venue)
Team Data:
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Management Corporation: | Yokohama Marinos Ltd. | |
Established: | 1 April 1992
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President: | Shigeo Hidaritomo
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Investors: | Nissan Motor Co., Ltd. All Nippon Airways Co., Ltd. | |
Address: | 1-18-1 Shinkoyasu,
Kanagawa-ku, Yokohama,
Kanagawa 221-8523 | |
Hometown Area: | Yokohama City, Kanagawa Prefecture | |
Home Stadium: | YokohamaInt'l (Nissan) Stadium (capacity: 72,600) | |
Joined J. League: | 1992 | |
Major Titles: | J.League Champions: 1995, 2003, 2004
Emperor's Cup: 1992
Asian Cup Winners' Cup:1992/93
Nabisco Cup Champions: 2001
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 |  | Marinos-kun
To symbolize Yokohama's maritime history and status as a major port city, what better animal to choose as a mascot than a seagull decked out in a sailor's outfit? Some might wonder about the choice; even in Asia the seagull is not generally viewed as a symbol of strength, luck or valour. And like most sailors, Marinos-kun isnt very big on "family values". Unlike other clubs, the Marinos never saw fit to give him a wife or a girlfriend . . . and yet he still managed to spawn a seaglet named "Marinosuke". Try explaining THAT to your kiddies when they get old enough to ask where little mascots come from! | |
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The Yokohama Marinos rank as one of the traditional powers of Japanese football, with a long tradition that dates back to their formation in the 1960s, as the club team of Nissan Motor. The Nissan team battled with Yomiuri Club (the forerunner of Tokyo Verdy) and Mitsubishi Motors (Urawa Reds) for dominance of the JSL, and these three remained near the top of the heap right up until the formation of the J.League. Although Kashima Antlers' near-upset of Verdy in the 1993 season came as quite a surprise, no one batted an eyelash when the Marinos knocked Verdy off their perch in 1995 and became the first team other than Verdy to win a league championship. It seemed that the pecking order of the old JSL would persist in the J.League. But Yokohama, like their next-door neighbors in Kawasaki, would go through some dramatic changes following this initial success.
When the J.League kicked off, most of the top teams established a character that bore similarities to, and maintained relations with, one of the leading football nations. This often reflected the nationality of the coach or top foreign players, but it also was fostered thrugh formal ties between the J.League club and club teams in the other country. Whereas Verdy and Kashima Antlers developed a very "Brazilian" character, and the Reds always had a strong German influence, in the Marinos' case, the original bonds were with Argentina. To mark its birth as an independent club, Nissan FC adopted the name "Marinos" -- Spanish for "sailors" -- as an allusion to Yokohama's long history as one of the nation's top ports.
As the team prepared for the J.League's inauguration, in 1993, Yokohama already had a solid base of talented defenders from the Nissan FC days, anchored by "Mr. Marino" Masami Iihara, who still holds the record for most national team caps at 123. However, the team's offence was less impressive, so the Marinos used their contacts in Argentina to acquire an entire strike force from River Plate, featuring the legendary Ramon Diaz, Ramon Medinabello and David Bisconti. These three prolific scorers propelled the team to its first league championship in 1995, but since all three were getting on in years, the team was not able to follow up on this success. Ramon Diaz retired and returned to Argentina, to coach at River Plate, and Medinabello followed close behind. Davic Bisconti was unable to carry the team's offence on his own, and subsequent attempts to bring in Argentine or Spanish talent failed to pay off. Though they never fell too far out of contention over the latter half of the decade, the Marinos entered what could be described as a "rebuilding phase", which focused much more on domestic talent.
At the end of the 1998 season the Marinos' cross-town rivals, the Yokohama Flugels, were disbanded amidst great turmoil and acrimony. As we describe elsewhere on this site, the fallout in terms of fan reaction and emotional turmoil was tremendous. Officially, the Marinos absorbed their local rivals. Ten Flugels players moved across town and the club added an "F" to the middle of their name in an awkward (and ineffective) effort to win over the former Flugels fans. In reality, though, the rivalry was too fierce for more than a handful of fans to cross the divide, and the divisions within the team were also unresolvable. On paper it looked like the "F.Marinos" had the material needed to build a dynasty, but on the pitch, the divisions and dissension quickly began to show through.
Despite being tapped by nearly all of the pundits to breeze to victory in 1998, the Marinos instead sank into a slump, posting their worst single-stage result ever (seventh) in the first half of the year. In 2000, the team tried to put things back in order by returning to its Argentine roots, hiring former Argentina and Tottenham Hotspur star Oswaldo Ardilles as the coach. Ardilles had already served one stint in Japan, at Shimizu S-Pulse, and many thought that he would be just the sort of guiding hand the team needed to put the divisions and distractions of 1999 to rest. Yokohama did perform well that season, capturing the first stage title. However, in the League Championship Series they fell under the hooves of the Kashima Antlers, who were galloping towards their historic championship treble.
Perhaps the disappointment of falling just short of victory in 2000 shattered the team's morale. Or perhaps the divisions in the team that had been papered over by Ardilles simply came back into the open, after this loss. Whatever the case, the Marinos offseason in 2000-01 was nothing short of a disaster. Flugels veterans Hideki Nagai and Atsuhiro Miura jumped ship to join Tokyo Verdy, signing new contracts for less money than they had been receiving in Yokohama. Team management suddenly became stingy, and released all of the Marinos' high-budget foreigners. Worst of all, individual players seemed to be overly preoccupied with their own personal careers, continuously stoking rumours of a move overseas even when there was only the faintest hint of interest from a foreign club. Ardilles was fired at midseason, and the Marinos looked to be completely at sea. In the end, the team came within a hair's breadth of being relegated in 2001. The next two years were a gloomy time in the city by the bay.
Nevertheless, the Seagulls had always possessed a solid core of talent, and the financial support of Nissan Motor ensured that the team's monetary resources are usually among the best in the league. Once management finally overcome the stinginess that it displayed in 2000 and 2001, the Marinos were able to return to the ranks of top contenders. Perhaps the smartest move the team made was to hire former Japan National Team coach Takeshi Okada, and put him in charge of the task of building a true contender. Okada agreed, but only if the team would give him complete freedom to rebuild in his own image. The first thing Okada did was to abandon former ties to Argentina. With the addition of players like Tatsuhiko Kubo, Yoo Sang-chul and Yukihiko Sato, Okada had all the tools he needed to create a champion, and his fine coaching skills did the rest. Yokohama had to fight off strong challenges from a host of contenders, but they managed to win both stages of the 2003 league competition and emerge as uncontested champions. They followed up this success with a narrow win over the Urawa Reds in the last J.League Championship Series, in 2004, to claim their third league crown.
When the J.League adopted a single-stage format, in 2005, many thought that the Marinos would be the top contender to claim a third consecutive title. But the "magic" that Okada worked in 2003 and 04 seemed to wear off. The divisions that had always existed in the team began to resurface, and though the team's underlying talent kept them competitive, the loss of key players like Ahn Jung-Hwan (to France) and Tatsuhiko Kubo (to injury) kept Yokohama out of the championship picture. When coach Okada took the fall for this malaise, and was fired in 2006, Yokohama entered the most difficult period of its history.
Perhaps the Marinos would have fallen from the top ranks even if they had been well coached. For one thing, the top players were beginning to get along in years, and the team had to start making the change of generations. By 2006, Yokohama relied far too heavily on players who were on the wrong side of 30. Yokohama's talented defence, in particular, was supported by players like Yuji Nakazawa and Naoki Matsuda, who can still effective contributions but who are no longer able to carry the team by themselves. Injuries also had their impact, particularly recurring knee ailments which kept midfielder Koji Yamase -- once viewed as the successor to Shunsuke Nakamura -- from playing more than a handful of matches between 2006 and 2008. But regardless of how great the challenges may have been, there can be no question that poor coaching contributed greatly to the Marinos' malaise over the past few seasons. Okada's successor, Takashi Mizunuma, was simply a former Marino who landed a coaching job after retirement. He never really exhibited the skills to serve as a head coach and the team's performance under his breif reign underline that fact. In 2007 the Marinos appointed Hiroshi Hayano, who was in the coaching chair when Yokohama won its 1995 title, but this is rather misleading. Jorge Solari had led the team to the First Stage title, and Hayano took over in a caretaker's role after Solari was lured away to coach Rosario Central, in Argentina. Under Hayano's actual tutelage the Marinos finished third in the 1995 second stage, and then plunged to eighth place in 1996. His results in this second coaching stint were not much better, with the team finishing seventh.
But the real disaster came in 2008. Marinos management turned to a former Jubilo Iwata boss, Takashi Kuwahara, who had difficulty getting the players to adopt his intricate, possession-style football at first, and failed to produce immediate results. In retrospect, it would seem that the head office panicked and made the short-sighted decision to relieve Kuwahara of command, but his replacement, another inexperienced assistant named Hiroshi Kimura, promptly led the team deep into relegation territory. The basic talent and veteran pride that still resides in key players like Nakazawa, Matsuda and Hayuma Tanaka eventually rescued the team from a spell in the J2, but the reward that the veterans received was to be dangled as trade bait at the end of the 2008 season
We think that the Marinos do need to make a shift to a new generation of players, so perhaps the personnel moves made at the end of 2008 are steps that have to be taken sooner or later. Nevertheless, it is hard to avoid the impression that Marinos top management have lost the clarity and careful planning skills that made the team a title contender during the league's first decade. The high-profile talk about bringing back Shunsuke Nakamura may excite a certain contingent of Yokohama's trendy, star-struck fans, but from the standpoint of football logic, it is rather difficult to understand. Even if Nakamura does arrive back in the Bay City at mid-season, he may face the immediate task of pulling the team out of another bout of relegation anxiety. The Marinos clearly have a lot of raw young talent which, if developed properly, may be able to carry them back into contention at some point in the future. In the short term, however, fans in Yokohama may have to get used to a diet of fingernail-nibblings.
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