Team Data: Oita Trinita
Team Name:
Team Logo & Mascot:  
Team Flag:
Home Uniform Away Uniform
 
Home Stadium
Seats 43,000 (WC 2002 Venue)
Team Data:
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Management Corporation: | Oita Football Club Co., Ltd. | |
Established: | 7 January 1999
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President: | Hatsutaro Hoshino
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Investors: | Consortium of 5 companies, including Paint House Co., Ltd. | |
Address: | Sanno First Bldg. 3F,
1-6-21 Funai-cho, Oita City,
Oita 870-0021 | |
Hometown Area: | The district including Oita City, Beppu City and Saeki City | |
Home Stadium: | Oita "Big Eye" Stadium (capacity: 43,000) | |
Joined J. League: | 1999 | |
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Oita Trinita is a relatively new club, located in a very small town in Kyushu (western Japan). The team was founded in 1994, as Oita Football Club. Upon joining the J2 in 1999, it changed its name to Oita Trinita. The name "Trinita" is formed from "Trinity" and "Oita", and recalls the fact that the area was a center of Christian (Jesuit) missionary work in the 1600s.
Despite the team's small home town and grassroots origin, Oita Trinita's performance in the JFL, not to mention its challenge for the league title its first two years in the J2, has attracted a huge and faithful following. In its very first year of existence, the team won the regional championship and was accepted as a member of the JFL's regional league. In its first season as a regional team, Trinita proceeded to win the Kyushu Regional Championship, and the following year it won both the regional title, and a share of the nationwide championship of regional teams, qualifying it for promotion to the JFL in 1996.
Oita made steady progress as a JFL club, advancing from 10th place in its first year of membership to 6th place in 1998. This was good enough to secure the team a spot in the J2 when the league was formed in 1999. But Oita's rapid progress did not end there. In the J2's inaugural year, the team finished third, failing to qualify for promotion to the J.League by just a single point. In 2000, the team once again came within a single victory of promotion to the J1, falling short due to Urawa Reds' last-minute victory in the final match of the season. Then, in 2001, the team collapsed in the final month of the season to dash fans' hopes of promotion once again. Although the roller-coaster ride of hope and despair provided fans with lots of excitement, and contributed to the team's rising popularity, fans were tremendously relieved when the team managed to maintain their form in 2002, and finally win promotion to the top-flight division.
Oita Trinita has continued its steady progress in the J1, as well. After just barely avoiding relegation in 2003, a more offence-minded Trinita sprang some upset wins in 2004, and though they remained at the lower end of the table, they bettered their record slightly. Things got off to a rocky start in 2005, and at midseason it looked like Trinita were ripe for relegation. But a coaching change brought in the very adept and charismatic Pericles Chamusca, who quickly got Trinita back on their feet and coached them to an unbeaten string of 11 matches at the tail end of the season. Oita claimed its best finish yet, at 11th, and coach Chamusca began the task of transforming the small club into a giant-killer, by instilling the same energy and self-control that the 43-year-old manager exudes.
Though they are now starting to taste some success, and enjoy a steadily growing fan base and revenue stream, Trinita still has one of the smaller budgets among J1 clubs, and their progress, though steady, has not been particularly swift or dramatic. From that perspective, the club's decision in 2008 to adopt a turtle as their mascot might seem appropriate. In truth, the symbol seems to be a very apt one, since Trinita is starting to develop a reputation for having a very tough shell
Coach Chamusca responded to the challenges of running a shoestring operation by adopting a unique style of play. In the past, coaches who tried to adopt defensive strategies in the J.League found it difficult to achieve success, due to the very open style of play and the fact that most teams -- especially title contenders -- invariably play for the win over the final 15 minutes of a tight contest, even if they risk conceding a goal and dropping all three points. Weaker teams that play for the 0-0 or 1-1 draw often find themselves overrun in the final few minutes, and rarely manage to get the points they are shooting for. This fact has cost more than a few J.League newcomers their coaching jobs.
But coach Chamusca's football philosophy, while aimed at keeping down the score, does not really deserve to be described as defensive, when compared with the sort of anti-football that one often sees from smaller teams in Europe. On the contrary, Trinita is a very aggressive team that rarely can be accused of "playing for the draw". Their strategy is aimed at keeping the pace of play relatively slow, and limiting the other team's chances, but then springing sudden, incisive counterattacks that can carry the team to victory. The above description offers a very precise synopsis of Trinita's victory in the 2008 Nabisco (league) Cup, which earned the team its first piece of silverware. Though they played much of the contest on the back foot, Trinita's clever trapping and swift counterattacks produced two second-half goals and carried them past Shimizu S-Pulse.
The question now is whether the Terrible Turtles can transform their cup success and underdog-style play into the consistent string of results needed to win a league championship. Following their fourth-place finish in 2008, nobody can claim that a championship is beyond their grasp. But the team does have a number of weaknesses that will continue to make life difficult. For one thing, Oita does not have a well established youth programme, and therefore tends to have less home-grown talent than other top J1 clubs. But that is slowly changing, and the strong football programmes at local high schools and universities have already spawned several candidates for the U-23 and U-20 teams. The team's finances are getting better with each passing year, but still fall a bit short of top rivals. Though it it may take several years yet before Trinita can hope to claim a league championship, the feisty little team from northern Kyushu is certainly increasing the pressure on the other frontrunners.
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  | Ch-ch-ch- Changes
Oita Trinita was a pioneer in the art of visual presentation. In 2004 the team decided that its club symbols and logo design were a bit too "old-fashioned", and conducted a makeover which abolished the logos shown here, replacing them with the current designs. Since then, several other teams have made similar changes, with varying degrees of success and . . . err . . . (what's another word for "SaganTosu"?).
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 | Neetan
Oita Trinita was also one of the last J.League teams to adopt a mascot. After stubbornly avoiding this ploy to appeal to youngsters for so many years, we had the impresssion that the club thought mascots were too 'cute" for a football team. That impression was shattered when they finally broke down and unveiled Neetan -- a cuddly turtle that makes even Ardija's squirrel look like a tough guy. |
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