The rise, fall and rise again of Japanese football

May 18, 2021 | News On Japan

May 18, 2021 (theroar.com.au) - This past weekend, the J-League celebrated its 28th anniversary. The Japanese top division has gone on to become one the best leagues in Asia.

But before the J-League, there was the Japan Soccer League, which was then considered an amateur league in Japan. The teams in the old JSL were owned by top Japanese corporations and lot of the players worked and played for those corporations.

Japanese soccer’s issues in the ’80s and early ’90s were somewhat similar to the issues that Australian football has had previously. In 1992, Japan hosted the Asian Cup and went on to win it, but a couple of years later, they narrowly missed out on going to the ’94 World Cup after losing to Iraq.

The Japanese national football team has suffered due to the status of the league being amateur and having players both working full-time and playing soccer as a hobby.

The Socceroos have suffered similar issues, despite the NSL being borderline professional in the late ’90s, going into the early 2000s, however, the NSL was a level or two above the Japan Soccer League.

After the 1992 Asian Cup, the JFA had to raise their domestic league to professional status.

The J-League was created, birthing nine new professional teams. Shimizu S-Pulse were brought up from JSL; the JSL became a second-tier league and was rebranded to Japanese Football League for six years.

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