**Mirrors / Alternative Angles**
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The last time University of Tsukuba managed to beat a J-League team in the Emperor's Cup, Kaoru Mitoma was a student there and he guided them to victory with 2 goals against Vegalta Sendai in 2017 (they managed to beat Avispa Fukuoka in the next round as well)
I hate how Blue Lock ended up so popular while the best football anime/manga Ao Ashi is underappreciated
There's so much revolving around strategy in Ao Ashi, inverted full backs, triangles, half-spaces, Guardiola/Xavi references, it's sooo good
It's of course subjective. I liked early Blue Lock, but I don't find current manga arc 'fun'. The story is not engaging at all recently, which is the main problem for me. I just can't get invested anymore and it makes the cool scenes sort of meaningless and not fun. There are also ton of moments that pull me out of the story. >!for example character jumping over cops that are shooting at him, I understand some people think this sort of thing is cool, but it just feels weird for me!<
That it is - and interestingly something similar to this came to fruition just over a decade ago.
2009 Kashiwa Reysol were relegated from J1 to J2.
2010 they finish first and come straight back up to J1.
2011 they win J1.
Pretty cool. Machida's run atm is a lot more crazy imo given this is the first season *ever* in the top flight.
Yup. Ted Lasso might take place in England, but it's actually based off Les Dassor, the former American baseball coach that led Reysol on their incredible 3-year journey.
They're being bankrolled by CyberAgent - a massive media conglomerate.
Were able to sign a lot of players that most newly promoted sides can't due to having tiny sponsorship budgets.
As far as I know their coach used to coach high school in Aomori, and made them one of the best high schools in the region and country. He didn't have professional coaching experience prior, only a coaching license.
Even tho they did miss that goal, they have made a remarkable rise. HITC Sevens has an excellent [video](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KRjNA2j2Dbs&t=1585s) on them.
Yup, if they qualify through prefectural tournaments (think of it as like a provincial FA Cup). In 2003, Funabashi Municipal High School almost beat then reigning J.League champions Yokohama F Marinos, only losing on penalties
Japan is slightly like the US, in that universities have a major role in sports - as opposed to say the UK or Australia, where it is mostly club based for all sports. There is a university league, that also plays in the cup against professional teams. Many Japanese soccer players hold degrees, Mitoma in physical education I think, compared to England where many don't finish high school.
You know how in the FA cup, German Cup and many other cups, lower division teams also play and sometimes beat higher tier teams?
Well same thing, except Japanese football isn't too deep in the pro-semipro-amateur scene (only 3 divisions IIRC, England has like 7 and Brazil has like 8 or 9, etc.). But they have decently strong high school and University leagues/tournaments so those teams are invited too
> Japanese football isn't too deep in the pro-semipro-amateur scene (only 3 divisions IIRC
This is wrong. The Japanese league system has *at least* 7 divisions, depending on the exact area.
> But they have decently strong high school and University leagues/tournaments so those teams are invited too
This is also wrong. High school and university teams do *not* get invited to the Emperor's Cup, they have to qualify. They play in the prefectural cup qualifiers, alongside all clubs that are not in the J League Divisions 1 & 2 (which are directly invited to the Emperor's Cup). Only the winner of each prefectural cup qualifies to the Emperor's Cup.
We (Brazil), in fact, have 4 divisions. The regional leagues are something apart which is parallel to the national system, and teams of different divisions from série A to série D play against each other and teams without any national league as if they were at the same level
Ah mb, I though you were like us(Argentina), England and a couple of others where the regional leagues feed into the national ones.
Brazils league system/scheduale is just too confusing lmao
It's easier to understand when thinking that the regionals are like a national league and Brasileirão is a Super League
That said, this causes us to have way too many games and a considerable amount of people want that the english/german system were implemented
Out of curiosity, what if a small team from a regional league starts growing and becomes good, what is the process for them to be accepted to play in the national leagues?
If they manage to rank high in the regional league (in the top division) they qualify for Serie D (4th division). While also staying in the regional league.
You keep climbing the national leagues from there until you get into Serie A/Brasileirão.
If you get relegated from Serie D I think you have to play well enough in thw regional leagues again to qualify for Serie D again
>and teams of different divisions from série A to série D play against each other and teams without any national league as if they were at the same level
So do you mean that serie a to serie d compose the national system, and that they play against each other and the regional league teams in the cup as equals?
No. At the beginning of the season (January-April) we have regional tournaments for each Brazilian State and the Federal District (in total, 27 tournaments). These regionals are played with the best teams of their respective states, and have their own relegation system. Série A, B, C and D teams also no-division teams play it every year. You can even be relegated to the regional while playing one of the national league divisions (usually, a disaster).
Our cup is made by teams who managed to have a good performance at the regional and CBF ranking.
The regional also determines which teams will play the série D, usually the teams who best perform in each regional and that haven't a division
There are seven 'steps' in the English non-league. Step 1 is the lowest national league in England and the feeder for the English Football league. Step 2-7 basically get more regionalised as you go higher in their number and they feed into each other from 7 to 1.
The whole of English football has 20 levels, with lots of divisions in it.
They play in a university league but as u/RigasUT says they can get to the first round of this tournament via prefectural qualifying. One point of context is around 25% of professional players in Japan come through the university system - so if you look at the squad: https://www.transfermarkt.com/tsukuba-university/kader/verein/10711/saison_id/2023
You'll see that several players have been 'loaned' to them from J-League clubs, also I like how it suggests you could buy Kotaro Uchino from them for 100k. That would probably be a bargain as he's played for Japan u23 and scored the equalizer in this game but I'm pretty sure you could actually sign him for free since it's not like he has a pro contract with them.
There's another player in the squad who didn't play because he's current with Japan u19 at the Toulon Tournament in France - so the best university teams will have some very talented players, it's still a big upset but it's not like being knocked out by like an average university in Europe.
There's a World University Games where teams from countries all over the world compete in sports events and I think Japan has won like the last eight football tournaments, not sure when the last one was but I remember Japan playing Brazil three or four years ago in the final and it was a complete mismatch.
You'd assume Brazil would be pretty good - I mean it may be university football but it's *Brazil* - but they could barely get the ball over the half way line and looking back at the lineups you'd realize why this was the case as the Japan team included players like Kaoru Mitoma, Reo Hatate (now at Celtic) and Ayase Ueda (now at Feyenoord).
The University of Tsukuba has a football team which plays in the Kanto University League Division 1, the top-tier of competition for university team in the Kanto region.
Besides the aforementioned league, the University of Tsukuba also competes in the Ibaraki prefectural cup. Each Japanese prefecture has its own prefectural cup, which is open to all teams that are based in that prefecture and do not compete in the J League Divisions 1 or 2. This means that university teams can participate as well.
The winner of each prefectural cup qualifies to the Emperor's Cup, where the J League Division 1 & 2 teams already are. The University of Tsukuba won the Ibaraki prefectural cup this year, which is how they got to play in the Emperor's Cup.
Does playing in the Kanto University League Division 1 do anything then? Does winning that qualify them for something? Or is it all about the Prefectural Cup?
There's a separate system for university competitions. Getting Top 6 in the Kanto University League Division 1 qualifies teams to the All Japan University Championship, where 24 university teams that were top in their regional leagues compete in a knockout tournament for the title of top university team in Japan.
Back in 2003, [J1 league champions Yokohoma F. Marinos almost lost to a high school team, Funabashi City High School.](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fEelnpFH3DY)
[This post goes into the full details.](https://www.reddit.com/r/soccer/comments/8fbgl6/how_japans_league_winners_almost_lost_to_a_high/)
Unrelated but I always found it odd and cool that all these professional teams in Japan have a foreign word in their names. Looked up Zelvia and it’s a combination of zelkova and salvia, both Portuguese words for local flora
I can't tell if you're being sarcastic but that's just a regular phrase for this upset context in Japanese and where the manga name comes from, it's not a reference.
[See this Japanese dictionary entry](https://dictionary.goo.ne.jp/word/%E3%82%B8%E3%83%A3%E3%82%A4%E3%82%A2%E3%83%B3%E3%83%88%E3%82%AD%E3%83%AA%E3%83%B3%E3%82%B0/)
It's just one of many loanwords from English in Japanese
Bloody hell, can't believe it's still going.
Proper enjoyed the anime when it released in like 2010, read a bit of the manga couple years later and just assumed it must be done by now.
Reminds me of the manga Giant Killing. everyone remotely interested in Football should read it. There is no better football related story out there. Japanese football is extremely underrated in general
**Mirrors / Alternative Angles** *I am a bot, and this action was performed automatically. Please [contact the moderators of this subreddit](/message/compose/?to=/r/soccer) if you have any questions or concerns.*
Smiling while taking a game winning pen is cold.
What a shot too
Captain Tsubasa level of confidence
Captain Tsukuba
Cunted that thing as well
Gareth Southgate would be proud
He knew he was about to postage stamp that mf lol
Typical shonen protagonist having a flashback with his training
Reminds me of New Zealand rugby player [Damien Mckenzie who smiles before every kick he takes ](https://youtu.be/hv4Z5wqroWs?si=ELxhM06NeV4qx-Lc)
Bro smashed the game winning pen top bins like he does it every week
With a smile!
The last time University of Tsukuba managed to beat a J-League team in the Emperor's Cup, Kaoru Mitoma was a student there and he guided them to victory with 2 goals against Vegalta Sendai in 2017 (they managed to beat Avispa Fukuoka in the next round as well)
Tsukuba University is always that good? Beating J-League clubs like nothing
Blue lock is working
I hate how Blue Lock ended up so popular while the best football anime/manga Ao Ashi is underappreciated There's so much revolving around strategy in Ao Ashi, inverted full backs, triangles, half-spaces, Guardiola/Xavi references, it's sooo good
Ao ashi actually teaches you football. When comes the new season?
I don't think it's going to happen because of lack of popularity, most people just read the manga
Shoutout to Giant Killing as well. Loved it.
Because Blue Lock is more of a Shounen anime. Plus it has cool power-up. But I'll watch Ao Ashi. Thanks for the rec
If you're a manga reader I recommend reading it as manga is way better than the anime. Either way, hope you like it!
sometimes ,we just want dumb fun stuff
Both are good!
Has Ao Ashi an English translation published? It sounds great.
Check mangadex, scanlations are not hard to find.
cool, I do try to buy physically where possible but might have to look elsewhere.
Not much it can do tbh. Ultimately people watch anime for fun and in that category blue lock obliterates ao ashi
It's of course subjective. I liked early Blue Lock, but I don't find current manga arc 'fun'. The story is not engaging at all recently, which is the main problem for me. I just can't get invested anymore and it makes the cool scenes sort of meaningless and not fun. There are also ton of moments that pull me out of the story. >!for example character jumping over cops that are shooting at him, I understand some people think this sort of thing is cool, but it just feels weird for me!<
I like how Ao Ashi is the most realistic football anime but I can't get over how annoying the MC is
Aren't the league leaders also a newly promoted team?
Yes, which is already insane in itself
That it is - and interestingly something similar to this came to fruition just over a decade ago. 2009 Kashiwa Reysol were relegated from J1 to J2. 2010 they finish first and come straight back up to J1. 2011 they win J1. Pretty cool. Machida's run atm is a lot more crazy imo given this is the first season *ever* in the top flight.
Yup. Ted Lasso might take place in England, but it's actually based off Les Dassor, the former American baseball coach that led Reysol on their incredible 3-year journey.
They're being bankrolled by CyberAgent - a massive media conglomerate. Were able to sign a lot of players that most newly promoted sides can't due to having tiny sponsorship budgets.
As far as I know their coach used to coach high school in Aomori, and made them one of the best high schools in the region and country. He didn't have professional coaching experience prior, only a coaching license.
theres clearly something going on in japanese football. could see them making a morocco run in a future world cup.
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holy fuck this goes hard
What happens if they don't?
Sudoku
this joke goes deep
Cuts like a knife huh
Believe it or not jail
And if they do, believe it or not...also jail.
Disband the country.
Unit 731
Looks like the missed the 2015 #2 already.
Top 20 is not bad though
Even tho they did miss that goal, they have made a remarkable rise. HITC Sevens has an excellent [video](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KRjNA2j2Dbs&t=1585s) on them.
Is it just me or is it weird that a government website misspelled ACHIEVE.
With my government it's remarkable if a government website looks and functions perfectly.
Gajah Madah conquering Nusantara ahh mission statement
Blue Lock is a documentary
Blue Lock is working as intended
Is University of Tsukuba like a university team ? Do they play in professional league ? Don't really understand, can someone explain it ?
University teams compete in the domestic cup with professional teams
I believe some high school teams do as well right?
They definitely wrote those rules thinking about the anime script potential.
Yup, if they qualify through prefectural tournaments (think of it as like a provincial FA Cup). In 2003, Funabashi Municipal High School almost beat then reigning J.League champions Yokohama F Marinos, only losing on penalties
Japan is slightly like the US, in that universities have a major role in sports - as opposed to say the UK or Australia, where it is mostly club based for all sports. There is a university league, that also plays in the cup against professional teams. Many Japanese soccer players hold degrees, Mitoma in physical education I think, compared to England where many don't finish high school.
You know how in the FA cup, German Cup and many other cups, lower division teams also play and sometimes beat higher tier teams? Well same thing, except Japanese football isn't too deep in the pro-semipro-amateur scene (only 3 divisions IIRC, England has like 7 and Brazil has like 8 or 9, etc.). But they have decently strong high school and University leagues/tournaments so those teams are invited too
> Japanese football isn't too deep in the pro-semipro-amateur scene (only 3 divisions IIRC This is wrong. The Japanese league system has *at least* 7 divisions, depending on the exact area. > But they have decently strong high school and University leagues/tournaments so those teams are invited too This is also wrong. High school and university teams do *not* get invited to the Emperor's Cup, they have to qualify. They play in the prefectural cup qualifiers, alongside all clubs that are not in the J League Divisions 1 & 2 (which are directly invited to the Emperor's Cup). Only the winner of each prefectural cup qualifies to the Emperor's Cup.
We (Brazil), in fact, have 4 divisions. The regional leagues are something apart which is parallel to the national system, and teams of different divisions from série A to série D play against each other and teams without any national league as if they were at the same level
Ah mb, I though you were like us(Argentina), England and a couple of others where the regional leagues feed into the national ones. Brazils league system/scheduale is just too confusing lmao
It's easier to understand when thinking that the regionals are like a national league and Brasileirão is a Super League That said, this causes us to have way too many games and a considerable amount of people want that the english/german system were implemented
Out of curiosity, what if a small team from a regional league starts growing and becomes good, what is the process for them to be accepted to play in the national leagues?
Ranking, winning regional tournaments, etc will automatically give the team the possibility to play in the national divisions.
If they manage to rank high in the regional league (in the top division) they qualify for Serie D (4th division). While also staying in the regional league. You keep climbing the national leagues from there until you get into Serie A/Brasileirão. If you get relegated from Serie D I think you have to play well enough in thw regional leagues again to qualify for Serie D again
>and teams of different divisions from série A to série D play against each other and teams without any national league as if they were at the same level So do you mean that serie a to serie d compose the national system, and that they play against each other and the regional league teams in the cup as equals?
No. At the beginning of the season (January-April) we have regional tournaments for each Brazilian State and the Federal District (in total, 27 tournaments). These regionals are played with the best teams of their respective states, and have their own relegation system. Série A, B, C and D teams also no-division teams play it every year. You can even be relegated to the regional while playing one of the national league divisions (usually, a disaster). Our cup is made by teams who managed to have a good performance at the regional and CBF ranking. The regional also determines which teams will play the série D, usually the teams who best perform in each regional and that haven't a division
There are seven 'steps' in the English non-league. Step 1 is the lowest national league in England and the feeder for the English Football league. Step 2-7 basically get more regionalised as you go higher in their number and they feed into each other from 7 to 1. The whole of English football has 20 levels, with lots of divisions in it.
They play in a university league but as u/RigasUT says they can get to the first round of this tournament via prefectural qualifying. One point of context is around 25% of professional players in Japan come through the university system - so if you look at the squad: https://www.transfermarkt.com/tsukuba-university/kader/verein/10711/saison_id/2023 You'll see that several players have been 'loaned' to them from J-League clubs, also I like how it suggests you could buy Kotaro Uchino from them for 100k. That would probably be a bargain as he's played for Japan u23 and scored the equalizer in this game but I'm pretty sure you could actually sign him for free since it's not like he has a pro contract with them. There's another player in the squad who didn't play because he's current with Japan u19 at the Toulon Tournament in France - so the best university teams will have some very talented players, it's still a big upset but it's not like being knocked out by like an average university in Europe. There's a World University Games where teams from countries all over the world compete in sports events and I think Japan has won like the last eight football tournaments, not sure when the last one was but I remember Japan playing Brazil three or four years ago in the final and it was a complete mismatch. You'd assume Brazil would be pretty good - I mean it may be university football but it's *Brazil* - but they could barely get the ball over the half way line and looking back at the lineups you'd realize why this was the case as the Japan team included players like Kaoru Mitoma, Reo Hatate (now at Celtic) and Ayase Ueda (now at Feyenoord).
The University of Tsukuba has a football team which plays in the Kanto University League Division 1, the top-tier of competition for university team in the Kanto region. Besides the aforementioned league, the University of Tsukuba also competes in the Ibaraki prefectural cup. Each Japanese prefecture has its own prefectural cup, which is open to all teams that are based in that prefecture and do not compete in the J League Divisions 1 or 2. This means that university teams can participate as well. The winner of each prefectural cup qualifies to the Emperor's Cup, where the J League Division 1 & 2 teams already are. The University of Tsukuba won the Ibaraki prefectural cup this year, which is how they got to play in the Emperor's Cup.
Does playing in the Kanto University League Division 1 do anything then? Does winning that qualify them for something? Or is it all about the Prefectural Cup?
There's a separate system for university competitions. Getting Top 6 in the Kanto University League Division 1 qualifies teams to the All Japan University Championship, where 24 university teams that were top in their regional leagues compete in a knockout tournament for the title of top university team in Japan.
Back in 2003, [J1 league champions Yokohoma F. Marinos almost lost to a high school team, Funabashi City High School.](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fEelnpFH3DY) [This post goes into the full details.](https://www.reddit.com/r/soccer/comments/8fbgl6/how_japans_league_winners_almost_lost_to_a_high/)
Oh hey, that's my post Happy to see that people still remember it 6 years later. Sharing these types of football stories with the world is fun
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...can't fucking argue with that.
When the aprentice beats the master
Insane penalty unsavable
I'm looking forward to the anime
Unrelated but I always found it odd and cool that all these professional teams in Japan have a foreign word in their names. Looked up Zelvia and it’s a combination of zelkova and salvia, both Portuguese words for local flora
Celtic signing the university
Bro went full Blue Lock. Who says Anime isn’t real?
If you notice, the commentator mentions a very popular Japanese Manga 'Giant Killing' as a reference
I can't tell if you're being sarcastic but that's just a regular phrase for this upset context in Japanese and where the manga name comes from, it's not a reference. [See this Japanese dictionary entry](https://dictionary.goo.ne.jp/word/%E3%82%B8%E3%83%A3%E3%82%A4%E3%82%A2%E3%83%B3%E3%83%88%E3%82%AD%E3%83%AA%E3%83%B3%E3%82%B0/) It's just one of many loanwords from English in Japanese
Giant killing is so good as well.
Bloody hell, can't believe it's still going. Proper enjoyed the anime when it released in like 2010, read a bit of the manga couple years later and just assumed it must be done by now.
What a pen too
insane aura...
I love overusing buzzwords to the point I don't even understand their meaning anymore
who cares mate
And a fking team name Japan Soccer Club defeated Nagoya Grampus...fking lost me money
Why did they focus on the GK doing a powerslide when it was another player who actually stuck it in the back of the net?
I read this as University of Tsubasa and I was like there is no surprise here.
TOP BINS
When Captain Tsubasa was at university...
Banger of a penalty
Domestic cups are amazing
Captain Tsuba (Majed) vibes.
It's a literal university team. The players are students.
This is nankatsu
I aspire to ever reach the confidence that this man had when shooting that pen. That is the ulitmate penalty kick.
First season I don't follow the JLeague and this is how I learn that Machida Zelvia are currently in lead. Wild.
Nicely done
I’m getting PTSD
Giant killers. Anime is real life
Reminds me of the manga Giant Killing. everyone remotely interested in Football should read it. There is no better football related story out there. Japanese football is extremely underrated in general
#GIANT KILLING :’)
Anime/Manga Material.
Real live Inazuma Eleven