2013/02/07 - As announced yesterday, Masashi Oguro (32) joined Chinese side Hangzhou Greentown on loan from Yokohama F. Marinos. Oguro started his career at Gamba Osaka, and after six seasons with the Kansai side culminated with the 2005 title win, he left for Europe, where he played in Ligue 2 at Grenoble and in Serie A at Torino, where he trained under current NT coach Zaccheroni. Once back to Japan, he changed shirt several times, and played with Marinos the last two seasons. He played 19 times for the national team, including the 2006 World Cup. - Cerezo Osaka brings home a Brazilian striker, Edno (29), from Mexican team Tigres UANL. Edno had stints in Europe in the early 00s, at PSV in the Netherlands, Wisla Krakow in Poland and at Viktoria Plzen in the Czech Republic: apart from that, he spent the rest of his career in Brazil until his move to Tigres in 2011. - Sagan Tosu's rightback So Morita (20) decided to leave professional football and found a new home at Grulla Morioka, one of the favorites for this season's Tohoku League title and an eventual jump to the upcoming J3. Morita only played once last season as a starter against Vegalta in the Nabisco Cup.
2013/02/08 - Dai Fujimoto (22) joined Roasso Kumamoto as his first pro club. Fujimoto played as a defender in Ohzu High School and Ryutsu Keizai University, with some appearances for both the uni squads (RKU and Club Dragons) - Tochigi SC will loan their Korean leftback Dae-Hyun Yoo (20) to JFL seeded Machida Zelvia. Yoo was picked from university in 2012 and was used as a starter for the first ten games of the season, but then never appeared on the pitch for the rest of the season. - Goalkeeper Hiroki Mizuhara (38) retires from football after 20 seasons spent on the pitch of all Japan. His career started along with the J.League in 1993, and he spent the first years of his career as a reserve GK at Nagoya. After six seasons without being used he decided to reboot and start from a lower division, and he became a starter at Honda FC in the JFL. He then moved to newborn Yokohama FC the following season, and went up to J2 with them. He spent other three seasons in Kanagawa-ken, starting most games, before climbing back to the first division, where he started to make the bench again, at Verdy this time. After Verdy he took another huge drop, to the Kyushu regional league, where he joined New Wave Kitakyushu, the club currently known as Giravanz. He called Giravanz home for the following five seasons, and was a starter for the Kyushu club the first four seasons. In 2011 he was relegated to the bench once again, and spent the last season on loan to Kamatamare Sanuki.
2013/02/09 Three players in today, all from abroad. - First off is the first international signing for last year's 2nd placed Vegalta Sendai, who brought in a defensive midfielder from Brazilian Serie A club Sport Recife. The name might be scary to Consadole fans- as the new guy's name is Diogo Antunes de Oliveira, (26) but he's just a namesake. THIS Diogo had his good share of Serie A play the past few seasons at Fluminense and Figueirense, other than Sport Recife. Vegalta will be his first international experience. - Matsumoto Yamaga signs two youngsters. First is Brazilian forward Rodrigo Adeildo Souza Silva (20), who goes as Rodrigo Cabessa and will get to wear no.9. He has been signed from Desportivo Brasil; in his very short career he already had a stint abroad, in Portugal. The other one is Korean midfielder Kwang-Il Park (21), who joins the ptarmigans from Yonsei University.
2013/02/13 - Vissel Kobe get midfielder Issei Takayanagi (26) from Consadole Sapporo. Issei was a regular at Sanfrecce Hiroshima between 2007 and 2010 but a string of injuries kept him away from the field since. He didn't play at all between 2011 and 2012. (no other move was reported by J's Goal the past three days)
2013/02/14 - News of the day is Tadanari Lee's return in Japan after a difficult year with English club Southampton FC. The 27 years old striker moved to Europe after a convincing 2011 season with Sanfrecce, during which he was called up with the NT several times, and scored the winning game in the Asian Cup final against Australia. His English adventure had more downs than ups, though. He had just started to make a name for himself when he got out injured for almost half an year. In the meanwhile the Saints got promoted to the Premier League, and since he recovered, he only got some crumbs of playing time in the cups or in the U21 league. Hence, he will be loaned to FC Tokyo until June to get some playing time again. He scored 4 goals this season so far- one in the Cup and 3 with the U21 team, including one against Man Utd's youth. - What better Valentine's Day present than three new players from abroad for Gainare Tottori's supporters? Ok... maybe not top class stars, but still the Chugoku team has made quite an effort to bring interesting players to their team during this campaign. From Korean team Hanam FC (I already discussed this- it's not a top class team and I couldn't find the correct spelling, I went with the more likely one) Gainare bought defender Dong-Hyeon Im (18). The other two signings are Brazilian: Rafael Aparecido Elisbao (27- 28 tomorrow, goes as Fefo) is a defensive midfielder who never enjoyed any particular success in Brazil, and spent the last year with Venezuelan top-tier club Carabobo FC, while Reginaldo Antonio da Silva (22) is a midfielder who spent his career in lowly tiers and was bought from Paulista club Itapiriense. - Meanwhile, Tottori's estabilished defender Hidenori Kato is leaving from the back door and dropping to Mie-ken's 2nd prefectural level, where he joined FC Viatin (<- literal katakana translation, I don't knwo how to spell this). Kato, born in Mie prefecture and raised at Yokkaichi Chuo HS, returns to his homeland after nine seasons as a pro- four and a half with Tosu and four and a half with Gainare. While he was never a starter, he never got benched for long periods either- he appeared on the pitch 32 times for Gainare last season.
Watching the Copa Libertadores-match between The Strongest (Bolivia) and Arsenal de Sarandi (Argentina) now, and guess who just got subbed in for the home-team? Kenny Cunningham, the Costa Rican who played for Gainare last season. He almost scored immediately after coming on actually, but what are a player of his low caliber doing playing for for decent Copa Libertadores side?? He barely started a game for Gainare... Actually Roy Smith, also a former Gainarean, are at the club ( on the bench here), so obviously their agent are sending them around the world, and I can imagien they must be best-buddies=)
Was he that bad ? I wonder, he didn't play enough to get himself written off. Even if he's bad, it's still god for a strikerless team like Gainare. He probably couldn't adapt to Japan.
2013/02/15 - Defender Yosuke Miyaji (25) will join JFL side Honda Lock after three seasons with Avispa Fukuoka. His first campaign (2010) was fairly successful but when the team was promoted to J1 he found himself relegated on the bench. Things didn't get much better last season- actually they got worse, as he spent most of the season out with injury.
Yeah that's true, but he spent an entire season there so it must have been more than just 1 reason why he weren't used. Adapting is one thing of course, but if u can't even become a regular at one of the worst J2-clubs, u normally shouldn't have anything to do in Copa Libertadores imho.
2013/02/17 - Brazilian time for FC Gifu, two new South Americans just joined the Chubu club. Both are fairly young, but one of them isn't a completely new face to Japanese football: attacking midfielder Daniel Soares de Souza Lemos (23) spent 2011 with Consadole Sapporo, though he never made an appearance for them. He was bought from Brazilian club Planaltina. His career already brought him to Europe, specifically to Red Bull Salzburg in Austria, Ingolstadt 04 in Germany and Portimonense in Portugal. He never grabbed a place as a starter, and only collected a couple 2.Bundesliga starts. The other guy is Fabio Freire Martins (23). He never left Brazil, nor had any particular success in his homeland. He was loaned to Gifu from Roma Esporte Apucarana.
2013/02/18 - Gainare Tottori's forward Masato Fukui (24) is moving to Singapore based Home United to seek fortune. He got a decent deal of playing time during his two seasons with Gainare, but only scored twice last season.
2013/02/19 - After a not-so-successful year at Ventforet Kofu, where he collected only one appearance (during the Emperor's Cup loss against Fukushima Utd- he actually scored his PK), striker Shogo Fujimaki (23) drops to ambitious JFL team Fujieda MyFC. Shogo was picked by Ventforet after he completed his university studies at Chukyo University, playing in the Tokai Regional League.
2013/02/20 - Another international signing for Gainare Tottori, and it's another Brazilian: striker Bruno Alexandre Rodrigues (24) joined the squad. Despite being comparatively young he already had a taste of Japanese football, when he was playing for Ventforet Kofu between 2008 and 2009- althoug he never really broke into the lineup. He spent the rest of his short career in Brazil. He was bought from one of the big names in Serie A, Palmeiras... he was playing for their second team, though. - Centreback Kenji Dai (23) is the last signing in Ehime FC's very busy campaign. Dai spent his first two seasons as a pro at Mito HollyHock, during which he mostly stayed on the bench though he had a short stint as a starter during the summer. Last season he scored his first pro goal as well, against Trinita in the Emperor's Cup. - JFL seeded Fujieda MyFC has been very active as well, and today they signed Shogo Nakatsuru (25), a rightback who was released by V-Varen Nagasaki after their JFL triumph. So far, Nakatsuru didn't prove exactly successful, collecting only 11 appearances in three seasons at V-Varen. Last season, he only played in the season's final game against Sony Sendai. He grew up in Avispa Fukuoka' s youth system. - Avispa Fukuoka released striker Yutaka Takahashi (32), who played for them the last four seasons. Takahashi has a long career behind him: he started with Sanfrecce in 1999, and was regularly on the pitch in his Hiroshima days. In 2004 he switched to Omiya, and then in 2005 he joined JEF. During all these seasons he didn't exactly score much, so he saw his playing time gradually diminishing until he hit his personal worst with the Chiba club. He took two step down to the JFL and joined Kumamoto, where he finally proved what he was capable of. In 2007, he was one of the heroes in then named Rosso's promotion, scoring an astonishing 29 goals. The positive trend continued in his first season back in J2, and was bought from Avispa in 2009. Unluckily he scored less goals in four seasons at Avispa than he did in 2008 at Roasso. According to Wikipedia (not J'sGoal official yet though), he will be joining Ehime FC next season. - 2012 was the last season for 35 years old midfielder Yoshiyuki Kobayashi, who spent a remarkable 14 seasons straight in Japan's top tier, the first seven of which at Verdy. When the team sank to J2 in 2005, he left them for Omiya Ardija, becoming a key player for them and spending 3 and a half seasons with the Saitama Squirrels. After a brief loan to Reysol he joined his last team, Albirex Niigata. He managed to play regularly until last season, when he only spent 5 minutes on the pitch in J1 + some Nabisco appearances.
2013/02/21 - As hinted yesterday, Yutaka Takahashi effectively signed with Ehime FC. - J3 hopefuls at Volca Kagoshima (Kyushu Reg League) get two new pieces for their team from Giravanz Kitakyushu: defenders Yuki Nagahata (23) and Kentoku Noborio (29). Nagahata is a young switchback who only saw the pitch four times in his two years at Giravanz, while Noborio has more experience and has been a starter player for Sanga and Tokushima in the past, though his career was ruined by injuries. Alongside his playing duties, he will be assisting recently appointed coach Koichi Kozawa.
2013/02/23 - FC Gifu's defender Akihiro Noda (24) moved to JFL newcomers and J3 hopefuls of Fukushima United. Differently from other J2 -> JFL moved, Noda actually had his success with Gifu in his past (and only, so far) two seasons, as he started most games with the Chubu outfit.
2013/02/27 - Giravanz Kitakyushu's former Brazilian forward Leonardo (27) joined Hokushinetsu League powerhouses at Japan Soccer College- that's a comeback for him, as that's where his career began. While retaining Brazilian citizenship, Leonardo moved to Japan when he was still in High School. After he scored 13 goals in 13 appearances with JSC in 2006 he was picked by Verdy, that loaned him to various J2 clubs. His loan to Giravanz eventually became a permanent deal, but he didn't exactly score much for the Kyushu team, so he spent last season mostly on the bench. - FC Gifu's young striker Kazuto Sakamoto (21) will be loaned to Kansai League div.1 newcomers FC Osaka, a very ambitious team that dominated Division 2 last season. Kazuto started with Gifu in 2010, and had a decent deal of playing time as a sub. In 2012 he was loaned to Tokai league team FC Kariya.
2013/03/01 - Keun-Ho Lee joined Giravanz Kitakyushu on loan. Probably not the one you were thinking about, as this is just a namesake of the former Gamba striker- a 20 years old midfielder who was brought to Japan last season from Omiya Ardija and never played for the squirrels so far. - Defender Mitsuhiro Seki (rightback, 30) leaves Kyushu for the first time in his playing career by joining Tokyo Verdy from Giravanz Kitakyushu. Seki was Giravanz's starter RB for most of the last seasons. Before joining then-named New Wave in 2009, he spent three seasons in JFL with Roasso Kumamoto, but when the club got promoted to J2 he found himself on the bench and had to start back from the top amateur league. - Midfielder Sai Kanakubo (24), who was released from Mito HollyHock earlier this season, found a new home at V-Varen Nagasaki. Kanakubo spent two season with the Ibaraki outfit after studying at Komazawa University, but never broke into the HollyHock lineup- played less than 60 minutes in his three appearances combined last season. - Former Fagiano Okayama striker Tiago Honorio (35) is back to Brazil after he was released earlier this season. Tiago was an eastern Asia traveller who played for many different teams in China (Shenzen Ruby, Shangai Utd, Beijing Guoan, Chengdu Blades) and had a stint in South Korea (Suwon Bluewings) as well, coming back to Brazil from time to time. In Japan, he played briefly with Sanfrecce in 2004 before joining Fagiano in 2011. After a good first season he only scored a single goal in 2012, in the season debut. He now joined Independente.