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Formed in 1990, just before the launch of the J.League, Nagano City's home team was founded under the name "Nagano Elsa". The original name was taken from the lion star of the movie "Born Free" -- Elsa -- because apparently folks in Nagano thought that the lion was an appropriate symbol for their small but extremely proud city. Even though the name was changed in 2008, the team's "heraldic lion" symbol is intact as part of the new logo, and their choice of a mascot was never in doubt.
Nagano was home to the Winter Olympics in 1998, so it has a host of excellent athletic facilities, many of which are seriously underused. The "city" of Nagano is located in an isolated mountainous region of central Japan, connected to Tokyo by bullet train but otherwise a world away from the modern urban centers of Japan. This is indeed an ideal location for a pride of lions to run free, and one hopes that Parceiro can live up to their majestic symbols in the years to come.
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