Thursday, 28 March 2024

 

Tegevajaro Miyazaki can trace its history back to the very earliest days of grassroots football development in Japan, though in actual fact, the club as it exists today is only a few years old. Several of the clubs that have joined the J.League in recent years share this unusual historical background, and it is not hard to understand why, when one looks at the J.League's own history and organization.

Tegevajaro's official team history begins way back in 1965, with the creation of a small amateur club named Kadokawa Club, in Miyazaki city, in southeastern Kyushu. Miyazaki is the smallest, most rural prefecture in Kyushu, and Miyazaki city one of smaller urban conglomerations in the area, so it should be no surprise that a small amateur club in the city would do little to attract attention, for almost 50 years. On the other hand, with few other amateur football organizations in the area, Kadokawa Club quickly became the focal point for a lot of youth club activity in Miyazaki Prefecture.

In the early 2000s, with the J.League growing rapidly in popularity, many football fans in Miyazaki began dreaming of a possible professional club in the prefecture. However, one of the requirements of J.League membership is that a club must have comprehensive youth programs at the U-12, U-15 and U-18 levels. This poses a problem for people who are trying to "create a J.League club from scratch."

Thus, in 2004, Miazaki fans and a few local ex-players and coaches followed the example of teams like Kagoshima United or FC Imabari, and "adopted" Kadokawa Club's entire youth and adult organization while injecting capital and rebranding. The name was initially changed to "Andiamo Kadokawa", out of respect for the original club. However, this was soon changed to "Miyazaki Sportsmen United", to try to give the club a better connection to people throughout Miyazaki Prefecture.

By the early 2010s, as new professional teams from other prefectures in the region successfully joined the J.League, it became clear that Miyazaki was being left behind. The club had managed to reach the Kyushu Prefectural League, but management was still amateur and the team never formally announced plans to pursue J.League membership. Their progress had stalled, and disappointed groups in the area were even beginning to create new clubs with more "ambitious" objectives.

So in 2015 the team made one more major reorganization, absorbing a few smaller teams in the area and adopting a new name that would hopefully reflect the spirit of the entire Miyazaki area. In typically ersatz-European style, the club adopted a name made up of random words in Spanish to create the odd yet somehow catchy name "Tegevajaro Miyazaki".

According to the club's official explanation, Tegevajaro is composed of three "words". The term "tege" is a local Miyazaki slang term that means great, amazing or superb. To this, we add the Spanish words "vaca" (cow) and "pajaro" (chicken), as an allusion to the poultry, dairy and meat packing operations which play a large part in Miyazaki's local economy. Remove a few unwanted letters, and the result is "Tegevajaro". In addition to adopting a new name, the club finally announced an official intent to join the J.League, and altered its corporate structure accordingly.

Two years later, in 2017, Tegevajaro hired former Consadole Sapporo and Kawasaki Frontale head coach Nobuhiro Ishizaki to lead the club, and signed veteran and former NT striker Yasuhito Morishima among others, to bolster the club's competitiveness. The result was the strongest performance ever for Tegevajaro, winning the Kyushu League for the first time with a record of 18-1-1, and earning promotion to the JFL for the 2018 season.

The club now had a strong, enthusiastic and growing fan base, as well as a top-notch coach and an increasing number of quality players. After just two years of competing in the JFL, Tegevajaro had met all of the requirements for J.League membership, and a second-place finish in the JFL was enough to meet the final requirement for J.League entry. Tegevajaro Miyazaki joined the J3 in 2021.


Team Results for 2015-2020

Year Rank Pts W D L GF GA G.Dif
2015 (Kyushu Lg) 2 41 11 4 3 47 13 +34
2016 (Kyushu Lg) 2 22 7 1 1 26 5 +21
2017 (Kyushu Lg) 1 56 18 1 1 70 12 +58
2018 (JFL) 12 32 9 5 16 43 60 -17
2019 (JFL) 5 41 11 8 11 37 34 -3
2020 (JFL) 2 28 8 4 3 26 15 +11

Tegevajaro Miyazaki Results for 2021-Present

Year Rank Pts W D L GF GA G.Dif
2021 (J3) 3 53 16 5 7 44 31 +13
2022 (J3) 9 46 12 10 12 45 47 -2