Japanese star Chira Miura is known as a "living fossil of football", and although public opinion has mixed reviews for his practice of still fighting in professional competitions, the 54-year-old star still has no idea of retiring. At the end of the 2021 season, he and Yokohama FC, who were confirmed to be relegated, left the team when their contracts expired. Since then, the media has exposed that he received an invitation from the JFL League Suzuka PG, and the player himself responded to this question on the 12th, saying that it is a happy thing that he can still receive the team's offer at this age (Suzuka's manager and general manager is his brother).
However, the focus of this article is not on Miura Chira, but on the JFL. As we all know, the professional league of Japanese football, which is what we commonly call the J League, has a total of three levels of J1, J2 and J3, so what kind of league is this JFL?
JFL's three-step walk
JFL is an acronym for Japan Football League, which translates to Chinese is "Japan Football League". The current JFL was established in 1999 and is slightly different from the previous JFL. According to the japanese media custom, taking 1999 as the boundary, this article will refer to the "Japanese football league" before this as the "old JFL".
Before the announcement of the J League in 1992, there was a league in Japan called the Japan Soccer League, or JSL for short, which was divided into two classes and lasted until the end of March 1992. Before 1986 it was a purely amateur league, the teams were all the football departments of the Corporate Consortium, and it was the Social People's League. In 1986, professional players were introduced, and the league was changed to a new year's system. After deciding to form the J-League, JSL played its final round on 29 March 1992. Japanese football is poised to enter a new era.
However, only 10 teams in the J-League in the first season were licensed, so the Japanese Football Association decided to create a new league called the JFL to accommodate the rest of the teams that did not complete the professionalization. In 1992, the first old JFL League began with a total of 20 teams participating, divided into two classes, each with 10 teams. Since 1993, it has maintained 16 teams, with only one level model.
Among the teams you played in the old JFL, there were many teams such as Yamaha Engines (Joy Iwata), Toshiba (Gonzaga Sapporo), Hitachi Manufacturing (Kashiwa Helios), Fujiwa Ikuto (Shonan Marine), Fujitsu (Kawasaki Striker), Otsuka Pharmaceutical (Tokushima Vortex), Tokyo Gas (FC Tokyo), NTT Kanto (Omiya Squirrel), Kofu SC (Kofu Wind Forest), Central Defense (Fukuoka Hornets), Kyoto Purple Light (Kyoto Undead Birds), and other teams that have transformed into professional teams in the future and are still active today.
At the top was a professional league (J League), below was the amateur JFL, a league system that lasted until 1998. In 1997, as more and more teams applied to join the J-League, the Professional League and the Japan Football Association decided to reorganize the league system and divide the professional league into 2 levels, that is, J1 and J2, although there were many disputes during this period (after all, many corporate consortia did not want to wade through the muddy waters of professional football), but finally the league council voted to move the old JFL as a whole into the professional league (the old JFLJ2). Seven teams that did not plan to participate in the professional league, as well as Yokogawa, who had just taken pictures from the Japan Football Association at that time, formed a total of 8 teams to form a new JFL. A new Japanese football league system was born.
In the 15 years since, the JFL has changed 4 times. In 1999, Yokohama FC received special approval and was given the opportunity to participate in the first league, when the total number of teams was 9. It was increased to 12 teams in 2000, 16 teams in 2001 and 18 teams in 2002. For the rest of the time, the number of JFL League teams remained at 18 teams for the vast majority of the year, with a few years, for various reasons, either 16 or 17 teams.
The second change in the JFL was in 2014, when the J-League expanded to a 3rd division. The advent of J3 has caused the JFL to lose 4 teams, and its corresponding level in the league system has been downgraded from level 3 to level 4. However, in the five or six years since then, the JFL has been trying to find ways to expand its military and absorb more regional league teams. In the just-concluded 2021 season, its size has returned to 17 teams.
How do you cross the threshold of a career?
Here we need to briefly introduce the promotion and relegation system between the JFL and the J3 league. Because the JFL is a semi-professional football league independent of the J-League, although it is nominally the 4th division league, there will be some restrictions on the promotion system because it needs to cross the threshold of "amateur professional".
To sum up, the following four necessary conditions need to be met: to join the J League Centennial Plan and obtain a J League license; to obtain the top 4 of the season in the JFL, and the following 2 situations: 1) If more than 2 teams hold a Japanese professional league license, only the 2 teams with the best results will be selected; 2) If the top 2 teams include teams that join the Centennial Program but do not have a J-League license, the teams below the 3rd place will not be replaced; the average number of participants in the season is more than 2,000; and the total annual income of the season is higher than 150 million yen. It can be said that this condition is still very harsh.
Let's take the example of the 2021 season. The chart below is the situation in the JFL standings this season, and we can see that the top 4 teams are Iwaki FC, Honda FC, Verspah Oita, and Suzuka PG. But the only team that was able to qualify for J3 was Iwaki FC in first place. Because of the impact of the prevention and control of the new crown epidemic, the first article of the above-mentioned upgrade rules, there is a clause on the average number of admission per game, and the annual income of the above teams is satisfied. So, the only conditions that really limit them are the first 2 conditions.
Among the above 4 teams, Honda FC did not join the centennial plan, so this team will not be promoted to the professional league no matter what results it achieves. Iwaki, V Oita, and Suzuka all joined the Centennial Plan, but V Oita did not get a J-League license, so V Oita was not eligible for promotion. As for Suzuka, the team is ranked 4th in the league, but he is 3rd out of 3 teams that have joined the Centennial Plan, so he is not eligible for promotion. Therefore, after this complicated condition screening, only the first place Iwaki FC was upgraded.
As for why such cumbersome and complicated upgrade conditions are formulated, the reason is that it is a matter of opinion. But the most important point is that such a layer of checks can screen out those teams that are really determined to participate in the professional league and enter the professional league in a healthy mode of operation, rather than a simple and rough upgrade, but will hurt some small business and teams that do not want to be professionalized.
In addition, there are lower-level teams such as regional leagues and prefectural leagues under the JFL, and there will be time to introduce them to you later. We can also see that the current ecosystem of the Japanese football league was not born overnight, but based on the corporate team before the professionalization, after a little bit of exploration, the formation of such a set of football league system today.
Text/Supine Braces - Yangyuan Zhang