‘The 16th All Japan Seniors (over 60) football tournament’ and ‘the Senior (over 70) football festival’ will be held on Saturday 4 June in Matsumoto city, Nagano. These competitions aim to promote football among the older generation and encourage people to play football as a lifelong sport.

Ahead of the coming championship, this article will take a look back at the previous tournament. The 15th Tournament was held in Yubari city, Hokkaido. Sixteen teams selected from across the country played for the title. The teams were divided into four groups to play the first round league matches in order to decide the top teams in each group. These teams then advanced to the final round, the knockout stage, to play the semi-finals.

The four teams, namely Muroran Senior 60 Soccer Club (Hokkaido), 60 Akita Selection Soccer (Tohoku 2/Akita), Yokosuka Senior Soccer Club (Kanto 3/Kanagawa), and Hyogo Senior 60 Selection (Kansai 1/Hyogo), got through to the final round in exciting matches.

Both of the semi-finals were very close. Muroran Senior made gestures as a team from the hosting region to win against Akita Selection 1-0, while Hyogo Senior beat Yokosuka Senior 1-0, who had a former national team player OKUDERA Yasuhiko in their team.

The final between Muroran Senior and Hyogo Senior moved shortly after the kick-off. In the second minute, MATSUNAGA Masatoshi from Hyogo Senior got through the right wing, and sent a cross in front of the goal. MINAMIMOTO Ryu reacted to it to strike the opener. Then Hyogo Senior continued to attack even more.

After five minutes, Minamimoto again reacted to Matsunaga’s pass to score, building a two-goal lead. Matsunaga put in a stable performance in the second half, scoring all of the team’s the goals. In the 26th minute, he sent an accurate cross, with which NOJIMA Akifumi struck a goal. Although Muroran Senior attacked back to score a goal, Hyogo Senior won the game 3-1 to win the championship.

The coach SATO Tadashi, who led the team to achieve their long-cherished wish, analysed their victory: ‘by regularly playing games against younger teams as practice, our stamina lasted until the end in this championship.’ The players already mentioned about becoming back-to-back champions: ‘I’m over the moon that we finally achieved our goal. We’ll aim to win the championship again next year.’

The 16th All Japan Seniors (over 60) football tournament

Sat. 4 June 2016 - Mon 6 June 2016
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