On Thursday 4 August, the 3rd All Japan Youth (U-18) Futsal Tournament got underway at Xebio Arena Sendai and Sendai City Gymnasium. The 16 teams who survived through regional tournaments all around the nation are placed in four groups for the first round, where top two teams of each group advance to the knockout round. Then, the single-elimination final round determines the best futsal team among Japan’s U-18 generation.

Group A’s four matches and Group C’s two matches were held at Xebio Arena Sendai. As four high school teams are competing against each other in Group A, Yasu High School (Kansai 1 / Shiga) showed their superiority. In the first match, they defeated the defending champions Sakuyo High School (Chugoku 2 / Okayama) 4-2 with the two goals by FP NAKAGAWA Ryota. In the following match, Yasu faced Seiwa Gakuen High School Football Club (Host / Miyagi). The memory of these two teams fighting against each other in last year’s high school football championship is still fresh in the mind of many. This time, Yasu successfully paid back for the loss last year by beating Seiwa Gakuen 3-1. Since Sakuyo High School outscored Nichinan Gakuen High School (Kyushu 2/ Miyazaki) 5-3 in the following match, Yasu became the only club on the first day who already clinched their spot in the knockout round.

In Group C, Hokkaido Kushiro Konan High School (Hokkaido 3) put down Hero FC U-18F (Tokai / Shizuoka) who upset the last year’s third-placed Agleymina Espaco U-18 and Nagoya Oceans U-18 in the Tokai regional qualifiers. Kushiro Konan grabbed an early two-goal lead on their way to a 2-1 victory over Hero FC. Chuou Gakuin High School (Kanto 2 / Chiba) on the other hand showed their explosive offence by tallying three goals in the first three minutes of the match against Seiwa Gakuen Football Club (Tohoku / Miyagi) and finished the contest with a 3-1 win and gained three points. 

At Sendai City Gymnasium, four matches of Group B and two of Group D took place. In Group B, Takamatsu Commercial High School (Shikoku / Kagawa), making the second tournament appearance in two years, collected three points each against Vinculo Oita U-18 (Kyushu 1/ Oita) and Hokusei Gakuen Univ. High School (Hokkaido 1). The only under-age team of an F.League club, Shriker Osaka U-18 (Kansai 2) lost to Hokusei Gakuen 5-1 in the first match, but came back with a 2-1 win against Vinculo in the following match. All the teams in this group still maintain a possibility to advance to the next round, which makes the Sec. 3 on 5 August very exciting to watch.  

In Group D, Teikyo Nagaoka High School (Hokushinetsu / Niigata) and Footboze Futsal U-18 (Kanto 1 / Tokyo) both came out with an easy win, 7-1 and 8-2 respectively. It is all up to the Sec. 3 whether Teikyo Nagaoka and Footboze obtain a spot in the next round before going head to head in the end of the group round or Shirakabagakuen High School (Hokkaido 2) and Yoshida High School (Chugoku 1 / Shimane) show their spirit not getting eliminated so easily.

The day 2 of the tournament on Friday 5 August will see the rest of the 12 matches of the first round, determining the eight teams to go on to the final knockout round. 

Coach and Players' Comments

YAGI Katsuyuki, Coach (Hero FC U-18 F)
Our mistakes resulted in conceding goals. It was regrettable that we could have done better. It would have been better if we had converted early chances. But we did not and that made us panic. I didn’t want to show our power-plays yet, but we didn’t have any other choice in that situation. Each of our players started to play on his own, and we stopped functioning as a team. We could not perform well as we normally do. That resulted in us being unable to score an equaliser. We want to take good results back home; even a little bit of takeaway from each match can go a long way. So we will reflect on what we couldn’t do today before going out for tomorrow’s game.

SORA Ryosuke (Chuou Gakuin High School)
This is the first national tournament for us Chuou Gakuin High School. We went out for the match so excited. And it was great that we came out with the win. We were a little tense at the beginning of the match, but scoring three goals early made it easier. In the Kanto tournament, we were able to play more aggressively, but today our ball movement wasn’t very good partly because we were nervous. Tomorrow and thereafter, I think we will be able to show better futsal.

ISHII Shuto (Yasu High School)
I am simply happy that we were able to win two in a row. We came out for the second match against Seiwa Gakuen SC trying to make a payback, because we lost to them at the last championship in such a regrettable fashion (7-1). We thought without doubt that Seiwa Gakuen would centre their offence on dribbling. So we were going to make sure to defend patiently and look for opportunities to counter attack quickly. That plan worked quite well. We want to advance to the knockout round with three straight wins, so we will do our best in the third match as well.

MATSUKAWA Kota (Nichinan Gakuen High School)
Both the first and second matches turned out to be very close matches. It was regrettable that we couldn’t win either of those tough ones. That reminded us of where we are right now. We need to become better and win such matches. For me personally, I couldn’t play well at all. More specifically, I lost the ball more often than I expected. I want to be a professional futsal player. Playing against good teams in the first round has been a good experience. But it will be too disappointing if we finish this tournament winless. So we want to go home with at least a win in the end. 

The 3rd All Japan Youth (U-18) Futsal Tournament

Thu. 4 August - Sun. 7 August 2016
XEBIO ARENA SENDAI, Sendai City Gymnasium / Miyagi
More information
JFA-TV (Japanese version only)