It was not about football and everybody who saw it knows that. Two men who have to play together on Saturday said things at Ventforet Kofu this week that will take longer than a week to unsay.
Squad14 Dec 2026
Taiju Ichinose has improved at 24, which nobody expected
Careers are supposed to plateau and then decline, and the players who ignore that are always the ones who were listening on the training ground. 3 points of it, over months, at an age where the direction normally only goes one way.
“We were not good enough today and I am not going to dress it up.” Hajime Mitoma after 0‑2, in the tone of a man who knows the next question and does not intend to answer it.
Successful dribbles: 13. He went past people as if he had been told there was a prize for it, and by the end the full-back had stopped pretending to try.
Gamba Osaka next, and one man in the Ventforet Kofu dressing room knows their training ground better than his own. The reception will tell him what they thought of him.
In brief
The dugoutKeisuke Sato knocks on the manager's door
Takumi Tsuchiya and a teammate said things this week that will take longer than a week to unsay. It was not about football, and both of them play on Saturday.
At 23 he is doing things this season that he could not do last season, and doing them every week. Form comes and goes; this has stayed long enough to be called something else.
It is not much of a headline and it is the reason players believe the next promise. Ventforet Kofu told Filip Uremovic something would happen and then it happened, which in this industry passes for remarkable.
16 new signings in one window. Every one may be an upgrade and the side can still be worse for a while, which is the part of a rebuild the verdicts never mention.
“It is not the end of the world and it is not good enough. Both of those are true.” The manager, after a 1‑1 draw, said the honest thing and then went to say it again inside.
In brief
The dugoutKeisuke Sato knocks on the manager's door
Player ratingsThe afternoon ran through George Onaiwu
Not a run of form — an actual step up, held for months. At 22 he is doing things at this level he could not do at the start of the season, and the coaching staff will tell you exactly which of them.
Filip Uremovic was at the centre of it, and by the time it was pulled apart there were three or four others involved. Training grounds are small places and long seasons make them smaller.
Everybody at Ventforet Kofu saw it before anybody said it, which is how this always goes. At 34 the decline is real and measurable — 3 points — and the only question left is how the club handles somebody it owes a great deal to.
Still no offer on the table, and Ryuji Sugimoto’s deal keeps shrinking. In boardroom language, silence this long stops being an oversight and starts being an answer.