The name of Yu Funabashi has come up in conversations Kashima Antlers were not part of. Nothing formal, nothing signed — but nothing about it accidental either.
Naomichi Ueda 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.
Squad7 Aug 2028
Yuta Higuchi falls out with a teammate over standards
The oldest argument in any dressing room and the only one that is genuinely about football: one man thinks another is not putting enough in. It is also the row a manager privately does not mind having happened.
“I am grateful for the games, but I did not become a footballer to be somebody else's spare part.” He wants to be at Kashima Antlers, and 4 appearances in 22 say he has earned the hearing.
A month is long enough that nobody gets in by accident. Daiki Sakai is in the division's best eleven for it, which is a quieter compliment than an award and a more reliable one.
Yuki Kakita had done his part in building a 2-goal cushion. What happened after that was collective, and Kawasaki Frontale were allowed back into a match that had been finished with.
1 for Ryuta Koike, marked 7.92, and a centre-half's name in the part of the report he normally only reaches by mistake. He will not be allowed to forget it in the dressing room for a month.
Somebody said out loud what several people had been thinking. Yuta Higuchi is at the centre of it, and the squad will now find out whether the standard rises or the pair of them simply stop speaking.
The team sheet says it in public every week until it changes. The only version of being dropped a footballer cannot argue with, and the one he takes hardest.
18 days on the announcement, and a year of quiet, unwatched rehabilitation behind it. Kashima Antlers lose a player for a season; he loses something harder to name.
“Things were said to me before I signed. I am not going to repeat them, but I remember all of them.” Kashima Antlers have not answered, which is an answer of sorts.
Somebody said out loud what several people thought about how hard another man trains, and Yuta Higuchi was in the middle of it. The one dressing-room argument that is genuinely about football.
The new man at Kashima Antlers has worked with Koki Anzai before and it went well. He arrives with a view of the player already formed, which is worth more than any pre-season.
Successful dribbles: 16. 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.
8 signings in three months. Every one of them may be an upgrade and the team can still be worse for a while, which is the part of a rebuild that never appears in the transfer-window verdicts.
The dugout20 Mar 2028
The manager’s verdict
“That is on me. I pick the team and I picked wrong.” Managers say that when they mean it and when they need to be seen to, and after 0‑2 Akira Endo left the room before anybody could ask which.