Marked for Yusuke Chajima
From our football correspondent
Steady
Squad23 Nov 2026
Yohei Takaoka damages knee ligaments — 51 days out
The words a physio says slowly. 51 days is what the club will announce and everybody who has heard this diagnosis before knows the number is the least of it: the knee comes back before the player does.
Squad23 Nov 2026
Daiki Suga: that is not what I was promised
“Things were said to me before I signed. I am not going to repeat them, but I remember all of them.” Sanfrecce Hiroshima have not answered, which is an answer of sorts.
Squad23 Nov 2026
It was not about football and everybody who saw it knows that. Two men who have to play together on Saturday said things at Sanfrecce Hiroshima this week that will take longer than a week to unsay.
Back issues
From our football correspondent
Steady
Squad16 Nov 2026
A knee injury of the worst kind for Yohei Takaoka
59 days on the estimate, and a long, private, unglamorous year of a rehabilitation nobody watches. Sanfrecce Hiroshima lose a footballer; he loses considerably more than a season.
Squad16 Nov 2026
“I remember the meeting. I remember exactly what was promised in it.” Sanfrecce Hiroshima may remember it differently, which is precisely the problem.
Squad16 Nov 2026
Keisuke Osako 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.
From our football correspondent
Upbeat
Player ratings31 Aug 2026
Successful dribbles: 27. There is a particular sort of despair on a full-back's face by the seventieth minute, and it was on display.
Squad31 Aug 2026
Yohei Takaoka 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.
Squad31 Aug 2026
The manager makes an example of Sho Sasaki
“If you cannot run for the shirt, somebody else will wear it.” No name was used and none was needed; every player in that room knew who it was for.
The terraces31 Aug 2026
At 23 he is being sung about by people twice his age, which is an affection a signing has to earn over years and a local kid gets for turning up. It is also the hardest thing in football to live up to.
Squad31 Aug 2026
Daiki Suga 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.
Player ratings31 Aug 2026
The afternoon belonged to Takuma Asano
7.63, and no serious argument from anybody who was there. Sanfrecce Hiroshima had eleven men on the pitch and one of them decided how it went.
Squad31 Aug 2026
Hayato Araki wants out of the spotlight
The ambition story running the other way, and the one nobody tells: a footballer asking for a smaller stage, fewer cameras and a crowd that does not turn. It is not weakness and it is very rarely reported as anything else.
From our football correspondent
Upbeat
Player ratings17 Aug 2026
Successful dribbles: 39. There is a particular sort of despair on a full-back's face by the seventieth minute, and it was on display.
Match15 Aug 2026
Sébastien Haller wins it after the whistle should have gone
96 minutes played. Sébastien Haller found the finish in time that only existed because of earlier delays, and Albirex Niigata went from a point to nothing inside one movement.
Market17 Aug 2026
The bid was some way short and Sanfrecce Hiroshima did not need long over it. Nobody in the game reads a first refusal as the end of anything.
Squad17 Aug 2026
It was not about football and everybody who saw it knows that. Two men who have to play together on Saturday said things at Sanfrecce Hiroshima this week that will take longer than a week to unsay.
Squad17 Aug 2026
Words at Sanfrecce Hiroshima training over how hard people work
Somebody said out loud what several people had been thinking. Mutsuki Kato 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.
Match15 Aug 2026
Ask anyone on the way out what separated the sides and you will get one name: Sébastien Haller. 1‑0 against Albirex Niigata, and the applause at the whistle was mostly his.
Player ratings17 Aug 2026
Marked 7.82. Ask anyone leaving the ground what settled it and you will get one name, which is the only award that has ever really counted.
Squad17 Aug 2026
There is no complaint available here and everybody involved knows it, which does not make the walk to the bench any shorter. Form is the only currency in football that cannot be borrowed against.
Market17 Aug 2026
Both sides expect a conversation in the coming days. Sanfrecce Hiroshima will name a price, and everything after that is arithmetic.
From our football correspondent
Triumph
Player ratings3 Aug 2026
Successful dribbles: 36. There is a particular sort of despair on a full-back's face by the seventieth minute, and it was on display.
Squad3 Aug 2026
438 appearances across 10 seasons in these colours. Careers like that are not built any more, and Sanfrecce Hiroshima know what they have.
Market3 Aug 2026
Takuma Asano wants to know where this is going
“I want to win things, and I would like to do it here.” Nothing has been demanded and nothing has been threatened — but a boardroom at Sanfrecce Hiroshima hears a sentence like that exactly as it was built.
Squad3 Aug 2026
“Some decisions take a long time. This one took ten minutes, and most of that was finding a pen.” Keisuke Osako and Sanfrecce Hiroshima agree another 4 years.
Squad3 Aug 2026
Keisuke Osako 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.
Squad3 Aug 2026
Mutsuki Kato 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.
The terraces3 Aug 2026
There is a particular warmth a ground reserves for a 23-year-old it feels ownership of. Sota Nakamura has it now, and everything he does for the rest of his time here will be measured against the goodwill he was handed for free.