Nobody at Yokohama F. Marinos will say this on the record and the team sheets have been saying it for weeks. There is a small group in every squad who get picked when the fixture is difficult, and he has joined it.
Thomas Jok Deng 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.
Squad16 Nov 2026
Rubén Blanco 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.
Nobody at Yokohama F. Marinos will say this on the record and the team sheets have been saying it for weeks. There is a small group in every squad who get picked when the fixture is difficult, and he has joined it.
A conversation in the manager’s office, and a commitment that came out of it. Promises like that are cheap to make and expensive to break, and Kosei Suwama has written the date down.
Rubén Blanco 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.
Somebody said out loud what several people thought about how hard another man trains, and Ilgyu Park was in the middle of it. The one dressing-room argument that is genuinely about football.
Nobody at Yokohama F. Marinos will say this on the record and the team sheets have been saying it for weeks. There is a small group in every squad who get picked when the fixture is difficult, and he has joined it.
It has been denied twice and printed three times, which is the usual arithmetic. Until Riku Yamane signs something — a contract at Yokohama F. Marinos or anywhere else — this column belongs to him.
A call-up flatters the player and the club that produced him in the same breath. Yokohama F. Marinos would like him back in one piece and know they will not be consulted.
He goes off to be somebody else’s player for a fortnight. Yokohama F. Marinos lose him for the window and would like him returned in the condition he left.
4 goals in 7 games at Wuhan Three Towns — numbers that travel home faster than he does. Somebody at Yokohama F. Marinos updates a spreadsheet every Monday, and it makes better reading each week.
“It had gone on long enough. I would rather have it out than leave it sitting there.” Ten minutes behind a closed door at Yokohama F. Marinos, and both men came out saying it was fine.
Nothing in writing and nothing in public: a word about playing time, given face to face at Yokohama F. Marinos. The team sheets over the next month will show whether it was worth having.
Clubs make promises constantly and the page usually only hears about them when they are broken. This one was honoured, and the dressing room noticed that faster than any supporter did.
Nobody at Yokohama F. Marinos will say this on the record and the team sheets have been saying it for weeks. There is a small group in every squad who get picked when the fixture is difficult, and he has joined it.
The crowd waited for a goal that never came. Vissel Kobe defended in numbers and left with what they came for, and the two sides could be playing still without troubling a scorer.
At 33 he has made the position his own, and the man he took it from has to find something to say about it. Yokohama F. Marinos have a decision that made itself.
“If we are going to be beaten, let it not be because somebody in here could not be bothered.” He stood up and said it in front of everybody, which is a thing a squad remembers about a man for years.
Somebody said out loud what several people thought about how hard another man trains, and Rubén Blanco was in the middle of it. The one dressing-room argument that is genuinely about football.
A squad rebuilt inside one window pays for it in a currency nobody budgets for. The football is not worse than the sum of the players; it is worse than the sum of the players who have played together before.
“The players deserve the credit. My job was easy today.” It was not, and everybody in the room knew it; after 1‑0, Hajime Yamane could afford to be generous.
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.
Every squad has one of these fixtures for somebody every season. This one is Hiroki Iikura’s: the club that knew him first, the supporters who will decide in the first minute whether to applaud, and Yokohama F. Marinos needing him to play as if none of it matters.
Somebody said out loud what several people had been thinking. Rubén Blanco 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.
Taisei Inoue 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.
“We earned that. I asked them for a reaction and I got one, and now I want the same again on Saturday.” Hajime Yamane on a 1‑0 afternoon that pleased him more than he was prepared to show.
Clubs make promises constantly and the page usually only hears about them when they are broken. This one was honoured, and the dressing room noticed that faster than any supporter did.
It is never announced and it is entirely visible: the biggest afternoons of the season keep containing him. A press box works this out long before anybody at the club confirms a word of it.
Rubén Blanco 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.
“The easiest signature of my career.” Ren Kato and Yokohama F. Marinos agree another 5 years, and the manager can plan around him rather than about him.
It is never announced and it is entirely visible: the biggest afternoons of the season keep containing him. A press box works this out long before anybody at the club confirms a word of it.
It has been denied twice and printed three times, which is the usual arithmetic. Until Riku Yamane signs something — a contract at Yokohama F. Marinos or anywhere else — this column belongs to him.
Numbers do not stay secret in a dressing room. He is not asking for more than he is worth; he is asking why somebody beside him is worth more, and Yokohama F. Marinos have no good answer.
4 goals in 6 games at Wuhan Three Towns — numbers that travel home faster than he does. Somebody at Yokohama F. Marinos updates a spreadsheet every Monday, and it makes better reading each week.
A conversation in the manager’s office, and a commitment that came out of it. Promises like that are cheap to make and expensive to break, and Ilgyu Park has written the date down.
The shrug has gone, the language is coming, and he now argues in training like somebody who expects to be here next year. Half a signing's value is this and none of it appears on a fee.
Gamba Osaka go through and Yokohama F. Marinos go home, 0‑1 the scoreline that did it. The dressing room will call the league the priority now, because that is what dressing rooms say.
It was not about football and everybody who saw it knows that. Two men who have to play together on Saturday said things at Yokohama F. Marinos this week that will take longer than a week to unsay.
Squad5 Oct 2026
Rubén Blanco 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 one version of being left out a player cannot argue with, and the one he takes worst. Somebody else has been better and the team sheet says so, in public, every week until it changes.
Nobody at Yokohama F. Marinos will say this on the record and the team sheets have been saying it for weeks. There is a small group in every squad who get picked when the fixture is difficult, and he has joined it.
It needed Kaina Tanimura to find the net to bring anything home at all: 1‑1 against FC Tokyo, and half the dressing room will call it a point won.
The dugout5 Oct 2026
The view from the dugout
“We did not lose. Some weeks that is all you get, and I would rather have the point than not.” Hajime Yamane chose the glass-half-full version of 1‑1; the supporters left with the other one.
“I have given this everything, but my family is not here and neither am I, not really.” A footballer can be coached out of bad form. Nobody has ever been coached out of this, and Yokohama F. Marinos know it.
A 1‑0 win over Shonan Bellmare, earned rather than given, and the sort of afternoon that sends everyone home talking about next week instead of this one.
It is the most legitimate ambition in the sport and the hardest for most clubs to satisfy. Jeisson Quinones wants continental football; whether Yokohama F. Marinos can provide it is a question about the next two seasons, not about him.
7 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.
Somebody said out loud what several people had been thinking. Ilgyu Park 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.
It was not about football and everybody who saw it knows that. Two men who have to play together on Saturday said things at Yokohama F. Marinos this week that will take longer than a week to unsay.
The chances are being made and something is happening between the making and the finishing. 3 matches now, and the anxiety in the ground arrives a little earlier every week.
7.34, and no serious argument from anybody who was there. Yokohama F. Marinos had eleven men on the pitch and one of them decided how it went.
The dugout21 Sep 2026
The view from the dugout
“We did not lose. Some weeks that is all you get, and I would rather have the point than not.” Hajime Yamane chose the glass-half-full version of 0‑0; the supporters left with the other one.
Somebody else has been better, the manager has said so with a team sheet, and there is no argument to be had. He will get the shirt back the only way it can be got back.
The crowd waited for a goal that never came. Jubilo Iwata defended in numbers and left with what they came for, and the two sides could be playing still without troubling a scorer.
It is never announced and it is entirely visible: the biggest afternoons of the season keep containing him. A press box works this out long before anybody at the club confirms a word of it.
Every squad has one of these fixtures for somebody every season. This one is Toichi Suzuki’s: the club that knew him first, the supporters who will decide in the first minute whether to applaud, and Yokohama F. Marinos needing him to play as if none of it matters.
Shots: 11. Goals: none. The chances were there and they were good ones, and they went into the stand, the goalkeeper's arms and the side netting in roughly that order.
Rubén Blanco 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.
Every manager keeps a short list in his head of the men he wants on the pitch when the stakes rise, and it is never published. The team sheets for the big afternoons say Naoki Maeda is on it.
The dugout14 Sep 2026
The view from the dugout
“We did not lose. Some weeks that is all you get, and I would rather have the point than not.” Hajime Yamane chose the glass-half-full version of 0‑0; the supporters left with the other one.
It has been denied twice and printed three times, which is the usual arithmetic. Until Riku Yamane signs something — a contract at Yokohama F. Marinos or anywhere else — this column belongs to him.
Every squad has one of these fixtures for somebody every season. This one is Jordy Croux’s: the club that knew him first, the supporters who will decide in the first minute whether to applaud, and Yokohama F. Marinos needing him to play as if none of it matters.
Numbers do not stay secret in a dressing room. He is not asking for more than he is worth; he is asking why somebody beside him is worth more, and Yokohama F. Marinos have no good answer.
Nobody at Yokohama F. Marinos is suggesting he is out of form. The manager simply wanted somebody with a different set of qualities for ninety specific minutes, and there is nothing a player can train to fix that.
17 days on the estimate, and a long, private, unglamorous year of a rehabilitation nobody watches. Yokohama F. Marinos lose a footballer; he loses considerably more than a season.
Yokohama F. Marinos ran out of time with Gamba Osaka. The paperwork was open when the deadline passed, and a transfer that was almost done is now a transfer that never happened.
Somebody said out loud what several people thought about how hard another man trains, and Rubén Blanco was in the middle of it. The one dressing-room argument that is genuinely about football.
It is never announced and it is entirely visible: the biggest afternoons of the season keep containing him. A press box works this out long before anybody at the club confirms a word of it.
Not a new contract, not a new number: a new place in the manager’s thinking, which is the only promotion in football that actually matters. Thomas Jok Deng has moved up it.
32 days on the announcement, and a year of quiet, unwatched rehabilitation behind it. Yokohama F. Marinos lose a player for a season; he loses something harder to name.
The clubs have shaken hands with Nagoya Grampus; the player has not yet. Personal terms are next, and personal terms are where more deals die than anybody prints.
5 wins on the spin now, and the question has changed from whether the run ends to who ends it. Confidence like this cannot be bought; it has to be earned exactly this way.
Yokohama F. Marinos asked and Kashima Antlers said no without discussing a figure. It is the least ambiguous answer in football and the one clubs most often come back to test.
1 for Kei Chinen, marked 7.74, 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.
15 in and 5 out, and no more changes for months. The manager has what he has, the supporters have their opinion of it, and the table will have the last word.
39 days on the estimate, and a long, private, unglamorous year of a rehabilitation nobody watches. Yokohama F. Marinos lose a footballer; he loses considerably more than a season.
There is no crueller way to lose a football match. Yokohama F. Marinos scored in the 94th minute, the restart barely happened, and the away end was still standing when the whistle went.
Dean David has gone, the accounts have $4.3M in them, and the supporters have the feeling of having been sold something themselves. Good business and a good decision are not always the same thing.
Nagoya Grampus paid $4.3M and Yokohama F. Marinos took it, which is the whole story in one sentence. The longer version involves a wage budget and will be told all season.
1 for Kei Chinen, marked 7.83, 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.
The number the board signed off was not enough. It has been asked again and raised its own offer to $161.0K — a club that wants Taichi Yamasaki enough to be asked twice.
3 wins on the spin now, and the question has changed from whether the run ends to who ends it. Confidence like this cannot be bought; it has to be earned exactly this way.
Yokohama F. Marinos asked and FC Tokyo said no without discussing a figure. It is the least ambiguous answer in football and the one clubs most often come back to test.
The number the board signed off was not enough. It has been asked again and raised its own offer to $38.9K — a club that wants Tomoya Inukai enough to be asked twice.
Yokohama F. Marinos have gone to Sanfrecce Hiroshima with a bid, and the supporters have gone to the internet with an opinion about it. Whether either changes anything is up to the selling club.
$37.0K on the table at Kashiwa Reysol. The manager wanted him, the board agreed a number, and the only voices still to be heard are the ones at the other club.
Somebody said out loud what several people thought about how hard another man trains, and Riku Yamane was in the middle of it. The one dressing-room argument that is genuinely about football.
At 22 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.