It was not about football and everybody who saw it knows that. Two men who have to play together on Saturday said things at Kashiwa Reysol this week that will take longer than a week to unsay.
Squad7 Sep 2026
Tojiro Kubo 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.
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.
14 times he got in the way of something. Centre-halves get written about when they make mistakes and ignored when they do not, so an afternoon like this needs saying out loud: he is the reason the scoreline reads as it does.
In brief
Player ratingsA defender's afternoon for Hayato Tanaka
A shoot-out is remembered by its ending, and this one ends with Ryosuke Kojima: 3 kept out, and a set of supporters who will describe every one of them for the next twenty years.
Taiyo Koga 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 unbeaten run reaches 7. Some of them were wins and some were escapes, but a side that refuses to lose is a side other dressing rooms talk about.
Squad31 Aug 2026
Yusuke Matsuo 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.
There is an age at which every good afternoon gets described as a throwback, which is unfair and also accurate. 8.05 at 33, and nobody on the pitch was better.
Ryosuke Kojima 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 fee was agreed and the flight was looked at — and then the phone stopped ringing. Urawa Reds moved on, Hiroki Noda reports back to Kashiwa Reysol, and everybody pretends Monday is just Monday.
Squad24 Aug 2026
Taiyo Koga 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.
A 2‑1 win over Albirex Niigata, earned rather than given, and the sort of afternoon that sends everyone home talking about next week instead of this one.
Marked 8.49 — the sort of number a correspondent writes down twice to be sure. Everything he tried came off, and what he did not try was not worth trying.
Some afternoons a goalkeeper is the team. 6 saves, several of them the sort nobody expects to see stopped, and a scoreline that flatters everybody in front of him.
The fee is $1.1M, the contract is signed, and the argument about whether he is worth it can begin. Gamba Osaka drove a hard bargain; time will say who won it.
The chase for Powell Obinna Obi ended with $580.0K changing hands and Avispa Fukuoka out of reasons to say no. The supporters will judge the fee the only way that matters: on Saturdays.
Taiyo Koga 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.
Boards get told what they have done wrong for years and hear nothing on the days they get it right. This is one of those days: Ryo Hatsuse from Gamba Osaka for $1.1M, and a ticket office having a very good morning.
Marked 8.65 — the sort of number a correspondent writes down twice to be sure. Everything he tried came off, and what he did not try was not worth trying.
Squad17 Aug 2026
Koki Kumasaka 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.
Footballers are asked about their boyhood club so often that nobody listens to the answer. Yusuke Matsuo has just signed for Kashiwa Reysol, and for once the answer mattered.
He is going to Olympique de Marseille, the club has $22.5M it did not have on Friday, and the phone-ins have already decided how they feel about that. Selling well and selling somebody they loved are not the same skill.
Omiya Ardija paid $1.1M and Kashiwa Reysol took it, which is the whole story in one sentence. The longer version involves a wage budget and will be told all season.
Taiyo Koga 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.
Vissel Kobe pay $990.0K, and the deal is done. The number reads well on a balance sheet; whether it reads well on the pitch is next season's question.
Squad10 Aug 2026
Yusuke Matsuo 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 ratings10 Aug 2026
Makoto Mitsuta was on a different afternoon to everybody else
8.36. There are performances a supporter describes to somebody who was not there and cannot quite convey; this was one, and the number does not help either.
Ninety minutes of very little, and then everything at once. The winner arrived in the 88th, and Ventforet Kofu spent what remained of the match appealing to the referee rather than chasing the ball.
The offer from Young Boys for Yuki Kakita was heard out and sent back the same day. First bids are rarely meant to succeed; they are meant to find out how loudly the door closes.
“I have ambitions, and I would like the club to share them.” Nobody has asked to leave and nobody has been shown the door — but a player chooses that sentence carefully, and a boardroom hears it exactly as it was meant.
Ryosuke Kojima 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.
A 3‑1 win over Ventforet Kofu, earned rather than given, and the sort of afternoon that sends everyone home talking about next week instead of this one.