Ōmiya Ardija ( Japanese 大 宮 ア ル デ ィ ー ジ ャ , Ōmiya Arudīja ) is a football club of the Japanese professional league J. League . The club from Ōmiya-ku , a district of the 2001 Saitama ( Saitama Prefecture ) metropolis , rose to the J. League after the 2004 season as runners-up in the second division.
The name Ardija is an artificial word borrowed from Spanish , there ardilla means something like squirrel . Accordingly, the rodent is also the club's mascot, adorns the club's coat of arms and gave the team the (not very scary) nickname “the mighty squirrels of Saitama”. This faint-heartedness is related to the merger of the cities of Ōmiya and Urawa to Saitama in 2001 , which made Ardija a city rival of the overpowering Urawa Red Diamonds . Although the squirrels surprisingly won the first derby 2-1 on July 9, 2005, they will have to make do with the role of the little ones for the time being.
The association was founded in 1969 as the works team of telecommunications - state enterprise NTT under the name of NTT Kanto Soccer-bu ( NTT関東サッカー部 ), English NTT Kanto Football Club, founded and was almost twenty years only in various regional leagues of the region Kantō active. By winning the championship of all regional leagues in 1986, NTT managed to win the only national title to date, and in the following year the club rose to the second division of the nationwide Japan Soccer League . But then the development of the club stagnated, which did not change when NTT moved into the newly created Japan Football League when the J. League was founded . In its current form, the team was founded in 1998 as a stock corporation: NTT Higashi-Nihon and other companies of the NTT Group are involved in the NTT Sports Community KK ( NTT ス ポ ー ツ コ ミ ュ ニ テ ィ 株式会社 , enu ti ti supōtsu komyuniti kabushiki-gaisha ).
It was only when the second division of the J. League was founded in 1999 that the group increased its commitment to the new second division, which from then on was called Ōmiya Ardija. The squirrel was supposed to give the team the image of a likeable outsider: nimble, skillful and hard-working - just as NTT wanted to present its employees. The commitment proved successful, and after five years in fourth to sixth place, Ardija achieved the longed-for promotion to the House of Lords in 2004. In 2007 they narrowly escaped the relegation when they landed in 15th place with three points ahead of Sanfrecce Hiroshima , and 16th place, which would have meant relegation. For the 2015 season, the club was relegated to the second division, but managed to return directly to the House of Lords.
The club plays its home games at the NACK5 Stadium Ōmiya ( Japanese NACK5 ス タ ジ ア ム 大 宮 , nakku faibu sutajiamu Ōmiya ) in Saitama in Saitama Prefecture . The stadium, owned by the city of Saitama, has a capacity of 15,500 spectators.
Seigo Watanabe
Netherlands
South Korea
Slovenia
