Imabari FC

Imabari FC
Basic data
Seat	Imabari , Ehime
founding	1976
Colours	blue yellow
Website	fcimabari.com
First soccer team
Head coach	Lluís Planagumà
Venue	Arigato Service Yume Stadium
Places	5,000
league	Japan Football League
2017	6th place
home Away

FC Imabari ( Japanese FC 今 治 Efu Shī Imabari ) is a Japanese football club from Imabari in Ehime Prefecture . He is a J. League Centenary Club and has played in the Japan Football League since 2017 .

history

Early years

The association was founded in 1976 as Ōnishi SC ( 大西 サ ッ カ ー ク ラ ブ Ōnishi Sakkā Kurabu ) in the then still independent small town of Ōnishi . From 1983 Ōnishi SC was able to establish itself in the highest league of the Ehime prefecture and belonged to this almost continuously until the turn of the millennium; the 1991 season in which the team was this, the only exception Shikoku - Regional belonged, but there did not make it past the last place and relegation straight back. With this promotion, the name of the team changed for the first time. In order to inspire the population of the neighboring city of Imabari and the entire surrounding district of Ochi , the first characters of the two places ( 今 for Imabari, 越 for the Ochi district) were merged to Imao FC ( 今 越 フ ッ ト ボ ー ル ク ラ ブ Imao Futtobōru Kurabu ).

For the 2001 season Imao FC managed to return to the Shikoku regional league. In 2004, the regional league team within the club was separated from the other teams and received a separate board in order to better promote the sporting development. At the same time, it was renamed Ehime Shimanami FC ( 愛媛 し ま な み FC Ehime Shimanani Efu Shī ). In 2009 began a three-year cooperation with the J. League club Ehime FC , which used the team as its official reserve team. This again led to a change of name to Ehime FC Shimanami, albeit a minor one .

The cooperation with Ehime FC turned out to be fruitful and culminated in a total of three participations as a representative of the Ehime prefecture in the Imperial Cup at the end of the 2011 season even in winning the Shikoku regional league. However, the club had to refrain from participating in the regional league finals because a promotion to the Japan Football League could not be financially realized. This is probably one of the reasons why those responsible decided to end the cooperation with Ehime FC and to re-establish the club as FC Imabari . The goal was now the medium-term promotion to the J. League .

Imabari FC and Takeshi Okada

The newly founded association was able to seamlessly build on the successes of 2011 in 2012 and 2013; In both years Imabari was able to win the Shikoku regional league and qualify for the Kaiser Cup, in the 2012 Kaiser Cup even the first division Sanfrecce Hiroshima was eliminated in the 2nd round . However, the 2014 season was below expectations with a third place in the league and a first round in the Kaiser Cup. Therefore, the entry of the former Japanese national coach Takeshi Okada , who acquired the majority of the club's shares in November 2014, came at just the right time.

Shortly after taking office as club chairman, Okada announced the goal of redesigning the club so that it would be able to "win the J1 League " within the next few years . For this purpose, the former U-17 national coach Hirofumi Yoshitake and Takeshi Ōki, who previously worked for Ventforet Kofu , Shimizu S-Pulse and Kyōto Sanga , were two experienced trainers. With the changes at the top, it was possible to return directly to the road to success, the regional league title as well as the now almost mandatory qualification for the Imperial Cup were achieved in both 2015 and 2016.

At the same time, the performance in the regional league finals showed how much the team could improve in general. If you left the preliminary round of this competition relatively unsophisticated in 2012 and 2013, the second place in the preliminary round was achieved in 2015, which was barely enough to reach the final round. In the 2016 season, the best four teams finally made it into the finals. There the FC Imabari could not be beaten and with three wins from three games easily achieved the first place qualifying for promotion to the Japan Football League .

At the same time, in February 2016, another important step on the way to professional leagues was achieved with the achievement of the status of a J. League Centenary Club . The opening of the Arigato Service Yume Stadium followed in mid-2017, which offers space for 5,000 spectators and is intended to serve as a home ground for the club in the future.

successes

• Shikoku Regional League (5)

2011, 2012, 2013, 2015, 2016

• Japanese Regional Leagues Finals (1)

2016

Stadion

The club plays its home game at the Arigato Service Yume Stadium in Imabari in Ehime Prefecture . The stadium has a capacity of 5000 people.

Coordinates: 34 ° 2 ′ 28.3 "  N , 132 ° 57 ′ 21.9"  E

player

Status: June 2020

No. position Surname 1 TW Tomohito Shūgyō 2 FROM Jung Han-cheol 3 FROM Yūichi Komano 4th FROM Takuya Sonoda 6th FROM Kei Nakano 7th FROM Takafumi Yamada 8th MF Shungo Tamashiro 9 ST Kodai Nagashima 10 ST Jun Arima 11 ST Masamichi Hayashi 14th ST Ryota Kuwajima 15th MF Shu Fukuda 16 ST Takumi Katai 17th MF Shuto Ono

No. position Surname 18th MF Seito Murai 19th MF Ryosuke Ochi 20th MF Kazuki Okayama 21st TW Masaki Imagawa 22nd MF Takurō Uehara 23 TW Lee Do-hyung 24 FROM Takatora Kondo 25th MF Keishi Kusumi 26th FROM Ryotaro Hiramatsu 27 MF Hideo Hashimoto 29 ST Ryoya Iizumi 31 TW Shinji Okada 42 FROM Wataru Harada

Season placement

season	league	Item	Emperor's Cup
2012	Shikoku Soccer League	1.	3rd round
2013	Shikoku Soccer League	1.	2nd round
2014	Shikoku Soccer League	3.	1 round
2015	Shikoku Soccer League	1.	1 round
2016	Shikoku Soccer League	1.	1 round
2017	JFL	6th	2nd round
2018	JFL	5.	2nd round
2019	JFL	3. ▲
2020	J3

Coach chronicle

Trainer	nation	from	to
Takahiro Kimura	Japan	February 1, 2012	January 31, 2016
Hirofumi Yoshitake	Japan	January 1, 2016	June 27, 2018
Naoto Kudo	Japan	June 27, 2018	January 31, 2019
Takeshi Ono	Japan	1st February 2019	January 31, 2020
Lluís Planagumà	Spain	February 1, 2020	today

Web links

• Official Website (Japanese)
• FC Imabari at transfermarkt.de
• FC Imabari at soccerway.com

Individual evidence

1. ↑ 愛媛 し ま な み FC (四 国 リ ー グ) の 来 季 よ り 愛媛 FC の ア マ チ ュ ア チ ー ム と し て の 活動 の お 知 ら せ. In: J's goal archive ( http://www.jleague.jp/jsgoal_archive/ ). J. League, November 28, 2008, accessed November 28, 2016 . 
2. ↑ 岡 ち ゃ ん 、 ＦＣ 今 治 株 51 ％ 取得！ 代表 監督 か ら ク ラ ブ 経 営 へ. In: sponichi.co.jp. Sports Nippon, November 1, 2014, accessed December 4, 2016 (Japanese). 
3. ↑ J リ ー グ 百年 構想 ク ラ ブ 審査 結果 に つ い て. J. League , February 23, 2016, accessed December 4, 2016 . 
4. ↑ J. League Data Site