Vissel Kobe made history in 2023 by winning their first-ever J. League championship. That success brought the title back to the Kansai region for the first time since Gamba Osaka won their second crown in 2014, and at long last out of Kanagawa Prefecture after six years of domination by Kawasaki Frontale and Yokohama F. Marinos. After 20 years of searching, it was Kobe’s first serious step towards achieving Rakuten CEO Hiroshi Mikitani’s proclaimed goal of building Asia’s strongest football club.
The 2024 season kicks off in late February with 2022 champions Yokohama, last year’s eventual runners-up, still best placed to challenge Kobe. Kawasaki, too, despite last season’s disappointing mid-table finish, may be ready to surge back after making a batch of promising new foreign signings. While Yokohama and Kawasaki will also continue their rivalry in the 2023-24 Asian Champions League, Kobe must wait until the 2024-25 competition begins in the second half of the season to resume their own Asian challenge.
Kobe manager Takayuki Yoshida, now in his third term at the helm, embodies the new Kobe-Yokohama rivalry, having joined Yokohama Flugels as a player out of high school in 1995. When Flugels collapsed in1998 and merged with Marinos (Flugels is the “F” in Yokohama F. Marinos) the young forward was one of the chosen few kept on in the newly-combined squad. He eventually enjoyed two spells at F. Marinos before joining Kobe in 2008 for his final six seasons as a player.
