Football Season Guide

V-Varen Nagasaki somehow missed on deserved promotion last season. Having by far the best scoring record in 2024 with 74 goals in 38 rounds Nagasaki missed out on a top 2 finish by a single point. This proved costly with the first round of the play-offs bringing an inexplicable collapse and a 1:4 home defeat against Vegalta Sendai. For most of 2024 Nagasaki looked like the real deal. They played modern aggressive football but ultimately costly collapse in August, suffered 3 consecutive home defeats that month, denied the team the joy to return to the top flight. In 2023 Juanma Delgado was J2’s Golden Boot winner. He lost his starting role last year but despite that the Spaniard still netted 10 league goals and was voted the ‘Best Twelfth Man’. It was Brazilian Edigar that was leading the attack from the off in most games and he scored 15 goals. Nobody from the forward line has left, instead two experienced new strikers (Emerson Deocleciano and Ryogo Yamasaki) were added. This only means that Nagasaki are likely to continue having one of the best scoring records in J2. Captain Hiroki Akino and two solid defenders are the most notable departures. Defensively replacements have been signed already. Both Eduardo and Masahiro Sekiguchi are expected to become key figures at the back. Of all the strikers in the squad it was actually midfielder Matheus Jesus that became Nagasaki’s top goalscorer last year with his 19 goals. He started the campaign as a deep-lying midfielder but by the end of it was mainly operating as a false nine. Now with Akino gone Jesus might go back to his natural role so his scoring stats are not expected to stay the same.