Tochigi SC

Tochigi S.C.
栃木S.C.

logo
Full name	Tochigi Soccer Club
Founded	1953 (1953)
Ground	Tochigi Green Stadium Utsunomiya, Tochigi
Ground Capacity	18,025
Chairman	Masanobu Nakatsu
Manager	Yasuharu Kurata
League	J3 League
2015	J2, 22nd (Relegated)
Website	Club home page
Home colours Away colours

Tochigi S.C. (栃木S.C., Tochigi Esu Shī) are a football (soccer) club based in Utsunomiya, Tochigi Prefecture, Japan. They will play in the J3 League. Their team colour is yellow.

Tochigi, uniquely, is the only major Japanese professional club to retain the word "soccer" in its English name, despite efforts by football authorities to minimize the incidence of the word in the J.League (the very Japanized pronunciation of the word is widely used in American English whereas "football" is more the more common term in British English, and is thus seen as an effect of the American influence following their occupation after World War II). Its club emblem is very attractive as many clubs such as Tai Chung FC of the Hong Kong first division league also copy its emblem.

History

Teachers in Tochigi Prefecture founded the club in 1953. They were initially called self-explanatory Tochigi Teachers' Soccer Club (栃木教員サッカー部 Tochigi Kyōin Sakkā Bu). They started to welcome players with other professions in 1994 and renamed themselves as Tochigi Soccer Club. In 1999, Tochigi won the Kanto Regional League and were promoted to the Japan Football League after finishing runners-up in the Regional League play-off. In March 2005, they announced that they would set up a task force to give a serious consideration to turn professional and try to gain J.League status.

On January 2007 they achieved J.League Associate Membership status and in the 2008 season they secured qualification for promotion to professional status on November 16; on December 1 promotion was made official by J.League and Tochigi had competed in J2 since 2009. In 2015 Tochigi finished bottom and were relegated for the first time to J3, the third and lowest professional level in the league system.

Record as J.League member

Season	Div.	Tms.	Pos.	Attendance/G	Emperor's Cup
2009	J2	18	17	4,706	2nd Round
2010	J2	19	10	4,157	3rd Round
2011	J2	20	10	4,939	3rd Round
2012	J2	22	11	3,850	2nd Round
2013	J2	22	9	4,922	3rd Round
2014	J2	22	12	5,294	2nd Round
2015	J2	22	22	5,167	1st Round

Key

• Tms. = Number of teams
• Pos. = Position in league
• Attendance/G = Average league attendance
• Source: J. League Data Site

Current squad

As of July 31, 2015 Note: Flags indicate national team as defined under FIFA eligibility rules. Players may hold more than one non-FIFA nationality.

No. Position Player 1 GK Akihiko Takeshige 2 DF Yoshiya Nishizawa 4 MF Kenji Arabori 5 DF Kei Omoto 7 MF Kazunori Kan 8 FW Koji Hirose 9 FW Yudai Nishikawa 10 MF Makoto Sugimoto 11 MF Yosuke Yuzawa 13 FW Akito Kawamoto (on loan from Ventforet Kofu) 14 FW Toyofumi Sakano (on loan from Urawa Reds)

No. Position Player 15 MF Takuma Nagayoshi 16 GK Shigeru Sakurai 17 DF Tatsunori Yamagata 18 DF Ryota Sakata 19 DF Hideyuki Akai 21 GK Daisuke Yoshimitsu 25 MF Tatsuya Onodera 26 DF Hiroshi Nakano 29 MF Jhonatan 30 MF Isao Homma 31 FW Ryo Matsumura (on loan from Vissel Kobe) 38 MF Keiya Nakami

External links

• Official Website (Japanese)
• Tochigi S.C.　2014 Squad