Nagoya Grampus (formerly Nagoya Grampus Eight) are a Japanese association football club that play in the J. League. Based in Nagoya, Aichi Prefecture and originally founded as the company team of the Toyota Motor Corp. in 1939, the club shares its home games between Mizuho Athletic Stadium (capacity 27,000 and the J.League's oldest-serving stadium) and the much larger Toyota Stadium (capacity 45,000).
Grampus are one of only five teams to have competed in Japan's top flight of football every year since its inception in 1993. The team previously had its most successful season in 1995 when it was managed by current Arsenal manager Arsène Wenger, winning the prestigious Emperor's Cup and finishing runners-up in the J.League, and which featured, among others, Dragan Stojković and Gary Lineker on the team, until it was eclipsed in 2010 on November 20, 2010, when the club won their first ever J. League trophy, under the management of Wenger protégé and former Grampus player Dragan Stojković.
Kashiwa Reysol is a J. League Division 1 team. Its home town is Kashiwa, Chiba, about an hour northeast of Tokyo. In 2009 they were relegated again, but in 2010 they won the J2 title and in 2011, against all predictions, won the J1 title, becoming the first Japanese team to win the second and first tier titles back-to-back. By winning the title in 2011 they also qualified for the 2011 FIFA Club World Cup.
0 comments:
Post a Comment