Yokohama. Down the western coast of Tokyo Bay from Kawasaki at the edges of the impossible sprawling metropolis that is Tokyo, Japan’s second largest city is powered by twin industries old and new.

The capital of Kanagawa Prefecture is one of Japan’s most vital ports and was among the first to enable international trade. It’s also a hotspot for the Japanese technology industry and the Nishi-ku ward is the home of global powerhouse manufacturers Nissan and Isuzu.

Yokohama Landmark Tower, the third tallest building in Japan, is a strangely alluring modern high-rise of glass and steel designed to weather the wind that whips in from the bay and withstand earthquakes. It offers visitors to its offices and hotel rooms a spectacular view across the water towards neighbouring Chiba Prefecture.

In 2002, almost a century and a half after the first foreign merchant ships docked in Japanese waters, the world arrived in Yokohama.

The World Cup was played partly in Japan and partly in South Korea but it was Yokohama that built a stadium to host the final.

Football took its showpiece occasion to the International Stadium in Kozukue-cho at the end of June and one of the greatest players of all time completed a famous redemption arc right there on the shores of Tokyo Bay.

Four years earlier, Ronaldo was initially omitted from Brazil’s World Cup final team but took his place in the starting eleven to be upstaged by Zinedine Zidane as France lifted the trophy in Paris.

When he scored two goals against Germany in 2002 to lead Brazil to their fifth World Cup, he did it at the International Stadium in Yokohama, now the home of a wayward giant of Japanese football.

Yokohama F. Marinos have achieved some recent success, winning J1 four times since the turn of the century.

Ossie Ardiles managed the club in 2000. Former Toulouse boss Erick Mombaerts preceded Ange Postecoglou, who was in turn succeeded by two more Australians, first Kevin Muscat – previously a brutal hatchetman midfielder usually uninterested in the presence or otherwise of a football – and then Champions League winner Harry Kewell.

Postecoglou and Muscat won a title apiece but there’s been precious little for Marinos supporters to cheer since 2022. If the opening months of the 2025 season are any indication, the trajectory of their club isn’t likely to bring back the glory days.

Twelve games into the 2025 J1 League season Yokohama F. Marinos had already sacked their new manager, former England assistant manager Steve Holland, and sat in last place with a single win to their name.

Four points and one place above them, with one more game played than the Marinos but fewer than the seven teams above them, were Yokohama FC.

Yokohama and the Marinos are rivals, certainly, but the enmity runs deeper than football.

Simmering beneath the surface, away from Holland’s abject failure and the disparity in expectations between one team with designs on the title and another that would simply be thrilled to stay up into a second season after promotion from J2, is a bitter war for the very soul of a football city.

A history shared

The Yokohama Marinos name came into being at the dawning of Japanese club football’s new era. In 1992, Nissan Motors were renamed to usher in the debut season of the J.League the following year.

Still majority-owned by Nissan and playing most of their home matches in the cavernous International Stadium, now Nissan Stadium, the Marinos are also part of one of the world’s leading multi-club ownership systems.

City Football Group, the Abu Dhabi-led holding company behind Manchester City, Melbourne City, New York City, Troyes and various other slices of pies including Girona and Palmero, owns around one-fifth of the Marinos.

Yet the chances of the club being rebadged and kitted out in sky blue are extremely slim to none, and the clue, hidden away in the middle of the name they’ve carried now for quarter of a century, is just a single letter.

‘F’ is for Yokohama Flügels, the rival club of the Marinos that dated back all the way to the 1960s when it was formed as All Nippon Airways. They were another founding team of the new professional league 32 years ago.

The Flügels’ key sponsor yanked its support in 1998 and the team was in mortal danger of financial collapse.

So, the Flügels and the Marinos merged in 1999 to become Yokohama F. Marinos. They play at the Marinos’ stadium in the Marinos’ colours. They carry the Marinos’ history.

This wasn’t a salvation but malicious subsumption. The merger took the existence of a football club and wiped it from the face of the earth and the real salvation is that a new club, a club with its spiritual history torn asunder but a club nonetheless, emerged in its wake and plays in sky blue in the Flügels’ stadium.

A present divided

In 1998, Rising Sun News reported on the reaction to a takeover disguised as a great unification of powers:

“Not surprisingly, [it] triggered a firestorm of protest. European fans should try to imagine what would happen if Tottenham Hotspur suddenly announced that they were merging with Arsenal, and all Tottenham fans should hereafter switch their support to the Gunners.

“The uproar shocked the entire J.League establishment, who until this point had little concept of how important team loyalty had become to many football fans in Japan.

“There were ugly scenes of team executives being pelted with raw eggs and fan contingents occupying the offices of major corporations… The players played their final two matches of the season with masking tape covering the corporate logos on their jerseys, and fans plastered all advertisements in the stadium with insulting graffiti.”

The Flügels were kept alive in spirit by a fan club without a team, an urban Japanese version of the Philadelphia Union’s Sons of Ben.

They fought successfully for the right to reform their club, though one might question whether a club with a different name starting from the semi-professional lower ranks should have needed such permission.

“Top players from the former Flügels were auctioned off and some of the funds were used to support the creation of the new Yokohama FC,” continued Rising Sun News.

Other forms of support came from supporter funding and a degree of involvement from sports media colossus IMG. Yokohama became the first fan-owned club in Japanese sport.

Surviving early financial turmoil, they rose to the top two divisions and are currently in their fifth season in J1, albeit not consecutively.

The club’s crest rather obviously features a phoenix where there should really be a flying squirrel but there’s also an important blue ribbon motif.

Yokohama’s club website explains: “The blue ribbon… comes from the blue ribbons worn by supporters as part of the ‘Blue Wings Movement’ in 1998 during the campaign to keep the Flügels alive.

“From the end of the 1998 season, Flügels players also began wearing the ribbons on the sleeves of their uniforms during matches and the ‘blue ribbon’ became a driving force behind efforts to keep the Flügels alive and the founding of Yokohama FC.”

A future uncertain

F. Marinos haven’t been dominant in the J.League but the Postecoglou and Muscat years set them up to compete. Their battles with Kanagawa rivals Kawasaki Frontale were fleeting but established the Marinos as a formidable force.

In the five seasons between 2019 and 2023, they finished first twice and second twice. That’s enough to cast a shadow in which an upstart foe can get lost. It’s shrinking fast.

They have the resources to pull away from the bottom of the table but nothing about their performances so far suggests they’re any more likely to do so than Yokohama.

Yokohama are seeking to establish themselves at the top level and are happier with life in J1 than J2 but relegation is a threat that’s never far away. The Marinos are in shambolic shape and the two of them make for an odd pair in the bottom two.

For all its historic turmoil, J1 football in the city of Yokohama has seldom been in worse condition on the pitch than it is right now.

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