Japan U18

Ajinomoto Field Nishigaoka sits inside the JFA Football Center in Tokyo's Kita Ward. It seats around 7,258 and serves as the administrative and training base for a side that has no ground of its own to defend, because Japan U-18 is not a club in the ordinary sense but a squad the Japan Football Association assembles for a single age bracket, drawing on the same structure that has run Japanese youth football since the JFA's founding in 1921. Training also takes place at the JFA Academy in Zama, Kanagawa, and matches themselves are scattered across grounds in Japan and abroad, wherever the fixture calendar sends the squad next.

That calendar has long run through Shizuoka, where the SBS Cup International Youth Soccer Tournament has been staged every year since 1977. Japan won it in 2013, and came back as runners-up in 2019; Spain took the title in 2025. Naomichi Ueda also passed through the age group on his way up.

The current squad, under head coach Yuzo Funakoshi, has kept a mixed run of results through the back half of 2025: a 2-0 win over Australia U20 and a 2-4 defeat to Spain U19 in December, following an August tour four years earlier that had ended 1-0 against Ukraine U18.

7,258.