Cerezo Osaka

Kyogo Furuhashi came through the academy and left it as the club's all-time leading scorer. Shinji Kagawa and Takumi Minamino were schooled in the same building before Europe took them; Kagawa came back in 2023.

The club started life a long way from that. Yanmar Diesel SC was a works team, set up in 1957 by a diesel engine manufacturer and based not in Osaka at all but in Amagasaki, across the prefectural border in Hyogo. It was among the founding members of the Japan Soccer League in 1965, and it won the Emperor's Cup three times in the Yanmar years — 1968, 1970 and 1974 — with Kunishige Kamamoto in the side.

Professionalism forced a rebuild. In December 1993 a new operating company was formed on joint investment from Yanmar, Nippon Ham and Capcom, and the name Cerezo — Spanish for cherry blossom — was picked from a public competition to tie the team to Osaka rather than to an engine works. A year in the Japan Football League followed, then J1 in 1995. The pink of the shirts is the same blossom; navy and black do the rest.

2017 was the season that finally paid: the Emperor's Cup after a 43-year gap, and the J.League Cup alongside it. The Super Cup came the following February.

Home is Yodoko Sakura Stadium, capacity 24,665, and the loudest date on the calendar remains the Osaka derby against Gamba Osaka.

What is missing is the league itself. Cerezo have never won J1 — runners-up in 2000, runners-up again in 2005, and nothing closer since.