Kashima

Kashima sits in Ibaraki prefecture. The football club that plays there did not begin as a town club at all.

What followed made the town a football address. Kashima Antlers won the J1 League in 1996 and were still winning it twenty years later, in 2016, with six titles in between — the run through 2007, 2008 and 2009 is the one supporters return to, three seasons when nobody in Japan could get near them. The Emperor's Cup has come to Kashima five times, the J-League Cup six.

The one trophy that sits apart is the AFC Champions League of 2018. Domestic dominance is one thing; the continental title took the club out of Japan and into a competition where the history between opponents adds an edge, and Kashima came back with it.

Home is Kashima Soccer Stadium, 40,728 seats, known since 2025 by the commercial name Mercari Stadium. The players go out in deep red shirts and navy shorts, the two colours the club has kept throughout.

The Super Cup of Japan has been won six times, most recently in 2017 — a match that tends to pit the league champions against the cup holders, which in several of those years meant Kashima meeting sides they had already beaten months earlier. Rivalry here is less about geography than about repetition: the clubs Kashima kept running into in finals through the 1990s and again after 2009 are the ones that come with an edge.