Kawasaki Frontale

When Fujitsu's works team turned professional in 1997, it did not simply change its name. It took the sky blue and black of Grêmio, the Brazilian club Fujitsu had business ties with, and it borrowed an Italian word — Frontale — to describe how it intended to play. The nickname that stuck, Azzurro Nero, points back to Porto Alegre rather than to Kanagawa.

Two years later the club helped found the J2 League, won it at the first attempt and went up. The four J1 League titles came much later, between 2017 and 2021, under Toru Oniki, who had played for the club before he managed it. The league title of 2017 ended a barren spell that had run through a decade of near misses.

Kengo Nakamura stayed for seventeen seasons and played more than 500 matches, captaining the side as it turned from a team that finished second into one that won things. He was named Japan's footballer of the year in 2016, the season before the first championship arrived. Kaoru Mitoma broke into the side in 2020 and was in England within two years.

The home ground in Kawasaki, renamed Uvance Todoroki Stadium by Fujitsu in February 2024, holds 26,232. Its position matters more than its size: the derby with FC Tokyo is called the Tamagawa Clásico because both clubs sit on the banks of the Tama.

Shigetoshi Hasebe, a midfielder for Japan at the 1998 World Cup, took charge in 2025 and reached the final of the AFC Champions League Elite in his first season. The badge he works under still carries the colours of a Brazilian club, chosen because a computer company in Kawasaki once had a football team.