An excellent background story on Iwaki FC, as featured recently on the website JLeagueRegista.
There is a scene in the popular Japanese movie “Hula Girls”, a film in which a group of miners wives/relatives decide to form a hula dancing group to aid the development of a Hawaiian resort in a town faced with looming unemployment, in which to help the city’s dream of becoming a tourist destination Iwaki is presented with some palm trees. It doesn’t occur to some people that, with Iwaki being located in north eastern Japan, the palm trees might struggle to survive the harsh winter. It takes a group of people, led by one person with drive, backed up by another group of people with the means to help, to help the situation by rounding up stoves and fuel. Therefore giving the trees some much needed heat that, ultimately, helped them grow and survive. For Iwaki residents, overcoming obstacles, however big or small – or indeed catastrophic – is just something they do. Continue reading →
Iwaki FC is a club with a big ambition. The club is completely new and operating for 4 months now. The club had no past, so no history, no culture and no trophies.
To build a professional club you need to have in mind the reason why you want to build such a club and how you want to position it in the present football landscape.
The goal of Iwaki FC is a clear one. We want to build a modern football club that is part of local community. It has to become a magnet for everything that has to do with football. It also has to have a social function that plays a binding part in in the local community. In order to achieve this we started the first initiatives to attract people to our club. It is good to see that the fanbase is slowly growing with every home game. Continue reading →
It is now more then one and a half years since I left the Netherlands to work abroad. First I went to Indonesia to become the technical director of the Indonesian FA. This was a different role in football compared to head coach. I am always interested to gain more knowledge and better insights in the secret of successful teams or organizations. In my new role I was automatically forced to look deeper in to these successes and what was the basis for it.
In my search I looked at countries like Germany, Belgium, Spain, the Netherlands and the South American powerhouses like Brazil, Argentina and lately Chile. And also the opposite, how is it possible that big and ambitious countries like England, America and the Asian countries where football is highly popular cannot make the last step to the worlds elite. Continue reading →
Our second league game, against FC E-Star, ended in another 8-0 victory.
Because of the recent earthquakes in Kumamoto Prefecture the team wore black mourning armbands to acknowledge the casualties and those affected.
After a long preseason in which we made the first steps to build a professional club in Iwaki, the official kick off to the season was made on Sunday April 10th 2016.
It was clear that this first game could not go by unnoticed. Our own staff together with the team of Domecorp wanted to make this a special occasion that would make an impact on our future supporters. They pulled out all the stops. Every school was visited with free invitations. Radio and TV announcements were made to attract as many fans as possible. Continue reading →
I have been working in Japan since the middle of January 2016.
Time is just flying past. Before we start our competition games on April 10th, here’s an update of what we have done so far.
“It is time to show Japan that this area has recovered from disaster and can be a breeding ground for ambitious sports projects.”
