LIFE AFTER FOOTBALL PROJECT, START!! Part 12009.04.30

I first talked about my plans for the LIFE AFTER FOOTBALL PROJECT during the announcement of the establishment of the TAKE ACTION FOUNDATION on 22nd January this year. Its first match was held on 12th April in Kofu, Yamanashi. This LIFE AFTER FOOTBALL PROJECT is based on the concept of the +1 FOOTBALL MATCH I held last year. Organising a big-scale international match like last year's takes an enormous amount of time and money, so can't happen frequently, and it was with this in mind that the idea came up to try and have matches in as many host cities as possible - hence this project. However, when we actually started making detailed arrangements, we realised that it wasn't significantly less work to organise than last year's match - in fact it was turning out to be even more difficult!!

Firstly, getting players together was extremely hard. The TAKE ACTION F.C. players were to be ex-professional footballers, meaning they weren't currently playing. There were no age limits, but they needed to still be able to play to a high standard (players worth watching, you might say) - that was a really key factor. After all, if you are accepting even one yen (or one cent!) from spectators, you have a responsibility to give them their money's worth - you want them to go home saying “I'm glad I came. I really want to come again next time.” Naturally in this kind of match, it is not about winning, it's all about how much pleasure you give to the spectators. That's all there is to it. But having said that, a strong team is a team worth watching - that's a fact. And for that reason I did want to have a high level of competition, and focus winning.

One thing I have experienced with painful clarity since retiring from professional football close to three years ago is that after quitting, simply maintaining the endurance to get through a single game is an extremely difficult task. And this applies whether the player was a professional or amateur; even a high school student. True, some players can cover for their lacking physical endurance to a certain extent with skills or experience, but even so, the level of fitness you need to keep moving for the 90 minutes of a game is not something to be made light of, as I realised after quitting myself. I made a decision to start training, determined to be fit enough to at least be able to move for the whole game, but trying to gather players with ability to move effectively for a whole game as a requirement, was really difficult.

Beginning with the players who participated in last year's +1 FOOTBALL MATCH, I asked around, and they in turn asked those around them, and we decided to have practise games regularly and get as many footballers together as possible. Another think I realised during last year's project is that it is really important to have regular training as a buildup to the match, to give participants an opportunity to share the meaning of the project, build their relationships, and to get a feel for the differences in the movements and play styles of team mates and opponents. This leads to the motivation and level of awareness that players need, to then go on and do self-training as well, which is the ideal setup.

This actually worked extremely well, and between the first game and the one on 12th April, we had seven practise games, and with each one the players' fitness improved markedly. And while you could say it was only teams of university students or regular workers (i.e. non-professionals) that we were up against, we managed a result of 5 wins, 1 draw and 1 loss over the 7 games. In terms of gathering players, by having these matches I was able to look at a lot of players including some who I had never played with before, and the number of fit footballers crept up so that in the end there were plenty of players.

As for the opposing team, I had been talking with Kofu and Yamanashi football organisations, and we decided we wanted to play against Ventforet Kofu. But from that point there was a lot of talking and waiting to be done. To hold a football match in Japan where money is collected at the gate, you need the approval of the Japan Football Association. This is actually quite a strict process, and not an easy one. Being a first-time event, like this project, makes things particularly difficult. We had trouble getting through this process for the match last year, but this year was different again with the host being the Yamanashi Football Association. Thanks in the main part to the full efforts of the host, and after much negotiation of various arrangements, the match was finally the all-clear to go ahead.

The goal of this LIFE AFTER FOOTBALL PROJECT is, on a parallel to ball distribution projects in developing countries, to pump some energy into the towns and cities of various regions, and by holding matches there, to hopefully inject some finances into the region as well reinvigorating in a broader sense... That's why I really felt that I had to make the match in Kofu a success, as an example, so that after the match in Kofu was over, people would want to see more such matches in other areas. For that reason we needed to think of events and ideas other than just the football match itself.

One reason I decided I wanted to spend this year travelling Japan is that even though I come from Kofu, I realised that I didn't know all that much about Yamanashi Prefecture, let alone Kofu itself. Because I felt the desire to know more about Kofu and Yamanashi, and also in order to stimulate the region, I felt it important to have people all over Japan learn about the special products of the region, the buildings and structures, the festivals and so on, so we decided to arrange an exhibition in the area of the match. On top of this, one of the dates for our match proposed by the host was around the time of the Shingenko Festival, said to be Yamanashi's largest. Based on the purpose of the project, this was a perfect combination.

Through this, another of our goals was to increase the number of people interested in visiting Yamanashi and Kofu, by giving them an opportunity to find about a little about some of the areas' great features. In the end, we somehow managed to pull it all together. There aren't any figures available yet so I can't say how much of a promotional effect it actually had, but regardless of that, having experienced the atmosphere of the day first hand, I feel positive about it, that we will indeed have achieved something.

To be continued in part 2...