Description
Kagoshima United FC are a professional soccer club in the J. League and are presently playing in J3 league. The team’s home town is in Kagoshima prefecture Kagoshima city. Their home stadium is the Kagoshima Kamoike Stadium, but with less than 15 000 seats the stadium doesn’t meet the requirements for the J1 license and is thus used temporarily as a home stadium.
Founded in 2014, the new team was formed by the merger of Volca Kagoshima and FC Kagoshima, that were both playing in the Kyushu Soccer League and aspiring to join the J. League.
When both clubs advanced to the finals of the 2013 season Japanese Regional Football League Competition, they fulfilled the requirements to join JFL and were allowed to start in JFL from 2014.
On their first year in JFL 12 members from Volca Kagoshima and 11 members from FC Kagoshima, along with new recruits from other J2 and J3 teams played on the team. They finished the season with good results, coming up 3rd after Honda FC and SP Kyoto FC in the yearly rankings.
The following year, in 2015, they hired Tetsuya Asano at the head coach, who had experience playing for Nagoya Grampus Eight and managing Avispa Fukuoka. And also acquired Kagoshima’s local Yutaka Tahara, who appeared in 144 matches and scored 32 goals while playing for Kyoto Sanga FC. On their second season in JFL the team finished 4th and the J. League committee decided that Kagoshima United FC would start playing in the J. League starting from 2016.
After moving to the J3 league in 2016, Tetsuya stayed on as manager and the team, with decent results, finished in 5th place. In 2017 Yasutoshi Miura, former manager of Kataller Toyama, took office and set his sights on the team’s promotion to J2.
The team’s home jersey was originally white, but since 2016 it’s been navy blue and their away shirt has been changed to white. Their supplier has been “mitre” ever since the club was founded and their jerseys hold logos of their local sponsors like “Satsumashochu”, “JA Group Kagoshima” and others.
