Description
Hokkaido Consadole Sapporo is a professional soccer club in the J. League. Their home town is Hokkaido, centering around Sapporo city, and their home stadium is the Sapporo Dome.
The team was originally established in 1935 under the name Toshiba Horikawa-cho Soccer Club in Kawasaki city, Kanagawa prefecture. In 1977, they won the All Japan Senior Football Championship. They continued to climb up through JSL’s 2nd and 1st division, and from 1992 they have been playing in JFL, which is a sub league of the J. League.
In 1996, the club moved to Sapporo, Hokkaido, and changed their named to Consadole Sapporo. The team was made up from professional players that transferred from other J. League clubs and employees-players from the Toshiba Soccer Club.
In 1997, they continued to steadily push up through JFL and thanks to the efforts of Diego Maradona’s younger brother Hugo Maradona (MF) and Panama’s national team player Valdes (FW),
they won the league’s championship with 26 wins and 4 losses, managing to promote to J. League.
When their battlefield moved to the J. League in 1998, they supplemented the club with more former J. League players, but their results were poor and they eventually finished 14th out of 18 teams. As the J. League changed to a two league system in 1999, Consadole participated in the J1 league entrance matches, but they were eliminated. Thus, they became the first team in J. League history to promote to J2.
In 1999, Takeshi Okada, who was the manager of the Japan national team during FIFA World Cup held in France, was chosen to take command of Consadole and during his second year as manager in 2000, he managed to lead the club to a triumphant victory in J2 with 31 wins, 5 draws and 4 losses, securing a reutrn ticket to J1.
Because Consadole Sapporo’s budget is limited in terms of how much they can spend on acquiring additional player compared to other J1 clubs, they have adopted a strategy of gathering their main players on with loan agreement.
Regardless of their strategy, they were unable to produce results in J1, and after finishing in last place in 2002, the team once again relegated back to J2.
After that they were able to promote to J1 again, but then relegated back after 1 year, earning the title of an elevator club. With 4 total demotions, they are right next to Kyoto Sanga, Shonan Bellmare, Avispa Fukuoka with the most number of relegations.
Consadole has had famous player in their ranks like Hugo Maradona, and Brazilian national team player Hulk (Givanildo Vieira de Sousa), former Japan national team players Masashi Nakayama, Shinji Ono, Junichi Inamoto, and others.
Also, there has been a lot of talk about Chanathip Songkrasin – also called “Thailand’s Messi” – who transferred to the team in 2017 from Muangthong United FC in the Thai League.
The team continues to use the same red and black vertically striped home jerseys since their Toshiba days. Their jersey supplier since 2006 has been Kappa. The jerseys are decorated with logos of Hokkaido’s own candy maker Ishiya’s Shiroi Koibito, as well as Sapporo Beer, JAL, JA Hokkaido, and other sponsors.
