Description
Vegalta Sendai is a professional J. League soccer club. Their home town is Senday, Miyagi prefecture, and their home stadium is the Yurtec Stadium Sendai.
The team was originally founded in 1988 under the name Tohoku Electric Power Soccer Club. In 1989 and 1990, they won the Miyagi Adult Soccer League two years in a row, and in 1991, they moved up to the Tohoku Soccer League.
When the J. League was launched in 1993, “A meeting to establish a J. League team in Tohoku” was held, where the governor of Miyagi prefecture and business leaders were the promoters, and they decided to create a new club with Tohoku Electric Power SC as the parent organization.
And thus the team Brummell Sendai was born, and every player from the Tohoku Electric Power SC became part of the new team.
At first, Brummell Sendai only had 2 players with professional contracts and the rest were employees from Tohoku Electric Power SC. Nevertheless, they managed to win their first championship title in 1994, in the Tohoku Soccer League, and promoted to JFL.
When the team was recognized as a J. League associate, they set out to strengthen their team with former West Germany national team players, who have also played for JEF United Chiba, Pierre Littbarski and Frank Ordenewitz, as well as other players that had experience playing in the J. League.
As the J. League was split into two divisions in 1999, they were placed into J2 as official members of the J. League. Because of issues with trademark rights, the team name was changed to the present day Vegalta Sendai.
During their third year in J2, in 2001, they finished in 2nd place in their league matches, and with that they achieved their long awaited goal of becoming the first club from the Tohoku region to promote to J1.
In 2002, they beat last year’s J1 champions, the Kagoshima Antlers, in an away match, and achieved 5 consecutive victories since the opening game, but after the summer, they lost momentum, and finished 13th out of 16 teams, barely managing to stay in J1. In the following year, they finished 15th, and after 2 years, relegation to J2 became a reality.
After that it took a long time for them to return to J1, but the situation started to change in 2008, when Makoto Teguramori became the new manager of Vegalta Sendai.
During his second year as manager, in 2009, with 32 wins, 10 draws, 9 losses and a total of 106 points, he led the team to their first championship victory in J2. Thanks to his efforts the team also advanced to the semifinals in the Emperor’s Cup.
The first year back in J1 was an uphill battle and the team finished in 14th place. In their second year, in 2011, the team pull themselves together and fought hard as the symbol of recovery after the Tohoku earthquake that occurred in March 11.
They ended up successfully finishing the season in 4th place. Moreover, they came close to earning a title in 2012, when they won 2nd and secured the right to appear in the 2013 AFC Champions League.
However, manager Teguramori, who was greatly valued for his abilities by Vegalta, left the team since he was put in charge of the U-21 Japan national team from 2014, with the goal of taking the team to the Rio de Janeiro Olympic Games.
With Teguramori gone, they were unable to compete with the better teams and sank into the lower positions, struggling to produce results.
The team’s home jersey was green during the Tohoku Electric Power SC and Brummell Sendai years, but when they changed the team name to Vegalta Sendai in 1999, they also change their jersey color to gold.
Since 2015 the team’s jerseys have been supplied by Adidas. Their jerseys have logos of their local sponsors like IRIS OHYAMA, Yamaya, Serlcohome, KADAN, and others.
