After Basara Mainz now Hyogo
As the news portal “Kobe Shimbun” reported on Monday, ex-Bundesliga professional Shinji Okazaki will take over the Japanese sixth division club Easy Akashi and compete in the fifth-rate Kansai Soccer League in 2023 under the name Basara Hyogo. Okazaki, who is still under contract with VV St. Truiden in Belgium, is already active in Germany with FC Basara Mainz and would like to intensify international cooperation with the Japanese club and enable talented players to go overseas.
Although Okazaki is still focused on foreign business, he hopes to be promoted to the JFL with the team in the near future and prospectively to Japanese professional football, it is said.
The Awajishima FC drama
This was preceded by an extensive drama about the current relegated FC AWJ. Founded in 2018 on the island of Awaji in Osaka Bay, the goal of the management was to continuously advance to the JLeague. If promotion is missed, the club must be dissolved immediately for financial reasons. A controversial announcement considering how complicated the bottleneck of an Ascension is.
With the promotion of FC Awajishima to the 5th division, the progress of the club was discussed controversially in social media. The club’s name was changed from Awajishima FC to AWJ FC, various high-profile players’ contracts were not renewed and the former CEO stated that Awajishima FC was no longer affiliated with AWJ FC.
The future of Easy Akashi
Instead, the sixth division club Easy Akashi was taken over by the management of FC Awajishima in early 2022. Many Awajishima FC players moved to the other side of the Akashi Kaikyo Bridge and secured direct promotion to the Kansai Soccer League Div.1. At the same time, FC AWJ was immediately relegated with just one draw from 14 games. At the risk of having two clubs on Awaji in the future, the plan was to officially merge and relocate Easy Akashi with the management of Awajishima FC in 2023. Most recently, the local football association did not agree to the venture, which has now opened up the option of a takeover by Shinji Okazaki.
After Yokohama FC, founded in 1999 by Yauhiko Okudera, and Okinawa Sports Club, founded by Naohiro Takahara at the end of 2015, Basara Hyogo would be the third club of a former Japanese Bundesliga player who is looking for a professional sport in Japan.
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