An Afternoon at the Tokyo Derby

By the time the Tokyo Derby kicks off we’ve been treated to cheerleaders, pyrotechnics, a rousing rendition of You’ll Never Walk Alone, and a bout of ebullient, bouncing, flag waving from the green sea of Tokyo Verdy fans. It’s not quite the Old Firm or the Classico, but after a couple of cold Sapporo’s it's hard not to get swept away in the passion of these Japanese football fans. The Tokyo Derby is one of Japanese football's strangest rivalries. It may not be the country’s biggest, but it is arguably the most complicated.

The rituals and ceremonies that govern football are more or less universal. The joy and the misery, the hope and the despair. The walk from the station to the ground, the ground slowly getting bigger and bigger, the pre-match food consumed standing up, the rising tension, the air thickening with anticipation, the sweet release of victory or defeat.

Tokyo Verdy and FC Tokyo have shared a ground since 2001, the Ajinomoto Stadium in Chōfu. That year Tokyo Verdy moved back to the city proper from Kawasaki. We get on a train from Shinjuku, which, as we approach the ground, begins to accumulate fans of both teams, with a pleasant politeness that would be absent from a similar match in England.

We’re greeted by both sets of fans with curiosity, full questions about which team we support back in England and who we’ll cheer on today, fans of Verdy and FC Tokyo trying to convert us into supporters of their clubs. But we’re amongst the Tokyo Verdy fans today, nominally the home team in their shared stadium.

Kick off approaches and we’re surrounded by a sea of green, flags being hauled above the crowd and listening to the rhythm of drums and chanting, the fans occasionally breaking into songs we recognise. Across the other side of the stadium, the FC Tokyo supporters are doing much the same thing in blue and red. Neither set of fans stops singing for 90 minutes, in the organised constant manner of the Continental and South American ultras they draw their inspiration from. Although that tenor of wildly passionate football support is there in the genealogy of these fans, it has been absorbed into something distinctly Japanese, friendlier, if equally fanatic.

To understand the rivalry that underpins the match, you have to go back to a time before either club was called Tokyo Verdy or FC Tokyo, when Japanese football was largely played by company teams and dedicated amateurs. FC Tokyo were founded in the 1930s as Tokyo Gas, a company works team, slowly rising through the amateur divisions until reaching the top of J League in the early 2000s. Tokyo Verdy on the other hand began life as a glamour club, launched by the Yomiuri media conglomerate and Nippon TV in the 70s to capitalise on the sports growing following in Japan.

This was the world Japanese football came from. Before the J League was launched in 1992, and football in the country turned professional, football was largely organised around company and amateur teams. Professionalisation changed this, and Verdy, set up explicitly to capitalise on it, flourished. They left Tokyo for Kawasaki, just across the river Tama, and became the stars of the new league.

They won the first two championships, in 1993 and 1994, while FC Tokyo languished in the lower divisions. Verdy’s squad contained some of the most recognisable players in Japanese football. Ruy Ramos, born in Rio de Janeiro and brought to Japan in 1977 became one of the defining figures of the club and of Japanese football itself. Kazuyoshi Miura, meanwhile, had returned from Brazil to join Verdy and became the most famous Japanese footballer of his generation. There was glamour to Verdy, attracting stars from across South America and Europe. The club had the history, the money and the stars, but like a Japanese Manchester City, never really had the dedicated fans of other teams.

Although for a brief period it looked like the team would define Japanese football, Verdy's relationship with Tokyo itself was never straightforward. Having moved to Kawasaki at the beginning of the professional era, the club returned to Tokyo in 2001.

Tokyo Gas meanwhile had changed their name to FC Tokyo, a deliberately simple moniker intended to represent the city as a whole. Those distinctions still feel important to the derby today. Verdy is the older club, more successful, but FC Tokyo is the civic club for the capital.

Recent outings between the clubs have been remarkably close, with the last few matches ending in a draw. This one, for all the fervency of the fans, ends rather anti-climatically 0-0. And yet it’s still a hugely enjoyable affair. The game is played at an intense tempo, full of technical skill, niggling fouls. A classic derby, all blood and thunder. It’s settled on penalties, with FC Tokyo winning 4-2, and we peel away back towards with the station, blending into the crowds of fans, one last Sapporo for the road.