The greatest head coach no one has ever heard of!
Aug 22, 2025
Incredibly, Machida Zelvia have won 11 straight games in all competitions, that is unusual anywhere and I have not seen it before in Japanese football and is further messing with my mind as I am not sure they are even that good! Do elite teams, because that is what that level of form suggests that they are, lose 6 of 14 home games ? Nothing makes much sense, their head coach, Go Kuroda had only coached at High School level and for 28 years(!) before joining Machida in 2023. He took them to the JL-2 title in his first season, which they won by 12 points (next biggest winning margin in the last decade was 6 points) and on the back of a 13th place finish in 2022. They were 3rd last year in their first season in the top flight and, with their win last weekend, hit the top of the table. Like the Japanese WW2 soldier who hid on an island in the Philippines for 29 years refusing to believe the war was over, did this coaching "genius" really hide at high school level for three decades!
Kuroda took over a completely unknown football program at Aomori Yamada High School in the early nineties.The school was located in the far north of the mainland over 700km from Tokyo, it had awful training facilities, and Kuroda had no managerial experience.He oversaw an unbelievable turnaround in a short amount of time, making the school one of the best teams, on and off the pitch, in the country and becoming the national champion multiple times and seemed happy to stay there winning title after title until 2023.
Almost as remarkable, this guy has only ever played a 4-4-2 formation and for 30+ years (!), but this season switched to a 3-4-1-2 which he has used in all 32 competitive games, so perhaps he is still evolving. What a story!
Anyway, expected numbers suggest that Machida are roughly where they are on merit (second) so no fluke. However, are they going to continue to just win game after game ? Last season they were top of the table by four points at this stage (1.96 points pg) and then took just 1.18 ppg from their final 11 games to drop to third. There is nothing in Kuroda's CV to suggest that he will not have learned from that and the romantic in me wants him to complete the job and win the title with Machida. Having said that, surely a drop off has to come soon, even if just a brief one and this relentless pace cannot continue indefinitely.
Good luck!
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