Former national team captain Tsuneyasu Miyamoto to become the next president of the Japan Football Association.

Tsuneyasu Miyamoto, 46, who served as Japan’s national team captain for two consecutive World Cups, will become the new president of the Japan Football Association (JFA) next April. On the other hand, there are also voices from within the JFA who fear that a new administration may be in the offing.

With incumbent president Kozo Tajima (66) stepping down at the end of his term, the JFA was scheduled to hold its first presidential election in eight years in late December. The two candidates who wished to run were Executive Director Miyamoto and Noriaki Suzuki (61), J-League chairman’s special mission officer. To be officially nominated, a candidate must be recommended by at least 16 of the 79 JFA trustees, and since Mr. Suzuki could not be nominated, only Mr. Miyamoto was nominated as a candidate for president-elect.

The nominations by the trustees were by name. The nominations by the trustees were in the form of signatures, so that we could clearly see who had made the nomination. It was truly a “treadmill. I heard that there were almost no trustees who recommended Mr. Suzuki.

Executive Director Miyamoto distributed a manifesto titled “Let’s Open New Doors Together” to all the trustees. At the beginning of the manifesto was an interview with Takeshi Okada, 67, vice president of the JFA. A JFA official who saw the document commented, “It was as if Mr. Okada had been appointed as Miyamoto’s campaign chairman! No one in the JFA would object!

The JFA’s presidential candidate election management committee (election management committee) conducted “physical examinations” of the two candidates who had applied to run for the office.

This physical examination was not conducted in the previous presidential election, but the results were scored in such a way that anyone could see them. Miyamoto’s score was overwhelmingly higher.