We caught up with the brilliant and insightful Reiya Tanaka a few weeks ago and have shared our conversation below.
Reiya, appreciate you joining us today. Let’s start with the story of your mission. What should we know?
Our football club’s mission is “Enrich your mind through the Peace Soccer”.
This mission comes from my experience that most of football teams play football focusing on only the victory and building-up
their physical abilities and football skills in Japanese football under-categories.
Football has been dominated by a win-at-all-costs mentality, and that deprives players of chances to literally enjoy this beautiful sport and aim for the perfection of character through playing football even if they are young and most of them will not become professional players.
Therefore, we started the club in order to produce a new attractive football club which has both strong squads and definite credo. Additionally, we decided to aim for not only our growth, but also the move of the people who are involved through football like opponents and referees.
Great, appreciate you sharing that with us. Before we ask you to share more of your insights, can you take a moment to introduce yourself and how you got to where you are today to our readers
In 2018, the football club FC PHOENIX was established by Ichihara Hideatsu and I, the club representative and I in Tokyo. We define our vision as the Peace Soccer which provides values below;
Proactive
Encourage
Accept
Creative
Enjoy
We joined the J. League 10th category in 2018.
The categories over J3 is professional league, so that we are going to aim there until 2030.
2018: 3st/11 clubs (J10)
2019: 1st/10 clubs (J10)
2020: 1st/12 clubs (J9)
2021: 4st/15 clubs (J8)
Though the Peace Soccer, we would like to connect countries with one another aiming for Peace.
We are going to become a professional football club in Japan until 2030 and to establish football academies all over the world.
As the first phase, we will launch the academy schools in Japan, Korea and Taiwan until 2030 as well.
The children who go to the academies can exchange with one another because the experience to exchange with foreigners when they are young will help their lives enrich.
Football can exceed the borders of language, habits, and culture.
Moreover, we would like to invest our profits to social organizations which tackle SDGs, not only to club strengthening according for our credo.
We welcome global fans who support our concept and extension.
Like Forest Green Rovers in the UK, we would like you to grow international social soccer club in the future.
Both corporate and individual sponsors are being accepted all over the world.
How’d you build such a strong reputation within your market?
From my career, working for Japan Football Association (JFA) helps me build my reputation within Japanese soccer industry. I worked in JFA in charge of international broadcasting business.
The point of view from integrating association is very useful for managing a club from various points such as finance, marketing, and sports rights.
How do you keep your team’s morale high?
Soccer clubs need at least approximately 25 players to sustain themselves, but they also need to have players understand club philosophies. Team sports business needs the members who have the same mind each other.
So, we have attempted to persuade high-quality players of our concept and the values before joining the club.
Even though how much a player has good talents, he cannot play for our club if he does not sympathizes the concept.
Additionally, in every training session and match, we have confirmed our mission, vision, and values in order to prevent losing philosophies.
Contact Info:
- Website: https://phoenixsince2018.com
- Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/_phoenix_2018/
- Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/reiya.tanaka.9/
- Linkedin: https://www.linkedin.com/in/reiya-tanaka-33a479156/
- Twitter: https://twitter.com/_phoenix_2018
- Youtube: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCfuGVwfgM_hC3etRVtQx4TQ
- Other: TikTok: https://www.tiktok.com/@_phoenix_2018?
Image Credits
PHOENIX JAPAN, Inc.