Montedio Yamagata

Montedio Yamagata
モンテディオ山形

Full name	Montedio Yamagata
Nickname(s)	Montedio
Founded	1984
Ground	ND Soft Stadium (Capacity: 20,315)
Manager	Shinji Kobayashi
League	J. League Division 2
2011	J. League Division 1 18th (Relegated)
Home colours Away colours
Current season

Montedio Yamagata is a professional association football (soccer) club based in Yamagata Prefecture in Japan. The club plays in J. League Division 1.

Montedio is a coined word combining two Italian words Monte ("Mountain") and Dio ("God").

History

The club was founded in 1984 as NEC Yamagata Soccer Club. It gained the promotion to the Japan Football League (former) in 1994. After renaming itself as Montedio Yamagata in 1996, it has been playing in J. League Division 2 since its inaugural 1999 season.

On November 30, 2008, they were promoted to J. League Division 1 for the first time. They achieved their highest league placing of 13th in 2010. However, in 2011, two strong rental players from Kashima Antlers go back to their own team and this influences the team in a bad way to lead to be relegated back to J.League Division 2 at the end of 2011. On top of that, main reason for going back to Division 2 is because of lots of injured players in the middle of the season. At the end of the season, the manager, Shinji Kobayashi, steps down even though many fans glorify his accomplishment for the past 4 years.

Current players

As of February 5, 2012 Note: Flags indicate national team as has been defined under FIFA eligibility rules. Players may hold more than one non-FIFA nationality.

No. Position Player 1 GK Kenta Shimizu 2 DF Ryo Kobayashi 3 DF Hidenori Ishii 4 DF Shogo Nishikawa 5 DF Kazuya Maeda 6 DF Takumi Yamada 7 MF Katsuyuki Miyazawa 8 MF Yuji Funayama 9 FW Yuki Nakashima 10 MF Shun Ito 11 FW Tomotaka Kitamura 13 DF Tatsuya Ishikawa 14 DF Takuya Miyamoto 15 MF Masaki Miyasaka

No. Position Player 16 GK Hayato Nakamura 17 MF Tomoyasu Hirose 18 FW Hiroki Bandai 19 MF Masaru Akiba 20 MF Keita Hidaka 21 MF Daichi Kawashima 22 MF Ryota Nagata 23 DF Kei Nakano 24 MF Kohei Higa 25 DF Naoya Okane 27 GK Yuta Suzuki 28 MF Tetsuro Ota 30 MF Masato Yamazaki

Season by season results and managers

Year	League	Played	Points	Wins	Losses	Draws	Place	Manager	General Manager	Average Crowd
1994	Former JFL	30	―	10	20	―	13 (16)	Naoki Sugisawa	―
1995		30	41	13	17	―	10 (16)	Nobuhiro Ishizaki	―
1996		30	49	16	14	―	8 (16)		―
1997		30	56	19	11	―	5 (16)		―
1998		30	64	22	8	―	3 (16)		―
1999	J2	36	48	15	17	4	7 (10)	Shigeharu Ueki	―	2,980
2000		40	33	11	27	2	10 (11)		―	3,468
2001		44	80	27	14	6	3 (12)	Koichi Hashiratani	―	4,391
2002		44	35	6	21	17	11 (12)		―	3,755
2003		44	55	15	19	10	8 (12)		―	4,370
2004		44	71	19	11	14	4 (12)	Jun Suzuki	―	6,420
2005		44	64	16	12	16	5 (12)		―	5,949
2006		48	65	17	17	14	8 (13)	Yasuhiro Higuchi	―	5,058
2007		48	58	15	20	13	9 (13)		―
2008		42	78	23	10	9	2 (15)	Shinji Kobayashi	―	6,273
2009	J1	34	39	10	15	9	15 (18)		―	12,056
2010		34	42	11	14	9	13 (18)		―	11,710

Former players

• Japan

Yukihiko Sato

External links

• (Japanese) Official Site