Sagan Tosu

Sagan Tosu
サガン鳥栖

Full name	Sagan Tosu Football Club
Nickname(s)	Sagan
Founded	1997
Ground	Tosu Stadium Tosu, Saga (Capacity: 24,000)
Chairman	Yukihiro Igawa
Manager	Yoon Jung-Hwan (2011 - )
League	J. League Division 1
2011	J. League Division 2 2nd (Promoted)
Home colours Away colours
Current season

Sagan Tosu (サガン鳥栖, Sagan Tosu) is a Japanese professional football (soccer) club, currently playing in the J. League Division 1. The team is located in Tosu, Saga Prefecture.

Sagan is a coined word with a couple of meanings behind it. One of its homophones is sandstone (砂岩, sagan) in Japanese. This symbolises many small elements uniting to form one formidable object. Also, Sagan Tosu can be interpreted as "Tosu of Saga (Prefecture)" (佐賀ん鳥栖, Saga-n Tosu) in the area's dialect. In addition, it is widely believed that the word is meant to be a pun with Italian giants Juventus although the club hasn't confirmed it.

History

In February 1997, Sagan was established as a new club which virtually takes over Tosu Futures, which became insolvent in the previous month, and admitted to participate Japan Football League from 1997 to 1998, as well as J. League Cup in 1997 as a preferential measure, although J. League Associate Membership status is not awarded to Sagan. In 1999 they were admitted to the new J. League Division 2 (J2), where they remained until their promotion to J1 at the end of the 2011 season.

Record as J. League member

old crest

Season	Div.	Tms.	Pos.	Attendance/G	J. League Cup	Emperor's Cup
1999	J2	10	8	3,385	1st Round	3rd Round
2000	J2	11	6	3,714	1st Round	3rd Round
2001	J2	12	10	3,479	1st Round	4th Round
2002	J2	12	9	3,890	-	3rd Round
2003	J2	12	12	3,172	-	1st Round
2004	J2	12	11	3,610	-	4th Round
2005	J2	12	8	7,855	-	4th Round
2006	J2	13	4	7,465	-	4th Round
2007	J2	13	8	6,114	-	5th Round
2008	J2	15	6	7,261	-	Quarter-final
2009	J2	18	5	5,939	-	4th Round
2010	J2	19	9	6,633	-	3rd Round

Key

• Tms. = Number of teams
• Pos. = Position in league
• Attendance/G = Average league attendance

Players

Current squad

As of August 1, 2010 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 Taku Akahoshi 2 DF Kosuke Kitani 3 DF Keita Isozaki 4 DF Terukazu Tanaka 5 DF Kim Myung-Hwi 6 MF Tomotaka Okamoto 7 MF Yukihiro Yamase 8 MF Ryota Nagata 9 FW Yohei Toyoda 10 MF Kim Min-Woo 11 FW Tatsunori Arai 12 GK Tatsuro Okuda 13 DF Nobushisa Uruta 14 MF Naoyuki Fujita 15 DF Ryuhei Niwa

No. Position Player 16 MF Takahiro Kuniyoshi 18 FW Ryunosuke Noda 19 MF Kenichiro Meta 20 DF Yeo Sung-Hye 21 GK Takuya Muro 22 FW Kei Ikeda 23 DF So Morita 24 DF Jun Yanagisawa 25 MF Ryota Hayasaka 26 FW Shohei Okada 27 MF Kim Byung-Suk 28 GK Daiki Tsukinari 30 MF Kohei Kuroki 31 DF Kyohei Kuroki MF Yusuke Inuzuka

Notable players

• David Bisconti
• Pericles
• Mike Havenaar
• Yugo Ichiyanagi
• Hirotsugu Nakabayashi
• Naoki Naruo
• Erikson Noguchipinto
• Junnosuke Schneider
• Park Jung-Hye

External links

• (Japanese) Official Site