FC Echigo-Tsumari marks five years since its founding - with the appointment of a new Senior Director and a new GM & Head Coach, the club enters its second chapter.

— Mr Motoi, congratulations on your appointment as GM & Head Coach. To begin with, could you tell us how you came to be involved with FC Echigo-Tsumari?

Motoi: I started playing football in Year 3 at primary school, and with my father also being a football player, I became completely immersed. When I was part of the coaching staff at Ōmiya Ardija, the club entered into a business partnership with the women’s team AS Elfen Sayama FC (now Chifure AS Elfen Saitama). Around the same time, Nadeshiko Japan won the FIFA Women’s World Cup, which further accelerated efforts in women’s football. In 2012, I became General Manager of Elfen — that was my first direct involvement in the women’s game.

― Nadeshiko Japan’s World Cup victory came shortly after the Great East Japan Earthquake, making it especially memorable.

Motoi: The head coach at the time, Mr Sasaki Norio, had also been at Ōmiya Ardija, and I learned a great deal from him. Once I became involved in women’s football, I came to understand how challenging the environment can be compared with the men’s game — from dirt pitches to demanding employment conditions. Within that reality, I found fulfilment in thinking about what I could do, even in small ways, to support the players. The J.League’s 100-Year Vision speaks of how clubs should contribute to and be embraced by their communities. At Elfen, we worked closely with our hometowns of Sayama, Hanno and Hidaka through comprehensive partnership agreements. That experience made Echigo-Tsumari’s approach particularly compelling to me.

― One of the motivations behind the establishment of FC Echigo-Tsumari was the question of how to make players’ lives and careers sustainable.

Motoi: A footballer’s playing career is not long. In women’s football there are additional challenges, such as the high incidence of knee injuries. Because players are often employed on the basis that they play football, retirement can make it difficult to continue working, and remaining in the region becomes a hard choice. This is an issue that extends beyond football to sport as a whole, including second careers.

― Have you made any discoveries through working in women’s football?

Motoi: Everything feels like a discovery. While it may look as though I am teaching, I am learning just as much. I have no intention of leading in a top-down way. By combining the players’ experiences with my own, I want us to create the future together.

— Mr Sakaguchi, you are joining FC Echigo-Tsumari in the newly established role of Senior Director. What led to your involvement?

Sakaguchi: The direct trigger was being asked by Hara Mitsu, Secretary-General of the NPO, to help find a head coach. We have been friends since junior and senior high school, and I had been hearing about FC Echigo-Tsumari since its early days. I had always said, “It sounds interesting — you should absolutely do it. If there’s anything I can help with, just let me know.”

— You are a lawyer by profession. How have you been involved in sport?

Sakaguchi: I started playing baseball in primary school, quit in my second year of junior high, and then joined the karate club. After becoming a lawyer, I began thinking about what themes to pursue — which fields might grow in Japan, and where I could be genuinely useful. That led me to focus on agriculture, sport, and small local businesses. These may seem modest, but if properly supported, I believe they can form the foundation for happy lives even in regional cities in Japan. I have also established an agricultural corporation. Around the same time, I was asked to manage the independent professional baseball team Tokushima Indigo Socks, and became its president at the age of 37.

— Was that level of interest in regional communities unusual among people of your generation?

Sakaguchi: I was born and raised in Kanagawa. My mother is from Yokosuka, and my father from central Tokyo, so I didn’t have a countryside to return to. I remember envying friends who visited their grandparents in rural areas during the summer holidays. For me, the countryside was something I longed for — it sparkled. However, through my work in corporate law and business, I came to realise that the excessive concentration of people and resources in Tokyo was hollowing out regional Japan and had become a serious social issue. I began to feel that unless this was properly addressed, there would be no future for Japan. That realisation became my starting point.

— Tokushima is home to distinctive initiatives such as Kamiyama, known for its IT ventures, and Kamikatsu, famous for its leaf business.

Sakaguchi: To understand Tokushima, I travelled extensively around the prefecture. That was when I met Yokoishi Tomoji, who launched the leaf business in Kamikatsu. I was struck by the idea of turning leaves into a business, but what impressed me most was what he said: “All I did was give grandmothers and grandfathers a role, and show them that this is one way they can be connected to society.”

This was before the term “SDGs” existed, but it was a story of older women finding purpose in a sustainable way and revitalising their community together. Hearing this, I decided that with the baseball team, I wanted to contribute — even in a small way — to creating locally rooted, right-sized businesses where people’s hearts are truly connected, spread across Japan. Rather than focusing attention solely on players’ performances, I felt it was more important to go out into the community and engage in activities beyond the playing field — initiatives that would be featured not only on sports pages, but also in local and business sections of newspapers.

Athletes are incredibly pure and sensitive. They won’t do something unless they truly understand it. Our team carried out around 300 community activities a year — such as rice harvesting and visits to welfare facilities — alongside roughly 80 baseball games. At first, the players complained, but once they understood the purpose, they began to take initiative themselves. Creating that kind of environment is the role of the front office.

— In professional sport today, financial value — such as salaries — often becomes the primary benchmark.

Sakaguchi: Independent teams initially aspired to follow the same model as the Central and Pacific Leagues, but competing on those terms is unrealistic. They need to create and sustain themselves through entirely different forms of value. One background factor behind the emergence of independent leagues was the decline of the old model in which a single company could sponsor an entire team — a system that only worked during periods of continuous economic growth. At the same time, observing professional baseball, the J.League developed a management style rooted in close relationships with local communities. There is no doubt that the establishment of independent leagues was influenced by the J.League’s approach.

— What are your thoughts on becoming involved in women’s football?

Sakaguchi: I grew up in a female-centred family, where caring for and respecting women was a given, so I like to think my “women’s awareness” is fairly high (laughs). That said, both the legal profession and the sports world are still full of gender-based challenges. I have also seen many women overcome those barriers and demonstrate abilities equal to — or exceeding — those of men. The power that women possess is immense. Baseball, meanwhile, is a sport with a strong individual element, whereas football is an organisational sport played by a collective of eleven. I am deeply interested in what kind of landscape players see from within that collective experience.

— What were your impressions after travelling around Echigo-Tsumari?

Sakaguchi: I found it truly wonderful — and felt that a strong foundation is already in place. You can sense, very clearly, how local people and art have built trust together over the past twenty years. I can only imagine the effort it has taken to reach this point. The artworks and architecture go beyond beauty alone — they feel alive, as though blood is flowing through them.

— Finally, could you tell us about your goals going forward?

Sakaguchi: FC Echigo-Tsumari has the potential to make innovation happen in the region. Through football, I want us to explore new ways of relating to society, and to propose new ways of creating value locally. I want to create an environment in which each player can discover an entirely new form of happiness together with the people of the region. The players are not coming here simply to play football; they are also seeking their own ways of living well. I want to see what lies beyond football — the landscape that comes after it. Perhaps I should say, “We’re aiming for the WE League” (laughs), but more than anything, I want us to build momentum together.