Tokyo Verdy Youth

2026 season

Currently 8th in the Premier League EAST with 18 points from 14 matches (5W 3D 6L, 27-32). Updated daily.

Playing style

The Verdy identity is the ball. The club's teams have always been built around control, close passing and players who can beat an opponent on their own, a Brazilian-influenced style that was, in the 1970s and 1980s, a deliberate argument against the physical, running-based football then common in Japanese schools. TESHIMA Kazuki took over as head coach in 2026. He played for Yokohama Flügels and Kyoto Purple Sanga and later coached Kyoto's under-18 and under-15 teams, and he has added speed in transition and more aggression in duels to the traditional possession game without replacing it.

Honours

The six straight Club Youth titles from 1988 to 1993 are the longest run in the competition. The team also lost Club Youth finals in 1977, 1978, 1980 and 2006, and J Youth Cup finals in 1994 and 1995. The 2024 J Youth Cup, won 28 years after the previous one, is the most recent national title.

History

• 1969 — Yomiuri Football Club is founded in Tokyo. From the start it runs teams for boys as well as adults, on the European club model rather than the Japanese company-team model.
• 1979 — Yomiuri's youth side wins the Japan Club Youth Championship for the first time. Another follows in 1981, and two more in 1985 and 1986.
• 1988–1993 — Six Club Youth titles in a row. Over the same years the senior side is one of the strongest teams in Japan, and becomes Verdy Kawasaki when the J.League starts in 1993.
• 1994–1996 — Two of the first four J Youth Cups, the new competition for professional academies.
• 2001–2005 — The club moves to Tokyo in 2001; relegation and financial trouble follow in the years after. The academy keeps producing players regardless, and in 2005, as Verdy Youth, wins both the Club Youth Championship and the All Japan Youth Championship.
• 2010–2011 — Two more Club Youth titles. The 2010–12 generation sends six players to the first team together in 2013, NAKAJIMA Shoya and MAEDA Naoki among them.
• 2012 — Premier League EAST champions; beaten 4-1 by Sanfrecce Hiroshima in the national final.
• 2024 — The J Youth Cup, 28 years after the last one.
• 2026 — TESHIMA Kazuki is appointed head coach, with TERATANI Mayumi as academy director.

Development pathway

• A club, not a school. Verdy's academy was designed as part of a sports club open to children, on the European pattern, at a time when almost every talented Japanese teenager played for his school. That history is why the club still talks about the academy as the centre of the organisation rather than a department of it.
• One ground with the first team. The under-18s train at the Verdy ground in Inagi next to the professionals. First-team registration is routine: in September 2026, sixteen of the under-18 squad were listed with the first team as type-2 (academy) players, and two of them, WATANABE Haruki and CAMARA Cheick Sezar, had first-team numbers.
• Its own juniors, plus Tokyo's best clubs. The core of the squad comes up through the Verdy junior-youth team. Around it the club recruits from strong independent clubs in and around Tokyo, and occasionally from a junior-high-school team, so that the internal players always have competition.
• School built around football. The club partners with a correspondence-course high school support centre, so that players can combine full-time training with a route to university if professional football does not come.

Former players

• MORITA Koki (midfielder, Tokyo Verdy) — through the Verdy junior, junior-youth and youth teams, captain in the 2023 season that took the club back to J1. He wears the number 10.
• NAKAJIMA Shoya (midfielder) — a Japan international who played for Portimonense, Porto and Al-Duhail, then returned to Japan with Urawa Red Diamonds. He went back to Portimonense in 2026.
• TSUNASHIMA Yuto (defender) — did not get a professional contract out of the academy, went to university, came back to Verdy, was called up by Japan for the 2025 EAFF E-1 Championship, and moved to Royal Antwerp in Belgium later that year.
• MAEDA Naoki (forward, Sanfrecce Hiroshima) — promoted with NAKAJIMA in 2013; later played for Utrecht in the Netherlands.
• SAKO Maaya (defender, Tokyo Verdy) — a tall centre-back who returned to the club in 2025 after three loans.
• IMAI Kento (midfielder, Tokyo Verdy) — promoted to the first team in 2026.

The old image of a Verdy product was a small, technical midfielder. TSUNASHIMA and SAKO are the evidence that the academy now produces other shapes of player as well.

Players to watch in 2026

Players worth knowing in the 2026 season:

• KINOSHITA Haruma (midfielder, third year, no. 7) — in Japan's under-17 squad for the Limoges International Tournament in September 2026.
• WATANABE Naohiro (defender, first year, no. 23) — a Japan under-16 international, selected for the 2026 U-16 International Dream Cup.
• ZEHNER Taiyo (midfielder, first year, no. 16) — selected for Japan's under-16 tour of Albania in spring 2026.
• SUZUKI Haruto (forward, third year, no. 11) — the team's top scorer in the league so far, with six goals.
• HIROSE Reo (midfielder, third year, no. 10), SHIMOYOSHI Kohei (midfielder, third year, no. 6) and KOGA Taiga (forward, third year, no. 9) — the senior attacking group.
• CAMARA Cheick Sezar (defender, third year, no. 3) and WATANABE Haruki (defender, third year, no. 5) — the third-year centre of the defence, both with first-team numbers.
• NAWA Yutaro (goalkeeper, second year, no. 12) — has played every minute of the league season.
• HARADA Soru (no. 2), KAWAMOTO Yusuke (no. 4) and WAKATSUKI Ren (no. 20) — second-years who have played in almost every league match.
• NUMATA Akito (forward, first year, no. 22) — three league goals as a first-year.

Almost every regular came through the club's own junior-youth team, which is the pattern Verdy has followed for half a century.

Notes

Full profile in Japanese, with the current squad list and every result: 東京ヴェルディユース.

Where a player has no official English spelling published by the JFA or the J.League, the name is shown in Japanese.

See also: Premier League standings and how youth football works in Japan.