Montedio Yamagata

The club was founded in 1984 as NEC Yamagata Soccer Club.[1] 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.[1]

On 30 November 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 many injured players in the middle of the season. At the end of the season, the manager, Shinji Kobayashi, stepped down even though many fans glorified his accomplishment for the past 4 years.

Yamagata returned to J1 after three seasons in J2 by winning the promotion playoff final. However, they were back to J2 after only one season.`

As of 28 June 2020.[2] Note: Flags indicate national team as defined under FIFA eligibility rules. Players may hold more than one non-FIFA nationality.

No. Position Player 3 DF Naoki Kuriyama 4 DF Kai Miki 5 DF Hiroki Noda 6 DF Takumi Yamada 7 MF Kenya Okazaki 8 MF Hayata Komatsu 9 FW Vinícius Araújo 10 MF Atsutaka Nakamura 11 FW Yuya Yamagishi 13 FW Shuhei Otsuki 14 MF Takuya Honda 15 DF Toshiaki Miyamoto 16 FW Shuto Kitagawa 17 MF Shun Nakamura 18 MF Shuto Minami 19 DF Ryota Matsumoto

No. Position Player 20 MF Taiki Kato 21 GK Masatoshi Kushibiki 22 FW Shunta Nakamura 23 DF Yuta Kumamoto 24 DF Kazuma Takayama 25 MF Rui Sueyoshi 26 DF Kenya Onodera 28 GK Hayato Settsu 29 MF Mutsuki Hirooka 30 GK Akihiro Sato 31 DF Riku Handa 32 GK Min Seong-Jun 33 FW Junya Takahashi 36 DF Masahito Onoda 40 MF Ryoma Watanabe

• Naoki Sugisawa (1994)
• Nobuhiro Ishizaki (1995–1998)
• Shigeharu Ueki (1999–2000)
• Koichi Hashiratani (2001–2003)
• Jun Suzuki (2004–2005)
• Yasuhiro Higuchi (2006–2007)
• Shinji Kobayashi (2008–2011)
• Ryosuke Okuno (2012–2013)
• Nobuhiro Ishizaki (2014–2016)
• Takashi Kiyama (2017–)

• (in Japanese) Official Site
• Montedio Squad