How good is it to be a SFIDA Setagaya fan right now?
Forget the merger for a minute. Forget the uncertainty.
Forget the endless conversations about FC Tokyo, licences, branding, pathways, facilities and all the other words football executives love throwing around.
Last weekend we went to the league leaders’ house and beat them.
Not scraped past them. Not nicked a lucky result.
Beat them.
Shizuoka SSU Bonita arrived unbeaten at home. They had battered us 6-1 earlier in the season and sat proudly at the top of the Nadeshiko League table.
Then SFIDA walked in and left with all three points.
Football is funny like that.
One week you’re questioning dropped points against teams you should probably be beating. The next you’re watching your club stroll into the toughest away fixture in the division and produce the sort of performance that makes you wonder whether the table has been lying to you all season.
Because honestly?
I think SFIDA are better than eighth.
Need proof?
I’ve got names.
Mio Otsuka.
Elite shot-stopper.
The sort of goalkeeper who seems personally offended whenever an opposition striker believes they deserve a goal. Against Bonita she turned shot-stopping into a sustained campaign of obstruction. Nineteen years old. 180cm tall. No panic. No drama. Just save after save after save.
Then there’s Nana Watanabe.
My favourite player.
I make no apologies for that.
Watching Nana defend is like watching somebody solve a maths equation before everyone else has even realised there’s a question. Danger arrives. Nana processes it. Danger disappears.
No fuss. No nonsense.
No social media highlights, just relentless excellence on and off the ball.
I’ve previously described her as 70% Sergio Ramos, 20% Virgil van Dijk and 10% Japanese tactical discipline.
After last weekend I’m wondering if I undersold her.
Mitsuki Horie?
Goals.
Goals from the bench, goals from chaos, goals from situations where you think nothing is happening before suddenly something is happening.
And then there’s Misuzu Uchida.
Two hundred league appearances.
Ten goals this season.
Joint top scorer in the division.
The woman scored the equaliser against Harima earlier this season and then followed it by helping knock over the league leaders. Oh, and she used to play for Harima.
Not a bad way to spend a few weeks.
The World Cup Elephant Standing in the Room
Of course there’s another football tournament happening.
Apparently it’s quite important. Something called the FIFA World Cup.
You’ve probably heard of it.
Look, I’m interested.
I will watch it.
I am not some crazy football hipster (ok, maybe that’s a lie) but I’m not pretending the biggest tournament on Earth doesn’t exist.
But if you asked me what I’m more emotionally invested in this weekend?
It’s SFIDA.
Every time.
Following the England men’s team has always felt strangely unrewarding to me.
The England women have set a much higher standard by actually winning major tournaments.
Meanwhile, many of the men’s players spend nine months of the year playing for Premier League clubs I actively dislike, only to suddenly expect my unconditional support every June.
As a Leeds supporter, our players rarely seem to get a proper look-in anyway.
So while the rest of the football world is busy discussing the England national football team, I’m setting alarms to watch a women’s football match in Setagaya City.
If that leaves me tired for a World Cup fixture later, so be it.
SFIDA over the World Cup.
Every day of the week.
The 90 Minutes
Saturday’s match against AS Harima Albion is Matchday 13 of the 2026 Nadeshiko League season.
On paper, it’s eighth against tenth.
Fifteen points against twelve. Nothing particularly glamorous.
Yet it feels enormous.
Manager Takashi Hamada has repeatedly called these fixtures “six-point matches” and it is easy to see why.
Win and SFIDA can start glancing upwards.
With a few favourable results elsewhere, sixth place suddenly comes into view.
Lose and the gravitational pull of the bottom end of the table starts dragging everyone back into uncomfortable conversations.
Yokohama Seagulls start looking over your shoulder.
The gap disappears. The mood changes.
That is football.
Yet there is another layer.
This is the final league match at Komazawa under the independent SFIDA Setagaya identity.
Harima, The Team I Can’t Quite Figure Out
Harima arrive in decent form.
They’ve won their last two matches.
Technically.
The most recent victory came against VONDS Ichihara.
Now, with the greatest respect to VONDS, everybody beats VONDS.
They’ve played twelve.
They’ve lost twelve.
That isn’t a form guide.
That’s a public service announcement.
It reminds me of playing pool back in the day.
I used to play quite often with a friend who possessed a remarkable talent for potting the black ball at completely the wrong moment. She stopped playing pool eventually.
Every game. Every week. Neither of us were good at it. She just handed out wins to me by default. I couldn’t get excited about them, I had won, technically, in the worst way.
That’s roughly how playing VONDS feels right now. You win by turning up – and if you don’t, well, there’s no data to say that it’s actually possible to lose or not win against VONDS.
The previous Harima win came against the inconsistent Yokohama Seagulls.
A more impressive result, certainly.
But enough to frighten me?
Not particularly. The players should absolutely take them seriously. I reserve the right not to.
A Strange, Wonderful Football Club
One reason I love this fixture is that it reminds me how different SFIDA are from modern football.
The match is sponsored by Summit. (And of course, they are on the front shirt sponsor!)
The local supermarket.
The Summit GO GREEN MATCH.
Several players are literally employed by the company.
Think about that.
The woman fighting for a loose ball on Saturday might be helping somebody with their shopping on Wednesday.
Elite football has spent years building distance between players and supporters.
VIP entrances.
Corporate lounges.
Private worlds.
SFIDA somehow move in the opposite direction.
The gap barely exists.
That feels rare.
And increasingly valuable. I’m miles away in England – but I still feel closer to this than I do to the silly aforementioned Men’s World Cup.
Outside the stadium, SFIDA Street will be packed with food stalls, local businesses, community events and SFIDA Beer brewed by Setagaya’s Riot Beer.
Thirty-three yen from every ticket sold goes towards cancer research through the deleteC initiative.
I think Summit’s goal is to support the communities where they operate while encouraging sustainability and local engagement.
At least that’s my understanding.
If I’ve completely misunderstood the concept, please feel free to tell me on Twitter.
One Last Afternoon At Komazawa
Komazawa isn’t perfect.
That’s why I love it. Just football.
The crack of harisen clappers.
Voices carrying across the athletics track.
Supporters close enough to hear instructions from the bench.
The sort of stadium modern football forgot how to build.
Saturday won’t be the final SFIDA match.
But it will be the final league match here before the club enters its next life.
A club caught somewhere between independence and absorption.
Between uncertainty and ambition.
Between being eighth in the table and perhaps being much better than that.
And right now? After the momentum that’s quietly building? After three unbeaten matches?
I fancy our chances.
Please don’t make me regret writing that.
doragon sports 