Ok, SFIDA fans!!! How are you all doing?
Firstly… apologies. I’ve been awful. My head has been a mess.
Last weekend I was actually busy having quite a nice time. I played one of those interactive physical games that felt a little bit like somebody had been allowed to rebuild Takeshi’s Castle without the health-and-safety nightmare. I watched Godzilla vs Mechagodzilla II. I did some other cool stuff. And, somewhere among all of that, I watched SFIDA Setagaya draw 1-1 with ORCA.
I was ready to write about it on Monday evening.
Then… I’m not going to turn a SFIDA preview into several thousand words about my situation, but it caused considerable strain on my well-being and future prospects.
So, yeah. Anyway. Less about me.
You can probably tell I’m not operating at 100% because I woke up early on Saturday morning, opened this document, and thought: right, Warren, you need to finish the Miyazaki preview today because the match is tomorrow.
Except it isn’t. It’s not 11 October.
It’s 18 October. had somehow given myself an entire additional week.
Brilliant.
Now I’m back.
Hello.
Actually, the ORCA draw was alright
With the benefit of reviewing it rather than vaguely remembering it while mentally wrestling a crocodile elsewhere, I’m comfortable calling the ORCA draw a decent result.
Not spectacular. Not transformative. Decent.
And perhaps that is an appropriate word for much of SFIDA’s 2026 season.
With two league matches remaining, SFIDA sit ninth with 23 points from 20 matches: six wins, five draws and nine defeats, with 27 goals scored and 31 conceded.
It hasn’t been stellar.
It also hasn’t been that terrible.
Nobody needs to start calculating permutations or wondering whether somebody three prefectures away can do us a favour.
And that changes the atmosphere around these final two matches.
I don’t want SFIDA to relax. Absolutely not.
There are players trying to establish where they fit into this team in 2027. There are combinations worth testing, places worth fighting for and, perhaps most importantly on Sunday, one final opportunity to make AGF Field actually feel like home.
Miyazaki have rather more on the table
Miyazaki arrive third with 35 points, carrying a 9W-5D-4L record.
Unlike SFIDA, something tangible still hangs in the balance in these final weeks. Third place is theirs to protect.
That creates a peculiar little imbalance.
SFIDA have freedom.
Miyazaki has purpose.
Which one is more useful on 18 October?
For now, one can only assume Miyazaki will arrive intending to dictate rather than negotiate. Agashi Matsunaga’s football is built around movement, both of the ball and the players around it, with vertical progression arriving quickly after turnovers.
SFIDA have increasingly gone in another direction.
Takashi Hamada’s shift towards a three-at-the-back structure, capable of becoming a five when required, has given the team greater protection through the centre. Miu Kashiwabara can retreat into that defensive structure, while Saya Shinohara and the wider players have licence to move.
It hasn’t magically fixed everything.
Football would be considerably easier if changing the formation graphic solved all your problems.
But SFIDA’s recent sequence is quietly encouraging.
After losing 2-1 to Iga on 5 September, they went to Nagoya and won 2-0. They lost the ridiculous 3-2 match against Nittaidai, then responded by beating VONDS Ichihara 1-0 away, before drawing 1-1 with ORCA.
Seven points from five matches. That is not championship form.
It is, however, the sort of form that suggests a difficult season is finishing with something resembling structure.
I remember Miyazaki
I remember the reverse fixture surprisingly well.
SFIDA drew 1-1 in Miyazaki on 17 May.
Miyazaki played well. Their kit was an almost aggressively luminous shade of green. Their ground was slightly strange.
I am allowed to say that because ours is strange too.
Not aesthetically.
AGF Field is perfectly nice.
It’s just apparently allergic to SFIDA victories.
The draw in Miyazaki was also notable because recent history between these teams has generally belonged to Viamaterras.
Across their last six meetings, Miyazaki have won four. SFIDA have won once. The other was that 1-1 draw in May.
The aggregate score is 12-5 to Miyazaki.
And we probably shouldn’t skip too quickly past their last visit to AGF either.
27 April 2025.
SFIDA Setagaya 0-4 Viamaterras Miyazaki…unfortunate.
The ridiculous Uchida-Horie statistic
There is one number I keep returning to when looking at SFIDA this season.
That is how many league goals SFIDA have scored.
Misuzu Uchida has 13.
Mizuki Horie has nine.
Twenty-two goals between them.
That means Uchida and Horie have scored 81.5% of SFIDA’s league goals.
Eighty-one point five per cent!
One interpretation is that that’s fantastic. Uchida is second in the league’s scoring standings and Horie sixth. Despite sitting ninth, SFIDA has two of the division’s most productive goalscorers.
That deserves recognition.
Another interpretation is to stare at the remaining five goals and start asking uncomfortable questions.
Miyazaki knows where the danger is coming from.
Everybody does.
Uchida’s movement against Kano Noguchi’s recovery pace should be fascinating, while the 174cm Horie gives SFIDA a completely different problem to throw at captain Riho Sakamoto.
And then there is Shinohara.
Her left foot has increasingly become one of SFIDA’s most useful weapons. She scored directly from a free-kick against Nittaidai and did it again against ORCA, opening the scoring after 13 minutes.
If Miyazaki concede free-kicks around their penalty area, they should probably be slightly concerned.
I hope they concede loads.
Nice legal ones.
And then there’s Runa Tohyama
Tohyama might be the Miyazaki player I’m most curious about.
Not simply because she came through SFIDA’s academy, although obviously that makes the story considerably more interesting.
It is where she could play.
If Shinohara advances, SFIDA inevitably leave space behind her. That is the bargain you make when you ask a wing-back to influence the attacking phase.
Miyazaki are built to recognise those moments.
Ayako Shimada can receive possession deeper and look vertically, while Yuzuki Tsuchiya and Tohyama can attack the spaces that appear before SFIDA have completely reconstructed their defensive shape.
That sounds worryingly convenient against a team increasingly dependent on its wing-backs.
The alternative, however, is to ask SFIDA to be cautious in their final home game because third-placed Miyazaki might hurt them.
No.
I’d rather see them attack.
We spent enough of this season worrying about what could go wrong.
One more afternoon at home
And perhaps that is why this fixture feels different from the ones that came before it.
There is no relegation battle to survive. No promotion fantasy to construct.
SFIDA cannot suddenly turn 2026 into a glorious season with two victories. It is what it is.
But some things are still worth doing properly.
There are supporters going to AGF Field for the final home match of the year. Players’ performances over these final weeks may help determine their place in whatever SFIDA becomes next. They face a team sitting third in the division.
That matters. Miyazaki have their own reasons.
Their travelling supporters come from a club deeply tied to Shintomi Town, where the team is part of a wider community project rather than an isolated football operation. Players have worked as Regional Revitalisation Corps members. The club talks about creating a town grandchildren want to return to and a place where people can take on challenges.
That is nice. Genuinely.
I approve of nice football clubs. I would still quite like SFIDA to beat them. Football civility has limits.
So here we are.
Sunday, 18 October. 14:00 in Tokyo. 06:00 in the UK.
SFIDA Setagaya against Viamaterras Miyazaki.
Ninth against third.
The final home game of 2026.
AGF Field has one last chance to stop acting like an away ground that happens to have SFIDA branding.
We’re safe.
The pressure has changed.
Now I want to see what this team looks like when survival isn’t hanging around in the background.
One more home game.
Front foot forward.
Please, SFIDA.
Just let us finish this one with a smile.
