J-League Season 2016: Kashima bashfully crowned champions
Sean Carroll
For some players the moment never comes. Liverpool legend Steven Gerrard, for instance, famously never got his hands on the Premier League trophy - the title he and his club coveted more than any other.
Others, meanwhile, enjoy careers laden with silverware, picking up trinket after trinket and developing an obsession with success, with finishing first, with lifting one more shiny pot.
Mitsuo Ogasawara is one such player, and the former Japan international won his 15th major honour this past weekend as Kashima Antlers sealed their eighth (and Ogasawara's seventh) J.League title.
That triumph was Antlers' first in seven years, came at the home stadium of their bitter rivals Urawa Reds, and was achieved despite the fact Reds had been 2-0 ahead on aggregate with 50 minutes to play. With Ogasawara also edging closer to the end of his career - he is 37, a year older than Gerrard - this latest success should have tasted extra sweet.
However, the celebrations at Saitama Stadium on Saturday were rather muted, more closely resembling the forced, almost tongue-in-cheek, joy that accompanies success in pre-season tournaments or curtain-raising super cup games than that which usually pours out after a long, hard season.
"In all honesty I wanted to come top over the season as a whole and then win here, but these were the regulations and a win is a win," Ogasawara admitted after Antlers came from a goal down to beat Reds 2-1 and snatch the J1 shield. "Next year the system is changing again though, and so we have to be focused on coming top then and defending the title."
His teammate Gaku Shibasaki was of a similar mind, and looked rather bashful as he addressed the media after winning his first J.League crown.
"In all honesty there isn't really a sense of achievement," the 24-year-old said. "Of course we showed the importance of winning knock-out games, but I think there would be more of a sense of achievement by winning the league over the year as a whole and then becoming champions. That is what we now have to aim for next season.
"With regards to the regulations of the competition, it feels a little bit flat - there is a sense of it not feeling like a complete title. On the other hand they were the rules that everyone was playing by, so it's half and half - I feel happy but also that Urawa Reds and Kawasaki Frontale deserve respect too.
Almost every Kashima player trotted out similar lines - "Of course there is happiness, but being truthful it doesn't feel like a title that brings joy from the bottom of the heart," was how recent Japan debutant Ryota Nagaki put it - while Reds' boss Mihailo Petrovic was left bemoaning a format which saw his team finish 15 points ahead of Kashima over the regular 34-game season only to miss out on a first league crown in a decade on away goals.
Such an occurrence was always a possibility when the J.League decided to abandon its regular league system and instead enforce a confusing two-stages-plus-play-offs format from the 2015 campaign.
While they got away with it last year as overall points-leader Sanfrecce Hiroshima saw off Gamba Osaka in the final (Gamba, like Kashima this year, also finished third overall, 11 points behind Hiroshima), they weren't so lucky this time around.
The fact it was Reds who were stung by the regulations will have made those in charge even more uncomfortable with the outcome, as it had been their fans who were the most vocally opposed to the change - although it should be noted that they seemed happy enough when their team won the first stage in 2015 and second stage this year.
Thankfully the J.League have seen sense (and the zeroes on Perform Group's cheques), and the top flight will return to a straight through, 34-game, top-at-the-end-is-champion format from next season.
That is too little too late for the 2016 campaign though, which in effect failed to produce a real winner. Reds proved themselves to be the best team over the season as a whole but can't call themselves champions because Kashima showed greater resolve over a two-legged showpiece, while Antlers' players were forced to excuse the manner in which they won the trophy and promise to do better next time around.
The history books will recognise Kashima as this year's champions, and they once again displayed their winning pedigree to play the system to perfection, but unfortunately there will always be an asterisk next to their latest triumph.
Copyright: Sean Carroll & Soccerphile.com
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