For the second installment of the 2020 FC Ryukyu season preview, I will look at the schedule of FC Ryukyu in 2020. While it is hard to predict which teams will start slow but finish strong, Omiya and Tokushima come to mind from last season, as well as who will be good and who will be bad, I will make some generous assumptions in this entry.
As you may know, there are 42 games in the J2 season with an even split of home and away games. The half way point of the 2020 season will occur around Sunday June 21st. However, there is a long “work stoppage” due to the Tokyo Olympics which begins on Sunday July 19th and lasts until Monday August 10th. That is a total of 21 days between matches in the J2. As you would rightly assume, this will have massive implications for all the teams throughout the J League.
Players will still be required to train during this period and they will have already played an additional 2 mid-week matches up to this point (in the J2 at least). There is also the possibility of playing 1, if not 2, Emperor’s Cup games at this point for some J2 clubs. Many teams may look back at the end of the year and see this as the tilting point to their season. There will certainly be equal shares of teams, both with and without momentum at the stopping point, who will witness a change in their fortunes. Another factor is that key players may also return from injury, or at the very least, have additional time to rehabilitate that will also shape the outcome of teams for the all-important end run of 2020.
For FC Ryukyu there is one additional tax that many mainland teams do not need to pay. They have to travel long distances for every road game. The farthest they will travel will be to Montedio Yamagata with the shortest trip being to V-Varen Nagasaki. Yamagata is not nearly as far as some of FC Ryukyu’s past opponents, like Akita and Morioka in the J3, but they still have to fly 2-3 hours plus factoring in additional commute times by bus to some locations. This will certainly take its toll on the squad. But with that being said, lets begin!
| MATCHES 1-21 | MATCHES 22-42 |
| 1. @ JEF United Chiba | 22. JEF United Chiba |
| 2. Fagiano Okayama | 23. @ Mito Hollyhock |
| 3. @ Kyoto Sanga FC | 24. Kyoto Sanga FC |
| 4. Albirex Niigata | 25. @ Tokushima Vortis |
| 5. @ Thespakusatsu Gunma | 26. @Tochigi SC |
| 6. Tokushima Vortis | 27. Thespakusatsu Gunma |
| 7. @ Ventforet Kofu | 28. @ Fagiano Okayama |
| 8. Matsumoto Yamaga F.C. | 29. Omiya Ardija |
| 9. Montedio Yamagata | 30. @ Giravanz Kitakyushu |
| 10. @ Omiya Ardija | 31. @ Renofa Yamaguchi |
| 11. Mito Hollyhock | 32. Avispa Fukuoka |
| 12. FC Machida Zelvia | 33. @ Matsumoto Yamagata FC |
| 13. @ Avispa Fukuoka | 34. Zweigen Kanazawa |
| 14. Renofa Yamaguchi | 35. @ Montedio Yamagata |
| 15. @ V-Varen Nagasaki | 36. @ Albirex Niigata |
| 16. Giravanz Kitakyushu | 37. Ventforet Kofu |
| 17. Tochigi SC | 38. Tokyo Verdy |
| 18. @ Tokyo Verdy | 39. @ FC Machida Zelvia |
| 19. Ehime FC | 40. Jubilo Iwata |
| 20. @ Jubilo Iwata | 41. @Ehime FC |
| 21. @ Zweigen Kanazawa | 42. V-Varen Nagasaki |
1. FC Ryukyu will play 11 home games in the first half of the season and 10 in the second half.
2. FC Ryukyu will play the 4 J1/J2 playoff teams from 2019 in a matter of 5 weeks (Vortis & Kofu Match Days 6 & 7; Yamagata & Omiya Match Days 10 & 11).
3. FC Ryukyu will play 4 mid-week matches in 2020, Match Days 5,12, 14 & 34. The last 3 are all at home.
4. FC Ryukyu will have 4 pairs of both back to back home games, and back to back away games.
5. The J League schedulers are funny people as one of those back to back road pairs happens to be the 2 farthest locations for the club in 2020. FC Ryukyu will play away to Montedio Yamagata and Albirex Niigata in a matter of 6 days on Match Days 35 & 36. I hope they intend to stay on mainland and find a suitable practice facility as that back forth distance leaves little time for recovery, training and travel between games.
6. In one 10 game stretch, Match Days 8-17, FC Ryukyu play 7 out of those 10 games at home. There are no other combinations in the schedule where FC Ryukyu plays more than 6 home/road games in any 10-game stretch.
7. FC Ryukyu will once again play Ehime FC on the road on Match Day 41.
8. FC Ryukyu will face Jubilo Iwata & Ehime FC in consecutive weeks twice this season. And they both occur at the same time in each half of the schedule (Match Days 19 & 20 & Match Days 40 & 41).
9. FC Ryukyu will play 17 games after the Olympic break (8 home/9 away).
10. FC Ryukyu will play 4 home games and 7 road games in the first 11 games after the Olympics.
11. FC Ryukyu will play 4 of their remaining 6 games in 2020 at home.
12. FC Ryukyu will play JEF Chiba United on Match Day 1 & Match Day 21 to start both the first and second halves of the season.
13. The shortest time gap between playing any one opponent is 8 weeks when FC Ryukyu play Tochigi SC (Match Days 17 & 26).
14. Every match following a game in which FC Ryukyu faces Montedio Yamagata, the opponent’s primary color is Orange (Omiya & Niigata).
15. FC Ryukyu play 24 games on Saturday, 13 on Sunday, 4 on Wednesday and 1 on a Monday.
16. FC Ryukyu play 16 games over a 3-month period (March to May)
17. The busiest month for FC Ryukyu is May with 6 matches and the slowest is July with 3 games.
Simple Observations
Whereas FC Ryukyu started amazingly fast to open the 2019 season, and caught teams sleeping on them, FC Ryukyu have a brutal 11 game stretch to open the 2020 season. They open against a team that beat them twice last season, face two newly revamped sides aiming for promotion in consecutive weeks, then play 4 JI/J2 playoff teams from 2019. Next, we sprinkle in games against the newly promoted J3 side who may have the “new boy bump” occurring, as well as the newly demoted side seeking to climb right back up to J1. Then to top it all off, they face a side who barely missed the playoffs last season. The schedule does not let up until match day 12 for this club and I hope we are not near the bottom left wondering where a quarter of the season disappeared too.
For a large part, the paragraph above represents a combination of how a majority of those teams finished in 2019 as well as some of the more popular opinions floating around today. As my knowledge of the J League continues to grow, thanks in large part to the excellent group of people on twitter – as well as the series of J-Talk podcasts- it is becoming apparent that players change clubs routinely and therefore so do the fortunes of the clubs. But make no mistake, this is a tough schedule for any side and FC Ryukyu will need to do all they can to grind out some early points so as not to find themselves in a relegation scrap come September.
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