To call them a motley crew would perhaps be quite disingenuous.
Yet, it wouldn’t be too harsh to suggest there is something quite unconventional about the current Kawasaki Frontale outfit.
And still, this is a side that is now one game away from winning the AFC Champions League Elite — with a final against Al Ahli to come on Saturday after they pulled off a remarkable 3-2 upset over another star-studded Saudi Pro League outfit in Al Nassr.
Kawasaki are hardly a team that have come from nowhere. Between 2017 to 2021, they were the dominant force in Japanese football with four J1 League title triumphs in five years.
At the peak of their supremacy, they were able to lure someone like Leandro Damião to the club, were littered with prominent Japan internationals such as Kengo Nakamura, Shōgo Taniguchi and Yu Kobayashi, all while bringing through outstanding prospects such as Kaoru Mitoma, Ao Tanaka and Hidemasa Morita, who have since gone on to establish themselves in Europe.
Yet, even throughout their most-successful era, the furthest Frontale reached on the continental stage was the quarterfinals of Asian football’s premier club competition.
Kawasaki’s current iteration already bettered that even before their stirring victory over Al Nassr. In beating Qatar’s Al Sadd three days earlier, they had secured a maiden last-four appearance.
Yet, the profile of this team is a far cry from that of their predecessors.
The starting XI which took on Al Nassr boasted just one foreign player. Marcinho has been an absolute livewire on the wing since he joined the club in 2021 but he might even be a relative unknown in his native Brazil — having made just eight top-flight appearances in his homeland during a loan spell with Fortaleza, who are hardly one of the more-prominent teams in the Campeonato Brasileiro Série A.
Erison, the other import that has featured regularly for Kawasaki, arrived with a more-impressive résumé but has also never played in Europe, unlike Al Nassr’s legion of star names which include Cristiano Ronaldo, Sadio Mané, Jhon Durán and Aymeric Laporte to name but a few.
Kawasaki only have a solitary current Japan international on their books. Even then, he only has two caps to his name and just made his first start back in March.
When Kōta Takai was born in September 2004, Ronaldo was already one season into his first spell at Manchester United and already on the path to greatness. Given his youth, Takai is certainly one for the future but — from the way he battled manfully against Ronaldo and Durán — he is also one for the here and now.
Other current Frontale players to have represented the Samurai Blue include 38-year-old Akihiro Ienaga, who does have experience playing in LaLiga with Mallorca but is certainly approaching the end of his career, while Kobayashi and Ryota Oshima no longer feature as prominently as they used to.
Where it gets interesting are the stories of the rest of the Kawasaki team behind their impressive run to the ACL Elite final.
Lining up alongside Takai in the heart of defence on Wednesday was Yuichi Maruyama.
The 35-year-old probably signed for the club at the start of 2024 content that was going to be a back-up option. He only started in the league five times last season. Yet, injury to Brazilian defender Jesiel has resulted in the veteran thrown into the fray and he has hardly disappointed.
So Kawahara, one half of Kawasaki’s dynamic engine room, was playing third-tier football as recently as in 2021. While not exactly a journeyman, his remarkable rise — via Roasso Kumamoto and Sagan Tosu — has taken him from the J3 League to the ACL Elite final in the span of four years.
Captain Yasuto Wakizaka is another late-blooming tale of success.
He only broke through for his top-flight debut as a 24-year-old but is now one of the J1 League’s best playmakers. Kento Tachibanada and Asahi Sasaki are other accomplished Frontale products who perhaps may never move to Europe but are still carving out creditable careers for themselves.
Then, there is also the next in line in Soma Kanda and Yuto Ozeki.
In what was only his fourth senior outing, 19-year-old Kanda was handed a first professional start against Al Nassr and did not look out of place leading the line. Ozeki, also born in 2005, had the tough task of replacing Wakizaka in the No. 10 role but would even find himself on the scoresheet.
The youthful exuberance both displayed in pressing from the front was a huge factor behind Kawasaki’s ability to unsettle Al Nassr right from the opening whistle.
Credit for that gamble which paid off goes to another intriguing story in Shigetoshi Hasebe.
When Kawasaki and Oniki, the man who presided over their glorious era, decided at the end of last year that was it time for a fresh start, few would have had Hasebe at the top of the list of possible replacements.
He was, after all, a coach who never boasted anything higher than a 43.5% win record at any of his previous clubs. His best achievement was a 7th-place finish in the J1 League in 2023 but the caveat to that was that he achieved it with a relatively-unfancied Avispa Fukuoka outfit.
It was the club’s highest-ever finish and, that year, he also led them to their first major silverware in the form of the J.League Cup.
Hasebe might not have been the most-glamorous of choices but the pragmatism from his experience in more-trying of environments perhaps meant he was the right one.
He is still some way from getting them back on track towards the summit domestically, with Frontale currently 8th in the J1 League, but he is doing something that even Oniki could not manage.
They will head into Saturday’s final as the underdogs once again yet, given how the SPL’s representatives were expected to dominate the competition – with some even believing an all-Saudi Arabian final was a foregone conclusion – it is a brilliant breath of fresh air that an underdog story has emerged.
And, if anything has been learned from their semifinal performance, it will be sheer folly to write off their chances before a ball is even kicked.
Even if they are the unlikeliest of ACL Elite title challengers.
