History
The team, originally called Yanmar Diesel, started in 1957 as the company team of Yanmar and was an original founder of the now-disbanded Japan Soccer League. With four Japanese league titles to its credit, it was a mainstay of the JSL First Division until 1990 when it was first relegated, and thus joined the former Japan Football League in 1992.
In 1993, the club incorporated as Osaka Football Club Ltd., and adopted the name Cerezo after a public contest. In 1994, it won the JFL championship and was promoted to the J1 League in 1995. This also coincided with a run to the finals of the Emperor's Cup, which they lost to long-time league rivals Bellmare Hiratsuka; this was the last final to date in which a non-top-flight club was a finalist.
In 2001, it finished in the last spot and was relegated to the J2 league. It managed to finish in second for the 2002 season and returned to J1 in 2003.
In 2005 they came close to becoming J-League champions, and topped the league into the last match day. In their final match, they led F.C. Tokyo with minutes to go and were on course to win the title. However, Tokyo equalised on 89 minutes, and a number of other late goals around Japan meant they finished 5th. Arch-rivals Gamba Osaka, who were originally formed from players from Yanmar Club, the former B-squad of Yanmar Diesel, ended up winning the title. Cerezo returned to J2 for the 2007 season after finishing second to last in 2006. In 2009 they were promoted and returned to the top division, where they have spent the majority of their career.
Read more about this topic: Cerezo Osaka
Famous quotes containing the word history:
“Culture, the acquainting ourselves with the best that has been known and said in the world, and thus with the history of the human spirit.”
—Matthew Arnold (1822–1888)
“In nature, all is useful, all is beautiful. It is therefore beautiful, because it is alive, moving, reproductive; it is therefore useful, because it is symmetrical and fair. Beauty will not come at the call of a legislature, nor will it repeat in England or America its history in Greece. It will come, as always, unannounced, and spring up between the feet of brave and earnest men.”
—Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803–1882)
“To care for the quarrels of the past, to identify oneself passionately with a cause that became, politically speaking, a losing cause with the birth of the modern world, is to experience a kind of straining against reality, a rebellious nonconformity that, again, is rare in America, where children are instructed in the virtues of the system they live under, as though history had achieved a happy ending in American civics.”
—Mary McCarthy (1912–1989)