In his first season as head coach, Michael Skibbe has won the championship title with Vissel Kobe. In the playoff final, Kobe prevailed over the Kashima Antlers.
After a 5-0 victory in the first leg of the playoff against Kashima, the championship was merely a formality for Coach Skibbe’s team; now it is official. Despite a 0-2 loss in the second leg, the 60-year-old not only secured his first title with his new club, but Skibbe is also the first foreign coach in the club’s history to lead Vissel Kobe to the championship. The club’s current roster includes several players well known in the Bundesliga, such as Gotoku Sakai, Yoshinori Muto, Takashi Inui, and Yuya Osako.
From 2019 to 2020, German coach Thorsten Fink was already at the helm, able to call upon two former World Cup champions in Lukas Podolski and Andrés Iniesta. Under Fink, Vissel Kobe first won the Japanese Cup and later the Super Cup, but never the league title. Kobe didn’t secure its first championship in the J.League—founded in 1992—until 2023, and the club claimed the title again the following year.
Skibbe’s first Japanese championship
The past season was held from February to June under the name J1 100 Year Vision League in a special format. Following a league phase in which the 20 participating teams were divided into an East and West division, the champions of the two leagues competed for the title. Vissel Kobe won the West League, while Kashima Antlers prevailed in the East.
With the league title, Vissel Kobe also secures a spot in the upcoming group stage of the AFC Champions League Elite, Asia’s top continental competition. Vissel Kobe had already participated in the competition last season and was eliminated in the semifinals by eventual champion Al-Ahli of Saudi Arabia.
Skibbe himself has been working in Japan since 2021 and previously won the League Cup twice and the Super Cup once with Sanfrecce Hiroshima. The former assistant coach of the German national team has been working in Kobe since the beginning of the year and has already won his first personal Japanese championship with his new club after just six months.