🇯🇵 Japan
Japón
サッカー日本代表
Samurai Blue
The Japan national football team, known as Samurai Blue, played its first match in 1917 and is run by the Japan Football Association (JFA), founded in 1921.
See its shirts ↓Crests
The national team
- Name
- Japón
- Full name
- サッカー日本代表
- Nickname
- Samurai Blue
- Founded
- September 10, 1921
- Country
- Japan
- Official website
- jfa.jp
- Colors
- #1F3C88, #FFFFFF
- Competitions
- Olympic Games (1936–1968)
- AFC Asian Cup (since 1988)
- FIFA Confederations Cup (1995–2013)
- World Cup (1998–2026)
- Copa América (1999–2019)
- In the archive
- 1 crest · 30 shirts
Current crest
Since 2026
Shirts
1930s
1950s
1960s
1990s
2010s
National team history
The Japan national football team, known as Samurai Blue, played its first match in 1917 and is run by the Japan Football Association (JFA), founded in 1921. It is the most successful team in the history of the AFC Asian Cup, with four titles (1992, 2000, 2004 and 2011), and has played in eight consecutive World Cups since France 1998. It co-hosted the 2002 World Cup with South Korea and at Qatar 2022 it beat Germany and Spain.
The full story is for premium members
## Origins: from 1917 to the JFA Japan played its first international match on 9 May 1917, at the Far Eastern Games held in Tokyo, and lost 5-0 to China; the next day it was beaten 15-2 by the Philippines. On 10 September 1921 the Greater Japan Football Association, today's JFA, was founded, and in November that year it organised the first national tournament, the forerunner of the Emperor's Cup. In 1929 it joined FIFA. At the 1936 Berlin Olympics Japan pulled off a huge upset by beating Sweden 3-2, the so-called «Miracle of Berlin», before losing 8-0 to Italy. Since the 1930s blue has been…
The fans
Japanese fans dress in blue and wave blue plastic bags during matches. At the end, they use those same bags to collect the rubbish in the stands, a custom that became famous at France 1998 and that they repeat at every World Cup. In 2026 they did it again in Texas, after the 2-2 draw with the Netherlands. The fans themselves explain that cleaning up is learned at school and is part of their culture. At that World Cup they also turned downtown Dallas and the neighbouring cities blue.
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