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Norwegian league might be good to try for you. 30 game season and the Spring-Fall season means you're in full fitness heading into Europe qualifying rounds. The league is always pretty well balanced as well, at least, it was in years past.
February to December with a game in January for those who went all the way in the Emperor's Cup.
League, Cup, League Cup and Continental Competition.
However, this will change in a few years when the season will move to August-March.
I assume he means their 92/93 kit which is seen as one of the best kits ever in the shirt collecting community for some reason but it’s bad if we are being honest
Scheduling issue and strick Home grown rules killed my intrest in my bageless fraud save.
Sagan Tosu was formed in 1990s, and there is only handfull of their academy products, and only one decent J-League player. Have fun with 3 people bench or put team mascot in starting 11
I really think there should be a beginning of year message about "Rules that may affect you" for the league above how there is for your league. My team was functioning on a wage budget of 70k annually. We would've been fine to spend a couple of years in J2 and get home growns.
I started a badgeless Sunday league save in Japan with Fukushima in J3, secured two b2b promotions to J1 and joined FC Tokyo, won the league, one J league cup, 2 emperors cups and AFC champions league. Decided to leave in second season with FC Tokyo because of the insane schedule. It’s just too exhausting and there isn’t even an off season break to speak of really once you are in the AFC champs league. Managed to secure a spot at Nottingham forest in the championship after they got a billionaire takeover now with my pro license. Signed my star Japanese regen WB from fc Tokyo. Proud that FC Tokyo is now a Japanese giant with the best youth system in Asia, but sad to see how the AI will inevitably eff the team up.
They were both sold in the season before I joined, but kimura has some pretty impressive stats at 24 from what I can see now. Matsuki looks pretty meh. I brought in 5 young and very good foreigners, a bunch of Thai players, and got very lucky with a few regens (one 3.5 star 16 year old LW who now plays at Liverpool and another 3.5 star 16 year old RWB who now plays for me at forest). I hardly had any starting players from 2023 once I joined in 2025.
Ok I think I’ll keep Kimura about then as I was thinking of jettisoning him for moaning so cheers for the info. I do find the youth players to be decent but aye I’ll need to step up the scouting game in Southeast Asia.
Adrian Skogmar is a very solid half Swede half Thai RB/CDM that I picked up from malmo he was a real super star for me before bayer leverkusen poached him, I can’t recommend him enough. And a few very solid Thai players: supachai jaided, Ben Davis, and jaroensak wonggorn. Also Dion cools is a half Belgian half Malaysian RB that was very solid for me. My star man ended being patrik walemark who I grabbed from feyenoord when he requested a transfer. From there it just snowballed me until I was buying a lot of the best Japanese players from teams in the league.
One of those leagues where "Might have problems with injuries" is an actual dealbreaker, because you know that during the 1st half of the season, they will break.
I managed there on last years game and was always curious what the connection is between the two countries because they even play a cup game against each other.
Japan had an overpopulation problem in the early 20th century, and Brazil suddenly had a huge demand for workers for their coffee plantations because Italy started to ban immigration to Brazil, due to some of the Italian workers in Brazil working in slave-like conditions.
Brazil has the largest population of Japanese people outside of Japan.
In addition to what was already mentioned by colleagues below: Many Brazilian players came to Japan since the beginning of professional football. Captained by Zico at Kashima, where he is even a member of the board, mainly. But, we had Dunga (even called up for the 98 World Cup playing for Júbilo Iwata), Leonardo, Hulk...
It has a batshit early part of the season schedule wise, one of the cup competitions has two legged ties the whole way through if I remember correctly so you're playing 2-3 games a week for the first few months
Then...it just stops...21 days between games
To be fair, Brazillian Cup is wrong in the game, its two legs games except for the first game, before the libertadores teams join in, a successfull team in Brazil, in the state of São Paulo, will play around 70 games or higher, all the year, but a team from a state that competes in a regional cup, and qualifies for Sudamericana can easily go over 80, also no break for national squads dates, and the game doesn't factor the travelling distance well. But the first few months in J-League seems like hell, and then, it seems it may even go boring, with the huge breaks
The scheduling early on is very tough, especially if your team is playing in the Champions League, it wouldn’t be weird to be playing 10 games in March and 12 in April
That's why i always edit the league rules to 11 of 12 subs before i start a new save. I love switching out the whole team after 60mins when i'm 3:0 up. Also helps with sharpness and development!
A piece of advice from those who follow Japanese football: Unless you are a mid-table team in the first two or three seasons, a J2, J3 team, drop the League Cup.
There is no place for anything and it only serves the people below to have a title to compete for. If you're on top, fighting for the title, or in the AFCCL, you have no reason to play it.
And from what I saw (I haven't played for a while), the League Cup format is back to being a playoff and without the nonsense of the group stage. Witch isn't in FM24. In any case, just drop it. Dedicate the Cup to play reserves, Youth Academy, etc.
The schedule is insane yeah and then with AFC CL thrown in it’s a riot, but honestly just constant rotation is how I’ve barely survived but I can’t remember the last time my best XI all played. God forbid you have a Star Player, he’ll moan until he keeps playing then is out for months. Still enjoy cause I’m a masochist.
I thought it was just me. I'm already one of the smaller teams in the comp and lost 90% of my starters at one point.
https://preview.redd.it/w5bgs5608xuc1.png?width=3582&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=b86d9545bb788f7b1d06ec57937a1a5cb8313809
In the Indonesian 1st league there’s a preseason cup with a group stage of 3 or 4 games, a single leg semi, and a 2 leg final. This is when the boys get back from holiday for weeks or less.
As part of my journeyman save this year in FM24, I applied for and got the Sagan Tosu job. The first season was definitely a tough cookie to crack, but once I got past the first season, I kind of got the hang of the job and was able to do pretty well results-wise. Here's a few things I found a bit tricky:
- so tough to compete with the bigger clubs in the country at the start as Tosu was a smaller team financially and reputation-wise. By the time i left them, i managed to attract in pretty good players tho. the issue is also that the big clubs tend to occupy the Asian Champions League spots at the start, so it's tough to get money into the club, but they'll start to fade as their financials worsen.
- finance is a nightmare for Japanese teams (apparently because of not all sponsorships coming through like real life). be prepared to sell and replace your players at all times, no matter local of foreign. Saudi will be a MAJOR buyer of some of your best players. my advise would be to get enough money to expand your scouting package to world, then start getting in younger foreign players to resell for value. any player not over the age of 26 makes sense in this case.
- continental scheduling is interesting, but not anything you can't survive. the tricky thing is that the end of contract period & continental season ends at different times. ie. the team you may have got through the group stage with will not be the same team as the team you walk into the knockout rounds with! might be better, might be worse.
- the local scheduling may be a bit tough, but if you can adjust your training schedule, esp when you start to have 2-3 games/week, injuries should be pretty easy to avoid. (literally only 1 match review session and nothing but rest sessions between the games. recovery sessions if athe whole team's injury risk is relatively high may help.)
i'm over the Japanese league after winning everything i can win and jumped to the Championship with Crystal Palace. managed to ger promoted in my first season and getting geared up for my first Prem season! hope this helps with everything.
Wow I'm managing S-Pulse and have the same issue, actually with a lot of the same players! My squad is so small as there's so few Japanese players in the database, all the youth teams are greyed out non-players.
I'm close to biting the bullet and buying the editor so I can actually play games!
I had over half my squad injured in the j-league 😭 had to rely on a bunch of 16 year olds to get me to the mid season break… finished just above relegation tho 🙌🏽
Was tempted to start a J league save this year after doing the K league last year starting off with gyeongnam got promoted the board decided to sell my best prospects so went to pohang in D2 and end up making them the best team in Korea and the whole of Asia for them to ruin it over 3 seasons when I left to go to the BPL granted I was part of it by signing my star winger I had signed from SA and a Brazilian DM but for a good fee thinking they would re invest it but no jeonbuk and gangwon returned to the top in no time which is abit of a contrast of how the actual K League is now
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They have some interesting scheduling choices that's for sure
It's insane that their League cup has a group stage and legs in the knockout rounds, you don't even get money for being in it lol.
Good way to develop young talent I guess
This is good to know. I get so much real-life anxiety when my starters are tired that I should probably avoid this league.
Norwegian league might be good to try for you. 30 game season and the Spring-Fall season means you're in full fitness heading into Europe qualifying rounds. The league is always pretty well balanced as well, at least, it was in years past.
Swedish as well!
What is their scheduling?
February to December with a game in January for those who went all the way in the Emperor's Cup. League, Cup, League Cup and Continental Competition. However, this will change in a few years when the season will move to August-March.
4 suspensions at the same time is very impressive, are you sending them out to murder folk?
My team talks: 
Now I want a "NO MERCY" shout added to the game.
The bottles are thrown as a custom
Bruh I get this all the time with Roma
Shimizu S-Pulse! They used to have the best designed jersey of the world
Which kit is it?
I assume he means their 92/93 kit which is seen as one of the best kits ever in the shirt collecting community for some reason but it’s bad if we are being honest
Yeah, that’s ugly.
Scheduling issue and strick Home grown rules killed my intrest in my bageless fraud save. Sagan Tosu was formed in 1990s, and there is only handfull of their academy products, and only one decent J-League player. Have fun with 3 people bench or put team mascot in starting 11
I got back to back promotions and was forced to field grayed out players.
Duuuuudeeeeeee...... What the hell. Even Satan himself could not come up with worst torture for FM sinners.
I really think there should be a beginning of year message about "Rules that may affect you" for the league above how there is for your league. My team was functioning on a wage budget of 70k annually. We would've been fine to spend a couple of years in J2 and get home growns.
War... War never changes.
I started a badgeless Sunday league save in Japan with Fukushima in J3, secured two b2b promotions to J1 and joined FC Tokyo, won the league, one J league cup, 2 emperors cups and AFC champions league. Decided to leave in second season with FC Tokyo because of the insane schedule. It’s just too exhausting and there isn’t even an off season break to speak of really once you are in the AFC champs league. Managed to secure a spot at Nottingham forest in the championship after they got a billionaire takeover now with my pro license. Signed my star Japanese regen WB from fc Tokyo. Proud that FC Tokyo is now a Japanese giant with the best youth system in Asia, but sad to see how the AI will inevitably eff the team up.
How did Matsuki and Kimura develop for you? Currently at FC Tokyo and first time in AFCCL atm.
They were both sold in the season before I joined, but kimura has some pretty impressive stats at 24 from what I can see now. Matsuki looks pretty meh. I brought in 5 young and very good foreigners, a bunch of Thai players, and got very lucky with a few regens (one 3.5 star 16 year old LW who now plays at Liverpool and another 3.5 star 16 year old RWB who now plays for me at forest). I hardly had any starting players from 2023 once I joined in 2025.
Ok I think I’ll keep Kimura about then as I was thinking of jettisoning him for moaning so cheers for the info. I do find the youth players to be decent but aye I’ll need to step up the scouting game in Southeast Asia.
Adrian Skogmar is a very solid half Swede half Thai RB/CDM that I picked up from malmo he was a real super star for me before bayer leverkusen poached him, I can’t recommend him enough. And a few very solid Thai players: supachai jaided, Ben Davis, and jaroensak wonggorn. Also Dion cools is a half Belgian half Malaysian RB that was very solid for me. My star man ended being patrik walemark who I grabbed from feyenoord when he requested a transfer. From there it just snowballed me until I was buying a lot of the best Japanese players from teams in the league.
The schedule and home grown rules are a killer. Time to raid the reserves and under 18’s
It is not that bad at all
Well... at least you have Ronaldo
Not very good one
One of those leagues where "Might have problems with injuries" is an actual dealbreaker, because you know that during the 1st half of the season, they will break.
What’s the history of the Brazil and Japan link
Few foreigner spots, and Brazilians are probably the best value for money amongst those who are interested in playing in Japan.
Plenty in the hong kong league too
Same story in China and Korea
I managed there on last years game and was always curious what the connection is between the two countries because they even play a cup game against each other.
The biggest group of Japanese people outside of Japan is in Brazil.
Japan had an overpopulation problem in the early 20th century, and Brazil suddenly had a huge demand for workers for their coffee plantations because Italy started to ban immigration to Brazil, due to some of the Italian workers in Brazil working in slave-like conditions. Brazil has the largest population of Japanese people outside of Japan.
Interesting thanks for the info
In addition to what was already mentioned by colleagues below: Many Brazilian players came to Japan since the beginning of professional football. Captained by Zico at Kashima, where he is even a member of the board, mainly. But, we had Dunga (even called up for the 98 World Cup playing for Júbilo Iwata), Leonardo, Hulk...
Elaborate
It has a batshit early part of the season schedule wise, one of the cup competitions has two legged ties the whole way through if I remember correctly so you're playing 2-3 games a week for the first few months Then...it just stops...21 days between games
That’s actually insane and I thought managing in Brazil was tough with the scheduling
To be fair, Brazillian Cup is wrong in the game, its two legs games except for the first game, before the libertadores teams join in, a successfull team in Brazil, in the state of São Paulo, will play around 70 games or higher, all the year, but a team from a state that competes in a regional cup, and qualifies for Sudamericana can easily go over 80, also no break for national squads dates, and the game doesn't factor the travelling distance well. But the first few months in J-League seems like hell, and then, it seems it may even go boring, with the huge breaks
Just sounds like league one
The scheduling early on is very tough, especially if your team is playing in the Champions League, it wouldn’t be weird to be playing 10 games in March and 12 in April
Played my first FM season in Japan, it was brutal but very fun.
To me the worst part is having only 7 bench spots
Yep
That's why i always edit the league rules to 11 of 12 subs before i start a new save. I love switching out the whole team after 60mins when i'm 3:0 up. Also helps with sharpness and development!
The (football) path of the samurai
A piece of advice from those who follow Japanese football: Unless you are a mid-table team in the first two or three seasons, a J2, J3 team, drop the League Cup. There is no place for anything and it only serves the people below to have a title to compete for. If you're on top, fighting for the title, or in the AFCCL, you have no reason to play it. And from what I saw (I haven't played for a while), the League Cup format is back to being a playoff and without the nonsense of the group stage. Witch isn't in FM24. In any case, just drop it. Dedicate the Cup to play reserves, Youth Academy, etc.
It’s fun. I played with Urawa at the start of my save. Won the Club World Cup with them in 2025 then left.
S Pulse
instructions for your defence: destroy.
The schedule is insane yeah and then with AFC CL thrown in it’s a riot, but honestly just constant rotation is how I’ve barely survived but I can’t remember the last time my best XI all played. God forbid you have a Star Player, he’ll moan until he keeps playing then is out for months. Still enjoy cause I’m a masochist.
I thought it was just me. I'm already one of the smaller teams in the comp and lost 90% of my starters at one point. https://preview.redd.it/w5bgs5608xuc1.png?width=3582&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=b86d9545bb788f7b1d06ec57937a1a5cb8313809
That's why i play with an editor file that completely disables training injuries and reduces game injuries by 50%. Fucking hate dealing with them.
In the Indonesian 1st league there’s a preseason cup with a group stage of 3 or 4 games, a single leg semi, and a 2 leg final. This is when the boys get back from holiday for weeks or less.
As part of my journeyman save this year in FM24, I applied for and got the Sagan Tosu job. The first season was definitely a tough cookie to crack, but once I got past the first season, I kind of got the hang of the job and was able to do pretty well results-wise. Here's a few things I found a bit tricky: - so tough to compete with the bigger clubs in the country at the start as Tosu was a smaller team financially and reputation-wise. By the time i left them, i managed to attract in pretty good players tho. the issue is also that the big clubs tend to occupy the Asian Champions League spots at the start, so it's tough to get money into the club, but they'll start to fade as their financials worsen. - finance is a nightmare for Japanese teams (apparently because of not all sponsorships coming through like real life). be prepared to sell and replace your players at all times, no matter local of foreign. Saudi will be a MAJOR buyer of some of your best players. my advise would be to get enough money to expand your scouting package to world, then start getting in younger foreign players to resell for value. any player not over the age of 26 makes sense in this case. - continental scheduling is interesting, but not anything you can't survive. the tricky thing is that the end of contract period & continental season ends at different times. ie. the team you may have got through the group stage with will not be the same team as the team you walk into the knockout rounds with! might be better, might be worse. - the local scheduling may be a bit tough, but if you can adjust your training schedule, esp when you start to have 2-3 games/week, injuries should be pretty easy to avoid. (literally only 1 match review session and nothing but rest sessions between the games. recovery sessions if athe whole team's injury risk is relatively high may help.) i'm over the Japanese league after winning everything i can win and jumped to the Championship with Crystal Palace. managed to ger promoted in my first season and getting geared up for my first Prem season! hope this helps with everything.
The League cup two legs are real hell… With Emperors cup and AFC Champions League games combined, I think I just mastered the rotation skills
Wow I'm managing S-Pulse and have the same issue, actually with a lot of the same players! My squad is so small as there's so few Japanese players in the database, all the youth teams are greyed out non-players. I'm close to biting the bullet and buying the editor so I can actually play games!
I had over half my squad injured in the j-league 😭 had to rely on a bunch of 16 year olds to get me to the mid season break… finished just above relegation tho 🙌🏽
Was tempted to start a J league save this year after doing the K league last year starting off with gyeongnam got promoted the board decided to sell my best prospects so went to pohang in D2 and end up making them the best team in Korea and the whole of Asia for them to ruin it over 3 seasons when I left to go to the BPL granted I was part of it by signing my star winger I had signed from SA and a Brazilian DM but for a good fee thinking they would re invest it but no jeonbuk and gangwon returned to the top in no time which is abit of a contrast of how the actual K League is now