By Vince Rugari
Mitchell Duke has spent roughly half of his club career in Japan. For almost all of that time, he has been able to walk the streets in total anonymity.
“Everyone just thinks I’m a tourist. Or when I say I’m living here, the next step is, ‘Oh, you work in the army’,” the Socceroos striker says. “Maybe because of the buzz cut.”
Mitchell Duke with Machida Zelvia coach Go Kuroda, who has the newly promoted side on top of the J1 League table with 11 rounds to go.Credit: Getty
Not any more. It’s not like people are swarming him like he’s Justin Bieber the minute he steps out of his house, but these days, at least, passers-by know who he is and what he does: “Now they’re actually like, ‘Oh, are you Duke, from Machida Zelvia? You guys are doing amazing’.”
Indeed, they are. Duke is fortunate enough to find himself in the middle of one of football’s great underdog stories – one that is capturing attention not just in Japan, where the beautiful game runs a distant second to baseball in terms of local popularity, but throughout the world.
Promoted last season as J2 League champions, Machida Zelvia were supposed to be relegation fodder, but they sit four points clear on top of the table with 11 games to go in their first season in the Japanese top flight. They’ve been there for the past 13 rounds, and haven’t dropped outside the top three since the opening fortnight of the season. They’ve done it with a squad containing no recognised stars – Duke is one of only a handful of players with national team experience – and with a 54-year-old coach, Go Kuroda, who until last year had only ever coached high school teams.
It’s worth noting that high school sport in Japan is roughly analogous to the US college system, and not like what we have in Australia, but, even still, Kuroda’s rather seamless transition into professional football, and at such an age, is not normal.
Machida Zelvia players celebrate after scoring a goal.Credit: Getty
Nothing about what Machida Zelvia are doing is.
“I spoke to BBC Sport recently, and they’re trying to compare it to Leicester’s incredible year that they had when they won the Premier League,” Duke says. “It’s a completely different kind of situation, but at the same time, the history of my club makes it a little bit more special with what we’re doing so far. And if we can see it out, it’ll definitely be an amazing football fairytale.”
But not everyone sees it as a fairytale. To many football followers in Japan, they are seen as villains; unwelcome upstarts who have barged their way into J1 with a style of football that is perceived, by some, as overly physical, rough and direct, running against the prevalent trend of possession-based teams.
They also stand accused of trafficking in football’s dark arts – like, for example, one of their strikers has been criticised for splashing water on the ball before taking penalties so as to make it more difficult for the opposing goalkeeper to stop.
“People lose their heads about trying to call this cheating,” Duke says.
Mitchell Duke and Machida Zelvia celebrate their J2 title win.Credit: Getty
“It’s not cheating. But fans of other teams, when it’s against them … people are going to monitor everything. I think people have this image of us now. Maybe a lot of people don’t like the fact that we are at the top, they don’t want us to win, maybe because we’re not playing the typical way that Japanese people would expect … [they] want you to fail more, and they look at other things being like, ‘Oh, that’s why they’re winning, because they’re dirty, they’re physical, or they’re doing little cheating things.’ And I think it’s just a little bit of clutching at straws, really.”
Even their geography is being questioned.
The city of Machida is on the far-western outskirts of Tokyo. It is technically part of greater Tokyo, but some locals consider themselves more culturally connected to the neighbouring Kanagawa prefecture. So, in that sense as well, they are deemed to be outsiders, which only makes them more determined to keep sticking it to the region’s traditional powerhouses, FC Tokyo, Urawa Red Diamonds and Yokohama F. Marinos, and prove themselves the best team in Tokyo.
Part of what has driven them to an unlikely title challenge, Duke says, is Kuroda’s ruthlessness at selection. In response to poor results, or even to poor training performances, Kuroda tends to push aside the notion of line-up consistency and is not afraid to make wholesale changes. No player is safe, and that breeds an edginess within the squad that seems to bring out their best.
Duke has been a victim on more than one occasion, and while earlier this year he was thinking about leaving to find more regular minutes elsewhere – and to boost his Socceroos prospects for the next round of World Cup qualifying – his personal fortunes have improved, and he is keen to see out the season and find out where the journey ends.
“I’m loving being part of this whole ride, to be honest,” he says.
“We made history for the club last year, winning the J2 and being promoted, and now we’re ready to do more. That’s what you look for as a professional player. I’ve been a part of certain moments with clubs, and even international level with our last World Cup – you want to be a part of history, making history and making some noise, and being a part of a squad that’s doing that. Things like that, you look back on, and you feel special to be a part of it. And I’m looking forward to being a part of a bit more this year.”