Go-getter Tsutomu Ogura: Japan and the Lions will have to earn their success

After realizing he would not reach his dream of playing at the World Cup and the Olympics for Japan, the Singapore national football coach cultivated the following attributes: perseverance, adaptability, resilience, humility, and a strong work ethic.

In 1990, he was just 23 when he set out to become a coach and went to great lengths to achieve his dream.

The only child bade farewell to his parents in his home town Osaka – “I think there were crying when I first went to Germany because I was still young” – to pursue coaching education in Europe because he wanted to see the outside world and felt Germany had renowned coaches at the time. 

During his stint, he played for the Werder Bremen amateur team as a winger and taught sports on the side at a Japanese school.

Ogura himself received an education that would last him for life. 

Not only did he witness the reunification of Germany in 1990, he learnt English and German, as well as the best coaching practices at a time when the Germans were world champions.

He returned to Japan in 1992 and wound down his playing career as a central midfielder with Furukawa (now known as JEF United) in Chiba, where he settled down after marrying 45-cap Japan international midfielder and Women’s World Cup player Michiko Matsuda, whom he had earlier met at Tenri University.

It is little wonder their four sons inherited the couple’s sporting genes – their three older kids played lower-league football and two of them also went into coaching, while their youngest is a national under-18 basketballer.

After hanging up his boots, Ogura became an assistant coach with JEF United for 10 years before he was recruited as Japan assistant national coach from 2006 to 2010 when he went to two World Cups with Bosnian Ivica Osim and then Takeshi Okada.

Describing the late Yugoslavia international as his mentor, the 58-year-old tells The Straits Times: “Osim was the one who challenged me to develop my own coaching style. He questioned why we want to follow other coaches when those styles could be outdated soon?”

After the 2010 World Cup, where the Blue Samurai reached the last 16, Ogura was appointed assistant coach of the Japan Under-23 side who reached the 2012 Olympics semi-finals. 

More assistant coaching jobs at four J1 and J2 teams followed. In between, he coached then J1 club Omiya Ardija for 16 games in 2013, and was also Yokohama F. Marinos’ sporting director from 2018 to 2022, when he set them on the path to win the top tier in 2019 and 2022.

Working with current Tottenham Hotspur manager Ange Postecoglou for more than three seasons at Marinos whetted his appetite to return to the dugout, as Ogura says: “I saw again how one can become a good coach with his own philosophy, ideas and concepts. 

“I also learnt from his way of man management, and how he could get the best out of his players through his individual approach and good communication.”

He got his chance when he became an assistant coach again at Tokyo Verdy in 2022 and 2023 when he helped them to J1 promotion, before he was offered the Lions post in 2024 to replace the sacked Takayuki Nishigaya.