At 6pm in Ginza, it is still hot enough for sweat to sweat. When the rain comes it is like a bad joke, slick and oily and warm. We are enveloped in concrete and the neon is clicking on as night approaches, but although the jet lag, humidity and sensory overload make Tyneside feel distant and hazy, as we stagger inside and glide down an escalator — revelling in the icy blast of air conditioning — it is another story. Here, it is home. Here, it is like family.
An hour or so earlier, staff from a Euro Sports store had set out temporary queue barriers outside the entrance. It seemed optimistic. The shop was already open, complete with pop-up stands and black-and-white shirts, pennants, caps and pin badges. There is a new, third-choice strip for sale — white with green and black trim — and specially-made shirts marking Newcastle United’s pre-season trip to Japan. Safe to say, it was not exactly rammed.
And now? Rammed is precisely what it is. The line stretches into the corridor and around the corner, where a man holds aloft a sign to indicate where the queue ends and the waiting begins. What’s noticeable about this is not just the number of travelling supporters who are present to watch matches against Urawa Red Diamonds and Yokohama F Marinos, or the ex-pats who live here or have flown the paltry nine hours from Australia, but the number of locals.
By 8pm, Shola Ameobi, the former Newcastle striker and current loan manager, is blowing out his cheeks. For 120 minutes he was faced with a solid wall of people, signing shirts and memorabilia and posing for photographs, hugging and shaking hands. He looks and sounds astonished. “I’m blown away if I’m honest,” he says. “I couldn’t believe the amount of fans who had shirts with my name on it. For me, that was like… it didn’t compute.”
Ameobi is a self-effacing person, but this was something else. At one point, he embraces a Japanese fan who is hyperventilating and weeping by the time he reaches the front of the queue, the kind of scene you might see at a boyband concert. “Two or three of them were like that,” Ameobi says. “You see how much it means to them. I just wasn’t expecting it. This isn’t somewhere I’ve been before and it’s not a market we’ve been to as a club for a long time.
Ameobi signing a fan’s shirt (George Caulkin/The Athletic)
“I know we came here back in 1996, the summer we signed Alan Shearer for a world record fee and I was a teenager, 15 or 16 at the time. I remember thinking, ‘Gosh, that’s so far away’. Fast forward all these years and you see the amount of supporters here and that trip has obviously left a legacy. A lot of them were talking about watching the team I played in during the early 2000s. The response, the amount of people who have shown up… surreal.”
He reflects for a second or two. “There’s nothing like being at St James’ Park,” Ameobi says. “That was my dream growing up, but it’s the connection you make with people that makes it special. It’s not just about fans singing your name, it’s what those memories elicit. Coming on these tours, you get to experience other people’s versions of it. I’ve never met these people before and they’ve only seen me from afar, but to be able to connect with them is such a buzz.”
Darren Eales, Newcastle’s chief executive, drops in and buys a couple of Japanese strips for his two boys. Peter Silverstone is here, too, and the club’s chief operating officer echoes Ameobi’s words: “I’m genuinely blown away by this,” he says. The truth is that this is not quite Beatlemania — away from their hotel, where a few fans mill outside, players and staff are able to walk around unrecognised — but it is also a precious reconnection.
What is pre-season for? Put that question to different departments at a club and you will be presented with very different answers. On the football side, it is about honing fitness and shapes and tactics ahead of the big kick-off, a time to reunite and strengthen and bond. For the marketing and commercial teams, it is a moment to focus on generating revenue and spreading the word. On social media, it is about SIGNING SOME F****** PLAYERS.
And, of course, all of those things are right, which means pre-season is increasingly about tight-rope walking. Lean too far in one direction and you risk toppling over. In an ideal world, you would only focus on football, but an ideal world for Newcastle does not include profit and sustainability rules (PSR), which prevent them from spending all that Saudi money. Lean too far towards profit-making and the team might suffer — which ultimately benefits nobody.
“Pre-season is a really fine balance between utilising and optimising a period of time where you can generate money and activate with sponsors, but also you need to get the football side really strong,” says Silverstone, who joined Newcastle in October 2022 having previously worked for Arsenal in a similar role. “You have to get that balance of what’s good preparation and what’s good commercially.”
Taking centre stage in Tokyo. 😍 pic.twitter.com/DZNYJeMDM6
— Newcastle United FC (@NUFC) August 2, 2024
This is not always so easy to do. Twelve months ago, Newcastle participated in the Premier League’s Summer Series in the United States and it ticked a lot of boxes. The U.S. market is huge for English teams with — deep breath — Arsenal, Aston Villa, Bournemouth, Chelsea, Crystal Palace, Liverpool, Manchester City, Manchester United, West Ham and Wolverhampton Wanderers all playing fixtures there this summer. That is more than half of the division.
Last July, Newcastle pitched camp in Atlanta, where they drew 1-1 with Chelsea, but there were also games against Villa in Philadelphia and Brighton in New Jersey. The fixtures were high-profile, competitive and well-attended and valuable connections were made with American-based fans, but the travelling was brutal and time on the training pitch was restricted. There were also multiple Premier League marketing events to attend.
The football department was discomforted, so much so that some believe a “ridiculous” schedule set the tone for a season which led to Newcastle losing more days to injury than any other Premier League side. “It was a logistical nightmare,” one leading figure told The Athletic last season, speaking anonymously to protect relationships. “Everybody came home physically done in and we’ve never quite recovered. Everything unravelled from there.”
Sometimes you don’t know until you’ve done it, but on that occasion, the balance tipped too far, something Newcastle were determined to learn from this time. They were late in announcing their pre-season plans, but what emerged was a combination of the intimate and expansive. Howe got a serious, granular few days working with his players at the plush German headquarters of Adidas, their new kit sponsors, and then Newcastle crossed the globe to Japan.
Newcastle training at Komazawa Olympic Park Stadium (Yuichi Yamazaki/AFP via Getty Images)
“I think it’s the perfect mix,” Silverstone says. “The coaching staff tell me that the week with Adidas was the best facilities they’ve had, which is great. And then there’s the compromise or the balance of coming over here because it’s obviously a very long distance and it’s obviously very hot, but then those things also apply to the Premier League teams who are in the U.S. now. Long distance, very hot.”
This feels closer to the best of both worlds or as close as you are likely to get. “Yes, I think so,” Howe tells The Athletic. “As always with these things, I’ll probably be able to tell you better afterwards, but it’s more about the internal travelling. If you travel a long way and then you’re travelling again once you’re inside a country, it takes a different toll on the players. So we’re pleased to be in one place, to stay in Tokyo and then return to England.”
“As a footballer, pre-season is all about preparation, right?” Ameobi says. “And sometimes when you go abroad, the travelling knocks you out of whack. There’s no doubt that it’s harder on the body. But players also understand, particularly with the position we’re in now where we’re trying to grow, that we need to keep up with the top boys. It’s important that players and managers are seen in these markets because that’s what stirs up fans with energy for the club. I mean, they still remember Newcastle from 1996. It’s very powerful.”
So why Japan? Firstly, it is not as if this is alien territory for the Premier League. Manchester City played here last summer, for example, playing games against Bayern Munich and Yokohama F Marinos. Brighton were here only a few days ago. Tottenham Hotspur played Vissel Kobe last Saturday. But City are now a worldwide brand, crammed with stars, Spurs are established, while Brighton have a strong Japanese connection in Kaoru Mitoma, who has been capped 20 times by his country. Newcastle do not have this, not yet.
But it brings enormous potential. “Newcastle’s ambition will only be achieved if we grow in every market, whether that’s the U.S., whether that’s any market in south-east Asia, whether that’s Saudi or whether that’s in the UK,” says Silverstone. “Japan’s a very mature football market and it’s not a coincidence that Japan is an Adidas market as well; they’ve got the national team and the J-League.
“We had options to go back to the U.S., but the U.S. is saturated this summer and we went there last summer and, if we’re trying to grow, we have to go to different places. There were options in China, which is good, but probably not optimal for us from a football perspective, our post-season trip to Melbourne was very successful from a fanbase perspective and Japan seemed like an obvious next step.
“We chose a tournament which was organised by a league, which is what we did last year with the Premier League, and that gave us a structured format. It felt like a strong platform to grow from and then launch this kit with Adidas. We chose to launch it in Japan because we think the round badge, the old crest, might align with Japanese fashion a bit more. It’s got that retro feel to it. That was very deliberate.”
As Ameobi discovered, there is also a hardcore troop of Newcastle fans, what Silverstone calls “a strong Japanese Mags group”. Between 20 and 30 regularly meet at 2nd Half, a “British pub,” in Shinjuku. Watching matches takes commitment when evening kick-offs back home equate to 4am here. They have crowdfunded to make flags and banners and displayed them at the team’s first match in Saitama. “Newcastle United is my life,” Wassy from @nufcjapan says.
Meet Wassy from our Japanese supporter group – @nufcjapan! 🇯🇵⚫️⚪️
We followed him around at the Saitama Stadium yesterday as he experienced a Newcastle United matchday in Japan for the first time. 🥹 pic.twitter.com/4vAO27MbeL
— Newcastle United FC (@NUFC) August 1, 2024
At the press conference before the team played Urawa, Dan Burn, the captain, laughed when he was told by a local reporter that members of the Japanese Newcastle supporters’ club “drink Brown Ale almost every day and they chant for you every day”. “I’m really impressed,” he said. “Because not even I drink Brown Ale. So that is loyal. It’s amazing we still have a fanbase over here. I’m sure it’s something we’re looking to expand.”
Simon Moran describes himself as a “Geordie journalist/fixer/entrepreneur” on his website. Born in Whitley Bay, he has lived in Japan for nearly three decades. Among his interests, he lists “Newcastle United and being happy”, adding that “the penultimate very rarely leads to the last”. That might just be shifting. He is “cock-a-hoop” that his team are visiting.
“We’ve been in the doldrums for so long and it’s just been brilliant the last two-and-a-half years,” he says. “Watching all of that in the middle of the night via the internet in my little room in Kyoto, four o’clock in the morning, minus seven degrees outside and not being able to be completely close to it, but much, much closer than I have been for years is brilliant. And for Newcastle to be here is brilliant. So, yeah, I’m drinking up as much of it as I can, in many ways.”
The frustration is that Newcastle neglected this kind of stuff — neglected everything — for so long. “They’ve got to try to grow a support base here as a club,” Moran says. “As you can see, there is a bit already, but they haven’t had a presence here for a long, long time. I went to see them in 1996 and they did try to establish business relationships back then but it wasn’t capitalised on. And then, after that, there just doesn’t seem to have been any interest.
Fans attending one of the matches on the tour (Masashi Hara/Getty Images)
“This is fertile ground. Premier League football has become incredibly popular in Japan, but people tend to support the successful clubs and players and fans will support players more often than they support teams. And then, of course, there’s the local angle, like Mitoma at Brighton.
“There are surveys done every year of what kids in elementary, junior and high schools want to do when they grow up and until the last couple of years, when programmer was the top answer, boys are answering ‘soccer player’ with a particular emphasis on playing in the Premier League. So there’s massive, massive potential to grow a supporter base. To do that just as a club won’t be easy without winning things.”
And here we return to the Newcastle United and being happy equation. The counterpoint: at least they’re bloody trying these days.
The match against Urawa Red Diamonds brought a 4-1 victory and what Howe called “a good game and really good conditions for us to improve our fitness levels”. Some torrential rain before kick-off made the temperature a little more tolerable, the away end was bouncing, but the feel and occasion were reflected in an attendance listed as 13,763. A stadium built for the 2002 World Cup in Japan and South Korea has a capacity of 67,000.
“Not as full as we or the promoters would like,” Silverstone says, “but I think Urawa have had a difficult season and their fans are a little bit disaffected. The game on Saturday is going to be different, hopefully the same kind of attendance as the 54,000 Spurs had last week.
“And this is the point; we need to build. We’ve got to come, we’ve got to engage, we’ve got to build a legacy and then the next time we come, we have four games here and sell them all out. You can’t just come and switch it on and off immediately. It takes time.”
From day one since Newcastle’s takeover in October 2021, there has been an assumption — always wrong — about that switch being flicked. Initially, it was that Saudi Arabia’s Public Investment Fund would insist on box-office players arriving. Then it was that mega-million sponsorship deals would immediately be unveiled, which ignored the fact that Newcastle barely had a commercial department and the club didn’t have much of a story to tell.
That is changing, too. Howe has given Newcastle an identity, they avoided relegation and then qualified for the Champions League, they got to a Carabao Cup final and then have proved they are equipped to compete at the highest level. It is this that makes them increasingly attractive to companies who might wish to be associated with them or to floating supporters who are looking for a team to follow.
Japan is not an end in itself. It is a beginning. Newcastle are not Manchester United, who can effectively put themselves out to tender for pre-season and go with the highest bidder, but they can only get there by doing this. They will not earn anything like £10million from their stay in Tokyo, but they have worked closely with Adidas on a spectacular launch of their kit and later held a photoshoot for it on the famous Shibuya Crossing.
At this point, it is more about eyeballs and recognition. As Moran says, “Adidas are very, very big over here and if Adidas push Newcastle in Japan, they can make some big inroads.”
Newcastle fans and players at an event in Tokyo (Serena Taylor/Newcastle United via Getty Images)
This October will mark three years since the takeover. If there is a constant pressure to grow and expand and win and spend — and a niggling frustration that it isn’t happening more quickly — in many regards, Newcastle still have a huge distance still to travel. They have to reintroduce themselves and then stay connected.
On Thursday evening, Newcastle hold an event for their international fans at a hotel in Shinjuku. When they arrive, supporters are given a casino chip which they exchange for a free drink and are then asked — with the help of a Geordie-Japanese interpreter — to explain in writing what they wanted from their relationship with the club. Eales and Silverstone are here, working the tables, listening, and expressing thanks.
Newcastle fans who have travelled from Tyneside arrive a little later and then there is a surprise; Sean Longstaff, Sandro Tonali, Lewis Hall and Mark Gillespie bound onto the stage, prompting gasps and applause from the crowd. They each answer questions, with Tonali — who is close to completing a 10-month ban for betting offences — speaking with emotion about starting again at the club.
Before they leave, Gillespie begins a rowdy rendition of favourite Newcastle chants and soon this becomes a form of karaoke, with Japanese translations for “Geordie Boot Boys” and “Who’s that team we call United,” appearing on a big screen. Eales joins in lustily. The crowd was not big in number, but it was big in heart and passion and those who are there will not forget it quickly. Not if Newcastle put down roots and then come back.
“The big thing is that it’s a chance to meet new people and generate more supporters for Newcastle and that’s great,” Howe says. “For the players and staff, it’s something different, a new experience. This is a country you might not otherwise get a chance to visit in your lifetime, so it becomes a life experience and you hope that a new culture and country makes everybody more rounded. It can only be of benefit.
“And I’d love to think the games will help us for the new season.”
(Top photos: Getty Images)