Yokohama Flügels was a Japanese football club that played in the J.League between 1993 and 1998. In 1999 the club was officially merged with local rivals Yokohama Marinos and the two teams became known together as Yokohama F. Marinos. However, many Flügels fans refused to support the new Marinos and created their own club, Yokohama FC, as they felt that the Flügels had been dissolved rather than merged with.
History
The club was originally the company team of All Nippon Airways. For a time they were billed as Yokohama TriStar SC, but the aftermath of the Lockheed-ANA bribery scandal ensured that ANA stuck to their own name as they were pushing for promotion to the Japan Soccer League from the regional Kanto Football League in the early 1980s. They were promoted to the JSL's Second Division in 1984 and immediately made an impact, being promoted to First Division as runner-up. Despite being relegated at the first attempt in 1985, they bounced back up again in 1987 and would never leave the top flight until their demise. The club's name, adopted upon professionalization for the J.League, sprang from the German word :de:wikt:Flügel|Flügel, meaning wing or wings. The name points to the club's former sponsor. For a time it was billed as AS Flügels, with the initials of both sponsors, ANA and Sato Labs, forming an initialism that resembled the Italian and French initials for "Sporting Association". Despite never winning either the JSL or J.League title, they were top contenders from the late 1980s through its last game, and won several accolades at home and abroad, including the Emperor's Cup, the Asian Cup Winners' Cup and the Asian Super Cup. In 1998, Sato Labs announced that it was pulling its financial support of the club. However, instead of simply dissolving the club or finding another investor, ANA, the team's other chief sponsor, met with Nissan Motors, the primary sponsor of crosstown rivals Yokohama Marinos, and announced that the two Yokohama clubs would merge, with Flügels players joining the Marinos. Although the "F" added to the new club name, "Yokohama F. Marinos" is meant to represent the merger of the two clubs, Flügels supporters rejected the merger. Instead, the supporter club followed the socio model used by FC Barcelona and founded Yokohama FC, the first professional Japanese football clubowned and operated by its members. On 1 January 1999, Flügels won their final match, the Emperor's Cup final against Shimizu S-Pulse, 2–1. Flügels were not the first club to withdraw from the Japanese top flight and fold; in 1976, Eidai Industries from Yamaguchi Prefecture had been closed down by its parent company due to rising costs of maintaining a top-flight team.
