Ahead of the start of Cerezo Osaka’s preseason training tomorrow, almost all transfer activity during the current window finished as the club announced the transfer of Kota Mizunuma (from FC Tokyo on one-year loan) and Jurato Ikeda (to Bangkok Glass on one-year loan), as well as the contract renewal of Kenta Mukuhara, Yusuke Tanaka and Kunimitsu Sekiguchi. Personally, Sekiguchi’s staying at the club was a bit surprising because I was thinking he might leave if Mizunuma would come.

At the moment, the following players are expected to play with Cerezo in the 2017 season (Alphabetically ordered. Names in bold are newly joined players, names in italic are eligible for the U-23 team).

GK: Ahn Joon-Soo, Kentaro Kakoi, Kim Jin-Hyeon, Shu Mogi, Kenta Tanno
DF: Kota Fujimoto, Kakeru Funaki, Matej Jonjic, Riku Matsuda, Teruyuki Moniwa, Reiya Morishita, Kenta Mukuhara, Hayato Nukui, Honoya Shoji, Yusuke Tanaka, Tatsuya Yamashita
MF: Daichi Akiyama, Takaki Fukumitsu, Yasuki Kimoto, Shohei Kiyohara, Yusuke Maruhashi, Mitsuru Maruoka, Kota Mizunuma, Masataka Nishimoto, Masaki Okino, Toshiki Onozawa, Musashi Oyama, Masaki Sakamoto, Noriyuki Sakemoto, Kunimitsu Sekiguchi, Souza, Hotaru Yamaguchi, Kazuya Yamamura
FW: Yoichiro Kakitani, Takeru Kishimoto, Ricardo Santos, Ryuji Sawakami, Kenyu Sugimoto, Towa Yamane, Hirofumi Yamauchi

Hisashi Oda’s article on El Golazo published yesterday tells us some behind-the-scene facts and details about Cerezo’s transfer activity. At first, Kim Jin-Hyeon, who received but rejected an offer from Kashima Antlers, signed a multi-year contract with the club. This is a big news for Cerezo fans and “the best signing” for Cerezo as Oda put it.

Meanwhile, one of the things which surprised Cerezo fans was that Ricardo Santos renewed his contract with the club after scoring just 5 goals in the last season. According to Oda, the club firstly looked for other foreign striker but, whether they couldn’t find a right one or failed to reach an agreement, they decided to let Ricardo stay as his contract remains one more year. But interestingly, Oda points out that “we should keep attention until the transfer window will close as to a foreign player.” This suggests that releasing Ricardo (on loan or permanently) and signing other player is still an option.