Unlike foreign football news, Japanese media outlets, or the clubs and players themselves, rarely reveal the details of their contracts such as the terms and wages. An exception is players directories published by two publishers: Soccer Digest (Nippon Sports Kikaku Publishing) and El Golazo (Squad). They provide an estimated annual wage of each player and help us know how much J.League players earn in a season, although we can not know on what grounds those estimates are based. There are considerable differences between the numbers estimated by Soccer Digest and El Golazo, so we should see them with a strong emphasis on estimated, but at least they give us some clue.

Below is a table showing Cerezo players’ estimated annual wages by both directories (It may not be easy to read because the numbers are written in ten thousands of yen, but it makes much more sense in terms of counting yen). I think the numbers mentioned by El Golazo look more persuasive. For example, ¥7m for Kenta Tanno, a decent second goalkeeper, cheaper than much younger bench or out-of-bench players like Sawakami and Akiyama, can be understood to not reflect his contribution. What’s your impression?