The Japan FA produced a surplus of 2.14B yen ($17.6M) for '14, up by 1.7B yen ($10M) despite the national team's lack of success at the World Cup and Japanese club teams' mediocre performances in the Asian Champions League. Income increased to 18.88B yen ($143M) thanks to higher uniform sales and pre-World Cup friendlies, including a match against Brazil in Singapore. "Although we were 21 billion yen in the black, this is not a happy occurrence, it was a very tough year," JFA Exec Dir Kazuya Fukui told local media, explaining how the national team's exit at the group stage in Brazil last summer meant the JFA paid out lower bonuses to players, with a similar situation for the Asian Champions League clubs. The JFA had targeted a quarterfinal spot in Brazil, which would have resulted in a $14M payout from FIFA, instead of the $8M it received.
BUILDING PLANS: The governing body plans to put 800M yen ($6.7M) of its surplus toward the construction of the JFA Football Centre national training academy, 100M yen ($840,000) to repairs on its JFA House headquarters in Tokyo, and invest 1.1B yen ($9.2M) in regional training facilities. The JFA became a Public Interest Inc. Foundation in '12 under the terms of new laws which place some governance requirements and restrictions on profit-making activities by public organizations.
Gavin Blair is a writer in Tokyo.
