Yokohama Flugels
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| Full name | Yokohama Flügels |
|---|---|
| Founded | 1964 (as All Nippon Airways FC) |
| Dissolved | 1998 |
| Ground | Mitsuzawa Stadium, Yokohama |
| Capacity | 15,046 |
Yokohama Flügels (横浜フリューゲルス Yokohama Furyūgerusu?) 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 F.C., as they felt that the Flügels had been dissolved rather than merged with.
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 , meaning wing or wings ("Flügels" is an anglicised plural, where the original German word has only one form which can both represent singular and plural). 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" (Associazione Sportiva and Association Sportive).
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