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The J. League is the top professional football league in Japan.
J. League was created in 1992, though play did not begin until the following year, and initially consisted of 10 teams,
taken from the original Japanese Soccer League formed in post-war Japan. The success of that inaugural season saw rapid expansion
follow, with two teams joining the league nearly every year until 1998, when the league stood at 18 teams.
During this initial phase of J. League, several players and coaches came from Europe and South America to play, raising
the overall quality of the league to rival that of the more established play overseas. However, with rising quality comes
rising cost, and many of the smaller teams could not sustain a viable product. Many J. League teams folded or were on the
verge of folding.
In response, the league was divided from the 1999 season. The bottom two teams from J. League were matched with 10 teams
from the semi-professional Japan Football League(JFL) to create J2, or J. League Division 2. The requirements for maintaining
a J2 franchise were not as stringent for those as the original J. League (now often called J1), and so smaller cities could
successfully maintain a franchise. There are currently 16 J1 teams and 12 J2 teams.
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