The 58th All Japan Senior Football Championship (Japanese: 第58回全国社会人サッカー選手権大会, Hepburn: Dai 58-kai zenkoku shakai hito sakkā senshuken taikai), officially the 2022 All Japan Adults Football Tournament, and most known as the 2022 Shakaijin Cup, [1] was the first edition of the annually contested single-elimination tournament (or cup) since 2019. Both the 2020 and 2021 edition of the tournament was deemed cancelled due to the COVID-19 pandemic. The defending champions Tiamo Hirakata did not participate on this tournament. As it's restricted to non-league clubs (Participating on Regional or Prefectural Leagues; not included in the nation-wide league competitions), they can't enter the competition as Tiamo played the 2022 season in the Japan Football League, Japan's 4th-tier league. All the matches were streamed in the "Shakaijin Cup" channel.
Venues
The championship was organized by Japan Football Association, in collaboration with the All-Japan Football Federation and the city of Shibushi. The collaboration with the Kagoshima's city of Shibushi happened due to the 2023 National Sports Conference. The 2022 All Japan Senior Football Championship served as a rehearsal for the National Sports Conference, which was also held at Shibushi. The venues hosting the tournament was entirely centered on the Shibushi Sports Park, and on the Shiokaze Park.
Holding method
Every match at the tournament were played under the unusual method of 40 minutes per half, instead of the usual 45, with every match being played under 80 minutes of action in total, excluding added times. The match would go directly to a penalty shoot-out, if the winner could not be decided after the full-time whistle. Up to five substitutions in three or less substitution breaks (excluding half-time) were allowed at the tournament, as per FIFA recommendation. Both methods are applied for the tournament due to the tiny 1-day interval between the matches, which could be even more tiring to the players in question if the matches had extra-time. [2]
The top 3threeteams would qualify to play on the 2022 edition of the Japanese Regional Champions League, which serves as Japan Football League's play-off tournament. Since eight of the nine 2022 regional champions were already participating (Tōkai champions FC Kariya did not qualify) at the Shakaijin, and since clubs belonging to leagues below the main regional league tiers were not eligible for the Champions League, the top three teams did not necessarily mean the semi-finalists.
Participating teams
Regional champions who were at the time already qualified for the Regional Champions League are denoted in bold. Lower-tier clubs who are not eligible to play in the Regional Champions League are denoted in italics.
The tournament schedule was officially released on 29 August 2022. [3] The kick-off times are displayed in accordance with the Japan Standard Time (UTC+09:00).
