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The story
5ch lit up over the fact that soccer commentary terms like “centering” (crossing the ball) and “hooligan,” once common in match broadcasts, are barely heard anymore. The thread kept circling back to the question “what do people call centering now?” but no one ever landed on a clear replacement term. Meanwhile, someone explained that hooligans disappeared because “ticket prices were raised to keep low-income fans out of the stadium,” which drew some surprised reactions. The discussion also branched into topics like the price of standing-room seats behind the goal in the J.League and who actually buys them.
What people said
Roles are so much more specialized now that just calling someone a "side half" is too vague to really fit anymore.
People still use that all the time…
"Shadow" (shadow striker)
That's been around forever.
at the very least, amateur men wouldn't stand a chance against them.
Though I'm not sure even a powerhouse high school team like Aomori Yamada could beat Nadeshiko Japan or Bayern's women's side.
Centering (cross)
Kickoff
Hooligans were poor, working-class fans, so they jacked up ticket prices to keep them out of the stadium.
Can't get in, so they don't come.
They disappear.
Whoa, TIL. Thanks.
Oh, so that's how it is.
I thought "hooligan" was just a blanket term for rowdy soccer fans in general.
There's actually talk in the J.League too about kicking out the rough crowd that hangs around behind the goal.
Those seats are dirt cheap.
People say that's exactly why the casual fan base isn't growing — too many supporters buying cheap tickets and then acting like they own the place.
If you assume you're going to all 19 home games, even for a top club it works out to less than 2,000 yen a game.
Tarami All-Star Game (old sponsor names for the League Cup and All-Star match)
How many times are you gonna ask that?
And I mean the most gruesome death imaginable.
What a pain…
Well, for top clubs regular seats start at a minimum of around 5,000 yen, though it's not that different if you're talking about some regional J3 club.
Background and Key Points of This Discussion
The shift from “centering” to “crossing” is believed to have spread gradually through match broadcasts and analysis sometime after the 2000s, but there’s no clear line marking exactly when the switch happened — even in the thread, the question “what do you call it now” kept coming up without ever being answered. The hooligan problem became a major social issue in England in the 1980s, and following tragedies like the 1989 Hillsborough disaster, measures such as all-seater stadiums, CCTV surveillance, and stricter entry controls were introduced alongside higher ticket prices, which made it harder for lower-income fans to attend — a factor often cited in the decline. The thread’s explanation that “they don’t come because they can’t get in” is true as far as it goes, but it’s only one part of a broader set of measures including tightened security and club-led countermeasures; it’s a common misconception that hooligans themselves vanished from the world entirely. The discussion of the J.League’s cheap standing-room seats behind the goal and who buys them is a separate, Japan-specific topic unrelated to anti-hooligan measures abroad.
※This article is excerpted and summarized from the 5ch (Nandemo Jikkyou G) thread “The Three Great Dead Soccer Terms: “Centering” and “Hooligan”.”
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