The 2015 J.League Cup, also known as the 2015 J.League Yamazaki Nabisco Cup for sponsoring purposes, is the 40th edition of the most prestigious Japanese
soccer
Association football, more commonly known as football or soccer, is a team sport played between two teams of 11 players who primarily use their feet to propel the ball around a rectangular field called a pitch. The objective of the game is ...
league cup tournament and the 23rd edition under the current
J.League Cup format.
Format
Teams from the
J.League Division 1
The , known as the for sponsorship reasons, is the top level of the system. Founded in 1992, it is one of the most successful leagues in Asian club football. Contested by 18 clubs, it operates on a system of promotion and relegation with the J2 ...
will take part in the tournament.
Gamba Osaka,
Kashima Antlers
are a football club in Kashima, Ibaraki, currently playing in the J1 League, top tier of Japanese professional football leagues. The name ''Antlers'' is derived from the city name, Kashima, which literally means "deer island". The club has fi ...
,
Kashiwa Reysol
is a Japanese professional football club based in Kashiwa, Chiba Prefecture, part of the Greater Tokyo Area. The club plays in the J1 League, which is the top tier of football in the country. Their home stadium is Sankyo Frontier Kashiwa Stadiu ...
and
Urawa Red Diamonds
, colloquially Urawa Reds (浦和レッズ), also known as Mitsubishi Urawa Football Club from April 1992 to January 1996, is a professional football club in the city of Saitama, part of the Greater Tokyo Area in Japan. The club plays in the J ...
were given a bye to the quarter-finals due to qualification in the
2015 AFC Champions League
The 2015 AFC Champions League was the 34th edition of Asia's premier club football tournament organized by the Asian Football Confederation (AFC), and the 13th under the current AFC Champions League title.
Guangzhou Evergrande won the tournament ...
. The remaining 14 teams started from the group stage, where they were divided into two groups of seven. The group winners and the runners-up of each group qualified for the quarter-final along with the four teams which qualified for the AFC Champions League.
Group stage
Group A
Standings
Results
Group B
Standings
Results
Knock-out stage
All times are
Japan Standard Time
, or , is the standard time zone in Japan, 9 hours ahead of UTC ( UTC+09:00). Japan does not observe daylight saving time, though its introduction has been debated on several occasions. During World War II, the time zone was often referred to a ...
(
UTC+9
UTC+09:00 is an identifier for a time offset from UTC of +09:00.
During the Japanese occupations of British Borneo, Burma, Hong Kong, Dutch East Indies, Malaya, Philippines, Singapore, and French Indochina, it was used as a common time with ...
)
Quarterfinals
Semi-finals
First leg
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Second leg
''Antlers won 6–2 on aggregate.''
----
''Gamba Osaka won 3-2 on aggregate.''
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Final
Top scorers
Updated to games played on 12 October 2015
Source: J.League Data
References
{{J.League Cup champions
J.League Cup
2015 in Japanese football