FC Baleine Shimonoseki

The name Baleine means whale in French. Whales are related with the club's hometown Shimonoseki, that was once a whaling base.^[1]

The club was founded on 2006, starting from the 4th division of the Yamaguchi Prefecture League, one of the 10th-tier leagues of Japanese football. Baleine would only get out of prefectural football on 2018, after winning promotion to the Chugoku Soccer League, starting their journey on regional football. In their first season, on 2019, it finished on 4th place within 10 participating teams.^[4]

Between 2020 and 2022, the club reached its peak so far, having finished two seasons as league runners-up, and qualified for the Emperor's Cup twice in the period. In the 2020 Emperor's Cup, the club made its debut at the second round, in a competition professional teams-shrunk due to the pandemic.^[5] They ended up losing against fellow Chugoku region side Fukuyama City FC. In the following year, the club once again failed to win an Emperor's Cup match, losing against Mitsubishi Mizushima FC, also from the Chugoku region, on the first round of the competition.^[6]

In 2023, Baleine qualified for the Emperor's Cup, winning their qualification as Yamaguchi representatives on 23 April, after beating Shunan University in the prefectural preliminaries' Final.^[7] They were knocked out in the first round by Verspah Oita. In 2024, they repeated the feat of qualifying to the Emperor's Cup as Yamaguchi representatives over Shunan.^[8] In the first round they defeated J3 League team Gainare Tottori in a tense penalty shoot-out by 4-3, with scores level at 1-1 after playing 120 minutes. In the second round of the competition, they lost heavily to Sanfrecce Hiroshima by 11–2. This is the first time Baleine have played official matches against professional sides.

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