The 2024 All Japan High School Soccer Tournament (第103Ã¥ÂÂå ¨å½é«ÂçÂÂå¦校ãµãÂÂã«ã¼é¸æÂÂ権大ä¼Â; All Japan JFA 103rd High School Soccer Tournament) marked the 103rd edition of the referred annually contested cup for High Schools over Japan, being contested by the winning schools of the 48 prefectural qualifications.
The defending champions were Aomori Yamada, who won the previous tournament beating in the final underdogs Ohmi, from Shiga, in the final.
As the norm, from the first round to the quarterfinals, matches had a duration of 80 minutes, split into two halves of 40 minutes each. The semi-finals and the final, however, were the only ones to match the standard match length of professional football, with the duration of 90 minutes, split into two halves of 45 minutes each. During the tournament, should a match be tied, it directly required penalty shoot-outs, except for the final, where extra-time would be played if the match remains tied on regulation time.
The entire tournament, including the prefectural tournament finals, was streamed on SportsBull and TVer free of charge for japanese IP only. On TV, the semi-finals and the final was aired nationally on NTV, while NNN, NNS and other non-network stations showed select matches from the first round to the quarterfinals.
The tournament takes place in a 17-day span, with the tournament split into a total of six stages, with each round's dates announced by the JFA on 21 October.
The tournament is held in the Kanto region, with the nine venues located on four prefectures.
All the 47 prefectures holds knockout stage qualifiers for their respective high schools. Tokyo's qualifiers is the only to qualify two teams to the competition, as they have the largest amount of registered high schools affiliated with the All-Japan High School Soccer Federation. Teams playing at higher-level leagues earns a bye from the early stages of their respective qualifiers, getting automatically seeded in more advanced rounds, usually between the 3rd and 4th round of their qualifiers.
Most of the qualifiers starts on October. Prefectures with a large amount of registered high schools, like Chiba and Kanagawa, started their qualifiers earlier than the rest.
Information about the broadcasts of the semi-finals and finals of each of the prefectural qualifiers was published by NTV.
On notable absences from this year's tournament (highlighted in bold for better visual comprehension):
The tournament welcomed five debutants, with all winning their prefectural tournament having Prince League teams playing on them. Only four participating teams won the national tournament two or more times, with long-awaited returnee Teikyo (absent from the previous 14 tournaments) having won six. Qualifying by 28 consecutive seasons (no other qualified school boast similar streak) are current champions Aomori Yamada, also the most successful high school of the century, with four national wins, are joint fifth-placed on all-time ranking by national wins and second-placed among the 2024 participating teams by national wins, having won their national titles from 2016 to 2023.
Miyagi's Tohoku Gakuin qualified for the tournament by the fifth time, appearing from the first time in 37 seasons, having qualified for the last time on 1987. Between the 48 qualified teams, they were absent from the national tournament for the longest time, with Fukui's Fukui Shogyo being the next school below them on the list, making their first in 17 seasons ago, as they were absent from the competition since 2007.
The draw was conducted on 18 November 2024.
The following 36 players featured in the Tournament's Best Players Squad: