Last August FC Tokyo were so disappointed that Andrés Iniesta was going to be absent from Vissel Kobe’s visit they hired an impersonator of the Spanish midfielder to entertain the rare sell-out crowd of almost 50,000. Unfortunately Kobe’s impression of Barcelona has been equally dodgy and the club that was supposed to be winning the Japanese title this year and challenging for the Asian crown in 2020 is two points above the relegation zone with a third of the J League season remaining.

The so-called and much-vaunted ‘Barcafication’ of Kobe has been a failure. In 2014 the Japanese e-commerce giant Rakuten bought the club that had never finished higher than ninth in the top tier. Two years later and the company was sponsoring Barcelona, marking the start of what was supposed to be a beautiful relationship between Kansai and Catalonia.

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Iniesta signed in May 2018 and when I visited the club’s unremarkable office at Kobe’s harbourfront, optimism was almost as high as the August temperatures. Merchandise sales were going through the roof, staff were being hired to deal with the international interest and there was even talk of the potential need for a stadium bigger than the existing 30,000 capacity.

On the pitch plans were equally lofty with the club aiming to become the best and biggest in Asia. The new money had already brought in Lukas Podolski in 2017 and with the arrival of Iniesta there were two World Cup winners in the team. Then came David Villa. Another Camp Nou alumnus arrived in March 2019 in the shape of Sergi Samper, and Thomas Vermaelen signed from Barcelona in July.

By that time, there were no Spanish hands at the helm. Near the end of the 2018 season, Juan Manuel Lillo was appointed as head coach, with much made of the Spaniard’s label as Pep Guardiola’s mentor, but six months later he was gone.

Lillo may not have been regarded as the last piece of the jigsaw but this master strategist was supposed to make the big picture visible. The target of the top three in 2018 had been missed before he took over and the season ended with Kobe in 10th. To jump from mid-table in 2018 to top in 2019 (the target set two years earlier) was always going to be a long shot but Kobe were expected to at least mount a challenge.

The arrival of Lillo suggested that the Rakuten founder and Kobe chairman, Hiroshi Mikitani, understood that it was going to take time to achieve his goal. To become another Barcelona was not going to happen just by signing a few former players but through building a philosophy over a number of years.

Facebook Twitter Pinterest Lukas Podolski stepped down as Vissel Kobe captain last April and will not go down as one of the club’s better signings. Photograph: Etsuo Hara/Getty Images

Lillo’s exit last April suggested, however, that Kobe had serious issues. He stepped down after seven league games of the season and an underwhelming but hardly disastrous haul of 10 points. Lillo said that it was the best move for his family but the job already appeared to be an impossible one. He did not have the time to build a Barça style of play but he had more than enough to understand that it was never going to happen.

The next day, Podolski stepped down as captain and tweeted: “Stop expecting loyalty from people who can’t even give you honesty.” It was unclear as to whether this was aimed at teammates, Lillo or the club. The German, who impressed so much on his debut, will not go down as one of Kobe’s better signings and will be remembered more for his remonstrations with referees and colleagues than anything special on the pitch.

Iniesta, who took the armband relinquished by Podolski, has performed better, seemingly enjoying his time in Japan. The class and the passes are still there, with even those that are misplaced often having more to do with teammates not making the right runs. Although the midfielder still misses games here and there for reasons often not given, in different circumstances Iniesta would be driving Kobe to the title. While Podolski bemoans the lack of stability on the pitch, it merely mirrors the situation off it.

Days after Lillo was out, Makitani was announcing a July friendly against, unsurprisingly, Barcelona. “As you know, the world is paying attention to this match,” the chairman told a Tokyo press conference in which he declined to talk about the issues at Kobe.

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Maybe his reticence was understandable as few were excited by Lillo’s successor. Takayuki Yoshida had been sacked from the same job in September 2018 but was given a chance to show that he had acquired major skills in the seven months since. He lasted seven weeks. This time he was replaced by Thorsten Fink. The former Hamburg and Grasshoppers coach is a move to a more pragmatic style but results have yet to improve.

On Friday the German takes his team to Sagan Tosu, who have the misfiring Fernando Torres in attack, for a six-pointer. Defeat would see the star-studded side slip below the hosts into 16th and the relegation play-off spot. There is not much talk of Barcelona these days. For Vissel Kobe, a club that was supposed to be the number one in Asia, the focus is now on avoiding the drop to the number two league in Japan.