On July 23, former Kashima Antlers president Masaru Suzuki succeeded Saburo Kawabuchi as J. League chairman after Kawabuchi retired from the post and moved on to take office as president of the Japan Football Association.

While Kawabuchi has a soccer background with experience as a player for Japan's bronze medal-winning 1968 Mexico Olympic squad and also as Japan manager, Suzuki's soccer background doesn't quite match up. He is a business-oriented person and this is the third time that Suzuki has assumed the presidency of "a corporation," following his spells at a Sumitomo Metal Group company in 1990-94 and the Kashima Antlers in 1994-2000.

"I was not so keen on soccer and preferred swimming," Suzuki, who played forward for his junior-high and high school teams in Kobe, confessed last week when he spoke at the Foreign Correspondents' Club of Japan.

But things started changing for him in 1987. That year, his company Sumitomo Metal assigned him to take care of its Kashima plant as vice chief and he also took up the post as the head of the Sumitomo Metal soccer team.

The Sumitomo Metal team played in the so-called Division Two in the old non-professional Japan Soccer League. But when the JFA announced the launch of the J. League, Sumitomo Metal decided to join the JFA project to become one of the J. League's inaugural 10 clubs with its team based in Kashima, Ibaraki Prefecture, whose population was merely 40,000 at the time.

The team recruited Brazilian legend Zico stunning soccer fans around the world.

"Something unimaginable happened in Kashima. The whole town got a lift thanks to the arrival of Zico," Suzuki recalled.

During his six-year spell as Antlers president, he built a solid foundation at the club making it one of the two leading clubs in Japan. Suzuki, a graduate of Tokyo University, is expected to develop J. League management in line with policy Kawabuchi laid out, which emphasizes bringing soccer to the community.

But the 66-year-old soccer-loving business man also revealed some of his own ideas in his first press conference as J. League chairman. He unveiled a plan to introduce draws in Division One games, scrapping the controversial sudden-death extra time for games which are level after 90 minutes.

"When I saw the Japanese fans' positive reaction to Japan's draw against Belgium in the World Cup, I thought this would be the time to do it," Suzuki said.

"Because of the World Cup, more Japanese became interested in soccer. The attendance of J1 games increased by 20 percent.

"In advanced soccer nations, fans support their local team and that's the way it should be. In Japan, meanwhile, the national team gets good support from the fans but J. League teams don't. So, it is one of our missions to make fans more interested in their local J. League teams.

"I think we, the J. League, have vast potential as there are more kids playing soccer than baseball," he said. "But we also have to work on other things -- improving the standard of coaching and refereeing to catch up with the rest of the world. Our players are improving and the quality of our game is improving quickly."

The referee issue is the one Suzuki is heavily concerned about. He is working hard to introduce a system of assigning a certain group of referees who have potential to important games. The JFA recently formed a new section within its referees' committee to specially deal with matters related to the J. League.

"It's important to have a good, solid organization at the J. League secretariat, as is the case with having a solid front office at a soccer club. Players and coaches change around quite often. But the front office doesn't and it should have a strong concept to advance the club. The same applies to the J. League and the JFA," Suzuki said. "The J. League is only 10 years old. We've got a lot to do."

Suzuki has a contract to serve as JFA chairman for an initial two-year term, but it may take longer than two years to see progress.