Takayuki Nishigaya

Takayuki Nishigaya (西ヶ谷 隆之) is a Japanese professional manager and former footballer who was most recently the head coach of the Singapore national team.

Playing career
Nishigaya was born in Shizuoka on 12 May 1973. After graduating from the University of Tsukuba, he joined J1 League club Nagoya Grampus Eight with teammate Shigeyoshi Mochizuki in 1996. He mostly played as a centre-back during that first season. In 1998, he moved to Avispa Fukuoka. He became a regular player as the left-back of a three back defence. In 1999, he moved to Verdy Kawasaki, where he did not play much. In 2000, he moved to JEF United Ichihara. Here, too, he did not play much. In 2001, he moved to J2 League club Albirex Niigata. There, he played a variety of positions, such as defensive midfielder, centre-back and left-back. He retired at the end of the 2001 season.

Coaching career
After retiring, Nishigaya started his coaching career at his alma mater, the University of Tsukuba, in 2003. In 2004, he signed with Tokyo Verdy. He coached for their youth team until 2009. In 2010, he became a manager for Meiji University.

Nishigaya went on to become assistant coach at Albirex Niigata under Hisashi Kurosaki at 2012, and Mito Hollyhock between 2013 and 2015 under Tetsuji Hashiratani, before being promoted to head coach at the latter, after Hashiratani was sacked. In February 2018, Nishigaya became the head coach of SC Sagamihara before moving on to Matsumoto Yamaga, where he was under-18 head coach, and then becoming first-team assistant under Kei Shibata in 2020.

Singapore
In April 2022, Nishigaya was appointed as the manager of the Singapore national team in a two-year contract. He failed to bring Singapore to qualify for the 2023 AFC Asian Cup after losing to Kyrgyzstan 1–2 and losing to Tajikistan 1–0 despite winning against Myanmar 6–2 in third round of 2023 AFC Asian Cup qualification. Nishigaya also led the team to a disappointing AFF Cup run, despite a narrow win against Laos and Myanmar, a scoreless draw with Vietnam, the Lions failed to qualify to the semi-finals after a heavy 4–1 humiliation against Malaysia. Despite calls for him to be replaced, he has continued as head coach.

In June 2023, Nishigaya only managed to get two draw results in the friendly matches against Oceania countries, Papua New Guinea and Solomon Island.

Nishigaya narrowly led Singapore to a 3–1 win on aggregate against Guam in the 2026 FIFA World Cup qualification first round. Nishigaya led Singapore with a disastrous results in the first two matches of the second round of the World Cup qualifiers. As Singapore lost 5–0 to South Korea away and lost 3–1 to Thailand in home ground. On 29 January 2024, Nishigaya was sacked from his duty as Singapore head coach.