“Keep your noses out of each team’s identity,” an unhappy fan wrote on the league’s official website.

Many fans, however, are turned off by the move. The idea is to make players more identifiable for viewers watching games on the small screens of smartphones and tablet computers. The professional football league in mid-September announced plans to standardize the typography for players’ names and numbers on their jerseys from next season. A uniform decision by the J.League has created a sort of identity crisis among soccer fans around Japan.