2023-07-01 20:00:02
The Japan national football team at the 1998 World Cup in France was made up entirely of players from the domestic Japan League. By contrast, professional players in Europe dominated the list of the team that participated in the FIFA World Cup Qatar 2022. What prompted the European continent to become a major destination for the best soccer players in Japan?
Professionalism pays off
The number of Japanese players in European leagues is increasing, as Japanese football seeks to double the number of professionals and market more talent.
The policy of marketing players towards Europe benefited the first Japanese team, which grabbed the limelight in the Qatar World Cup 2022, when it reached the final price, and was able to defeat Germany and Spain, and forced third-placed Croatia to play penalty kicks.
During last year’s FIFA World Cup in Qatar, Japan’s coach, Moriyasu Hajime, called on players with experience in European clubs to feature in the starting line-up. Of the squad’s 26-player roster, 22 were professionals in European clubs either now or earlier. Hajime’s strategy has been a resounding success. Despite participating in the “group of death” that included Germany and Spain, the Japanese national team exceeded all expectations by defeating the two teams and advancing for the fifth time in its history to the round of 16, as it performed a strong performance against Croatia, the continuing favorite to win the tournament, before receiving a disappointing loss. penalty shootout.
This reliance on players with European experience has made Japan stand out as a team that stands out from the other Asian competitors in the tournament. For example, Iran called up 13 professionals playing in European clubs, while South Korea called up 7 players, and Saudi Arabia did not call up any players. Even Australia, which has strong ties to British football, called up just 15 European club players among its international players.
Japan’s shift to calling up professional players in Europe has been gradual. When the Japanese national team first participated in the World Cup in France in 1998, the team consisted entirely of players playing in the Japanese domestic league. When Japan co-hosted the tournament with South Korea in 2002, there were four players playing in European clubs in the starting line-up of the Japanese national team. Then this number almost stabilized during the following tournaments. At the 2014 finals in Brazil, that number rose to 12, and then to 16 for the 2018 World Cup in Russia. Nowadays, playing in a European club is almost a prerequisite for any player to be included in the Japan national team.
Competition is also fierce, with more than 100 Japanese players playing in top-flight teams in Europe. These include examples such as Takefusa Kubo, Daichi Kamada and Kaoru Mitoma at top five league clubs in England, France, Germany, Italy and Spain, as well as stars such as Daisen Maeda and Ayase Ueda who have found success in top-flight competitions in other countries. Japanese players have been heading to Europe with increasing frequency over the past ten years, making Japan the largest source of football talent in Asia, even being compared in some quarters to Brazil and African countries that have long sent players to play on the European continent.
Kagawa effect
Undoubtedly, Japan’s success in developing homegrown talent has contributed to the current demand in Europe for Japanese players. However, in the beginning, the road was very difficult, requiring footballers to first prove their ability through long stints in the J1 League. Those rules changed with Shinji Kagawa, who caught the eye as an outstanding young player at second-division club Cerezo Osaka.
In 2010, Kagawa was called up to the Japan national team, but he was not selected in the final squad for the World Cup in South Africa that year. However, the 21-year-old midfielder caught the attention of Bundesliga club Borussia Dortmund with his performances, including being named top scorer in 2009 to help Cerezo to promotion to the top flight. At the end of the season, Kagawa’s transfer to Dortmund was approved for the modest sum of €350,000 under a private agreement.
Kagawa Shinji plays for Dortmund on March 25, 2012. (© AFP/Jiji Press)
When I visited Dortmund’s pre-season training camp near Graz in Austria after Kagawa arrived at the club, I was struck by his youth and inexperience, an impression reinforced by the absence of players who had participated in the World Cup. Even to the untrained eye, Kagawa stood out far from his teammates, both in the quality of his performances and his dexterity and skill. His teammates had difficulty predicting his carefully coordinated movements or locating them to receive his accurate passes. Although Kagawa wasn’t happy with his performance, saying after the training session that “I just need more time to adapt”, I had no doubt he would succeed in Europe.
As expected, Kagawa shone and settled in Dortmund. He played a crucial role in the team winning back-to-back Bundesliga championships in 2011 and 2012, and in his breakout second season with the club, he was named to the Bundesliga All-Stars. His brilliance caught the attention of Manchester United, and two years later, Kagawa bid farewell to Dortmund and moved to the English Premier League.
After Kagawa, German clubs began to pay attention to Japanese players, as they discovered in Japan the availability of high-level footballers with technical skills, football sense and a strong desire to win. What’s more, transfer costs were in the range of bargains, with transfer costs usually much lower than average transfers in European leagues.
At the same time that Kagawa moved to the Bundesliga, other Japanese players such as Honda Keisuke, Nagatomo Yuto, Shinji Okazaki Hasebe, and Makoto were making an impact at top clubs in Germany and other countries, increasing the demand for Japanese players.
The large amount of Japanese football talent in Europe points to a significant increase in the level of football in Japan, but Philippe Troussier, who captained the Japanese national team from 1998 to 2002, says this is not true. He attributes the situation to the excessive focus of European clubs on the transfer of stars from Brazil, Argentina and African countries, which prevented them from exploiting the amount of talent available in Japan. After Japan’s first World Cup appearance in 1998, he says, it took a decade for many European teams to embrace the idea of signing Japanese players.
The beginning of European professionalism
The origin of the Japanese move to Europe dates back to the 1970s, when Okudera Yasuhiko became the first Japanese player to join a European team when he signed for West German club Cologne in 1977. Okudera achieved fame as a midfielder for Furukawa Electric (now known as GE). F United Ichihara Chiba) in the corporate football league in Japan, and was also a member of the Japan national team. During his trip to Germany to train with Bundesliga clubs, he caught the eye of legendary coach Heinz Weissweiler, who signed him.
Despite his difficulties adapting to the new environment, Okudera succeeded, contributing to the team’s second league title in 1977. He was also instrumental in the team’s campaign in the 1978 European Championship (now the UEFA Champions League), including He scored the controversial equalizer in the first leg of the competition’s semi-final against the English team Nottingham Forest. Okudera spent nine seasons in Germany, including stints at Hertha BSC and Werder Bremen, where he won his second Bundesliga title.
Okudera Yasuhiko (center) returns to Japan with Cologne for a Japan Cup (now Kirin Cup) match at the National Stadium in Tokyo on May 27, 1978. (© Jiji Press)
In the 1980s, following in Okodera’s footsteps, two more, Ozaki Kazuo and Kazama Yahiro, headed to Europe. The duo spent several seasons in Germany, but it can be said that they did not achieve the same success as their predecessors. Their return to Japan sparked the beginning of a long stalemate with no Japanese players moving abroad. Apart from Miura Kazuyoshi, who dropped out of school and traveled to Brazil at the age of 15 intent on becoming a professional player, no top Japanese player went abroad until Nakata Hidetoshi, whose World Cup performances in France led him to join Perugia. in the Italian league in 1998.
But the picture was not as dark as it seemed. The beginning of the nineties of the last century saw the beginning of a new era for domestic football in Japan. The J. League focused attention on the sport when it launched in 1993, with teams fielding international stars such as Zico, Gary Lineker, Pierre Littbarski and Dragan Stojkovic to attract fans and raise the level of play. Youth development became a priority for the JFA, and this decision paid off immediately, as Japan put in a strong performance at the 1994 AFC Youth Championship to make their first participation in the World Youth Championship (now the U-20 World Cup) held the following year, and qualified for the Quarter-finals in that tournament, which further demonstrated the progress and potential of Japanese football on the international stage.
Despite these encouraging signs of progress, there were very few, if any, Japanese players of the period at a level that would attract the attention of European clubs. In fact, Japanese soccer fans at the time saw the top European leagues as being out of reach for the stars of the domestic league. The only exception was Nakata, who was loved for his skill and football sense.
Nakata Hidetoshi, after moving to Roma, plays in a match against Milan on January 30, 2001 (AFP/Jiji Press)
With the onset of the first wave of Japanese players beginning to move abroad in the early 2000s, entirely new issues arose branching out from their footballing abilities. Having not had the experience of living in a country culturally different from their own, many have had difficulties adjusting to the demands of living and playing abroad, particularly the need to express themselves in foreign languages. Some of them have managed to overcome these obstacles, such as Nakamura Shunsuke who gained the full confidence of his coach while he was succeeding at Scottish club Celtic, and Matsui Daisuke and Kagawa, who were able to express their talents as part of close-knit youth teams. However, players who were less outgoing or did not live alone had more difficulty adjusting.
Honda Keisuke plays for Milan in a match against Sampdoria on February 23, 2014 in Genoa. The midfielder’s signing with the club, one of the biggest signings in European football, was headline news in Japan. (© AFP/Jiji Press)
Today, players see their steps towards Europe in a completely different light. The success of stars like Kagawa, Honda and others has made this less difficult than in the past, giving hopefuls more confidence that they can succeed in this challenging environment. Many players are now laying the foundations for living and playing abroad by taking classes to enhance their communication skills in English and other languages.
There was a fear that the J.League’s level would be affected by more and more of its stars leaving abroad, but the exact opposite has proven to be true. Japanese teams are regular competitors in the AFC Champions League, the main club tournament in Asia, with Gamba Osaka, Kashima Antlers and Urawa Reds winning the title, and Urawa Reds winning the title three times.
It can be expected that we will see more J.League players moving to Europe and elsewhere in the coming years, which will further increase the demand for Japanese football talent and raise the level of the sport to ever higher heights.
(Originally written in Japanese, translated from English. Banner photos: Kobo Takefusa (left) after his move to Spanish club Real Sociedad, while Mitoma Kaoru dribbles the ball for Premier League side Brighton. (© AFP/Jiji Press)
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