Japanese players are moving to English soccer in record numbers and more look set to follow with clubs attracted by their quality, strong work ethic and value for money.
Kaoru Mitoma is the standout talent of five Japanese players in the English Premier League, with eight more in the Championship and two in League One.
Liverpool midfielder Wataru Endo, the captain of Japan, believes his compatriots are “being held in higher esteem” by English clubs compared with the past.
Photo: EPA-EFE
“The staff at Liverpool ask me about lots of Japanese players, not necessarily with a view to a transfer, but just saying this or that player is a good player,” Endo said. “It feels like there is more interest in Japanese players from around the world.”
Currently also in England’s top flight are Daichi Kamada (Crystal Palace), Takehiro Tomiyasu (Arsenal) and Yukinari Sugawara (Southampton).
Japanese players have had mixed success in the Premier League since Junichi Inamoto became the first when he joined Arsenal in 2001. Inamoto left for Fulham after a single season where he failed to make a league appearance for the Gunners.
Shinji Kagawa won the Premier League with Manchester United in 2012-2013, but drifted to the margins after a bright start and returned to Borussia Dortmund after an up-and-down two years.
FIFA-registered agent Joel Pannick, who has 50 Japanese players on his books, says English clubs previously had “a bit of a fear of Japanese players.”
“The stereotypical approach would be that the player would be technically very good, but would they be physical enough? Would they be strong enough?” Pannick said. “Previously maybe Japanese players were pigeonholed — they go to Germany or Holland [Netherlands], where it’s more technical.”
Pannick says the recent success of Japanese players at British clubs, especially at Celtic under former J.League and now Tottenham Hotspur coach Ange Postecoglou, has helped change perceptions.
He also says the COVID-19 pandemic changed the way clubs scout players, making video footage and data from around the world more readily available.
“Teams wouldn’t want to spend the time and money taking a risk going to a place far away when they don’t know what they’re going to see when they get there,” he said. “Now that everything is available to watch hours or minutes after the match, it has removed any fear of ‘should the Japanese market be one that we look at?’”
Relatively cheap transfer fees have made Japanese players a canny investment, with Pannick calling them “more attractively valued than the equivalent player from anywhere else in the world.”
Brighton paid just ￡2.5 million (US$3.3 million) to sign the winger Mitoma from the J.League in 2021, while prolific goalscorer Kyogo Furuhashi joined Celtic for ￡4.5 million the same year.
Furuhashi was heavily linked with Manchester City this summer.
The prices mean that in recent transfer windows it has mostly been Championship clubs entering the market for Japanese players.
Japan coach Hajime Moriyasu says players are willing to play in the second tier and work their way up.
“The J.League is a very good league, but the players want to play at the highest level,” Moriyasu said. “The Premier League is where the best players in the world are and they want to be there, too. I think a lot of players have moved to the Championship with a view to making the step up.”
Pannick says post-Brexit changes to work permit rules have forced English clubs to look beyond Europe for signings and be “more open-minded and creative.”
Japan’s performances at the World Cup, which included wins over Germany and Spain in Qatar in 2022, have put their players firmly in the shop window.
Pannick says they have the mentality to make the most of the opportunity.
“With the players I’ve worked with, if something hasn’t gone right, if they’ve been taken out of the team or if they’re asked to play in a position that’s not their favorite, the default response is: ‘What can I do better?’” he said. “The players identify themselves as ambassadors of Japan and they want to give a good account of themselves.”
“I don’t remember the moment, but ever since I was a kid, that’s the first thing I loved,” two-time NBA All-Star Isaiah Thomas said of his lifelong romance with basketball. However, that journey unfolded against the limitations of his size in a game where height often dictates opportunity — a reality he confronted throughout his career. At 175cm, Thomas is less than 2cm taller than the average Taiwanese adult male, while NBA players during his career stood at about 200cm on average. Compared with the NBA’s average career length of less than five years, Thomas’ 13-season career stands out as
Dakar and Rabat have longstanding ties, but relations have been strained since the Africa Cup of Nations (AFCON) final, which Senegal won in mid-January before being stripped of the title, which was transferred to Morocco. Now, the AFCON trophy is something of a thorn in the two countries’ sides. On Rue Mohamed V, the street where Moroccan vendors are based in the Senegalese capital, a police van is parked. “The police have been on high alert since the Confederation of African Football [CAF] decided to award the title to Morocco, but there have been no incidents,” a local resident said.
Top seeded Jessica Pegula on Friday once again fought back from a set down to reach the WTA Charleston Open semi-finals with a 3-6, 6-3, 6-2 win against Russia’s Diana Shnaider. Defending champion Pegula has lost the first set in all three of her matches at the tournament so far, but again dug deep to maintain her hopes of retaining the title. The world No. 5 from the US took 2 hours, 10 minutes to defeat 19th-ranked Shnaider, relying on a formidable service game that included eight aces. Shnaider battled well in the first two sets and broke early for a 2-0 lead
Cambridge on Saturday made it four wins in a row as they comprehensively defeated Oxford in the 171st University Boat Race on London’s River Thames. It was Cambridge’s seventh win in the past eight years of a rowing race between England’s two oldest universities first staged in 1829. A world-class Cambridge crew were heavy favorites for victory. However, four minutes into the race, the crews came close to a clash of oars which could have caused severe disruption, with Oxford repeatedly warned as both team chased faster conditions in the middle of the river. For the first time in the
RSS