On this New Year's Day, the Soviet Super League giants Celtic announced the joining of 3 Japanese players in one go - Yosuke Inoueguchi, Flag bearer Miyo, and Maeda Dairan. Coupled with Tsuyoshi Furuhashi, who joined the team last summer, this has allowed the Celtics to have four international-level Japanese players in the squad, spread across multiple positions in the midfield. The Soviet Premier League is not the top league in the territory of European football, but there is no shortage of Japanese players in history, we may wish to take stock.
Toshiaki Nakamura (2005-2009)
The last Japanese star to be able to leave a memory in the Soviet Super League was undoubtedly free-kick master Shunsuke Nakamura. The 43-year-old former Japan No. 10 is still active in the professional arena. Although his first stop in Europe was Serie A Regina, because Celtic were regulars in the Champions League, after joining the Soviet Super League, he gave Shunsuke Nakamura a bigger stage to play his ability.
His most impressive goal was undoubtedly in the 2006-2007 Champions League group stage, when he scored directly from the free-kick that broke through the Manchester United goal at Old Trafford. That wonderful goal helped the Celtics beat Manchester United on the road, and he also became the first Japanese player to score since the Champions League was restructured in 1992.
Returning home to face Manchester United, Nakamura scored a direct free kick again to help the Celtics reach the Round of 16 of the Champions League, which was also the team's first time in the knockout round after the Champions League restructuring. It is no exaggeration to say that In the 2006-2007 season, Nakamura used his two brilliant goals to write a lot of money in the history of the team, while helping the team to make history.
At Celtic, Nakamura made a total of 145 appearances in all competitions, scored 31 goals, won 3 Soviet Super League trophies, 2 Soviet Premier League Cups, and 1 Scottish FA Cup, and he can be called the most successful Japanese player in the history of the Soviet Premier League. In particular, in the 2006-2007 season, he won the Scottish PFA Player of the Year Award, the Scottish Football Journalists Association Player of the Year, and was selected into the Best Team of the Soviet Super League.
In 2009, he turned down an invitation from his old club, the Yokohama Mariner, to play in La Liga. However, in Espanyol, Shunsuke Nakamura did not play as he should, so his competitive status declined, directly leading to the starting lineup of Takeshi Okada before the 2010 World Cup.
Akira Mizuno (2008-2010)
During His time with Shunsuke Nakamura for the Celtics, the team also had a Japanese player, Koki Mizuno.
In the 2007 season, Koki Mizuno, who played at a high level in Chiba Ichihara, decided to challenge himself in the Europa League, and in January 2008, he joined the Celtics and signed a three-and-a-half-year contract with the team. However, in the second half of the 2007-2008 season, he was not able to get even a minute of playing in the first team, so he was scolded by the player's mentor when chiba played football, former Japanese coach Ossim, and Japanese football star Seiichiro Mizuno also called to denounce Mizuno's inaction.
It wasn't until December 2008 that he came off the bench in a Soviet Premier League game, receiving an assist from Shunsuke Nakamura to score his first goal at the Celtics, and was on a 40-meter long run, but was yellow carded for excessive celebration. In the 2009-2010 season, Mizuno played only two official games for the team, and left the team on the grounds that he needed to think seriously about his future life.
In the Celtics' more than 2 years, he has only played 12 games. This stay in The Ocean was a huge failure, during which he was defeated by the Japanese Olympic team for the 2008 Beijing Olympic Games, and until then he had been the main player in the national Olympic team. Since then, back in Japan, his career has not improved, it can be said that it has declined all the way.
Years later, Mizuno recalled this trip to the Ocean, and he thought that the reason for his failure was because he overestimated himself, because of his performance in the J League, the outside world's praise made him a little fluttery, but after arriving in Scotland, he found that he was not competitive at all. However, although staying in the ocean failed, he still missed and enjoyed that journey very much.
Kawashima Nagashi (2015-2016)
Japan's veteran goalkeeper Kawashima Nagashi also had a brief stint in the Soviet Super League.
After the 2010 World Cup, Kawashima joined Belgian team Liers SK through that wave of staying in the ocean, and then went to play for the powerhouse Standard Hot Suns. However, his career in the West was not smooth sailing, and in the middle of the 2014-2015 season, he was excluded from the team's main squad and left the team at the end of the season. After that, he did not find his next home for half a year, until the end of 2015, when he announced that he had joined the Soviet Premier League team Dundee United.
Before coming to the Soviet Super League, Kawashima Hadhito went to the First Division team, Serie B Novara, and his national team friend Shinji Okazaki at the time to play for Leicester City, but in the end did not stay, and thus lost the Japanese national team qualification. It wasn't until November that he and Super Dundee United reached an agreement.
Dundee United were mired in relegation and desperately needed an experienced fire-fighting goalkeeper. However, Kawashima is not a god, and after taking over the team's original main goalkeeper halfway, he was not able to single-handedly change the problem of the team's poor defense, and the team could only accept the reality of relegation at the end of the season.
However, Kawashima Has a great advantage in that he is strong in foreign languages. Long before leaving Japan, he used his private time to learn various European languages, English, Italian, Portuguese, Dutch, French, etc., he did not speak, and even worked as a translator for his teammates. This language ability also allows him to find a job in Ligue 1 even at the age of 38.
Ryotaro Shokuno (2019-2020)
I don't know if domestic Manchester City fans have an impression of Ryotaro Iino. Yes, he is still a Manchester City player, but he has been on loan because he does not have a labour certificate.
After joining the Blues in 2019, he was immediately loaned to Hartz in the Soviet Premier League to play. However, Ryotaro Isino went a little high and low in the Soviet Super League, and he quickly sat in the main position at the beginning of the season, and once used goals to help the team to draw the Wanderers. But in the time that followed, as The record of the Hartz team deteriorated, Ryotaro Atano's form also followed the roller coaster, and finally after December 2019, he gradually moved away from the main lineup. In the second half of this season, due to the outbreak of the epidemic, the Soviet Super League ended early, and the players hurriedly ended their Soviet Super League careers, which seemed to be a tiger.
Text/Supine Braces - Yangyuan Zhang