On January 10, the 100th All Japan High School Football Championship came to an end, and Aomori Yamada, the first winner of the tournament, won the third national championship in the history of the team by defeating Otsu High School 4-0. This is also the third time that the team has reached the final in the past 6 years, and the team has also become the fifth team in the history of Japanese high school football to achieve "summer and winter consecutive championships" (Note: summer high comprehensive sports football championship + winter national conference champion), and the pair has also won the "Takaengu Palace Cup" U18 League East Side Championship, becoming the first triple crown team in high school football after 2011.
However, it is worth noting that this four-goal victory in the final was Aomori Yamada's second big victory after sweeping Takakawa Gakuen 6-0 in the semi-finals. In addition, there were as many as 8 games with a score difference of more than 5 goals in this tournament. The advantages of traditional strong schools in this tournament are becoming more and more obvious, and Aomori Yamada has shown a trend of destruction in various competitions over the past year, is it true that Japan's high school football matches must also be rolled in, and can the varsity team replace the professional team youth training?
The big score win was record
Since the 55th tournament in 1976, the All Japan High School Soccer Championship has been played on the grounds of the Tokyo Metropolitan Area. In the decades since, there have been only 5 games with a score difference of 5 goals or more in a single tournament. But in this tournament, there were a total of 8 such big scores. The most frightening thing is that the winning side of these 8 games is all overwhelming victories, the opponent does not score any goals, and the number of shots in the whole game is also significantly behind the winning side.
Traditional strong school Maehashi Yuei defeated Mie High School 6-0 in the second round, and the latter only had one shot on goal in the whole game. After the game, the mie coach said that Maehashi Yuei was more than one notch ahead of the team, and the gap between the two teams could be fully appreciated through the game. In the third round of the competition, there was the largest point difference competition of this tournament. Shizuoka Gakuen, who is considered a favorite to compete for the championship, has 4 J-League players and swept 8 goals against Miyazaki Hidō.
Of course, the most prominent is the championship team Aomori Yamada. Except for their 2-1 win over Higashiyama High School in the quarterfinals, the rest of the matches were all overwhelming.
Higashiyama High School from Kyoto Prefecture conceded 0 goals before playing against Aomori Yamada. In the game, they also broke through Aomori's gate by defending and counterattacking, but they were eventually defeated by opponents with strong offensive firepower. For the rest of the matches, Aomori Yamada, as the seed team, played directly from the second round, and won 6-0 against Taisha High School from the beginning, and after crossing higashiyama in the third round, the semi-finals again defeated Takakawa Gakuen 6-0, and the final final swept Otsu High School from Kumamoto Prefecture 4-0.
Runner-up team Otsu High School also scored two scoring wins on the way to the top, with a 5-0 win in the first round from Aichi Prefecture's Chubu Daiichi and a 4-0 victory over rival Higashi-Fukuoka in the second round.
Super strong
In the field of Japanese high school football, the country's Football Association has been organizing a tournament called the "Takaengu Cup U18 League" since 2011, and Aomori Yamada is in the first division of the Premier League East, which won the East Zone championship for the first time in 2016 and then won twice in 2019 and 2021.
According to the format, at the end of each season, the Champions of the East and West Regions will have to play the Grand Finals. Aomori Yamada defeated the echelons of Sanfrecce Hiroshima and Nagoya Whale in the finals in 2016 and 2018 respectively, and the finals of the 2021 season were unfortunately suspended due to the epidemic, otherwise Aomori Yamada would probably beat Hiroshima Sanjujk again to win the championship.
In the "Takaengu Palace Cup" event, the professional team echelon has a natural advantage over the high school team, but Aomori Yamada can represent the East Zone twice to defeat the West Zone champion after passing through Daipaku in 2013, which is evident in its strength. It is worth mentioning that in the 2021 season, due to the impact of the epidemic, some matches of the Takaengu Cup were cancelled, and Aomori Yamada was the least number of matches among the 10 teams in the Eastern Zone, with only 16 games. In the end, they scored 40 points in the standings, just one point behind Shimizu's agitation echelon, which had played 18 games. Aomori Yamada averaged 2.50 points per game and scored 36 goals on goal difference, both ahead of Shimizu, who played two games more, and the former won the East Zone championship.
In fact, Aomori Yamada's opponent in the final, Kumamoto Prefectural Otsu High School, is also a strong team in the high school football world. They reached the quarter-finals of last summer's high school polys sports conference soccer tournament, and the Gaoyuangong Cup U18 League West Zone finished 4th. In addition to the larger advantage of the Western Zone champion Hiroshima Sanfrecce Echelon, the gap between Otsu High School and the three professional teams of Nagoya, Osaka Gamba, and Tosu is not large. So, although Otsu faced Aomori Yamada in the final, he hardly had any counterforce, but this was actually because Aomori Yamada was too strong to say that Otsu was a fish belly unit.
Don't forget, Otsu is a public high school, and campus sports actually have relatively high financial requirements, so most of the strong schools in Japan's sports tradition are private schools, and nagasaki Prefectural Kunimi High School has appeared in the history of the National Football Congress, which is an extremely dominant team. But in the last 10 years, it has been basically all private high schools that have won the championship. The last public school to win the championship was the Municipal Funahashi in 2011. Otsu can beat a number of private high schools and career echelons, and I have to say that its strength is still very strong.
Can campus sports replace professional youth training?
In summary, the final of the 2021 Japan High School Football Championship is the current showdown between the strongest high school teams in Japan, which is not excessive. However, with Aomori Yamada so strong, can we conclude that the level and strength of campus football have surpassed the youth training of professional teams? This is not the case.
First of all, it must be clear that a school team like Aomori Yamada is a special case, and its trajectory is not replicable, and not all schools can single-mindedly devote huge energy and financial resources to the sport of football. The school is a "middle and high school school", the football department to create a "6-year plan" for this purpose, on the 10th of the final, the first 11 people 6 people are from the junior high school stage are in the school.
Aomori Prefecture, the northernmost region of Honshu Island, has a high latitude and a climate similar to that of Hokkaido, and outdoor sports such as soccer are greatly affected by the cold, and were once called "the barren land of football." In order to overcome the difficulties, head coach Kuroda just let the players practice indoors on a snowy day, and paid great attention to the physical training of the players. This made Aomori Yamada's players much stronger than their opponents of the same age. The team's most famous "muscle man", center-back Maruyama Yamato stripped away after the goal of the scene also appeared on the hot search.
In addition, under the support of strong physical fitness, the team's offensive and defensive conversion rhythm is extremely fast, with a sense of speed that is no less than that of professional games. It can be said that Aomori Yamada is under the painstaking management of coach Kuroda for more than 20 years, using training methods and technical and tactical training far beyond the scope of high school football, to create a varsity team with combat effectiveness exceeding the professional team echelon, known as "football in an other dimension", and now it has become a "public enemy of all Japan".
Most importantly, the success rate of high school graduates leading to professional football is not high, according to statistics, there is less than 0.1% probability. In other words, the purpose of high school football, or high school sports, is not to select talents for professional teams and national teams, but its main purpose is to enable students to fully appreciate the joy of sports. If you can get the appreciation of professional teams through high school sports competitions, it is naturally good to embark on a career path in the future, and if you do not succeed, it is also a good memory, after entering the university, after entering the society, there are still university leagues and social events to participate in this sport.
Relatively speaking, after the birth of the U18 League, the scouts of professional teams paid more attention to the event with many professional echelons, and if they could play at the level of the Gaoyuangong Cup, the players were more likely to receive attention. Therefore, the strength of one or two high school teams cannot prove that the level of campus football has surpassed the youth echelon of professional teams, which is still the most critical part of football talent training. The former assumes the function of creating a popular movement and creating an atmosphere.
Text/Supine Braces - Yangyuan Zhang