From the original trailblazer Yasuhiko Okuter in the 1970s to Shinji Kagawa and Makoto Hasebe in recent years, Japanese players have achieved many great results in Germany, and there have always been Japanese players who have won praise from fans for their outstanding performances in the Bundesliga. Now, let's take a look at the new generation of Japanese Bundesliga players represented by Masaya Okukawa and Daichi Kamada! The Bundesliga official website is dedicated to investigating the impact of these high-level Japanese players on the league.
Master brother and his disciples
From Yasuhiko Okuter's first steps to Shinji Kagawa becoming a top star at Borussia Dortmund, Japanese football has been extremely determined at every step of the Bundesliga! For decades, Japanese football has adhered to a path, even if there is no physical advantage, but with the agility and technological development of Asians, they have been affirmed by German football, and finally have a stable foothold in the Bundesliga and have embarked on a path that suits them.
The 20th round of the 2021/22 Bundes league season is of great significance to Japanese fans. Frankfurt's game against Bielefeld is crucial, with Frankfurt struggling to top four in the table and the visiting team Bielefeld struggling for relegation. However, for Japanese fans who follow the Bundesliga, the match will usher in a milestone moment worth remembering. That's because the three players who played against both sides – Makoto Hasebe and Daichi Kamada in Eintracht Frankfurt, Masaya Ogawa at Bielefeld– and more importantly, they all played important roles in their respective teams.
Makoto Hasebe is the team's experienced defensive stalwart, and on the eve of the match against Bielefeld, he celebrated his 38th birthday. On January 18, Japanese veteran Makoto Hasebe celebrated his 38th birthday, and Frankfurt officials sent birthday wishes. Makoto Hasebe left Urawa Red Diamonds in 2008 to land in the Bundesliga, and is a well-deserved evergreen tree in the Bundesliga! It is a model for Asian players to stay in the west, and it is also the "master brother" of Japanese players in the Bundesliga. To this end, the Bundesliga officials also made a documentary for him!
Attacking midfielder Daichi Kamada has been in Germany for three seasons and scored his second league goal in 2021/22 in a 1-1 draw with Augsburg in the 19th round of the season. The 25-year-old also scored three goals in the Europa League to help his side advance to the round of 16 with a group first.
Masaya Okukawa also had a perfect start to his first full Bundesliga season. The equally 25-year-old has scored in the league for four consecutive rounds after scoring in the 19th round of Bielefeld's 2-2 draw with Fürth, and has scored seven goals for Bielefeld this season.
"He's very good at scoring goals," Bielefeld boss Cramer said of the former Holstein kiel and Salzburg striker, "He always has clever ways to score. The match ended 2-0 at Bielefeld, the performance of the Japanese players is still there for all to see, and although Okukawa Ya has not been able to score consecutive goals, his personal performance has been fully affirmed.
Because of the high success rate of Japanese players in the Bundesliga, almost all Bundesliga teams assign top scouts to Japan. Of course, there are more than a few Japanese players who have played well in the Bundesliga!
The Bundesliga became the most popular league for Japanese players in Europe
The three are among eight Japanese players registered to play in the Bundesliga this season, which is more than the other four major leagues in Europe combined – and three other Japanese players play in the Bundesliga.
In the 2019/20 season, Japanese midfielder Hang Endo helped Stuttgart return to the Bundesliga, and since then he has been the mainstay of the team, and last season he was named the fourth back of the Bundesliga by the German authoritative media "Kicker". After finishing fourth in the Tokyo Olympics as a member of the Japanese Olympic team, Endo returned to Germany with the captain's armband, while his compatriot Yoshiki Ito also came to Stuttgart.
Ito quickly gained a foothold in the Stuttgart squad, where the 22-year-old centre-back scored his debut goal in the Bundesliga in a 2-1 win over Mainz in the 13th round and was honoured with the Bundesliga Newcomer of the Month award in November.
In 2014, attacking midfielder Haraguchi completed his Bundesliga debut after joining Hertha Berlin, after which he played for Düsseldorf and Hannover 96 before returning to the capital in the summer of 2021 as a key player for Union Berlin.
His teammate, Japan international Keita Endo, has not played at the level he expected in the Bundesliga since he joined on loan from the Yokohama Mariners in July 2020. But the team has bought him out, and the 24-year-old winger still has room to rise.
Meanwhile, former Arsenal, Hanover and Stuttgart winger Takuma Asano played an important role in Bochum's successful return to the Bundesliga.
In addition, the three Japanese players who play in the Bundesliga are also expected to join the top league team soon. Central defenders Itakura and midfielder Hiroshi Tanaka joined Schalke 04 and Düsseldorf respectively after gaining valuable experience at the Tokyo Olympics. Since then, they have all been the main players of the team, which is also the achievement of right-back Muroya Sari after his transfer to Hannover in August 2020 after 96.
So it's clear that German teams are increasingly looking to find inexpensive players, even the team's thighs, from four-time Asian champions Japan. After all, in terms of the number of foreign aid, Japan is now a country in the top 10 of the Bundesliga.
Shinji Kagawa and other BundeskaKu Japanese legends
Two Japanese players, Yasuhiko Okutera and Makoto Hasebe, are already in the Bundesliga Hall of Fame. Yasuhiko Okuter was The first Japanese player to play in the German top flight, playing for Cologne, Hertha Berlin and Werder Bremen in the 1970s and 1980s.
Another of Germany's most successful Japanese players in the top flight is the country's Bundesliga goal record holder Shinji Kagawa, who scored 60 goals in 216 games during his two stints at Borussia Dortmund. During his first time with Dortmund in 2010-2012, Kagawa won two Bundesliga titles and two DFB-Pokal titles in the outstanding young team Klopp coached.
At the same time, Makoto Hasebe is also the japanese player who has played the longest in the Bundesliga. He came to Germany in January 2008 and played as a midfielder when Wolfsburg won the Bundesliga title for the first time in the 2008/09 season. He then spent a year at Nuremberg before moving to Eintracht Frankfurt in 2014, where he has been with him ever since.
As a former captain of the national team, Makoto Hasebe continued to extend his career at the end of his career and achieved new achievements in the position of dragging center-back through the tactics of frankfurt's three-back. His experience and ability to read matches perfectly match his bravery and courage on the pitch, which allowed Eintracht Frankfurt to beat Bayern Munich in the 2017/18 DFB-Pokal finals and reach the Europa League semi-finals a year later. As an "evergreen" and "record-breaker", in June 2020, the veteran made 309 appearances in the Bundesliga, setting a record for Asian players in Germany's top league. Since then, Makoto Hasebe has been active in the Bundesliga and has a record of more than 350 appearances, and the veteran remains very important to his team.
"He works very hard to maintain physical function and form and puts his work ahead of anything and can be a model for professional players." Bobic, then head of sport in Frankfurt, commented. Makoto Hasebe renewed his contract with the team for a year in March 2021, "In fact, at his age, he is still a key player and an indispensable member of the team, mainly due to his highly professional attitude." ”
"Hase's professional attitude and training have always been top notch," Eintracht Frankfurt boss Grasner said on his 38th birthday. According to Glazner's evaluation, it can be seen that Makoto Hasebe, who won the 2018 AFC Overseas Player of the Year, is a real, downright and outstanding professional player.
Almost all Japanese players who play in the German league seem to have a similar characteristic, that is, their hard-working professionalism. This is a lasting legacy they leave behind, and I believe that such players will become more and more numerous.
Who is Also Ya Okukawa, who lost the Japan roster?
As mentioned earlier, Okukawaya has also scored seven goals this season, and the last four consecutive goals have made him the third player in the history of the team to achieve this achievement, and in the history of Bielefeld, only Pegelsdorf, who scored five consecutive goals in 1982, and Barkley, who scored six consecutive goals in 2004, had more consecutive goals! However, he was in such excellent shape that he actually lost the list of the top twelve of the world preliminary rounds.
Okukawa is also leading Bielefeld in his fight for relegation in the Bundesliga, his first full Bundesliga season. He was hungry for more goals and perhaps that's why the Japanese Football Association chose to keep him in the squad.
The 25-year-old attacking midfielder's failure to be selected for the Japanese national team caused a sensation mainly because of his excellent performances this season, but in fact he has never been selected for the Japanese national team before. Perhaps few fans know that in fact, Okukawa Ya is not a player who is favored by the top European scouts, and unlike most of the Japanese players who were selected to Europe because of their talent, Okukawa Ya's early experience in staying abroad has been defined as a "knockout product".
In July 2015, Okukawa Also joined The Austrian giant Red Bull Salzburg with his performance in Japan's U18, when he was just a player from the Japanese J2 League Kyoto Undead Bird, he was quickly eliminated after not getting a chance in the Olympic League, and was loaned to The Austrian Levlin, and this time the loan was two years. In the two years of the second division, Okukawa ya also spent 64 games with 8 goals and 10 assists before being loaned to Mattsburg in the Austrian League, scoring five goals that season. Okukawa, who saw no hope of returning to the first team, also chose to be loaned to the Bundesliga, where he scored five goals again at Holstein Kiel.
After four years of dormancy, Okukawa finally got the opportunity to become a substitute for Salzburg, and in the 2019/20 season, he seized the limited opportunity to score goals, and made 23 appearances that season, and finally scored 9 goals, in the Champions League against Liverpool, the Europa League against Frankfurt. The following season, still unable to see the hope of the main force, he chose to join Bielefeld on loan, and he was ready to land in the five major leagues after 47 appearances in the Olympic League in a year and a half, contributing 14 goals and 8 assists.
Subsequently, Okugawa Ya also helped Bielefeld successfully relegate with 1 goal and 2 assists in 13 games, and was bought out by the team. In the new season, Okukawa Ya also became an important player under Kramer, so he had an excellent performance of 7 goals this season and became the top scorer in the team.
Masaya Okukawa also has an excellent talent for dribbling, good at turning around and getting rid of it, playing without dragging mud and water, and is quite similar to shinji Kagawa, a predecessor in the same position. But the difference is that Ogawa Ya is also physically and running ability is better, which is also a style honed by Salzburg's ultra-high-intensity youth training system, according to this season's statistics, Ogawa Yaya's high-intensity running ranks in the top 10 in the Bundesliga, and the running distance and sprinting distance are ranked in the top 30 of the Bundesliga, which also proves that he can make up for his willpower.
"My next goal is to play for the national team!" Okukawa ya also still has plans and visions for the future, and this young player, who was not optimistic at first, has now stepped out of his own sky.
For the Bundesliga, these qualities of Japanese players seem to be destined to be a perfect match with themselves, and they will surely attract more Japanese players from the Bundesliga to the world!