Tiger Punch September 18, 2019 Today, Sports Weekly wrote an article comparing the influence of returnees from China and Japan on their respective domestic players, and the media bluntly said that compared with Japan, domestic returnees did not play a good role in helping.
On September 12, Beijing time, Japan international left-back and Nagatomo Yu, who has been in Europe for 11 years, announced his return to the J-League and joined FC Tokyo. On September 18, the 29th round of the J-League FC Tokyo home match against Yokohama FC, Nagatomo Yu will make his debut. The return of Nagatomo has become a footnote to the return of Japanese players to the 2018 World Cup: in the 2018 World Cup roster, Hiroki Sakai, Masakoyuan, Akira Yamaguchi, Takashi Kaneshi, Usami Takashi, Isamu Ōki and Yoshiki Muto all returned to China, marking the end of the previous generation of foreign countries.
However, the one-generation stay in the west was over, but the size of Japan's foreign army was unprecedentedly expanded. Why is this happening? This is because Japanese players have passed on their experience and awareness to the next generation without reservation. And this kind of scene of bringing the old to the new was not seen at all in the last wave of foreign footballers.
Players return, experience follows
On the last international match day, the Japanese national team began to concentrate in Osaka on August 30 in preparation for the match against Oman and China. As the number one center of the Japanese team, Ōki Yukiya reported to Osaka by taxi from Kobe. In an interview with the media, he said that it took him only 40 minutes to get from Kobe to Osaka, which was really refreshing. As a Representative of Japan in Germany, Daisuke also played overseas for 8 years, from Munich in the Bundesliga in 1860 to promotion and promotion cologne to the former giants Werder Bremen, although the most goals scored in a season were only 8, but it also proved the value of Japanese players with his own strength. And now, rest and relaxation are deserved for him.
A similar situation has occurred in Nagatomo Yuto, who said in an interview this year: "In my philosophy, I really want to challenge myself under harsh conditions." However, no one in the European club extended an olive branch, which allowed Nagatomo Toshito to eventually return to his parent team, FC Tokyo, shocking Japan.
Tokyo's current coach Kenta Hasegawa was not very willing to answer Questions about Yuto Nagatomo head-on. However, in the past week, after Nagatomo and FC Tokyo officially practiced together, the Japanese coach made it clear that Nagatomo would officially debut in the match against Yokohama FC.
The return of famous players who are too senior in Japan is a burden for the J League players, which will more or less affect their performance and the performance of veterans; former Japanese coach Ossim pointed out in his comments on this matter that only Nakamura Shunsuke played better football than before among the returnees, and Honda Keisuke, Shinji Kagawa and Hidetoshi Nakata have not fallen back to their roots, which is worthy of reference for Japanese players.
But that's not the whole picture. Behind the return of Japan's famous players is a steady stream of fresh blood to join the Europa League: the reason why Kobe spent a lot of money signing Isamu Daisuke and Yoshiki Muto is because their core player, Yutaka Furuhashi, and he scored 7 goals in the first 9 games of the Soviet Super League Celtics, which also proved that he also has the strength of his predecessors. The so-called "weak brigades" such as Tosu and Shonan, and The so-called "weak teams" who can also get out of the mainstream European leagues, such as Endo Hang, show that Japanese football has entered a virtuous circle, and can even be considered to form a kind of talent exchange mechanism between the European League and the J League.
The reason is that the training of Japanese players has benefited the younger generation a lot. In an interview, Furuhashi mentioned his predecessor, Shunsuke Nakamura: "Nakamura is my idol, and I have always wanted to be like him. At the same time, Furuhashi also specifically mentioned the return of Yamaguchi Hotaru, "Yamaguchi's predecessors are very energetic in each training, and they can also teach us how to exercise." It is because of him that I have improved so fast."
The current coach of the Japanese team, Mori Hoichi, even supported the return of daisuke and others, saying that the return of these foreign players could bring "world standards" to the J-League.
The return of the national football team is short-lived
The transmission of Japanese football seems to be somewhat directionless in Chinese football. Since 2015, the Chinese Super League has launched a number of foreign players, including Zhang Xizhe, Zhang Chengdong and Zhang Yuning, who grew up overseas. Although these players have experienced staying in foreign countries, their subsequent development is not only underserved, but also has not brought too many positive impacts to the players after returning home.
At the beginning of Zhang Xizhe's return to China, he played a back in the Guoan lineup, and before his thin body suddenly showed a strong confrontation, so that Guoan was like an extra foreign aid on the field. But the good times are not long, in the middle of the 2018 season, Guoan officially abandoned the front court four-core system, focusing on Augusto's backward and Vieira's front play, and in the past few years, Fernando has been introduced, and Zhang Xizhe's tactical role has been marginalized again. It was not until this season, because of the difficulty of returning foreign aid, that Zhang Xizhe retook on the organizational responsibility of national security.
Zhang Chengdong's performance is also very general. After returning to China, Zhang Chengdong joined Hebei Huaxia Happiness from Guoan, but compared to the experience brought by Liuyang, Zhang Chengdong's role was more like a tactical golden oil and a generalist on the field, and finally the Hebei team sat with him and Mascherano and Ravitch, but did not see any obvious strengths in the team's attack and defense. This season, in the case of Hebei team's salary arrears, Zhang Chengdong was even considered by the media to "apply for a red card in advance".
And even if they went abroad earlier and performed better, Arthur Junmin and Feng Xiaoting did not have a better effect of passing on help. Arthur Junmin performed eye-catching in Luneng, but in recent years, Luneng's midfielder has always relied on him, coupled with the addition of fellaini, Moises, Sun Junhao and other foreign aides, domestic players basically rely on Arthur Junmin and Kim Kyung-do, and now, even Kim Kyung-do is 30 years old... Li Xiaopeng even wanted Cui Peng and Zhou Haibin to come back to the rescue; Feng Xiaoting was in Evergrande, and he also failed to bring Mei Fang, Liu Haidong, Chen Zepeng, these juniors out of the division, and now he is not an absolute main force in Shenhua, and the defense of the old owner Guangzhou team is also no longer strong.
The unsustainability of the national football team is not only the problem of the players themselves, but also the fact that the entire football ecology is too far behind That of Japan. Arthur Junmin once recalled that after returning to China, he could not find a suitable strength training plan and had to practice on his own every day. Almost every player who stays in Foreign Countries has experienced a process of additional training-joint training-decline, and the bad state of China's football environment is the reason why they have not been able to bring out fresh blood in the end. And young people, including Wei Shihao and Tang Shi, returned to China to earn high salaries after staying in Europe for a few years, and they did not leave anything.
In any case, Japan's wave of return is taking place, and their replacement of old and new is about to come to an end. From past experience, the Japanese team's next Olympic U24 generation will take over the banner; and the national football team 97 and 99 age groups are the fewest registered players, and it is difficult to have any strength with the opponent.
A darker tomorrow that seems predestined?
(Editor: Yao Fan)