In recent years, Japanese football has continued to send young players to the Europa League, allowing players to blossom everywhere. In contrast, Chinese football currently only has Wu Lei and Li Lei staying in the top leagues of European football.
In the previous round of 12, Japan defeated Australia 2-0, and the 24-year-old striker SanjiZo staged a two-time victory at the end of the game, and the personal performance was extremely eye-catching!
In the 92nd minute, Sanji broke through the penalty area at high speed and burst into the penalty area, bursting from the side to successfully end the game. It's hard to imagine a 24-year-old Asian player playing the scene, and similar situations are a habit for him.
In the summer of 2021, the 24-year-old Sanji officially landed in the Europa League, and the Japanese striker transferred from Kawasaki Forward to Premier League Brighton for a transfer fee of 3 million euros, setting a record for the highest transfer fee for a non-Japanese national team player.
However, due to the non-compliance with the British labour certification conditions, Sanji had to first be loaned to Belgian First Division club St. Giros. So far this season, he has started nine of his 19 games for the team, scoring five goals and two assists, and this is only the third season of his professional football career!
It is worth mentioning that Brighton boss Tony Bloom acquired the Belgian club in 2018, so St. Gilos is equivalent to the overseas satellite team of the Seagulls, which is currently at the top of the league table.
Last summer, Mitsuru represented Japan at the Tokyo Olympics, scoring a face-saving goal off the bench in a bronze medal match against Mexico. After the Olympic Games, he officially went to European football.
After training in the second grade of elementary school, Mitsuaki entered the Kawasaki Striker Academy, and when he studied at the university of Tsukuba, a prestigious Japanese university, he continued to play for the club as a specially designated player, and it can be said that he was ready to enter professional football early.
At the age of 21, he successfully signed his first professional contract with Kawasaki Striker, and finally became a professional footballer while completing his studies. Interestingly, it is said that the title of mitsuru's thesis at the time of graduation was "Why My Dribble Can Pass".
In the 2020 season, Mitsuru played 37 games in all competitions for Kawasaki Forward, scoring 18 goals and providing 14 assists to help the team win the J1 League title in Japan, in addition to the Emperor's Cup and the Japanese Super Cup. Although he has only just graduated from college, his personal performance is amazing, and he was elected the best newcomer of the year.
He has managed to show his personal abilities: continuous agility, superior speed and explosiveness, good ball quotient, and the ability to score goals and assists. Some fans even call him "the strongest college student in Japanese football".
In the history of Japanese football, there has indeed never been a player who has played in college to professional football in the first place. It often takes a lot of training to adapt to the rhythm of professional football first, and playing well is secondary.
For his part, the current goal of his football career is to score enough points in the Belgian league to earn a British labour certification so he can play in the Premier League with Brighton next season.
For a long time, the Japanese men's football team has paid more attention to foot technology, but it has always lacked a player who can use flexible dribbling and rapid speed to open up the opponent's defense line to create scoring opportunities, and truly turn the team's on-field possession advantage into an offensive threat.
I have to say that Japan's football system and atmosphere are indeed enviable. Physical education and education are not wrong, and it is possible to play well and not affect the completion of school. Maybe a player like Mitsuaki is just one of the people in Japanese football that achieves a better combination of sports and education, and excellent football talents continue to emerge.
If you think about it this way, the gap between Chinese football and Japanese football will never be just the current one...