On the afternoon of April 7, Beijing time, the Bundesliga club Stuttgart officially announced that the Japanese Olympic team player and 18-year-old American-Japanese mixed-race center-back Henri Chase will join the club's U21 echelon this summer to start a career in foreign countries.
Born on March 24, 2004 in Yokosuka, Kanagawa Prefecture, Japan, Henley Chase was born to an American father who was a former U.S. military station in Japan and to a Japanese mother. Henley Chase went to the United States at the age of 3 and lived in Texas for nine years before returning to Yokosuka, Japan, in 2016 to attend junior high school. In the same year, he joined the school football department and really started his football career – and until then, he had always been interested in basketball. At first, Henri Chase was assigned to the forward position, but the following year he switched to center-back, and at the same time, his Japanese level improved by leaps and bounds.
Although several high schools in Kanagawa threw olive branches at him, In the end, Onley Chase chose Fukushima Prefectural Soccer School Shoshi High School. In February 2020, Henley Chase was selected for the Japan U17 national team for the first time and scored with a header against East Timor. The following year, he was selected for the Japanese U22 national team and started in the first round of the U23 Asian Cup qualifiers against Cambodia. In the summer of the same year, he went to Stuttgart in the Bundesliga and Alkmaar in the Dutch League, and according to Japanese media reports at the time, he also attracted the interest of a number of J-League teams and even Dutch giants Ajax.
In January this year, Henri Chase had the honor of participating in the training camp of the Japanese national team as a sparring partner. At that time, also participating in the national team as a post-00s student player were goalkeeper Kitagawa Khori from the university and Meiji University winger Keiyun Sato. In the Dubai Cup in March, the Japanese national Olympic centre-back, who had just turned 18, also participated in the team and won the final championship.
Earlier this year, Henri Chase, who had not yet completed secondary school, turned down invitations from all J-League clubs, bent on starting a career abroad after graduating from high school, and in the end, the Bundesliga club Stuttgart became the first stop for the rising star of Japanese football. On April 7, Beijing time, Stuttgart Club officially announced that Henley Chase will join the club's U21 echelon this summer. On July 1, the tall young centre-back, who is 1.88 meters tall, will officially arrive in Germany to report.