Recently, Yoichi Takahashi, a well-known Japanese cartoonist and author of "Football Player", officially announced that the "Football Player" comic, which has been serialized since 1981, will officially end in April this year! This week, the 102nd Japanese High School Competition also came to a successful conclusion, with 3,842 teams participating, 55,000 people watching the game, and Aomori Yamada High School won the final championship!
The manga "Football Player" has accompanied Japanese teenagers for 43 years, with a global circulation of more than 90 million copies, and the manga has been adapted into TV and theatrical versions of the animation many times, which has greatly promoted the development of Japanese football, and the original inspiration of Yoichi Takahashi, the author of "Football Player", actually began in the 80s of the last century, and is even related to the national football team.
In those days, Japanese football was almost unpopular, most Japanese teenagers preferred baseball, and even Go was more popular than football, plus in 1980, the Japanese team lost 0-1 to China in the World Cup qualifiers and missed the 1982 World Cup in Spain, which made Japan completely lose hope in football.
Yoichi Takahashi decided to delve into the field of football manga that no one cared about, and voted his first work "Captain Tsubasa" to "Weekly Shonen Jump", and since then manga characters such as Tsubasa Okura and Kojiro Hinata have become idols of many teenagers in Japan, and even superstars such as Iniesta, Torres, and Aguero have also been deeply influenced by "Soccer Player", and high school football has gradually taken root in Japanese campuses.
In April 2024, "Soccer Junior" is about to come to an end, but the influence is not over, Japan's youth sports events are often closely integrated with campuses, Hakone Ekiden is tightly bound to universities in the Kanto region, and Koshien and Japanese high school football leagues are mainly precipitated on middle school campuses.
The recently held All Japan High School Football League, which was held in 1917 and is now the 102nd year, is the oldest and largest amateur sports event in Japan, and has been widely welcomed by the Japanese people. With a total of 3,842 teams participating this year, this competition means the last time for a senior high school student to represent their school!
This year, there was a super dark horse Omi in Japanese high school football, who eliminated Nichidai Fujisawa and Summer Sports Champion Akihide Hitachi through penalty kicks, and then reversed Kamimura Gakuen 4-3, and eliminated Horikoshi with three goals in 12 minutes in the semifinals. The opponent of Omi in the finals was Aomori Yamada, the overlord of Aomori Prefecture who won three championships and two runners-up in the past 7 years, and finally Omi lost 1-3, Aomori Yamada won the fourth championship in eight years, and the 102nd Japan High School Tournament ended!