From Hidetoshi Nakata to Keisuke Honda to now Kenei Kubo, when a very talented player appears, Japanese football will flourish and a team can be formed around him. Keune Kubo is one such person, and despite the ups and downs of his first few years in La Liga, the Real Madrid striker's home performance at the 2020 Olympics gives us a glimpse into what the 20-year-old can bring to the Japanese national team over the next decade.
Takumi Minamino, another Japanese superstar, won the Premier League title in 2019-20 and started seven games for Liverpool last season, scoring four goals and two assists. In this season's away game against Norwich, Takumi Minamino scored twice for Liverpool, helping the team to eliminate Norwich 3-0, and was named the best player after the game.
This time, Araki Ryotaro has the potential to take Japanese football to new heights. He is one of the players of the Japanese national team, and the attacking midfielder has made a brilliant breakthrough in kashima Antlers in the J-League. The 19-year-old has scored 11 goals and eight assists in all competitions of the 2021 season, while the J-League is five games away from the end of the season and he is expected to score more than 10 goals.
His nine league goals this season mean he will be the second young player to score double-digit goals in a single season after former Japan international Masashi Nakayama. Masashi Nakayama completed the feat in 1994 and then scored a goal at the World Cup four years later, helping Japan secure their first World Cup spot and get a transfer to Real Madrid for La Liga.
It is hoped that Araki will follow a similar path and become a national team star while playing in europe's five major leagues, and Kubo left his home country at the age of 10 to attend the La Masia Football School in Barcelona, before which Kubo was regarded as a miracle in football. Unlike Kenei Kubo, he tried many ball games before finally choosing football.
Araki said: "When I scored, I was happy." That's why he chose football, and at the 2018 AFC Under-16 Championship, in Japan's first game against Thailand, he scored two goals, which attracted widespread attention for the first time. For his outstanding performances, he was named the best player of the game. Except in the competition in Malaysia, he and the Japanese team defeated all opponents to win the championship. In October 2019, Araki announced that he had joined the Kashima Antlers. He spent his first season as a winger, scoring two goals in 26 appearances in the J-League, including a goal equalised in stoppage time, the first goal of his career.
But after entering the national team in 2021, after either as a second striker or as a nomadic player, he performed well, scoring four goals in the first three games of the season, which clearly shows that opponents are difficult to limit his influence on the game. Araki's teammates said of the teenager: "He always takes the ball from his teammates and makes beautiful passes of his own, and when he is a striker, he is the heart of the team." It is these abilities that make Araki a special talent that Japanese football can rely on in the future, from Kubo Kenei to Takumi Minano, which is also the envy of Chinese fans.