Japan

Unconventionally marching toward the realm of the elite

In the 1980’s, kids around the world watched and aspired to be like the greatest players in the world one day. Young Brazilians dreamed of becoming the next Zico. Young French children longed to play like Michel Platini. Young Argentines strived to emulate Diego Maradona. But in Japan, the young children idolized Captain Tsubasa.

Captain Tsubasa never played at a World Cup. Captain Tsubasa never went toe-to-toe with Zico, Platini, Maradona, or any of the other best players in the world. In fact, Captain Tsubasa is an entirely fictional person, created by Japanese cartoonist Yoichi Takahashi. And yet, perhaps moreso than any other player of his time, Captain Tsubasa has transformed his nation’s soccer landscape and inspired a generation of dreaming kids to become soccer players.

When Captain Tsubasa was first published in 1981, the audience for soccer in Japan was close to none. There was no professional league. There was no seriously competitive national team. There was not even a general awareness of what the World Cup was. There was, however, a wide circulation of the Weekly Shonen Jump magazine, and that was all that was necessary for a love of soccer to germinate, bud, and blossom within Japan.

Captain Tsubasa arguably had a greater impact than any real player ever had on Japanese soccer.

As the manga cartoon surged in popularity, so did support for the beautiful game. By the end of the eighties, more school children were playing soccer than baseball, Japan’s most popular team sport. In 1993 the J. League, Japan’s first professional league was founded, and, in 1998, Japan qualified for its first World Cup.

Soccer has undoubtedly come a long way in the past twenty years in Japan, in large part thanks to smart management by the JFA. The national team has qualified for every World Cup since its first appearance, serving as co-hosts along with neighbors South Korea in 2002. The J. League continues to be successful in sporting and financial terms, with 11 players on the 2014 Japan squad plying their trade domestically and all 23 having begun their careers in the J. League. The national team has won four of the past six Asian Cups. Perhaps more importantly than any of these metrics though, soccer has found its place within the Japanese sporting landscape and culture.

While progressing this far is commendable for the JFA, continuing to new levels of success is even more difficult. The national team sits marginally ahead of its continental counterparts South Korea and Australia as the best team in Asia. It will likely qualify for every World Cup for the foreseeable future, given the dearth of quality in the Asian confederation which is guaranteed at least four World Cup spots. It may even qualify for the knockout round, a feat it has achieved in two of its four tournament appearances.

But, as far as it is from the despair and obscurity of Japanese soccer circa 1980, the current state of the national team may be just as distant from being among the world’s elite. Like countless other middle of the road nations, Japan have a couple of players capable of playing at the highest level, a few other stellar players, and other mediocre players filling out its lineup. This statement was just as true in 2002 as it is today for Japan’s national team, despite the continued growth initiated by the federation since then.

Keisuke Honda and Shinji Kagawa, who play for AC Milan and Manchester United respectively, are the bright stars on a team that lacks their quality at center forward and in the defensive half.

How, then, can the JFA push the Japanese national team into the realm of the best teams in the world? Can Japan, a nation without the soccer history of a Brazil, Argentina, England, or any other of the world’s best, punch at the level of the game’s traditional powerhouses? Is the country — geographically, culturally, and systematically — just too far away from Europe, the capital of soccer, in order to be at the forefront of the sport?

The answers to these questions are from clear, yet they will undoubtedly determine the future of the national team. Ivica Osim, a legendary Bosnian coach who finished his career in the J. League and briefly managed the national team in 2010 and 2011, opines that limitations both physical — “they are not tall enough, so you can’t make a player look like Drogba or Crouch,” he says — and cultural — “there is no improvisation in Japan, and football can’t exist without that … players were so afraid … that they didn’t want to do anything on their own initiative. I had the feeling that players could go into the box, get in front of the goal and then stop and ask me what they should do: should I shoot at the goal or pass the ball away?” he adds — restrain the progress of the national side.

Hidetoshi Nakata, now retired, occupied the central attacking playmaking role for Japan, having been inspired to play the sport by the manga character Captain Tsubasa, despite the fact that he has declared multiple times that he finds watching soccer boring and does not understand why people are fans of the game.

Moreover, the best players that Japan produces are positionally redundant. All three of the Japanese players of all-time who can truly be considered as world-class play a central attacking midfield role, uncoincidentally the same position played by the comic-book icon Captain Tsubasa who inspired these players to become professionals. The quality in this position, however, is not matched in other places on the field, such as center-forward, where the hesitancy in front of goal mentioned by Osim has been particularly troublesome for the Japanese.

The mediocrity of the Asian confederation serves as both a blessing and a curse as Japan look to become one of the top ten or fifteen teams in the world. Without regular high level competition or lessons learned from failure because of the poor quality of its continental opponents, Japan only has the World Cup and the occasional international friendly with a European side as its lone litmus tests with which to measure its progress.

However, this mediocrity also guarantees Japan a fair degree of security, security which enables Japan to take risks, a necessary step in order to achieve success in soccer. Already, with the appointment of Italian coach Alberto Zaccheroni, the JFA have implemented a staff willing to take risks in order to progress. For example, Zaccheroni’s side will feature two or even three creative attacking players in the midfield, along with attacking, overlapping fullbacks, strategies that promote ruthless offense over the careful defense that is the norm in the international game.

The 4-2-3-1 formation Japan will use at the World Cup features four outright attacking players along with defenders Nagatomo and Uchida who, as the arrows suggest, will surge forward often, abdicating defensive responsibility in order to generate chances in attack.

The next generation of Japanese soccer players are not growing up watching fictionalized soccer players anymore, as English Premier League and German Bundesliga games featuring Japanese players are broadcast regularly throughout the country. Instead of Captain Tsubasa, children in Tokyo, Osaka, and Kyoto hope to become like Shinji Kagawa or Keisuke Honda, who have fulfilled the dream of playing soccer for one of the world’s best teams in reality. But, living up to the dream of Captain Tsubasa doesn’t just mean having Japanese players on the world’s best club sides; indeed, Tsubasa and his teammates win a world championship, in thrilling style nonetheless against Brazil. If the JFA hope to likewise fulfill this vision of winning a world championship, it must break the glass ceiling of mediocrity by putting together a well-rounded team instead of one loaded in just a couple of positions, by continuing along its path of steady growth of the domestic league as a means of generating interest and developing players, and above all by playing with the spirit, risk, and adventure that Captain Tsubasa embodied.