Posts Tagged ‘Atsuto Uchida’

The Rise & Rise of Japanese Football – Part 2

Posted: August 13, 2012 by thearabscot in Asia
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It has been a long time coming, but finally our resident Asian football devotee TheArabScot is back to provide the second and final part of his instalment on Japanese football and how it rose from relative obscurity to worldwide prominence. Part 1 is here for those who missed out.

We left things in the outset of what was to prove a meteoric rise for Japanese football, and from there we pick up the tale again. The ball was rolling and the changes that had started to take place in the 80s were to soon have a perceptible, far reaching effect and one that would continue to grow in significance.  The academies were beginning to produce the talent in numbers, the new professional J league was on its way to becoming an established force in Asian club football and the national team began to click into gear.

The J League

The J league has continued to grow in stature since its inception in 1993. In the beginning many star names such as Zico were brought to the league to pique interest, this model proved successful and is still used as a blueprint and implemented in both East & West Asia; Qatar’s league, the UAE as well as China most recently have adopted the stance of attracting big names who have maybe played their best football in Europe to increase interest and awareness in the game. It certainly seemed to work for Japan (other factors obviously played a major role), so why could it not work elsewhere?

Big names aside, however, the league has continued to produce talented players through academies and export them as we will see in the next section. Japanese teams have also won the Asian Champions League three times since the league was set up, not the strongest record at club level in Asia, but the continued success of the National side cannot be ignored, nor can the constant flow of new talent into the league.

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Atsuto Uchida shines, Mahamadou Diarra fully returns

Posted: March 19, 2012 by Salim Masoud Said in Africans Abroad
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Each week our team will attempt to watch a few matches around the world and then write something resembling a ramble or review. This won’t be a round-up of who scored, we’ll actually be watching as many games as possible involving African and Asian players, and any other players, really – (after all, everyone is from Africa, if scientists are to be believed!) – and we will then report back our findings. We will endeavour to do this weekly but some weeks it may not be possible.

Uchida shines for Schalke

I’ve watched a lot of football matches this past week but none have come close to being as entertaining as the Europa League clash between Schalke and FC Twente on Thursday. With the match televised on ITV4 and it being the Europa League,  I had low expectations, but the beauty of football is you should always expect the unexpected. After Twente taking an early lead, Schalke needed to score 3 goals to overturn a two-goal aggregate deficit and progress into the quarter-finals.

It was a gigantic task, but they did it with a swashbuckling 4-1 win. Aside from Robin Van Persie, there is another Dutch striker who ‘scores when he wants’ in the form of Klaas Jan Huntelaar. The klaasy (sorry) striker has scored 38 goals in 38 games this season, scoring a hat-trick on the night with some emphatic finishing. One of the stars of the show, though, was Japanese right-back Atsuto Uchida. After an uncertain first half, he battled through the second half and controlled the right-wing with Jefferson Farfan, putting in a tireless shift of defensive astuteness and productive forward runs. It was his smart reverse pass which found Raul Gonzalez who cleverly back-heeled for Huntelaar to finish off another chance.

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