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The reporter reported coldly Japan was one of the earliest beneficiaries of naturalized high-level foreign aid in Asian football, and 32 years ago, they relied on Brazilian naturalized midfielder Sergio Ramos to win the Asian Cup on home soil, and used the opportunity to promote the professionalization of football in the country. Since then, Japanese football has been growing rapidly, and it has a tendency to "break away from Asia and enter Europe". But when Japanese football entered the fast lane, naturalized players almost missed the Japanese team. Why?

After Lu Bisu and Sandu, with the rapid development of Japanese football's local youth training and overseas education, Japanese football decided not to seek naturalization of high-level foreign aid. However, when the Japanese team was unable to break through the barrier of the round of 16 in the World Cup, the famous Bosnia-Herzegovina coach Halilhodzic, who coached the Japanese team from 2015 to 2018, pointed out that if Japanese football wants to compete with European powerhouses, whether the players' size and confrontation ability can meet world-class standards will be the key.

While the whole of Asia is looking for naturalized high-level foreign players and naturalized players who have grown up in Europe and the United States and have better physical conditions, Japanese football has chosen a different path in recent years: more and more mixed-race players who have grown up in Japan have come to the fore in Japan and gradually entered the national teams of all age groups and become the main players.

The current Japanese mixed-race internationals of all age groups alone are enough to form an 11-man squad, and most of the mixed-race players are made in Japan. In this year's round of 18, the Japanese team has goalkeeper Suzuki Caiyan, defender Mochizuki Haihui, midfielder Fujita let mixed-race players like Ru join the team, and Suzuki Caiyan has also become the main goalkeeper. It can be said that when the tide of naturalization is sweeping Asia, Japanese football will add more mixed-race players trained by local leagues in the future as a response to the tide of naturalization.

Local mixed-race players are emerging in large numbers

As early as more than 10 years ago, German-Japanese left-back Takatoku Sakai and Dutch-Japanese high-school striker Mike Huff were selected for the Japanese national team, and the former even made more than 40 appearances. However, it has been a phenomenon and trend in Japanese football that the emergence of local mixed-race players has emerged in recent years.

First of all, it is concentrated in the short goalkeeper position of Japanese football, and there is an outbreak. In the front, there are Yuji Yabuki (German-Japanese mixed-race), William Pope (American-Japanese mixed-race), and then there are Suzuki Ayaki (Ghana/Japanese mixed-race), Kokubo Reio (Nigerian/Japanese mixed-race), Nozawa Daishi (American-Japanese mixed-blood), Nagata Mio (German-Japanese mixed-blood) 4 "post-00" mixed-race goalkeepers are collectively on the top. Ayaka Suzuki is already the main goalkeeper of the Japanese national team, Reio Kokubo and Daishi Nozawa have both been selected for the Japanese Olympic team, and Mio Nagata has also been selected for the German U19 national youth team.

The presence of local mixed-race players in the Japanese national team is gradually rising from the younger age group. It is enough to show the patience and systematization of Japanese football in the development of mixed-race players.

In the 2019 U17 World Junior Championships, Japan's U17 national junior team defeated the favorite Netherlands in the group stage, and the Japanese national junior team had four mixed-race players. In addition to goalkeepers Ayaka Suzuki and Daishi Nozawa, there are also left-back Daiya Hata and midfielder Jeanru Fujita. Among these 4 people, except for Nozawa Daishi, the remaining 3 are the absolute main force, which means that the proportion of mixed-race players in the Japanese U17 national junior team has reached nearly 30%.

In September 2020, as many as six of the 29-man training roster for the U20 World Youth Championship were mixed-race players. At this year's Paris Olympics, the Japanese Olympic team also has four mixed-race players, in addition to Reio Kokubo, Daishi Nozawa and captain Jeanru Fujita, as well as midfielder Megumi Sato (Colombian/Japanese mixed-race). In addition, the mixed-race players who have been called up by the Japanese Olympic team include defender Amway Chase (American-Japanese mixed-race) and left-back Kashifu (Ghana/Japanese-mixed-race), who also made his debut for the Japanese national team in 2023.

Of course, the Japan Football Association is also concerned about mixed-race players who have grown up and developed overseas.

For example, Barcelona's youth team has 19-year-old full-back Hitoki Takahashi (Argentine/Japanese mixed race), who was shortlisted for the "World's Top 60 Best Rising Stars" selected by the British newspaper "The Guardian". Born in Hong Kong, 20-year-old right-back Jiying Maeda (mixed English-Japanese) who plays for Blackburn Rovers in the Championship has been playing in England since the age of 12. In addition, midfielder Mohamed Samana (Indian-Japanese), who wore the number 10 shirt in the Japan Under-18 national team, midfielder Apelkamp Madai (German-Japanese), who wore the number 10 in the German Under-21 national youth team, and 23-year-old high school striker Solomon Sakuragawa (Nigerian/Japanese).

Coupled with the emergence of local mixed-race players, Japanese football is enough to build a full mixed-race 11-man squad. It is conceivable that in the future, the Japanese national team will have more mixed-race players, which will become a positive response to the tide of Japanese football embracing naturalization.

Higher and stronger, the Football Association is strongly supporting

As early as three years ago, the chairman of the Technical Committee of the Japanese Football Association, Yasuji Tamamachi, publicly encouraged Japanese mixed-race players to obtain Japanese nationality and become an emerging "bonanza" for the Japanese team to select talents. At that time, Koji said that there were about 50 mixed-race athletes with Japanese nationality, and the Japanese Football Association would conduct a comprehensive investigation and support for mixed-race players to strengthen the Japanese national team. Japan's Nationality Law stipulates that Japanese nationals who can choose their nationality before the age of 20 must make a final choice of nationality before they reach the age of 22. The Japan Football Association will not only fully support mixed-race players who grew up in Japan to choose Japanese nationality as soon as possible, but will also look for mixed-race players with Japanese ancestry overseas and encourage them to naturalize in Japan.

The Japan Football Association has always wanted to bridge the gap between the players in terms of height, intensity and speed with the strong teams in Europe and the United States. Mixed-race players are generally able to make up for the above disadvantages, for example, the four "post-00" mixed-race goalkeepers are all more than 1.90 meters tall and have the physical fitness of modern large goalkeepers. Solomon Sakuragawa, who is 1.91 meters tall, is the strongest high school forward in the J2 League, and is regarded as the forward hope for the Japanese team to compete with the tall defenders of Europe and the United States in the future.

The Japanese Football Association is very open to mixed-race players, in addition to the consideration of improving the height, confrontation ability and speed of the Japanese team as soon as possible, the underlying logic is also that the aging of Japanese society has led to a smaller and smaller selection of local youth.

Japan has entered an era of increasing reliance on foreign workers and employees to sustain its economy and society, and the fact that these foreigners have settled in Japan and married and had children means that mixed-race teenagers will become an increasingly important source of choice for the future of Japanese football.

The Japan Football Association believes that this is the stage of diversification of football talent that developed countries in Europe have already experienced, and it is natural for Japanese football to catch up with this trend. Unlike other Asian countries, the level of the J-League and the Japanese football youth training system are among the best in Asia, which can ensure that local mixed-race players get enough football enlightenment and training, and at the same time, take advantage of the very mature foreign system of Japanese football to continue their studies in Europe. This complete football talent training system is the advantage of Japanese football over other Asian football powers. Moreover, these homegrown mixed-race players do not have the integration problems that are common in other countries when they bring in naturalized players from overseas. In the midst of the surging tide of naturalization in Asia, Japanese football has found its own track with unique advantages.