Word: yasuhiko
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Dates: during 2000-2009
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...same can be said of the entire squad. Japan plays extroverted football, displaying not just rigid discipline but poetry, creativity and opportunism. "They do what they want to do quite freely," says Yasuhiko Okudera, Japan's first great soccer player who made his mark in the German Bundesliga in the 1970s. Now 50, Okudera is naturally thrilled for Japan, though he's not quite sure what to make of the Cup team personalities. "One of my German friends asked me, 'Why do they dye their hair like that?' I didn't know what to tell him," Okudera says...
...Senzoku train station in Tokyo's Meguro, strangers bowed and smiled to one another and shared special editions of newspapers published to commemorate the occasion. BABY GIRL! screamed headlines. Queues snaked around shops selling royal-birth specials. Red lanterns swayed and banners extolling congratulations hung from homes and buildings. Yasuhiko Teraza, 67, and Teruhiko Itoh, 69, both hightailed it here from across town when they heard about the birth on the TV news. "I think it's great that it's a girl," says Teraza, pulling at his gray felt baseball cap. "They've got female royalty in England...
...from 1995 to '96, agrees. "It's time for a Japanese player to do well in the Premier League," he told the daily Yomiuri. A decade ago, the prospect of a Japanese invasion of European football would have been laughable. There were some one-off success stories, such as Yasuhiko Okudera, who played in various divisions in Germany from 1977 to '86, and Kazuyoshi Miura, who appeared for Brazil's Santos and Italy's Genoa in the 1990s. But Japan did not even have its own independent professional circuit until 1993 when the J-League was launched. In the past...
...decade ago, the prospect of a Japanese invasion of European football fields would have been laughable. There were some one-off success stories: Yasuhiko Okudera who played in various divisions in Germany from 1977-86, including the Cologne F.C. side that contested the 1978 Champion's Cup. In the 1990s, Kazuyoshi Miura played briefly for Brazil's Santos and Italy's Genoa. But Japan did not even have its own independent professional circuit until 1993 when the J-League was launched?and even then the competition's brightest play came from over-the-hill foreign players like England's Gary...