prince's green

Chapter 6 The Development Path of Japanese Football

The university semester arrangement in Japan is different from that in China. Japanese universities start at the beginning of April every academic year and end at the end of March of the following year. The period from April to September is the first semester (the last semester), and the period from October to March of the next year is the latter period. (next semester).The holidays of Japanese universities are also different from those in China. There are three holidays every year, summer vacation from early August to the end of September, winter vacation from late December to mid-January, and spring vacation from early February to the end of March.

In other words, Japanese students only have about 5 months of vacation every year. This is one of the reasons why Japanese students often go out to work during the vacation. The vacation time is really long, and they need to find something to kill time.

Ringer's summer vacation this year, apart from working part-time, is practicing basketball. The two-month vacation will soon pass, and the second semester will start soon.

Two months of practice made Ringer improve a lot, at least he thought so, so he told Fatty about his thoughts.

"What? You want to switch careers and become a professional player? Brother, are you out of your mind? You are 20 years old, and now you say you want to play professional football. You don't think it's great to pass two people? That's our intention. Let you, buddy, you don't really think how powerful you are, do you?" The fat man did have reason to be shocked, because Ringer's decision was so sudden.

But seeing that Linge was still determined to eat weights, the fat man was even more distressed: "It's over, it's over, I dare not see your parents when I go back like this, they thought I abducted you Come to Japan, if you run to play football now, I will not be able to tell with ten mouths."

"Xiao Linzi, you are a top student at Dongdae University, why do you have to fight for jobs with those football players? Look at the professional players in the Japanese League, how many can make money, you study hard at university, and later If you come out and find a job, you can earn more than them." The fat man was earnest.

Fatty is so worried because he doesn't have much confidence in Ringer's football. Being an ordinary professional player in a daze, at least for now, there is really no future.As far as the Japanese J-League closest to them is concerned, the average annual salary of the top J1 league players is just over 1000 million yen, which is only 60 to 70 yuan when converted into RMB. The average annual salary of the J2 league is only about 500 million yen. The lower leagues are even lower.

It seems that it is not too little, but for a horizontal comparison, the current average annual salary in Japan is more than 400 million yen, which means that the players in the J2 league are only equal to the salary standard of ordinary people. It is dragging the hind legs of Japan's GDP.Lin Gedong's status as a college student, after graduation, he randomly found a white-collar job for two years, and his salary was higher than most people in the J1 league, so the fat man felt that there was something wrong with his head.

China has entered the era of Jinyuan football. Many people think that playing football earns a lot of money, but in Japan, only playing in the J1 league is considered a good job. Not as good, especially in recent years, there have been news of low-level league players stealing things from convenience stores from time to time (the salary is too low to make ends meet, and theft is inevitable), and the image of low-level league players is not very good. of.

"Fatty, I'm just informing you that I've made a decision, not asking for your opinion."

"I really met a god, so tell me, how do you become a professional player?"

"I am a 20-year-old college student. It may be difficult to switch careers in other countries, but it is not difficult in Japan. The training of professional players in Japan is club youth training plus campus football training. Many people transfer from school every year. Go play professional football."

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Club youth training plus campus football, this is the football road that Japanese footballers have explored for many years. So far, the effect is not bad, and many good players have been trained. Shinji Kagawa, Yuto Nagatomo who will soon join Inter Milan, Keisuke Honda No. 10 of AC Milan in the future, Shinji Okazaki who completed a hat-trick in the Asian Cup in 11, these stars are all cultivated under this model.

Now Japanese football ranks No. [-] in Asia for a long time, but they have also been hard-pressed, and they were also very good in the early years. Even if they are good at China, they can easily beat their level.Speaking of which, the most popular sport in Japan has long been baseball. Even now, the popularity of baseball in Japan is no less than that of football. The American Major League Baseball has always had stars from Japan. This is the long-term cultivation of baseball culture. from.

Before the 60s, few people in Japan played football, and young people played baseball. At that time, many people probably didn't even know what football was.

In 1960, Tokyo, Japan won the right to host the next 1964 Olympic Games. This was a big event for Japan, and it also gave Japanese football a chance to develop, because the Japanese government wanted to win medals for every event at home. Olympic football is One of them, so the Japanese Olympic team came into being (does it sound a bit like the model of 08 Olympic football).

At that time, there were only two types of people who played football in Japan. One type was enterprise workers. Enterprise workers’ football was influenced by Western corporate football culture. It is said that it was brought back by Japanese entrepreneurs who went abroad for inspection. , College students are the most widely seen group of people. They know that the number one sport in the world is football, not baseball as many people in Japan think.

Enterprise workers are often a group of middle-aged and elderly uncles. The Japanese Football Association can't form an Olympic team for uncles to participate in the Olympics. Therefore, the scope of selection for the Japanese Olympic team is narrowed, and the National Olympic team is selected from college students.

The University of Tokyo is the best university in Japan, and it is also the best Japanese university in line with the world. So at that time, the university football team of the University of Tokyo was the strongest football team in Japan, so the main selection target of the Japanese Olympic team was the University of Tokyo. football team.Several core players of the University of Tokyo, plus good players selected by other universities, together formed the Japanese Olympic team at that time.

Because football was not taken seriously at that time, the training venue was arranged in the football field of the University of Tokyo. At the same time, the team had the most students from the University of Tokyo, and the team uniform temporarily used the blue school uniform of the University of Tokyo. Fortunately, the Japanese Football Association still A foreign coach was invited to lead the team, otherwise this is really a grassroots team.

To what extent was Japanese football not taken seriously at that time?As the football Olympic team representing the country, they have to make concessions to the Tokyo University baseball team during training.

The University of Tokyo has only one lawn, on which both the football team and the baseball team practice. In the past, if they got together, the football team would take the initiative to give up the field to the baseball team, because baseball is the number one sport, and few people know about football Sports (in Japan at the time), this tradition was also inherited to the Japanese Olympic team born by the stepmother. If they encountered a baseball team training, they could only go to the sidelines to run laps, and the field was given over to the school baseball team.

Under such conditions, a group of young people relied on their enthusiasm to win glory for the country, and they actually achieved results. They reached the quarter-finals in the 64 local Olympics, and then won the bronze medal in the 68 Mexico Olympics. Set off a football boom in Japan.

Also because of the outstanding performance of this Olympic team, they naturally transferred to the Japanese national team. Today, the home blue jersey of the Japanese national team inherits the blue jersey tradition of the Tokyo University team at that time.

Of course, today we go back and look at it. It can be said that the grassroots team can achieve this kind of result, which has a lot of luck.

Because it was the period when Olympic football was the least valued. The teams sent by European football powers to participate in the Olympics were often composed of a few marginal players from the national team and a bunch of amateur players. Even the Nobel Prize winner Bo They all represented Denmark in the Olympic Games, and won the Olympic football silver medal with the team. This kind of Olympic team may not be much better than the Japanese National Olympic team, but I have to say that those people have indeed promoted football to every corner of Japan. , Laid the foundation for the rise of Japanese football.

(End of this chapter)