Maybe the ausi keeepr Mitchell Langerek, is on his radar?
Interesting thought. He’s been settled in Japan for a long while.
It does seem as though there’s been a few Japanese players coming to the A league in recent years, particularly younger guys like Danzaki, Ibusuki and Imai and that we didn’t see before. Maybe it’s lifestyle or some such…but there must be agents and players open to the idea and it’s led to Sakai coming to Auckland and now Chief on a ticky tour.
Hope he’s hydrating. It is hot right now!
The rise in quality of football in Japan (over the last 20 years or so) has been astronomical. Having larger population than say Australia to draw from, they can identify young talent much better now. The main difficulty over the early period (then) was coaching quality, which led to a large influx of foreign coaches (including Australians) who did well there overall. But regardless, it is the talent development that made Japanese players now an excellent option in terms of quality, regretfully not always affordable though.