Japan Football Blog

Mike Havenaar made the switch from J. League to Eredivise this winter, moving to Vitesse Arnhem. Last week he came off the bench to make his debut. Today, he came off the bench once again, and scored his first Eredivise goal, against giants PSV no less. Vitesse ended up losing 3-1. Mike came off the [...]

Here are the winners of the three Japan Footblog Player of the Year awards. Shinji Kagawa is the winner of the Japanese Player in Europe award. While he was injured for the second half of last season, he has played well for so far this season and has combined well with the likes of Mario Gotze and [...]

Surprise, surprise. There were no other nominees for this award. Tadanari Lee’s 109th minute, Asian Cup winning volley is the 2011 Japan Footblog Goal of the Year. Feel free to suggest other notable goals, but I doubt they’ll be better or more important than this one. Look forward to the award winners, which will be [...]

Here are the nominees for the inaugural end-of-year Japan Footblog Player of the Year Awards. Please let me know if there are any glaring misses or players that are more deserving. Japanese Player in Europe: This award is for the player who was the most important for his club team. Bonus points if they were really [...]

The blog is back! Sorry for the lack of posts over the past three weeks, I’ve been busy with finals and the holiday season. To make up for it I’ll be posting regularly for the next week and a half. First off, an update on how Japanese players have been doing over in the European [...]

Shinji Kagawa played most of Dortmund’s 1-0 win at Bayern. The win brought Borussia to within two points of Bayern, who have been in first place for most of the season. In Europe, Dortmund lost away 2-1 to Arsenal. Kagawa scored his first Champions League goal in stoppage time, but that will be scant consolation [...]

There it is. Japan’s first loss since the World Cup. First let me apologize for the lack of update over the last couple of weeks. Been busy, etc. Secondly, I know that Japan had already secured progression into the next round of qualification, but I’m still a bit sad because of this result. Here are [...]

Japan have qualified for the fourth round of World Cup qualifying, with a 4-0 away win at Tajikistan. Shinji Okazaki had two goals, while Yasuyuki Konno and Ryoichi Maeda added a goal each. While it wasn’t the 8-0 hammering that they dished out when the two teams met a month ago, it was a good [...]

Shinji Kagawa was the Japanese star this weekend, as he scored a goal and had two glorious assists. He has been criticized this season for his inconsistent play, but he was in top form in Dortmund’s 5-1 demolition of Wolfsburg. He set up Mario Gotze with a slick backheel for the first, then scored the second [...]

Takashi Usami scored his first goal for Bayern in a 6-0 cup win over FC Ingolstadt 04 from Bundesliga 2. He came on for Toni Kroos in the 73rd minute and played on the right. He scored in the 90th minute, playing a neat one-two with Ivica Olic to get through on goal, and then [...]