Another change of window, this time to go back to the original format – the EAFF E-1 Championship is back in the middle of Summer, with the J1 League which will stop for one week to make space for the tournament. And Japan have a title to defend, since in 2022 the Samurai Blue won the competition – surprisingly enough, it was just the second time overall, nine years after the last one.
As told already in that Summer of 2022, this is a good chance for the coach to test J.Leaguers in this competition. You can see some senators coming back and/or many, many debutants – we’ll have 12 of those this time around. Last time, we talked about three players who were trying to get a shot for Qatar 2022 – Ryuta Koike, Yasuto Wakizaka, and Makoto Mitsuta were all tipped from us to have a small shot, although none of them made the list.
The same will happen here, with some strange twists from the past – for example, Yuki Soma will play his THIRD (!) tournament in this competition, after being the MVP and the top-scorer in 2022. Or the captain Yuto Nagatomo – almost 39 years old, 142 caps to his name (second all-time) – has more caps than all the rest of the squad combined. Nagatomo himself and Kashima Antlers’ Naomichi Ueda are the only over 30 in the team.
Among the debutants, some of them deserve a proper look. We already mentioned some of them in a recent piece concerning the final seats for the flight to the 2026 FIFA World Cup (Henry Hiroki Mochizuki, Kota Tawaratsumida, Ryonosuke Sato) plus an article over Taisei Miyashiro one year ago. But this time we wanted to cover four more profiles, all at their first shot with the Samurai Blue’s jersey.
The Keeper
Nagoya Grampus are a strange creature at the moment. They brought back one of the best foreigners J.League has ever seen in Mateus Castro, but they’re not a well-run club at the moment. They spent massive amount of money (Junker, Morishima, etc.) to get higher in the table, and it’s not happening. And they lost Mitchell Langerak last Winter, with a great question mark between the posts – which might have been involuntarily solved by a youngster.
Born in 2006 in the Aichi Prefecture, Alexandre Pisano joined Nagoya Grampus’ youth ranks just in 2021. He had some call-ups for Japan U-17, but he took the stage just last year in the J.League Cup (awat at Omiya Ardija in April 2024). No one was expecting him to start – until no. 1 Daniel Schmidt got injured, and he was the second choice. He started in a very anticipated clash at the National Stadium against Shimizu S-Pulse – clean sheet at the debut in front of 52k spectators.
From there, Kenta Hasegawa has never benched him again. And Grampus have become suddenly less penetrable – four clean sheets for Pisano, just seven goals conceded in 10 games. Numbers are on his side and Nagoya Grampus suddenly needing him is a good stroke of luck for the club. Surely, for the national team it’ll be hard to emerge – Keisuke Osako, Zion Suzuki, and Kosei Tani are all six years younger than him, but only one of them plays in Europe. Who knows…
The Brain
Yuto Ozeki has been in everyone’s mind for a while. Kawasaki Frontale struggled in recent years to put together a proper youth product who could stand the test of Kaoru Mitoma, Ao Tanaka and the other who made this club invincible 4-5 years ago. Ozeki didn’t play any official game after getting promoted to the first team in 2023, but he did feature in a friendly match against Bayern Munich: “I thought I was going to be nervous – but training with Ryota (Oshima) and Atsuto (Wakizaka) helped me processing the opponent”.
This changed with him, who needed though some development time away from the Todoroki Stadium – in fact, he was sent out on loan to J3 outlet Fukushima United FC alongside a fellow teammate, Yuto Matsunagane. But if the side-back prolonged his loan to the J3 club also for 2025, Ozeki didn’t need to stay longer: 32 matches, eight goals, and a spot in the “Best XI” of the season, with Fukushima going tantalizingly close to reach J2. The return to Frontale was a must.
As Ryo Nakagawara reported in his “Shogun Soccer” report, Ozeki “is a player that can make it in Europe eventually but he’ll still need to continue to gain significant playing minutes at higher J.League levels first”. And he’s doing exactly that – he’s started just one game in J1, but he’s accumulating minutes under his belt, scoring his first goals, and he’s been crucial for Frontale to reach the AFC Champions League final (even scoring against Al-Nasr).
The Surprise
Zento Uno wasn’t even supposed to be here, despite his CV in his youth days would have told a different story. Born in Fukushima, Uno was a high-rated prospect in his younger days, when he played for Aomori Yamada High School. His inspiration was his back-then-teammate, Kuryu Matsuki, another future gem for Japan. When Uno joined Machida Zelvia, head coach Ranko Popović gave him some minutes in his rookie year.
Then the incredible happened – Go Kuroda left high school football and became the head coach of Machida Zelvia. Many expected then Uno to blossom under his old maestro, but injuries and a rising campaign by Zelvia sidelined the young midfielder. When Zelvia reached J1, there was no space for him – so Uno had to leave, first on loan, to join Shimizu S-Pulse back in the second division.
It worked – Tadahiro Akiba immediately gave him minutes in the middle of the pitch, and Uno won his second J2 title in back-to-back seasons. The defensive midfielder has played almost every J1 match this season, even sometimes being fielded as a centre-back. Surely there’s room for more improvement, but it’s tough to say if this EAFF E-1 Championship will be his only chance with the Samurai Blue.
The Rising Star
His call-up is a surprise, but not so much. Sota Nakamura is still in the middle of his rookie season, but some videos of him were already circulating before even playing the first minute as a pro. At Meiji University, he was making some waves with his performances, even becoming the top-scorer and assist leader of his Kanto division in 2023, doing the same in 2024. There were a lot of talks around him.
And it’s not an accident that Sanfrecce Hiroshima signed Nakamura for the 2025 season… back in May 2024! They clearly saw the potential and decided to make space for him in the rotation, even if it meant loaning out Makoto Mitsuta to Gamba Osaka, and letting Marcus Junior go. He scored already 8 goals and provided 7 assists – including the last-minute winner in this weekend to clinch a crucial win for Sanfrecce away in Okayama.
He had a lightning start – debut in the Japanese Super Cup as a sub, first goal in the AFC Cup, then another one in his J1 debut against Machida Zelvia, and to finish it a brace against against Nam Dinh FC in the AFC Cup. It seemed a lucky start, but Nakamura kept running – and the questions now are just two: a) can he keep this pace in his sophomore season? Because Mitsuta couldn’t; b) will he leave for Europe after the 2026 FIFA World Cup? First up, the debut with the Samurai Blue.
