You know, here at J. League Regista, I tried to be a “jack-of-all-trades”. It’s nice to cover a lot around Japanese football, whether it’s the top-flight or the regional leagues. Whether it’s past, present, or the future. Whether we’re talking of a Japanese star rising up from a remote place of the country, or a foreign player who found his home in the Land of the Rising Sun. That’s why our columns tend to cover many topics, but something was missing.
I’ve always been fascinated by the players who had immense class, something intangible you can’t really measure with today’s football metrics. To give you an example, the likes of Juan Roman Riquelme, Gheorghe Hagi, Manuel Rui Costa, or Enzo Francescoli – those no. 10s who had a great vision on the pitch, and they were maybe “floor generals”, but I think we can all agree they wouldn’t have shone today as bright as they used to be, because of how football has changed (certainly not because of their skills).
With a more muscular and analytical football, with flashy rhythms, slow-paced players are even more to appreciate. And that happened as well in Japanese football, and that’s why we created “Ten-sai”, which contains the word “10” (the number to usually identify a football genius, a pure offensive demiurge), but “tensai” is also the word for “genius” or “prodigy” in Japanese. And we picked some criteria to line up our candidates for this series.
No European football in their careers; they wore the “10” for at least five seasons, whether at one club or during their careers; and true leaders wherever they played, plus they’ve never been told in another JLR series. After telling the story of Masashi Nakayama – one true legend for Kashima Antlers – we moved nearby to Ibaraki. In fact, Vegalta Sendai counted for almost two decades on an icon up in the North: Ryang Yong-gi.
The Zainichi Potential
Well, speaking of “Zanichi” touches upon a tough nerve in Japanese history. Koreans are the second largest ethnic group in Japan after Chinese immigrants. Japan ruled Korea for 35 years, and this triggered the creation of a whole generation of descendants with Japanese citizenship, but with Korean roots. Back in 2024, almost 500,000 people were Korean citizens living in Japan. And some of them are pretty famous within Japanese football history.
When it comes down to managers, take Cho Kwi-jae, who just signed with Urawa Red Diamonds, but had a wonderful stint with Kyoto Sanga, and started his legend in the J.League-sphere with Shonan Bellmare. You could also mention Kim Myung-hwi, a man who did so well on the pitch results-wise (with Sagan Tosu and Avispa Fukuoka), but who was also the protagonist of two separate power harassment scandals.
And then you can add so many players:
- Park Iru-gyu, the keeper from Yokohama F. Marinos who won one J1 title with them and probably deserved a shot at the Japanese national team.
- Jong Tae-se, the man who most of neutral fans identified with “North Korea’s Rooney”, but he was rather a spectacular and flashy no. 9 who also featured in Europe.
- Tadanari Lee, who scored the winning goal in the 2011 AFC Asian Cup final for Japan against Australia and enjoyed both a florid J.League career and a stint at Southampton.
Ryang Yong-gi was a bit of the opening feature. He was one of the first Zainichi players to make it to the pros, and probably the one who led the way towards this generation I just mentioned.
A Legend born in Sendai
Born in Osaka, Ryang Yong-gi almost felt he didn’t have a shot because of his mixed path. He was basically considered a foreign player, and J.League had a pretty strict restriction at the time. He tried to go to a Japanese university (Hannan University) to overcome the issue, but the hurdle was still there when he wanted to go pro. A deal fell through with JEF United Chiba in 2004 because of this, and Kawasaki Frontale decided to pass on him despite Ryang featured in their training camp.
Ryang was actually travelling to Korea – he gave up on Japan and he was planning to change nationality and just joining a K-League side. Instead, his high school coach introduced him to Vegalta Sendai, right when the deal with JEF United collapsed. Back then, the head coach was Makoto Teguramori, who then became a legend in Sendai. Vegalta tried a lot to come back to J1, but only in 2009 they delivered a promotion back to the top-flight, which felt like liberation for Ryang.
He immediately became a fan favorite, playing 16 years for the club – even in the toughest of times, the 2011 Great East Japan Earthquake. When it happened, he was driving: “I thought my tires had gone flat or I had driven over the curb, but the shaking continued and I saw the windows of shops shaking too”. In the charity match on March 29, 2011, he was selected as the only non-Japanese players in the “J.League TEAM AS ONE” playing against Japan.
Ryang Yong-gi enjoyed a really long stint in the top-flight, and stayed with Vegalta Sendai until 2019, before his contract expired. He joined Sagan Tosu for two seasons, but he couldn’t close his career like this, and he came back to Sendai in 2022, to feature for two more seasons before retirement in December 2023: “I feel a little sad, but I also feel that I have accomplished everything I could. […] When I joined Vegalta in 2004, I never imagined that I would be able to play after the age of 40.”
The Legacy
I think there are three kinds of legacy here. First one: the Zainichi community. He’ll always bring with himself the regret of not making it for the 2010 FIFA World Cup squad for North Korea (which he would have totally deserved), but he represented the national team in two AFC Asian Cups, even scoring one goal – the opening one in the match of 2015 against Saudi Arabia. Furthermore, with him on the pitch, North Korea won the AFC Challenge Cup.
Second one: Ryang embodied and lived through the whole growth of Vegalta Sendai, from perennial J2 side to almost title-winner in 2012. For him, they held the first retirement match in the history of the club in December 2024. And if you look back at 2004, when Ryang first joined Vegalta, the club completely changed – they have now a lot of J1 seasons under their belt, played in the AFC Champions League, and they could be on the trajectory to go back again to the top-flight.
Third – the way he mixed a classy touch and a no. 10 attitude with being a resilient player. Not just about his North Korean story, but even on the pitch – Ryang Yong-gi had the record of consecutive matches played in J2 (145), and until 2018, he always played at least 26 games per season. It’s an impressive number – and speaks volumes about how Ryang almost reached the age of 42 before retiring from the pitch.
Right now, Ryang Yong-gi has a double role – he’s an official ambassador for Vegalta Sendai, but he also manages IRIS FC in the second division of the Tohoku Soccer League. He started well, winning his first four games as the head coach. Only time will tell if he’ll be able to leave a even bigger mark on Sendai and the history of its club.
