Families, right? They can be supportive and they can also be over-present in your lives. We often saw that even in sports, where fathers (e.g. Ball family in the NBA) or mothers (e.g. Adrien Rabiot’s agent) can be a lot to juggle for young sportive profiles. And Japan made no exceptions, especially when honoring your family and making them proud is so important. And that’s where the protagonist of this piece comes into play.
He’s a young kid from Hamada City, Shimane, one of the most remote Prefectures in Japan. So much that the kid himself later in life said: “When I can give some recommendations or souvenirs from Shimane, I often advice the “akaten” (which is basically a spicy and deep-fried fish paste)”. And he’s into football, but his father is the engine pushing behind his physical development – so much that he almost made the kid quit the sport all together.
In his high school days, the kid went under rigorous training even outside of normal practice sessions: he was subjected to 10 laps on a steep slope near home, before and after practice. And nonetheless, his father told him anyway to quit football due to a scandal, but the kid persisted. Actually, he saw it like a tipping point – the moment that defined his resilience in the pursuit of his dream.
That kid is today among the senators at a two-times J1 champion team, Vissel Kobe. That’s where all started for Daiju Sasaki, who joined as a rough diamond and kept polishing his game, to the point where he’s now among the vice-captains of the team and he’s become a true fan favorite among supporters. Furthermore, he’s become a valuable a J.Leaguer – something that wasn’t written in the stars coming from Shimane with his story.
From Shimane to Brazil
To give you a perspective over Shimane Prefecture, you have to get a few data first. It’s one of the few Prefectures where there’s no pro-team in the Japanese football ladder, and that’s not going to change soon. Furthermore, Shimane is 19 among Japanese prefectures for area, but it’s second-last for population (just roughly 640,000 people – mostly in the capital city, Matsue). Therefore, we’re not looking exactly to a rampant, underdog story here.
And that’s why Sasaki joining Vissel Kobe youth ranks makes the story even bigger. After growing up at Iwami Espirit FC, and then switching to Les Paul Hamada, Sasaki entered the youth ranks of Vissel in 2015, when he was just 17. At the time, Kobe described him as “an offensive all-round player who combines physical strength and height with a soft touch on the ball”. And there were some glimpses of promise there when Sasaki featured with the first team.
In 2018, the young midfielder debuted despite the “Galacticos”-era was starting due to Rakuten’s money push. He had a crazy week at the beginning of April 2018, scoring his first pro-goal in the J.League Cup in an away win at Shonan Bellmare, then he scored also his maiden goal in his J1 official debut League against Urawa Red Diamonds. It seemed like everything was setting itself up to make Sasaki a star, but then someone came along to scoop him up.
In fact, Palmeiras wanted him on loan. They made an offer and Kobe accepted, loaning the young kid to the Brazilian giant for a year. The problem is that Sasaki didn’t even make the bench in a full year spent in Brazil. It was tough to find space in such a good team like Palmeiras, but the whole experience felt like a disappointment. Actually, when Sasaki came back from the loan in August 2019, he didn’t make the bench either for Vissel. Was it all over, at just 20 years old?
Rebuilding
Instead, Sasaki already anticipated his attitude: “There have been many challenges in my year in Brazil, but I have also become tougher mentally and physically”. Combine that with the fact the “Galacticos”-project was sinking with the stars becoming older and older, and then something of an opportunity opened up for Sasaki. He played also in so many different roles – it seemed like head coach Thorsten Fink wanted to understand what to do with him.
Once general manager Atsuhiro Miura was appointed as a head coach, the guys who came through Vissel Kobe youth ranks finally had a breakthrough. Sasaki’s minutes bumped up in 2021, from 510 to 1026, to again another leap in 2023 (1950). Injuries broke his development in 2022 (letting him feature just 19 times in the league), but the return of Takayuki Yoshida as a head coach gave the final push to his breakthrough.
If 2023 was an appetizer of his potential, 2024 definitely unlocked his possibilities. From being a ductile super-sub – capable of playing many different positions in Yoshida’s 4-3-3 –, Sasaki became a Swiss knife capable of playing at least three positions (striker, winger, and offensive midfielder). Not only that – he heavily contributed to the back-to-back J1 titles won by Vissel Kobe, plus he scored four goals in six Emperor’s Cup matches in 2024 (including the winner in the semifinals against Kyoto Sanga).
2025 just confirmed all his progresses. He had the highest amount of league minutes in his career (2229 – more than Yuya Osako and Yoshinori Muto, to give a comparison), provided seven assists and scored five goals in J1, plus three more in the AFC Champions League. And that hasn’t changed under new head coach Michael Skibbe, who’s featuring Sasaki heavily both in the J1 “100 Year-Vision League” and in the AFC Champions League.
The Final Form
It’s incredible how Vissel Kobe are finding a solution to an ageing squad that’s antithetical to what’s been their approach a decade ago. In the Rakuten splashing-money era, the answer to clinching trophies was basically having former FC Barcelona players in the roster: Andrés Iniesta, David Villa, Thomas Vermaelen, Bojan Krkic, Sergi Samper. And I’d argue that the best investment among these players wasn’t even Iniesta, but rather Sergi Samper.
Once Yoshida took over, that approach changed and it brought two J1 titles and a national double in 2024. And that approach meant no more superstars (I mean, at least not foreign ones), but rather focusing on internal development – whether it meant developing players from the academy or from university into starters (Daiya Maekawa, Tetsushi Yamanaka) or bargains on both the internal and the international markets (Kyogo Furuhashi, but also Mathias Thuler and Ryuho Kikuchi).
Daiju Sasaki is the final embodiment of this approach. He came through the youth ranks; he gradually worked his way up from “young prospect” to “super-sub”, to finally “starter”, even “senator” at this point. Last but not least, he’s become a fan favourite and a player who can featured in different positions, with good technique and incredible stamina. I think we’ll never see him in a Samurai Blue shirt, but he can become an excellent J.Leaguer.
All this development made Sasaki always remember about the struggles he had, whether they were in Kobe or Brazil. And that’s why he created a local competition in Shimane, the “D Dream Cup”, to encourage young kids there to take the path of football, back in 2024: “Football is something you should enjoy – it’s something that I learned as a kid, and I still haven’t forgotten that. I hope this tournament will be an opportunity for children to pursue their dreams”.
Father Time always finds a way.
