It’s a new year and yet if feels old. We haven’t still got rid of some of our world-related problems: COVID-19 is here to stay until vaccines are going to be fully implemented, the rise in cases seems common to many countries and it’s tough to read what will happen in the next months. J. League has done a solid job in establishing practices to bring the 2020 home, but they’re no different from NBA, NHL and Premier League.
While we’re still figuring out if the start of the 2021 season will be the announced one (if not delayed until June like in 2020, everything’s gonna be fine), a story broke out in the J. League-sphere. One month ago, Michael Olunga – Kashiwa Reysol’s sniper and J1 top-scorer – surprised everyone by clinching the MVP Award for last season, even though many were expecting a rookie to collect that silverware.
If the Kenyan striker stole the show, it’s because there was some ground for that outcome. Even though our readers awarded Kaoru Mitoma and his maiden season with Kawasaki Frontale in the Regista Awards, it’s undeniable that Olunga improved himself, scoring even more goals than he did in J2 and probably making Reysol overperform in a strange return to J1 League (Reysol ended seventh on the table and lost the J. League Cup final to FC Tokyo).
This hasn’t come out of the blue. African players have come to Japan not with the same numbers of Europeans or South Americans, but some of them have left a mark in Japanese football. And they’re still doing that today, albeit cases are just a few: ask Peter Utaka or Simão Mate Junior. Despite Olunga left a few days ago to join Al-Duhail in Qatar (a good chunk of money for Reysol, anyway), we wondered if this could be the start of a new tendency.
To talk about it, we gathered two African football experts and ask them some questions about this link between this continent and the Japanese championship.
A historic first time
Class ’94 and born in Nairobi, Michael Olunga had a Plan B beyond football: he studied geospatial engineering and tried to pursue a degree in his home country. That’s why he got the “Football Engineer” nickname, which he clearly likes and helped shaping a little bit of his narrative (it’s in his Twitter bio). At the same time, though, to clearly get how many expectations there were around him and his growth, we needed to talk with someone.
That’s where Bonface Osano came in play: he’s a pundit, writer and he ran for the presidency of the Football Kenya Federation in 2020. We asked him a couple of questions, starting from a look to Olunga’s career. He had great performances both at home and in Sweden, but struggled in Spain and then joined Reysol in the Summer of 2018. We asked Osano if he forecasted such a rise in the striker’s performances:
“Olunga’s move to Japan was a shocker, we didn’t see it coming after going to LaLiga, one of the most followed leagues in Kenya. There was though an understanding, albeit reluctantly, he needed regular game time. But there’s nothing surprising about his success in Japan: having followed his career step by step, he usually starts slow, but given ample time you can expect him to deliver and surpass expectations”.
And he did, despite Olunga had to adapt to a different reality. Kashiwa went through an unexpected relegation and had to settle to J2 reality. But the club kept most of its pieces, including the striker. With Nelsinho back on the bench, Reysol worked on their structure, but then endured a wonderful run of results and Olunga was crucial for winning the league, scoring 27 goals (including eight past Kyoto Sanga in the final game of the year).
When we probably thought we had seen enough, the striker stepped up his game a notch and proved he was the real deal even in the top tier. He immediately scored on the first match of the 2020 J1 season and didn’t stop after the forced break: he brought home 28 goals in 32 games, providing a range of skills and basically scoring against every team in J1 (only Oita Trinita and FC Tokyo didn’t give up).
And while we’re sure J. League has taken the chance to promote the brand of the championship both in Africa and in Kenya through Olunga’s performances (especially in the last month), we also asked Osano if at this point he would recommend other African players to take the leap and try an experience in Japan, which is a country that has seen less African players than the close Chinese Super League, for example.
“I think, like other Asian leagues, J. League is still viewed as a destination for players who are winding up their careers, but I believe Olunga’s success has helped change that narrative to an extent. So yes, I expect more players from Africa taking the same route”.
And he might be not the only one to see it that way.
Africa and J. League, an unexpected match?
In fact, it wasn’t the first time that someone told that African players should have been scouted more in the last years. And this got us wondering if there’s a new possible road opened by Olunga’s experience: can we see more African players in J. League in the next seasons? Can J. League exploit this link to promote their brand in another continent? And how this match would even work?
To answer some of these questions, we even got in contact with a well-managed page about African football, “Sandals for Goalposts”. With them, we tried to understand several aspects of this unexpected relationship, starting from a clear point: after the Olunga experiment and giving how other leagues did it in previous decades, might there be a chance for J. League pull off an attention boost in Africa?
“I doubt that to be honest – said to us Salim Masoud Said, the Chief Editor of the project –. But whenever an East African player, particularly one from football-mad Kenya or Tanzania, comes over to play in Japan you’ll get the sort of interest Olunga received. His feat has definitely brought them together for the moment, and it surely paves the way for more Kenyan players to see the benefits of a career in Japan”.
As Salim said, there might be a chance, but there a lot of dynamics intertwining between each other and they all need to fit somehow. Looking at Olunga, there were some clear factors that helped this rise: Reysol desperately needed a solid no. 9 (that’s one of the reasons they got relegated in 2018 in the first place), the striker needed to re-boost his profile and the match worked perfectly in J2, where they both had to time to craft this partnership.
Other ventures might not have been so lucky. Just look at some examples from recent times in J1 and J2: Achille Emaná, Isma, Moestafa El Kabir or Lassad Nouioui. Either because of injuries or unsolid choices, these moves didn’t work out, leaving nothing in terms of legacy. So you can only quote a few decent examples of matching between African players and J. League, like Seydou Doumbia, Wilfried Sanou or especially Patrick M’Boma.
But if the stint of the Cameroonian striker in Osaka seems almost unmatchable in this day and age (he scored 29 goals in 33 league matches, before leaving for Italy and coming back to Japan in mid-2000s with Tokyo Verdy and Vissel Kobe), there’s gotta be for sure more opportunities to see African players thriving in J. League. That’s why we asked to Salim if African players might start considering Japan instead of China and which factors might refrain them to make this move:
“Money is of course always a big factor. But then there’s distance from their home country (and from family and friends), a different language and a different culture. Another factor is because if there are no pathways to get to these countries – either through clubs or via agents – then it’s hard for the idea to enter into players’ heads to have a career there.
Hopefully the success of Olunga has opened the door for others in the sense that Japanese clubs will be more open-minded in recruiting from East Africa and, equally, players can see it as a possible destination for their career where they otherwise wouldn’t have considered it”.
The future as a possible destination
Olunga made history not just because he won the MVP Award, but because he was the first African player to do so. Out of the 28 MVPs that J. League ever recognized in their first division, ten have been non-Japanese. But among those, eight were Brazilians, mostly players who had international recognition or experience in European football (Jorginho and Dunga were the backbone of the squad which won the 1994 FIFA World Cup).
The two non-Brazilians have been unique profiles: a legend not only of J. League, but of European football, like Dragan Stojković (who also enjoyed a good run as a manager) and Olunga himself, who had a terrific season in a crazy-paced year. But we asked to Salim if we could see some African players taking the chance and going directly to J. League as a reputation-boost, maybe even tipping some names who could so.
“This is a tough question to answer. A lot of things need to align for an East African to end up in Japan. Olunga and Simao Mate had experience of playing in Spain, so maybe someone else like that, who has moved to a big league and it’s not worked out, could see down the line Japan as an option. Or, now that Olunga has opened doors, why not go straight from East Africa to Japan?”.
It’s really tough to say, but we can’t hide the fact that we would be curious to see if this partnership will go forward and find new traction in the next future. We’re talking also about the ratings: if African players could come to Japan, that would just help with the quality of clubs and the scouting (leading to solid capital gains, like it happened for Reysol with Olunga), but also drive new spectators and fans towards Japan.
It’s a mission that the international department is surely trying to pursue for the rest of Asia – J. League is probably already the best league of the continent – and for other continents, but we wonder if “opportunity made a thief”. If the success of Olunga might open a path that J. League never saw coming. But that’s why 2021 and future seasons will be interesting to watch: who knows if J. League can also campaign in that land with their stories.
Well, this ends our piece and our journey throughout this topic. We wanna thank both Mr. Bonface Osano (you can find him here on Twitter) and Mr. Salim Masoud Said from “Sandals for Goalposts” (you can look up to their feeds here and here): their opinions surely helped us in understanding a little more about possible ramifications from this development. See you soon!
