Japan's national football team: thirty years of a project nobody saw coming

In 1992, Japan had no professional football league. Thirty-two years later, at the start of the 2026 World Cup, the Japanese national team arrives at the tournament with ten starters at top European clubs — Liverpool, Arsenal, Brighton, Freiburg, Monaco — with two recent victories over Germany and Spain in the same tournament, and with a generation of players that no longer surprises anyone in Europe. The journey between those two points is a story of long-term planning, of failures that became levers, and of a country that decided to learn football the same way it had learned to make cars or electronics: by studying the best, importing what it needed, and building on it for decades.

I’ve lived in Japan long enough to have watched football from inside the country. I’ve been to J.League matches, watched Yokohama F. Marinos at Nissan Stadium — the same stadium where the 2002 World Cup final was played — and understood that Japan’s relationship with this sport is unlike any other country I’ve known. It’s not visceral passion in the European sense. It’s something more patient, more constructed, more collective. This is the story of how they got here.

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The starting point: a country without professional football

In 1992, football in Japan was amateur. The Japan Soccer League had existed since the 1960s, but it was a competition between company teams — Nissan, Yomiuri, Furukawa — where players were company employees who combined football with their regular jobs. The level was competent but provincial. Japan had never appeared at a World Cup. The national team reached the 1968 Mexico Olympics and won a surprising bronze medal, with top scorer Kunishige Kamamoto netting seven goals in the tournament, but that remained an isolated achievement with no follow-through.

What did have follow-through was a manga. In 1981, Captain Tsubasa — known in Europe as Flash Kicker or Oliver & Benji — began publication. Yōichi Takahashi’s comic about a boy prodigy obsessed with football became a generational phenomenon. Millions of Japanese children grew up wanting to be like its protagonist. When decades later Hidetoshi Nakata, Shinji Kagawa, or Andrés Iniesta — who publicly declared his devotion to the manga — talked about their influences, Captain Tsubasa was always on the list. It’s hard to measure how much a comic contributed to the development of a national team, but the generation that founded the J.League and reached the first World Cup was exactly the generation that grew up reading it.

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1993: the year that changed everything, and the Tragedy of Doha

On 15 May 1993, the first match of the professional J.League was played. Verdy Kawasaki against Yokohama Marinos, in front of 60,000 spectators. The league started with ten clubs, generous budgets funded by founding corporations, and — in a strategic decision that would prove fundamental — with a significant number of foreign stars specifically contracted to raise the level: Zico, the Brazilian who had been one of the best players in the world, was the first. Then came Gary Lineker (briefly), Dragan Stojković, Salvatore Schillaci, Pierre Littbarski.

The idea wasn’t decorative. It was pedagogical. Young Japanese players would train, play and live alongside world-class footballers. They would see close-up how they prepared a session, how they managed a difficult match, how they understood the game. In ten years, that transfer of knowledge would show.

But 1993 would also bring the greatest trauma in Japanese football history.

On 28 October 1993, at the Al-Ali Stadium in Doha, Qatar, Japan played their final qualifying match for the 1994 World Cup. They needed a draw against Iraq to qualify for the first time in their history. With two minutes remaining, the score was 2-1 to Japan, and the match seemed won. Then an Iraqi player headed a corner kick and the ball entered the Japanese net. 2-2. There was no time to respond. The final whistle sounded thirty seconds later.

Japanese players cried on the pitch. The images went around the country. The “Tragedy of Doha” (ドーハの悲劇) became a date that any Japanese football fan of that generation remembers the way others remember their team’s worst defeats.

What nobody knew then was that this failure was going to be the catalyst.

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1998: finally at a World Cup

Qualification for France 1998 also arrived dramatically — Japan needed an intercontinental play-off against Iran, with the second leg in Lyon, to secure their first World Cup — but it arrived. For the first time in history.

The team was modest. Japan lost all three group stage matches against Argentina, Croatia and Jamaica, though they scored against the Jamaicans through a 21-year-old Hidetoshi Nakata who was already playing in Italy and who at that tournament was recognised as one of the best players in the group. The balance was three defeats, four goals conceded and two scored, but the message was clear: Japan was now at the level where these things are decided.

Nakata embodied something important. He wasn’t just a good player — he was someone who had decided to go to Italy to learn football the same way Japanese people of his generation went to learn languages or technology. He arrived at Perugia, then Roma where he won the Scudetto, then Parma. In Europe he learned to demand of himself the same standards as the best on the continent. When he returned to the national team, he brought that knowledge with him.

The Nakata model would become the standard model for Japanese football.

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2002: hosts in the Round of 16

The 2002 World Cup was jointly organised by Japan and South Korea, in the first edition of the tournament held in Asia. For Japan, hosting the tournament was a national project: new or renovated stadiums, improved transport infrastructure, guaranteed international attention. And the national team delivered.

Japan won their group with victories over Russia and Tunisia, and reached the Round of 16 where they fell to Turkey (1-0). It wasn’t the most brilliant knockout match, but having made it past the group stage at home — in a tournament remembered for the chaos of results it produced — was a genuine step forward.

The final was played at Nissan Stadium in Yokohama, between Germany and Brazil. Ronaldo scored twice. Brazil won 2-0. That stadium, where years later I would watch J.League matches with Marinos, holds within its walls the memory of the only World Cup final ever played in Japan.

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The learning decade: 2006-2018

The following years brought ups and downs. In Germany 2006 Japan fell in the group stage. In South Africa 2010 they reached the Round of 16 again — eliminated by Paraguay on penalties, in a match that ended 0-0 after extra time. In Brazil 2014, another group stage exit.

But beneath those results, something was consolidating. The route for young Japanese players to European leagues had become a highway. Kagawa joined Dortmund in 2010 and won two Bundesligas before going to Manchester United. Keisuke Honda moved through CSKA Moscow, AC Milan, Pachuca. Yuto Nagatomo played at Inter Milan for years. Makoto Hasebe at Frankfurt. Maya Yoshida at Southampton.

What mattered wasn’t just that they were going to Europe. It was that some of them were reaching significant clubs and genuinely playing, in matches that mattered. The daily demand of competing at the highest European level was forming the generation that would later take Japan to its greatest World Cup results.

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2018: the match against Belgium

The 2018 World Cup Round of 16 match between Japan and Belgium is probably the most talked-about match in Japanese national team history. And it is for the wrong reasons.

Japan scored in the 48th minute and in the 52nd. 2-0. The 61st-ranked team in the world had been beating the 3rd-ranked team for 42 minutes with football that left half the planet speechless. Belgian fans in the stadium had gone quiet. Anyone who valued well-played football was watching something unexpected.

Belgium equalised before the break in extra time. 2-2. And in the 94th minute, after a quick goal kick, four touches and Chadli’s run, the score was 3-2 to Belgium. There was no time to react.

What happened after the match became news around the world for a reason unrelated to the result: the Japanese dressing room was found completely tidy, clean, with a note written in Russian that said «спасибо» — thank you. The Japanese delegation left the venue as if they had never been there, with a note of thanks to the host country. It was the most Japanese way possible to lose a football match.

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2022: the samurai nobody expected

The 2022 World Cup in Qatar was where the Japanese national team broke every previous expectation.

First match in Group E: Germany. The four-time world champions, with Neuer in goal and Müller on the pitch. Germany scored first from the penalty spot. Japan equalised in the second half through Doan, and in the 83rd minute Asano scored 2-1 with a chest control and volley that became one of the goals of the tournament. Final score: Japan 2, Germany 1.

Third group match: Spain, world champions in 2010. Japan trailed 1-0 at half-time. In the second half Doan and Tanaka scored within seven minutes. 2-1. Japan topped the group, Germany eliminated.

VAR reviewed Tanaka’s goal for what felt like eternal minutes. The ball appeared to have gone completely over the goal line before Mitoma kept it alive with his toe for the finish. The goal-line camera showed millimetres of difference. The goal stood. Japanese fans in the stadium, many of them having travelled from Japan with their happi coats and rising sun flags, couldn’t believe what they were witnessing.

In the Round of 16, Croatia. The match ended 1-1. Croatia held their nerve better in the penalty shootout. Japan were eliminated.

But what remained after Qatar wasn’t the elimination. It was the image of Mitoma flying down Brighton’s left wing, of Endo as Liverpool captain, of Tomiyasu as an Arsenal defender. The 2022 Japanese national team wasn’t an accident — it was the accumulated result of thirty years of a project that started with Zico training young players in Kawasaki and continued with thousands of decisions by eighteen-year-olds boarding a plane to Europe with one suitcase and the intention of learning.

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The generation arriving at the 2026 World Cup

The squad arriving at the 2026 World Cup is the most talented in Japan’s history. It’s not an opinion — it’s the reality of a squad in which almost all starters play in the major European leagues and several are regular starters at clubs competing in the Champions League.

Kaoru Mitoma at Brighton has spent seasons being one of the most unbalancing wide players in the Premier League. Wataru Endo arrived at Liverpool from a position of need and earned the trust of the dressing room. Takehiro Tomiyasu at Arsenal, Ritsu Doan at top-level clubs, Takumi Minamino with Champions League and Europa League experience.

What all these players have in common, beyond technical level, is that they grew up competing in Europe from a young age. They’ve lost important titles, spent months on the bench at big clubs, had to earn their place in competition with the best players in the world. That culture of high standards is what makes the Japanese national team hard to surprise in major tournaments.

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Why watching football in Japan is different

Going to a match in Japan is an experience unlike any other. I’ve seen it at Nissan Stadium in Yokohama watching the Marinos, and what stands out most isn’t the level of play but the organisation of the supporters. The chants are rehearsed, there are supporter groups with choreographed routines, there are specific songs for each player. There is order even in the passion — which is the most Japanese way of doing things.

The national team brings that same character to international tournaments. Japanese fans at World Cup stadiums are known for staying behind to collect their litter after every match. Players leave dressing rooms spotless with thank-you notes. It’s football with a different dimension behind it.

If you’re in Japan during the World Cup and there’s match atmosphere in bars, sports bars or public screens in the neighbourhood — go and watch it. The way Japanese people experience their national team’s matches, with that mix of restraint and emotional explosion when something goes right, is one of those experiences you only see here.

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The 2026 World Cup is held in the United States, Canada and Mexico. Japan participates in their ninth consecutive World Cup since France 1998.