Unusual/Notable stuff from around the football world.

[osarusan]

Kazu Miura signs on for another season with Japanese second-tier side Yokohama.

He's 54.

Here is King Kazu consoling Iniesta after Yokohama FC beat Vissel Kobe 2-1 last November. Playing alongside Shunsuke Nakamura these days, a spring chicken at 42.

[pineapple stu]

I should correct my original post actually - they're a top-flight side now.

I think he was left out of Japan's 1998 World Cup squad - despite being top scorer in qualifying - as he was deemed too old. At 31.

osarusan - you'll have half an idea what the craic is with him. He can't be up to it still surely? Is it a token thing or what's going on?

[osarusan]

osarusan - you'll have half an idea what the craic is with him. He can't be up to it still surely? Is it a token thing or what's going on?

Comes on for the last couple of minutes mostly. 4 appearences in J1 last year. In J2 before that it was 9, 12, 20, 16, going back in years.

There's a lot of publicity in it alright, maybe he helps out with coaching or something, or maybe they use him a lot for sponsorship and the like, but J-League is still a serious and professional league even at J2, so he can't be completely useless.

I was a Yokohama FC fan when I was in Japan - they were the closest team to me and my sense of Irishness made me embrace the underdog, rather than the far bigger and more successful Yokohama Marinos, who were 2 stops farther away on the subway. I loved watching him play. Even as an auld fella, he had the vision and touch of a player at a much higher level. Here he is 13 years ago - Dec 2007. I was at this game, which was the last game of the season. Yokohama FC have already been relegated (in fact, they set the record for the fast ever relegation, relegated with something like 8 games to play), whereas Urawa top the table and a win guarantees them the league. Enter King Kazu at 0.38, skipping past a player on the sideline and setting up the only goal of the game, that ended up losing Urawa the league.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ojbmpc9kOCo (Despite the crowd, it's actually a home game for Yokohama FC but moved to the Marinos stadium to accommodate the Urawa fans)

[geysir]

(A preamble of a sentence to claim thread topic compliancy)
An unusual and notable event in world football was documented on film and released in 2014.

It's excellent, called Next Goal Wins and covers the remarkable rise of American Samoa from last place in the Fifa ranking to 2nd last place, a feat achieved during the qualifiers for 2014 WC. One may snigger like "they" use to snigger about the football style and standard of the North Atlantic Island countries, but this rise in fortune for Am. Samoa came after their 31 - 0 defeat to Australia.

The local FA managed to get one application for the position from Thomas a Dutch coach in the MLS, ex footballer and so the saga began. In one of his first team talks he tells them that he would have given his right foot to play for his country in the WC qualifiers, thing is he probably would've been good enough to play for Am. Samoa with just one good leg.

[tetsujin1979]

Great documentary, watched it last year.
Taiki Waititi has directed a film of the story, but it has not yet been released, with Michael Fassbender as the Dutch coach