INTERVIEWING FOOTBALL PEOPLE as a DISTRACTION from the INEVITABILITY of DEATH pt. 2: KENICHI YATSUHASHI
BEGINNINGS
Kenichi Yatsuhashi's life makes no sense whatsoever. I think there is a very decent possibility that he is the only person in human history to have lived and worked in Kyrgyzstan, Qatar, Ghana, Nigeria, and Sri Lanka. He might not be the only professional football coach in the world right now who studied for an art degree, but I mean, I suspect there aren't tons of them. And even the fact that he's made a three decade long career out of football at all is quite remarkable, considering that he never made it as a professional player, and the Japan he grew up in wasn't exactly a hotbed for the game. “Back in the 70s and 80s, when I was a kid at elementary school and junior high school, football wasn’t the most popular sport. It was a very minor sport. Baseball was number one, and if you didn’t play baseball as a boy, they would think there is something wrong with you... Football matches were available once a week, I think on Saturday evening, on TV. Fortunately there was one channel showing Bundesliga, as well as the league in Brazil, also the Premiership. So I was watching one top level football match a week, passionately.”
Yatsuhashi had the raw potential to consider playing the game as a career, but Japan didn't even have a professional league until 1993, and so it's unsurprising that he was looking far afield for inspiration even from a young age. “I wasn’t really into local football, and until the 1986 World Cup, when I saw Diego Maradona... that was the first time I really had a passion for a football star. I thought it was amazing what he could do, I was really into it. So South America was where I was interested in going, but also Bundesliga was very popular in Japan at the time. I think there was one Japanese player playing in Bundesliga at the time, Kazuo Ozaki..." (Note 1).
Yatsuhashi fuifilled his dream - sort of. "There were a few shady people sending young Japanese players to Brazil. So I wanted to go to Brazil, and one of those shady people took my money. And I had nothing over there. But I met a few people and created my own path, knocking on the doors of the youth academies over there. My parents, especially my father, were very supportive of me going to Brazil to pursue my career as a professional player. Unfortunately, I wasn’t aware I wasn’t good enough. But my father was supportive of all my passions, and I really appreciate what he did for me.”
Speaking from Sri Lanka via a surprisingly smooth video call, some of the traits that have made Yatsuhashi such a successful coach stand out - he's calm, thoughtful, and yet at times a certain undemonstrative steel comes through. Having moved to the other side of the world chasing what turned out to be a pipe dream however, he would have to be extraordinarily resilient if he were to stand any chance of carving out his own niche in a footballing world that, particularly at the time, wasn't open to Japanese teenagers.
As you have probably guessed, Kenichi Yatsuhashi is, indeed, extraordinarily resilient.
COLLEGE
After his time in Brazil petered out, Yatsuhashi regrouped and moved to New York to study his aforementioned art degree (which incidentally I'm grateful for because his English is superb, and my Japanese is, erm, limited). Perhaps there's an alternate universe version of him somewhere whose romance with soccer withered away there. Like Japan, the USA at the time also lacked a professional soccer league, although a condition of their successful bid to host the 1994 World Cup was that they would start one. However, one thing America had developed over the previous couple of decades was a burgeoning middle class who encouraged their kids to play soccer, on the basis that it was a fun outdoor sport that was less expensive to participate in than the likes of baseball, ice hockey, and American football (and was also substantially less likely to get your offspring's teeth knocked out than the latter two). It was through coaching those children that Yatsuhashi rekindled his love for the game. "When I started coaching in the United States, I was a college student. I wasn't planning on doing anything with football at all. I started coaching young kids just to make a few bucks here and there, because I was going to school and I had a bit of time to make money to help with my living costs, so I was coaching in the evenings and at weekends. But I quickly found out I had a huge passion to coach, and I was more talented as a coach than a player. So I pursued my career as a coach. I wasn't thinking about going to professional senior sides at all, but after several years coaching youths, my friend gave me an opportunity to coach a college soccer team in New York City."
That soccer team represented the Borough of Manhattan Community College. Yatsuhashi coached them from 2001 to 2009, and was by all accounts a huge success there, turning them from an indifferent side into one that finished 3rd in the National Championships, and securing himself a Coach of the Year award from the National Soccer Coaches of America group. While he clearly looks back on those formative years of his career with fondness, however, Yatsuhashi slowly became frustrated over the course of his time there with the limited attention his achievements were destined to receive. "First of all, College soccer has not been well respected or well appreciated in a broader sense in U.S. culture. It is seen as a non American sport, and it is a non American sport, looking back. So, Baseball, Basketball, American Football and Ice Hockey were the big four sports in the U.S. I think things might be different now, but in the moment when I was thinking about leaving the U.S, between 2009-2012, I was really frustrated that I had had success in college soccer, but I didn't see myself going any further. I didn't see anyone outside the college soccer community in the U.S. recognising what I had done, whereas if I had been a college basketball coach, it would have made a huge difference."
As Yatsuhashi alludes to, certain sports can be a huge deal in America when top educational institutions turn their hand to them - the 2020 College Football Playoff National Championship game between Louisiana State University and the Clemson Tigers attracted 76,885 spectators and was broadcast live on ESPN. For a soccer team at a community college (which, in America, traditionally offer two year courses that then allow students to embark on a full BA at a higher university), attendances would tend to hover around the 200 mark in a good season. Yatsuhashi moved from Borough of Manhattan to coach ASA College in 2010, but was still keen to prove himself at a higher level. "I used my network and contacted everywhere in the world, from the Caribbean to Africa to Asia to Europe to South America. I had interviews in a few places, but nothing materialised. A few professional clubs in Japan said if I arrived in Japan they would take the time to interview me, so I met with a few J-League clubs, but I couldn't get a job offer. But along the way, the Japanese Football Association called me and asked me to come to their office. And they asked me to go to Kyrgyzstan to work with their youth footballers. So I said yes."
MOUNTAINS
Because I am a hard hitting journalist, I knew I had to ask Kenichi the big questions - like, for example, what is this place called Kyrgyzstan? Why would they spell it like that? Is it even a real country? Can we be sure he didn't hallucinate its existence? Happily, he had the answers for me. "It's a small mountain country in Central Asia, I know that now, but at the time I had no idea where Kyrgyzstan was. But, you know, it was an opportunity, and a new experience, and that excites me, to go to places I've never been. At that time, they were 174th in the FIFA World Rankings, I think, so they were near the very bottom, but I think they're doing much better now, maybe the 130s, 120s, so I'm really happy to see their progress."
Yatsuhashi certainly played his part in that improvement, having been named the country's Technical Director in 2012. I asked him what that entailed. "One of the responsibilities of the job was to oversee the coaches and to improve the quality and standard of coaching in that country, including overseeing the license courses, holding seminars, and expanding grassroots football. Especially at the time the AFC and FIFA were very strong advocates of that, and women's football as well. So basically everything except the senior men's national team was my responsibility." In what has already become a trend just two articles into this blog, it seems that coaches are also tasked with funding basic equipment for their players if they're in charge of a poorer country. "In Kyrgysztan they don't even have bibs, they don't have markers, they didn't even provide a ball. I had to buy everything for the national U-16 team (who Yatsuhashi managed as part of his duties).”
Throughout our conversation, Yatsuhashi exhibits glimmers of a wry, self deprecating sense of humour that not every football coach's ego will allow them. He's certainly under no allusions as to the Kyrgyzstani's FA's underlying motivations for creating his role. "In reality a country like Kyrgyzstan, and not just Kyrgyzstan but many countries in a similar situation, they will only get FIFA and AFC support funds if they appoint a technical director." Deep down, his job was simply to exist as a walking, talking justification for that sweet, sweet FIFA cash. But he made the best of it, and gained some utterly unique coaching experiences. "I definitely enjoyed living in that country. As I say, I like to experience new cultures, new people, new societies. A little bit of background - a few years before I arrived there they'd just finished this revolution of government, so they'd just come out of a war and a new government had started. Many things were not so stable, but they were looking to build something more stable. However, the economy in Kyrgysztan compared to Uzbekistan, Tajikistan and Kazakhstan is a very very difficult situation. They don't have any natural resources, Uzbekistan has gas and oil, Kazakhstan the same. I think Turkmenistan is even worse than Kyrgyzstan, but Kyrgyzstan has no natural resources at all. The government is not involved in football at all, it's only the football federation that wants to improve football, as well as... they also have some other personal interests - I can't say specifically what those personal interests are, but you can guess. But, it's a small country, the people are very nice, I enjoyed working with the players and there were some very good coaches, but it's only the capital that is developing, the rural areas aren't developing at all. There are mountains that divide the north and south, and the south part is more Uzbek, there are more Uzbek people living there. So, the north part and the capital don't recognise them as part of the country. When we held an international friendly tournament, there were two national youth teams, one from the north, one from the south, so it was very surprising to me to see two national teams competing. But it was a challenge I enjoyed a lot."
One of the things that particularly intrigued me was his comment about expanding women's football in the country. My limited knowledge of the 'Stans that lie just south of Russia led me to believe that they're pretty conservative, and I was surprised to learn that he was able to construct a Kyrgyzstani women's team at all. "Culturally, as you say, it's a conservative country. Women are supposed to stay home and do the housework, that is a traditional value they have. There's a Russian community over there that are more liberal, and so there are more Russian women playing football compared to Kyrgyzs people. It's a very small community, there's only one person driving women's football forward, and without her it wouldn't be happening. But I think... the situation is difficult, but their drive becomes stronger, and they can overcome many difficulties because they're already facing a difficult situation. So they're not easily giving up anything, but because of the obstacles they face they were only a small number of girls playing football when I was there."
ASPIRE
One of the cool things about being alive is that you never truly know what's coming next. In 2013, Yatsuhashi led the Kyrgyzstani U16's in two AFC U16 Championship games. "Against Oman we drew 3-3 and against Qatar we lost 3-4, but in the 90th minute we scored a tying goal, and then they scored the winning goal, 4-3. After the match, the Qatari U16 coach exchanged contact details with me, and then several months later I had an interview... next thing I knew, I was in Qatar already. I think the result itself had a lot of value."
This time around, Yatsuhashi wouldn't be working with the national team directly, but with the country's lavish, government funded Aspire Academy. Established in 2004 to improve the prospects of young Qatari competitors in a range of disciplines, the academy has been the backbone of the recent improvement in Qatar's footballing fortunes, which saw them win the AFC U19 Championships in 2014, and then the senior Asian Cup itself in 2019, both times with a squad that largely consisted of graduates. With Qatar of course set to host the FIFA World Cup in 2022, the Aspire Academy is really, really important. It's also, it turns out, quite a different experience from buying your own players' training equipment in Kyrgyzstan. "They had the top European coaches from the academies, PSG, top La Liga clubs, Dutch, German, you name it. They had everything money could buy - 15 natural grass pitches, an indoor astro pitch with 4000 seats, of course air conditioned. They had one of those machines that Dortmund were using where the ball comes from different panels, and you have to kick to the panel that's indicated. So they had many different toys."
For all the money that had been thrown at the operation, there were still challenges. "Qatari players were very competitive, very positive footballers, but the Qatari population is very small. At that time, I think 80% of the Qatari population were foreign, only 20% native Qataris. And in the beginning... it may be true now that they recruit the foreign kids, but when I was there, only Qatari kids, born in Qatar with Qatari parents, were able to join the Aspire Academy, as future national team players for the 2022 World Cup. The pressure was there. I learned a lot about how the top level European youth academy systems are. I believed I contributed some, and I learned some as well, so it was a very good experience for me to say the least."
Yatsuhashi may not have known it at the time, but it was an experience that would have to prepare him for his most high profile, and extremely high pressure, coaching role to date.
OAK
Ghanaian domestic football might not get the collective pulse racing of the international footballing hive-mind, but within Ghana itself, it is far more significant. Traditionally, Ghanaian football has two huge clubs with rabid fan bases - Asante Kotoko, and Hearts of Oak. The juggernaut popularity of the English Premier League has led to a decline in interest across Africa in their own domestic leagues, and Ghana Premier League games don’t pull in the attendances figures they would have done in the 20th century. Games between Kotoko and Hearts of Oak, however, can still be relied upon to attract at least 10,000 people to the stands. If you'd told a fan of the latter in the year 2000, when they last won the African Champions League, that in 15 years time they'd appoint an unknown Japanese with no experience leading senior teams as Head Coach, you wouldn't have got a very warm response. Unsurprisingly, Kenichi Yatsuhashi didn't get one initially either when he was unveiled as the new man in charge of Hearts of Oak in 2015.
"I think it was a fair opinion at that moment to have a backlash, or a negative opinion, about me coaching Hearts of Oak in 2015, because I'd never coached a senior side, and I was the first Japanese coach to be there. The perspective of West African people, including Ghanaians, was that they were far better than the Japanese at football. So let's flip the perspective - if a Ghanaian person who had never coached professional baseball had come to Japan, and had taken the head coaching job at the biggest professional baseball team in Japan, what would that reaction be like? So I'm not really surprised or angry about how they received me."
Hearts of Oak had been in steady decline since 2000, when they combined that Champions League success with victory in both the Ghana Premier League and Ghanaian FA Cup for an historic treble. They followed it up with the AFC Confederation Cup (the African equivalent of the Europa League) in 2004. Their last league title had come in 2009, and their continental profile had since receded significantly. That didn't prevent expectations from being extremely high as Yatsuhashi began his post, though. "Hearts and Asante Kotoko compare themselves to Real Madrid and Barcelona in Spain, and it is true within Ghana, and at a continental level. Except, in the most recent decade, they've not been able to carry on the success they had in the year 2000 when they won the Champions League in Africa. Since then I think many African countries have progressed a lot, especially North African clubs, they were well organised and played a really modern way of football. I played against the Moroccan champions in the CAF Confederations Cup, and also the D.R. Congo and Cote D'Ivoire... I think unfortunately Ghana is not progressing at the same pace as other African countries, and it's not just one coach that can fix this delayed progress. Poor organisation and a lot of self interest stand in the way of football moving forward."
Quite aside from poor organisation at a national level, Yatsuhashi also had another small stumbling block in his way as he embarked on his Ghanaian adventure. "One thing I have to point out is that I was an unwelcome coach for the board of Hearts of Oak because the number one coach on their shortlist declined at the last minute, and I was the only one on the list who hadn't taken another job. So, they wanted to fire me as soon as possible." Not for the first time in his career, though, he made the best of it. With Hearts of Oak having only avoided a humiliating relegation via goal difference the previous season, Yatsuhashi steered them to a massively improved 3rd place before the board got their wish and contrived to dismiss him with three months of the season remaining, In spite of everything, it's clear he looks back on those months as an absolute career highlight. "I think the results spoke for themselves, and I think there are a lot of Hearts of Oak supporters, as well as supporters of other clubs, who recognise the work that I did, as well as how vibrant the entire league had been while I was there. They definitely wanted to win. A lot of nonsense went on during my tenure at Hearts of Oak, but the board members and anyone involved with that club genuinely wants to win matches and wants to win the league title. They might not have had the same opinion as me as to how to win the league title, but the passion and drive was there. I really enjoyed the huge pressure of coaching Hearts of Oak, and I found myself that I perform better under huge pressure, so that was positive for me."
SKULDUGGERY
His reputation vastly improved in Ghana by his results at Hearts of Oak, Yatsuhashi went on to have two more brief stints in charge of Premier League clubs in the country - he led Inter Allies for the first half of the 2018 season, and then moved briefly to Aduana Stars. He managed just four games there before, astonishingly, the league was cancelled altogether after a scandalous documentary on Ghanaian TV showed high ranking employees in the FA involved in fraud and match fixing. The shambolic state of affairs didn't catch Yatsuhashi completely off guard. "I knew that corruption was going on, not only in Ghana, but there are many countries where corruption is going on. Surprisingly, one of the journalists dug deep and got the facts and the proof. No, I wasn't really thinking that would happen, but it was a good wake up call, and I hope now there is less corruption within the Ghanaian football world. I won't say it will eliminate everything, but I hope it will be less, and that they will try to be fair about playing matches, and not have outside interests decide the result. I hope it is different right now."
In between his time at Hearts of Oak and his return to Ghana with Inter Allies, Yatsuhashi decided to test himself in the notoriously corruption free paradise of Nigeria. It would be a considerable understatement to say that his brief flirtation with Ifeanyi Ubah FC went badly. He joined the club in 2016 - had he done so a mere one year earlier, he would have been managing a team called Gabros International. However, their name was changed in 2016 by their owner, who by sheer coincidence happens to be named erm, Ifeanyi Ubah. (NOTE 2). If you think that's odd, then you don't know half the goings on at Ifeanyi Ubah F.C. And neither do I. This is the only subject across our entire conversation that Yatsuhashi is anything other than forthcoming about. When I ask him for details about his solitary month at the club, he hesitates, and smiles sheepishly.
"Erm... I can't tell you everything. Bottom line, it was my assistant coach at Hearts of Oak who asked me to come with him. He was offered an assistant coaching role, on the condition that I would be the head coach, because of the success we'd had at Hearts of Oak in Ghana. Myself and Yaw Preko, my assistant coach at that time, felt that it was a matter of life or death, seriously, for me to get out of the country and be safe. I can't really elaborate more than that, but, if it wasn't for him coming between me and many people, I would have been dead with anyone even knowing."
TODAY
Kenichi Yatsuhashi has since rebounded strongly from what would have to be considered a career low point of almost being murdered. After taking in Cambodia and India with cups of coffee at Cambodian Tiger FC and Lonestar Kashmir, Yatsuhashi's current assignment sees him leading Navy Sea Hawks FC in Sri Lanka. As the name suggests, the team are affiliated with the Sri Lankan navy, and are an integral part of the country's attempts to get a viable professional football league off the ground; no easy feat in the midst of a global pandemic. It's clear though that this sort of challenge is the exact reason Yatsuhashi is in football.
"Navy Sea Hawks are a fantastic club. Probably the best club I've ever worked with, in terms of co-operation, in terms of the effort from the club board, management, and administration side. They're not perfect, but these people are top people in their country. Many of them have been exposed to cultures outside their country, a few people within the club have traveled to Japan and visited J1/J2 clubs, so they know how it should be. So when I ask them for something, they can relate that to their own experience - 'oh, he's asking for what I saw in Japan.' They're also working for the Navy, so of course they get top people. I'd like to develop Sea Hawks first, obviously, and become the league champion in our first and second year. I don't know what's beyond. I came here partially because of the pandemic, and myself and my family have a personal interest in Sri Lanka for non football reasons. So I'd always wanted to come to Sri Lanka, and I said to myself 'it's a perfect opportunity, there's not many jobs available because of travel restrictions due to the pandemic, so let's go there because they're inviting me, and it's the Navy so it must be a good organisation.' Let me just focus on winning the league first, and then see what comes next. There are many possibilities, I can't really think beyond this season at this point, but hopefully I can help improve the whole of football in this nation to a higher level."
I was interested as to whether Yatsuhashi had hopes, beyond his current role in Sri Lanka, of possibly coaching in Europe or South America. The absolute dearth of coaches from the Asian Football Confederation at the highest levels of the game globally is interesting to me. While you'd be extremely naive indeed to think that elite football coaching isn't predominantly still the preserve of white men, there are at least two coaches from just Senegal, let alone Africa as a whole continent, currently employed at head coaches in European leagues of a decent standard (Mbaye Leye at Standard Liege, one of Belgium's biggest clubs, and Omar Daf at Sochaux in France's Ligue 2). Despite Japan being a wealthy and well respected country internationally, its domestic football league being more attractive than any in Africa bar, at a push, Egypt's, and its national team going further than any African side managed at the 2018 FIFA World Cup, there are no Japanese coaches I could find currently leading a European team, apart from one in the sixth tier of German football. Another interesting point of comparison is the USA, which many in Europe still regard, however inaccurately, as a footballing backwater. And yet there are a clutch of American coaches doing well in Europe, and not even in English speaking leagues; the most notable being Jesse Marsch, whose work developing an attractive, free scoring Red Bull Salzburg side saw him linked with the Borussia Dortmund job last year. So, as one of the most experienced and well travelled Japanese coaches in the world, I wondered if Yatsuhashi had any thoughts on why no one from Japan, or even South Korea or one of the gulf nations, had gained any traction at the very top of world football. He was typically erudite.
"I think what's common across the AFC is there are many foreign coaches coaching top clubs, or foreign coaches working to improve up and coming countries. For example, in Thailand there are many coaches from Europe and Brazil working there. If you look at the number of German coaches in Japan... the majority of coaches are foreign. If you look at Qatar, UAE, Middle East, it's the same, many big time coaches coach there or China. So that has been the common theme across Asia. One thing I can say about Japan - not the other countries... I won't say always, but the majority of the time, yes men succeed. So if they want to get the talented young people, in any industry, football or non football... they are not given that opportunity, or they are not thinking of problem solving by themselves. They tend to think, what is their senior person expecting them to say? That is not really a football way of thinking, because you play a match, then you analyse it, then you have to figure out how to improve and win the next match. That's you making the decision, not asking the senior person to tell you what to do. So that's one reason, the other reason is that it's only in recent years that Asian footballers are making an impact in top European leagues. I think there are several veterans, and a few players who retire from playing and enter a coaching career. So I'm hoping a few years from now there will be top players who are given an opportunity in South America or Europe. Speaking of Bob Bradley (who I mentioned as an example of an American who had coached in Europe) when he was given an opportunity in the English Premier League, the owners of the club were American. I think that was a big factor. I know he's a good coach. I'm not saying he didn't deserve it. But there's huge competition to get a top job in Europe. There are several clubs sponsored by Japanese companies in lower European leagues, and some Japanese coaches were actually given the opportunity, but didn't do well. I think there was one Belgian club either owned or sponsored by Keisuke Honda, he appointed a Japanese coach when the Belgian coach was doing very well, and he lost the job. That's the only one that I could think of. (NOTE 3)."
CONCLUSION
If there's one unifying theme I can draw on as a conclusion for this article, it's how nauseatingly jealous I am of the adventures Kenichi Yatsuhashi has had (apart from the whole Nigeria debacle). To have seen as much of the world as he has while following his passion, a passion which he happens to be so good at that people will pay him for doing it... that's about as good as it gets, isn't it? By way of a bit of vicarious tourism while trapped at home in COVID purgatory, I asked him if he could reflect on the similarities and differences of the various soccer cultures he's experienced over the course of his career. What's it like coaching a game in Kyrgyzstan compared to Cambodia, for example - the atmosphere in the ground, the quality of the facilities? While Yatsuhashi doesn't strike me as someone who regrets any second of his career (apart from Ni... well, you get the picture), it's clear there's one country in particular that still holds a special place in his heart.
"Many top European clubs and leagues have the history, infrastructure, and passionate supporters, as well as many South American countries, as they were the leading continents in football globally. So I would say that infrastructure is not nearly perfect, or not nearly as well organised, in the countries I have worked in. Kyrgyzstan in particular was very poor, Cambodia at the time was also poor, although recently they have improved. Ghana was really poor, despite the fact they have very good players. In recent years I think they have improved, and now they're able to play better football. As far as passion is concerned... I'm sure that every country is passionate about football, but in the way that they express passion, Ghana is top of my list. It was incomparable to other countries in the way that they express feelings. But they're not violent, they're not trying to attack anybody, it's just that they're open people, and they're open to expressing their feelings. Straight away, if you don't win they will tell you how they feel, and if you win they'll tell you how they feel. The way that the vibe of the town, or the country itself, goes up and down with one win or one loss, is amazing. Cambodia is not so open, or, let's say, they don't express their feelings directly. That doesn't mean they're not passionate - I saw a 70,000 seater stadium packed when the national team played. But for club sides it wasn't as popular... each country has a different way of expressing their passion, their opinions... I really miss how passionate, or open, Ghanaian football fans were, and still are, but right now I'm just at a stage in my life where I'm seeing more from a distance, from a broader perspective."
As much as Yatsuhashi's remarkable coaching career was my main motivation to reach out to him for this piece, I was also drawn to that art degree that precipitated his fateful move to New York, thirty years ago. I think football people who have interests that have nothing to do with football are interesting and admirable, because professional soccer demands you exist inside its bubble, and more so even than in other sports, I don't think you hear much about the best players in the world being passionate about anything too unusual. Is Lionel Messi an anarcho-capitalist? Does Cristiano Ronaldo like Italian spaghetti westerns from the 1960s? Has Erling Braut Haaland even considered the merits of being a Hare Krishna? These are the questions I will never get to ask. But I could ask Kenichi Yatsuhashi about his art degree, and what he does to take his mind off the pressures of his day job.
"I was very into art at the time I gave up my playing career, and I think I was good. I don't think I was excellent. I don't think I could have made a career out of drawing or painting. I did drawing, painting, photography, sculpture, everything. I wasn't really that different or that good to really make it happen. It's also a competitive world. Since I started coaching in the early 90s, I devoted more and more time and passion and effort to become a better coach, so I'm not really spending much time creating artwork, but I still have an interest, and my wife and I will sometimes go to a museum to look at artwork. But right now I do everything, really, to stay away from football on my off days. One thing I'm really passionate about is doing any kind of non football exercises - cycling, jogging. strength training. And I also enjoy - my wife's a former professional surfer. She's great! So I just go to watch her surf and hang out with surfers, that sort of thing really helps me take my mind off football."
If moving literally to the other side of the world to Brazil as a teenager, spearheading the development of Kyrgyzstani youth football at the start of the last decade, becoming the first Japanese to coach one of Africa's most historic clubs, and being married to a former professional surfer hasn't convinced you that Kenichi Yatsuhashi is one of the coolest people on the planet, you and I have very different outlooks on life. The name of this blog series, the whole 'Distracting Myself from the Inevitability of Death' thing, is obviously meant to be a bit silly and tongue in cheek. But to the extent that there is anything meaningful behind it, it lies in the fact that the people I speak to on this blog have done as good a job as any in fending off the grim certainty of oblivion through the medium of football. It's hard to worry about the end of everything when you're trying to get professional football in Sri Lanka off the ground. That's a pretty all consuming task. What's particularly exciting is that Kenichi Yatsuhashi shows no signs of stopping. His appetite for football, and adventure, is unwavering. There is literally no way of telling where he'll be in ten years time. At 52, he's just entering his prime in coaching terms. And, having defied so many stereotypes and expectations already in his career, who knows what he might be able to defy next?
From 1983 to 1990, Kazuo Ozaki played as a striker for mid ranking German teams Arminia Biefefield, Dusseldorf, and cult favourites St. Pauli. He followed in the footsteps of the slightly more successful Yasuhiko Onodera, who notably scored for FC Cologne in a European Cup match with Nottingham Forest.
To be perfectly honest, I initially found such shameless narcissism weirdly thrilling - imagine if, instead of merely changing their shirt colours a few years ago, Vincent Tan had renamed Cardiff City 'Vincent Tan F.C.' for their return to the Premier League. I think we can all agree it would have been top bantz, as the kids say.
I knew of Keisuke Honda as one of the best Japanese players of his generation, and from the slightly odd fact that he's the head coach of the Cambodian national team while still not having retired from his professional playing career. I had no idea about him having been in European football in any kind of ownership capacity though and was intrigued to look this up. It turns out Kenichi was spot on, although it was actually an Austrian team that he got involved with, his company buying 49% of Austrian Second Division club SV Horn. They then appointed a relatively obscure Japanese coach, Hamayoshi Masanori, for two separate spells as manager, one from 2016-17, the other from 2017-19. As far as I can tell, both of his stints in charge passed fairly uneventfully.
