Jul 25, 2010
The ‘Sushi Bomber’ a nickname given by the Japanese supporters is heading west, but not to Germany this time but to the football capital city of Korea; Suwon a city down south, just an hour away from the real capital Seoul. The well traveled Japanese International has finally decided to put his signature on the dotted line on a Samsung letterhead A4 paper.
Suwon, the four time K-League Champions has been banking on that extra AFC spot to fill in a well-known Asian football figure and in doing so obtained the services of a Japanese veteran who has scored 23 times for the national team. A fitting stature indeed for a massive club like Suwon. However, in my opinion Takahara has nothing left in his tank. Takahara who is 31, is not young and it seems Suwon’s acquisition will probably not get much return on the investment as Takahara’s price tag doesn’t come cheap. A decorated CV having played for Boca Juniors in the Argentinian League, Hamburg and Eintract Frankfurt, it doesn’t take a rocket scientist to figure out his value. If he was younger, it would make business sense, but his job is to add in goals for the team as a center forward. Like it or not, his performance will ultimately be measured by the number of goals. Something that Takahara is very poor at doing.
Suwon is taking a big risk by signing a washed up star and one can just take a look at his previous season with Urawa where he was warming the bench. He wasn’t even included by the former Japanese National Team coach for this year’s world cup, and that evidently shows that he is not competitive even in Japan. Takahara has a huge mountain to climb if he is to get any playing time in Suwon as Jose Mota has been a prolific striker for Suwon thus far. The pecking order isn’t looking in favor for him as he has to compete with other Korean Internationals on the team such as Yeom Ki-hun or even Ha Tae-gyoon. At least for the time being it seems that Suwon is just happy about the fact that they can now attract Japanese fans and enlarge their fanbase in Japan. The real question is, how much of that would liquidate into actual profit? Is his wage lesser than the revenue Suwon would potentially rake in by selling his shirt far east? Or are they just proud to attract east asian icons in asian football in their respective leagues. Or perhaps Li Wei Fung has been a motivator for this acquisition?
Tell me your comments below!
byong@footkorean.net
Even though there is not much value for Suwon,
I expect Takahara become a HERO for Suwon supporters.