Japan’s high school tournament goes viral with unusual goals and ciranda team

Near the area, Takagawa Gakuen players already know: time to do the cirandinha.

The move that ran the world of sport last week, registered in a high school tournament in Japan, went viral not only because of the unusual way the team moved in the offensive dead ball, but because the apparent joke worked and resulted in a goal. He wasn’t the only one.

Days later, against another opponent, Gakuen players repeated the roundabout inside the penalty area, and, although the goal did not come directly from the cross, the athletes took advantage of the rebound to score once more. Again, they called attention with the weird play that ended with the ball in the back of the net.

Also breaking Japan’s borders was Ryutsu Keizai, who took just 34 seconds to start the race in a penalty kick. When he finally ran for the ball, Keizai kicked with class, displacing the goalkeeper and scoring the goal.

Such bids have made other countries aware of the Secondary Schools National Football Championship, a traditional competition in the local sport that brings together 96 participants, most of them Japanese colleges.

If the tournament is new abroad, in Japan itself, however, the championship is extremely popular. Broadcasted on open TV, it sometimes garners more audience than the games of the J-League, the first division of national football, which only has its matches televised on cable channels.

Information about disputes between colleges can be found on the Japanese Football Federation website, with match records, registered athletes and statistics.

The National Secondary School Football Championship has been played since 1917, even older than the Emperor’s Cup, a professional competition that has been taking place for the longest time in Japan. The collegiate tournament was only interrupted by World War II and is in its hundredth edition.

The goals that have been reproduced by sports programs around the planet in recent days show bleachers with a good crowd and uniformed fans. An environment reminiscent of university tournaments in the United States.

Players who stand out in high school may win contracts with professional clubs across the country. That’s what happened, for example, with Shinji Okazaki, a forward who played in three World Cups with the Japanese team and was English champion with Leicester City in the 2015/16 season.

“It’s a competition capable of changing the lives of those who aspire to play at this stage [profissional]”, Okazaki, now 35, told the Japanese federation’s website.

Divided into three categories (men’s high school, women’s high school and women’s under-18) and with 80-minute games (40 each time), the tournament has tickets at around R$ 244 for the semifinals and finals, which will take place next week .

The decision takes place on the 10th, at the Tokyo Olympic Stadium, which hosted the opening and closing ceremonies of the Olympics and Paralympics, held last year.