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The story
Japan national team forward Daizen Maeda started for new club Ipswich Town in their Premier League season opener, as the team edged out Sunderland 2-1. After the match, Maeda’s comments — “The intensity is on a completely different level” and “So this is the standard” — sparked a wide-ranging discussion on 5ch, from debates over what “intensity” actually means to comparisons of the Premier League’s quality against other leagues.
◆England Premier League ▽ Matchday 1: Ipswich 2-1 Sunderland (Aug 22)
[Ipswich, England, Aug 22 — Masatoshi Mori] Japan national team forward Daizen Maeda, who joined Ipswich, started in the home match against Sunderland and played until the 35th minute of the second half. The team won a hard-fought 2-1 battle.
— A dramatic late winner clinches victory in the season opener
Source: hochi.news / Original article here
What people said
Sprinting flat-out to close down the opponent in every phase of play, the physical weight and speed you put into challenges, never giving an inch of space when marking tight — that's what makes up the difference in "intensity."
The J.League is way more relaxed, so its intensity is lower.
Heard it's just a handy buzzword that idiots love to throw around lol
There are geniuses who come out of junior colleges too. To a genius, it doesn't matter whether it's a junior college or Tokyo University.
But you're just a high school grad though
Even back in Shunsuke [Nakamura]'s day, the Scottish league's MVP couldn't cut it in what's effectively England's second division.
He's in the US, on the same team as Yoshida.
If anything, he played until the 35th minute of the second half and they won, so maybe the Premier League isn't such a big deal.
Though the press wasn't really coordinated.
Sunderland finished 7th in the Premier League last season — above Brighton, Chelsea, and Newcastle.
It's just that a ton of great foreign players come play in the Premier League.
For big clubs in leagues like Spain, Germany, and France, the domestic league is basically just tune-up practice for the Champions League — they coast through it. Premier League big clubs can't win unless they go full effort in every single league game.
Are you serious? Just because a league buys up players from all over the world doesn't mean that country's own national team becomes the best.
Well, good luck to him anyway.
Yeah, that's about right. The Dutch and Turkish leagues sit at about the same level as J1.
Premier League >>> Belgium > J1 (Netherlands/Turkey) >> Scotland > J2
The "Scot-league" is below J3.
Background and Key Points
Daizen Maeda’s move to Ipswich Town caps a rapid rise: he left Yokohama F. Marinos in the J.League for Celtic in 2022, where he won consecutive Scottish trebles, and now arrives in the Premier League at 28 — an age and a pathway (J.League to Scotland to England) that is unusual rather than typical for Japanese exports, most of whom either stay in Japan or move to a “big five” league directly. Ipswich themselves are newly promoted, which matters for reading his quote: he is comparing top-flight England not to a mid-table club but to a side fighting to stay up, against an opponent, Sunderland, who posters note finished above Chelsea, Newcastle, and Brighton the previous season.
The thread doesn’t split over whether Maeda struggled — most agree the Premier League is a step up — but over what “intensity” is actually measuring. One camp treats it as a real, quantifiable gap (pressing speed, duel physicality, lack of space when marking); another dismisses it as a vague buzzword. A second, more substantive split emerges around the “Premier League is the best, so why doesn’t England win tournaments” question, which posters resolve by distinguishing league quality (driven by imported talent) from national-team quality.
What the thread never engages with is Ipswich’s own situation: as a newly promoted club they are more likely to play a higher-intensity, transition-heavy style out of necessity than an established mid-table team would, so Maeda’s early impression may reflect his specific club’s tactics as much as the league as a whole.
*This article is compiled from excerpts and a summary of the 5ch (Geisports Sokuho+) thread “[Soccer] FW Daizen Maeda on his emotional English Premier League debut: “The intensity is on a completely different level,” “So this is the standard,” “We’ll be defending more, but…”“.
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