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The story
On September 20 local time, in Matchday 5 of France’s Ligue 1, Lille’s Ayase Ueda started and played the full 90 minutes, scoring his 3rd goal in 4 official matches since joining the club. The goal — a left-footed finish from inside the penalty area — drew praise for its quality as well as the result. However, league-leading Lille went on to lose 1-2 to bottom-placed Nice, suffering their first defeat of the season and surrendering top spot in the table. While many thread comments praised Ueda’s individual performance, debate also broke out over whether Ligue 1 or the Premier League is the tougher league, alongside talk of how well Feyenoord — the club Ueda left — have been scoring since his departure.
Started at center forward, played the full match
In Ligue 1’s Matchday 5 on September 20 local time, league-leading Lille, with Ueda in the squad, faced bottom-of-the-table Nice. Lille suffered a painful 1-2 defeat — their first loss of the season — and fell from first place.
Starting at center forward, Ueda scored for the first time in two matches. In the 79th minute, with his side trailing 0-2, he held the ball up to become the focal point of the attack, then reacted to a teammate’s lofted pass to run in behind the defense, firing home a left-footed shot from inside the left side of the box. The ball rippled cleanly into the net.
Source: soccerdigestweb.com / Original article here
What people said
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Well, seems like he'll keep racking up goals
Who made you the judge?
France's weak though
The Premier League's the strongest league in the world, he needs to do it there
That was some really slick passing right before it lol
Wait, Nice is bottom of the table now? Back when they had guys like Ben Arfa and Balotelli they were a Champions League-level side
Watching the movement right after, it really looks like he controlled it down on purpose…
Breaking news
Real Sociedad win again with Kubo glued to the bench
Kubo starting: 0 wins, 1 draw, 2 losses
Kubo on the bench: 3 wins, 0 draws, 1 loss — and that one loss was 0-0 until he came on, then it went 3-0 the other way and they lost after he entered
Even Nakamura's been saying stuff like
"Playing for Lyon is nothing like playing for Stade Rennes"
That said, Ligue 1 these days has less talent than it did a while back,
so it's actually gotten a bit softer for Japanese players than before too
What Ueda needs isn't a goal tally, it's
"the profile of a forward who can drag the team forward"
Even scoring today, he still just ends up rated as "part of the losing side"
Yeah, when Nakamura joined up with the national team he said something like "everyone's so much better than at Rennes, it's fun" too — basically dissed Rennes lol
There were a couple of close headers too
Guess it's an old cliché, but Japanese forwards really do suit a two-striker system huh
Okazaki was the same way at Leicester
Not like Son Heung-min
Looking at current players like Tanaka and Kamada, they're the same as Japanese players before them —
not at a level where they can score heavily in the Premier League
Even as a striker, Ueda would top out in single digits in the Premier League,
and no Champions League-level club would sign him for it anyway
He'd have grown more scoring near the top in La Liga
Playing for Lille isn't going to change the national-team version of Ueda all that much
And in France, no less.
Like how hard it was for Petagine to wrestle the starting job away from Kiyohara at the Yomiuri Giants — there's always a home-turf bias at play (a famous NPB position battle)
Strong even without Ueda
You should say they're stronger without Ueda
They got stronger once Ueda left, basically
Isn't this just the "stronger without Shinji Ono" joke all over again?
What the national team actually needs is that kind of finishing punch from its midfielders
Compared to the power of Hidetoshi Nakata's shots, Kamada's got basically nothing
Sano's shot power is an even lower tier
Ueda also needs to start banging in more decisive strikes as a forward,
or none of this matters
A goal that just drags you back level after falling behind, like today's, is the easy kind to score anyway
And the finish itself wasn't anything special — Asia-level, J-League-level stuff
It's not that the keeper was good, it's that the level of finish Ueda's capable of is low
True, aside from goals like that one… (this post seems to have a typo mixing in Ki Sung-yueng's name) we don't really see thunderous "Bati-goals" like Batistuta's from him, do we?
Back in the hellish days of the Yanagisawa "QBK" and "enemy spy" Takahara strike partnership,
you can really see how far the level's come now (QBK is an old meme mocking Atsushi Yanagisawa's infamous open-goal miss)
Wild that a casual fan who can only talk about Yanagisawa and Takahara at that level still hasn't grown out of it after decades
Wasn't even born 20 years ago, but… wait, "Yanagishiwa" and "Takuharu"? Weren't those the Golden Generation's go-to scorers? (playful misspellings of Yanagisawa and Takahara)
Takahara scored double-digit goals in the Bundesliga, you know
Right around the same age Ueda is now
He even once ended Oliver Kahn's clean-sheet streak
No wonder they're bottom of the table
Oh, it was the opponent who's actually bottom of the table
Still, that defense was awful
A few years ago, nobody
would've predicted
double-digit numbers of Japanese players
playing in the Premier League
Whatever happened to Kiyogo? If he'd gone to Spurs back then, he might've been the one to become Premier League top scorer (fan nickname; unclear which player is meant)
No crazy statements out of him so far at least
But heading's linked to higher dementia risk, right? Hope he's okay
Still better than American football or rugby though
Feels like rugby players are getting concussed constantly
Background and Key Talking Points
Ayase Ueda transferred this past summer from Dutch powerhouse Feyenoord to league-leading Lille in France’s Ligue 1, and this goal was his 3rd in 4 official matches since joining. Thread opinion split mainly over comparing league quality, with comments going back and forth between “he needs to prove it in the Premier League, not France” and “Ligue 1 has lost talent and gotten easier lately.” Another point of debate was how to weigh Feyenoord’s strong form since Ueda’s exit — 25 goals in their last 7 matches — which highlights a twist common in judging a player right after a transfer: the verdict ends up shaped not just by output at the new club, but by how the old club performs without him. It’s also worth noting the match itself was a defeat that knocked Lille from first place, a reminder that Ueda’s individual performance and the team’s results don’t always line up.
※This article is excerpted and summarized from the 5ch (Geisports Sokuho+) thread “[Soccer] Ayase Ueda scores again! Blistering left-footed strike makes it 3 in 4 official games since joining! Lille suffer crushing loss to bottom-placed Nice, fall from first.”
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