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The story
Japan national team defender Ko Itakura (29) has reached a verbal agreement with his former club Borussia Mönchengladbach to return to the Bundesliga side from Ajax, a local German paper reports. The transfer fee is said to be around 740 million yen including add-ons, on a four-year contract — a return just one year after joining Ajax.
On 5channel, posters were split on whether his dip in form was down to a back injury or friction with his manager, and quite a few comments also worried about how his rumored girlfriend, actress Haruna Kawaguchi, would cope with life in Germany.
Sports Nippon [August 19, 2026, 06:46]
German outlet Rheinische Post reported on the 18th that Japan national team defender Ko Itakura (29), currently of Dutch top-flight side Ajax, has reached a verbal agreement to return to his former Bundesliga club Borussia Mönchengladbach. He is set to undergo a medical on the 19th, and if the move goes through it will mark his return after just a year away. The deal is reportedly a four-year contract worth 4 million euros (about 740 million yen) including add-ons.
After joining Ajax last summer, Itakura secured a regular starting spot, but was sidelined for a long stretch from January with a back problem. He returned to action in April, but ended up making just 26 official appearances.
Source: sponichi.co.jp / Original article here
What people said
He never really cut it in the Netherlands anyway.
Didn't you know he clashed with the manager and they never got along?
It was an injury, wasn't it? Didn't you watch the World Cup?
Clashing with the manager at today's Ajax would put you fifth-rate at best in the first place
She's a YouTuber, so she can live anywhere, right?
Apparently Düsseldorf, where a lot of Japanese people live, is less than an hour's drive from Mönchengladbach, so she should be fine?
There are even Japanese-run hair salons and restaurants there
— he got Champions League appearances and time to rest up ahead of the World Cup
And yet he still broke down at the World Cup in the end……
Though you could also read it as him having faced the reality that he can't expect to step up any further than this
Back in his BMG days though, he had a high fitness/availability rate
These days he's injury-prone, so who knows how that'll go
Class-wise Ajax is the bigger club,
but there's also the question of whether it suits him or not,
hard to say how it'll turn out
The fact that he made the squad is a success in itself
— a miscalculation on the national team's part
In the end he got subbed off partway through the first half against Sweden
Why does Moriyasu keep calling up players in that kind of condition?
Doan, Itakura, and Ueda were all in Mizuho's "Facing It With Blue: Samurai Blue" commercial, so there's no way they could drop him — I must've seen that DAZN ad a hundred times
Moriyasu makes bold picks in meaningless friendlies, but in the big, tough matches he only plays proven guys he personally trusts
The Eredivisie's mid-table-and-below clubs are just too weak
— well below Belgium's league
That's why Eredivisie results don't get much credit
This guy clearly doesn't watch it at all
Even Feyenoord/Ajax-level Dutch football is sloppy, roughly mid-table-Bundesliga level or below
And the gap between the top and the rest is huge — the bottom half is honestly unwatchable
— riding his bike around and all that
What's riding a bike got to do with anything lol
Saaa-ka-ku-raaa (mocking the wrong name — it's Itakura, not "Sakakura")
A top-of-the-Bundesliga club would be out of Itakura's league
Being the regular CB for a weak Gladbach side bouncing between 10th–15th place is really about the level he's suited for, ability-wise
They're a sell-on club (buy-low, sell-high business model), they don't take 29-year-olds
Background and Key Points
Ko Itakura’s move to Ajax last summer was itself a step up in prestige — Ajax, though currently mid-table in a weakened Eredivisie, carries far more European pedigree and Champions League exposure than Mönchengladbach, a Bundesliga club that has spent recent seasons hovering in the lower-mid-table (10th–15th) after a period competing for Champions League spots earlier last decade. Itakura, a Japan national team center-back who first moved to Europe via Gladbach, made his name there before the Ajax switch. A reported four-year deal worth roughly 4 million euros (~740 million yen) to return after just one season is unusual — transfers reversing that quickly, especially back to a “smaller” club from a bigger-name one, usually signal that something didn’t work out rather than pure sporting logic.
The thread’s real disagreement was over why Itakura’s Ajax spell fizzled: some blamed a manager conflict, others pointed to the long back injury that sidelined him from January to April, which limited him to 26 appearances and clearly affected his match sharpness — visible when he was substituted early against Sweden. Posters leaned toward the injury explanation once reminded of his World Cup showing, since a fitness-driven decline fits the timeline better than a personality clash.
What outside readers may not grasp is how normalized this kind of return move is in Bundesliga culture — Gladbach has a track record of buying back players once they’ve plateaued at their new clubs — and that “moving down” from Ajax to Gladbach isn’t necessarily a demotion in Bundesliga terms, since Gladbach’s competitive level is comparable to Ajax’s despite Ajax’s bigger brand name. The thread also never addressed how Japan’s national team selection dynamics (established starters retaining trust regardless of club form) could keep Itakura in the squad despite his dip.
*This article is compiled and summarized from the 5channel (Geinou/Sports News+) thread “[Soccer] Ko Itakura set for Borussia Mönchengladbach return — local paper reports agreement reached, just a year after his Ajax move.”
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