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The story
Takuhiro “Pipi” Nakai, the former Leganés B man who joined the J.League this summer, has gone three straight matches without a single minute for FC Imabari since the September 26 clash with Shonan Bellmare — and it’s become a hot topic on 5ch. He’d started seven straight league games from the season opener, but playing time dried up after former head coach Abel Moureiro was sacked on September 20 and defense-first head coach Yoshikiyo Kuboyama took the reins. The thread split between posters praising his technical quality and others flagging his weak defending and physicality, with plenty of comparisons to past “can’t-miss” prospects who ended up stalling out.
One of the new arrivals generating buzz since the J.League season kicked off this summer was Takuhiro “Pipi” Nakai, who moved from Spain’s fifth-tier CD Leganés B to J2 side FC Imabari.
Playing in central midfield, he started seven straight league matches from the season opener, but hasn’t featured since the September 26 match against Shonan — three games running now. He wasn’t even named to the bench for the match against Tokushima on the 10th of this month. Taken at face value, that record makes it look like Nakai simply isn’t cutting it, but the real picture is different.
“After opening the season with three straight losses and sinking to the bottom of the table, Spanish head coach Abel Moureiro was dismissed effective September 20, with head coach Yoshikiyo Kuboyama stepping up as his successor. The possession-heavy, control-the-game style Moureiro was pursuing wasn’t necessarily bad in substance, but the team kept getting torn apart defensively and conceding goals, forcing a change in direction.”
Source: dot.asahi.com / Original article here
What people said
So-called "child prodigies" are basically all busts
Kubo's about the only one who actually became a regular on the national team
The only others who made it to the national team are that "Japan's Ronaldo" guy and the one with the jutting chin
In that category Ono would be the top case, but every player who makes it to national-team level was a local prodigy at some point
The thing is, the youth-team reject pile includes Shunsuke Nakamura, Honda, Junya Ito, Kamada, Ueda, and more
When someone gets treated as a genius and then "vanishes," it reminds me of Ishizuka
He's doing fine with WACKO MARIA and now a udon shop, so he hasn't vanished
The only one who truly vanished and is wandering around lost is Isogai
A classic-style technician
That type's basically extinct in modern soccer
For a second I thought "what about Messi," but even after Messi lost his speed, his positioning and off-the-ball movement are still ridiculous
If he were at Kashiwa or Hiroshima he'd probably run riot
Even at the recent U-21 games, the J.League guys were mostly worse than Nakai
If he got minutes somewhere like Kawasaki and adjusted to the physicality, he could probably make the national team within half a year
That's the kind of club you join after you've already dominated J1, let alone J2
By that logic, the players at his Spanish club must have been low level too
If he were 18 that'd be plausible, but he's 22
His peers have already spent four years turning pro or playing college ball and have already built the kind of physicality it takes to hold up as a pro
Spain and Japan are different, after all
So then Spain, which sent him down to the fifth division, has no future either lol
He came to J3 because he couldn't cut it in Spain either, so "European method" doesn't exactly hold up
and the crowd goes wild whenever Pipi's on, he's got real buzz
But I get that a defensive midfielder who can't defend is a hard sell. He's really more of an attacking-midfielder type anyway
The fact he's not even getting called to the bench suggests things aren't working out with the team
It's flat-out lack of ability
He's not a player who'd hold up at this level on any team
The attacking-midfielder role has been shifting toward more of a striker-type position for a while now
it demands more agility than a defensive mid, and what's valued is attacking sense tied to goals and assists
His strengths would be top-tier even in J1
He got crushed by the Japanese-style method of zeroing in on weaknesses and freezing players out
You've got zero eye for talent, this isn't even worth discussing
If you actually watch him play, it's obvious right away he's not even at a level where "national team" talk makes sense
has nothing to do with "development stages"
Well, for FC Imabari it was like casting pearls before swine
Re: #78
He himself said he'd be on the full national team in four years — do you know more about soccer than Nakai does? Are you even Spanish?
Just as most people predicted
Exactly
A guy who's 22 and stuck in Spain's fifth division
I thought from the start, "don't underestimate the J.League"
The tactic of pushing the defensive line up, creating a numerical advantage, and winning the ball back has been around since the Cruyff and Beckenbauer era, so "before that" means something like Pelé's time
back when there were no cards or substitution rules, and you could win by just taking out the other team's star with a rough tackle
It's just that things might not be clicking with his teammates
Didn't you watch the actual match instead of just clips?
ABEMA streamed it for free and everything
Well, good luck to him I guess
When he was starting, it was under the Spanish coach who couldn't get a single win and ended up getting fired
He hasn't played a single match since
Even I could tell he lacked talent, and I'm someone who sensed talent even in Maeshun
I remember back when Kikuchi and Narioka were being hyped as elite prospects and were fixtures on the age-group national teams, there was talk on 2ch — even before he'd turned pro — saying "Hasebe is clearly better"
At the time I thought "who the hell is Hasebe," but seeing how Hasebe turned out later, I realized you shouldn't underestimate an amateur's eye — or rather, I started wondering if the pros' eye for talent was any good at all
This is a copypasta from last year, but it was something like this:
Takuhiro Nakai, 21, Spain Division 4
Dela Vibora, 22, Spain Division 5
Vallejo Arce, 21, Spain Division 6
Redondo Borajo, 20, Spain Division 4
Sunico Alonso, 20, Spain Division 5
Antequera Sánchez, 21, Spain Division 4
Maroto Chaos, 21, Spain Division 5
Fernández Carreras, 21, Portugal Division 1
Buendicha, 21, Spain Division 4
Loreson Guerrero, 21, Spain Division 5
Jorge Jiménez, 21, Spain Division 4
Hornero Marín, 21, Spain Division 5
Casillas Ramírez, 21, Spain Division 5
Parado Olmos, 21, Spain Division 4
Calleja Sánchez, 21, Spain Division 5
Cruz Durán, 21, Spain Division 6
Asensio Rosario, 21, Spain Division 1
Antolín Garzón, 21, Spain Division 2
Chamón Morales, 21, Spain Division 4
Fernández Morales, 21, Spain Division 5
Background and Key Points of Debate
As the original article lays out, Nakai genuinely has been affected by the coaching change: Moureiro’s dismissal stemmed from the team’s poor results — three straight losses to open the season — and the Kuboyama regime that followed came with a shift toward a defense-first approach. That makes it likely his reduced playing time is more a byproduct of the team’s overall tactical overhaul than a verdict on Nakai himself. At the same time, the thread’s debate also turned toward how much faith to put in the “prodigy” label itself. Posters pointed out that players like Keisuke Honda, Junya Ito, and Daichi Kamada were all cut from youth national team selections at some point, repeatedly making the case that age-group call-ups or being hyped as a can’t-miss talent are no guarantee of future success. A list of Japanese players from Nakai’s generation currently playing in Spain’s lower divisions was also posted, showing that sitting on a foreign lower-division roster isn’t unusual in itself. Opinion remains split between those who chalk up his reduced playing time to a lack of ability and those who see it as a mismatch with the new tactics — as of now, neither explanation has been settled.
*This article is composed from excerpts and a summary of the 5ch (Geisoku Sokuho+) thread “[Soccer] Called a “vanished prodigy”… FC Imabari’s Nakai Pipi hasn’t played in 3 straight matches, and his “reputation is surprising”.”
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