Takefusa Kubo: Teenage talent from Japan
Takefusa Kubo is a Japanese professional footballer who plays for LaLiga club Villarreal and the Japanese national team as a winger. He is on loan from his parent club, Real Madrid.
Kubo started his youth career at FC Persimmon when he was only 7 years old. Later, in a Soccer Camp conducted by FC Barcelona, he won the Most valuable player (MVP) trophy. In fact, Kubo impressed the Catalan giants so much that the club invited him to join La Masia in 2011 for a trial. Kubo passed the trial and joined the fabled youth academy of the Blaugrana. In his first full season with the U11 team, Kubo ended up being the highest goalscorer in the league having scored 74 goals in 30 games. During his third full season, he was promoted to the U14 side. But it was at this time that the Spanish club was discovered to have breached the policy of FIFA’s international transfers for U18 players, thus rendering the Japanese teenager legally disqualified to play for Barcelona.
Looking for regular playing time, Kubo returned to Japan and he signed for the youth team of FC Tokyo in March 2015. His debut for the reserve team came against AC Nagano Parceiro in November 2016. At that time, he was 15 years and 5 months old. In April 2017, Kubo, who at the time was 15 years and 10 months old, became the youngest goalscorer in the J-League when his team, FC Tokyo, won against Cerezo Osaka U-23 1–0. He made his top flight debut for the first team in a J-League YBC Levain Cup match against Hokkaido Consadole Sapporo which FC Tokyo won 1-0. Kubo was promoted to the first team of FC Tokyo permanently in November 2017.
In the 2nd half of the 2018 season, Kubo was loaned out to Yokohama F. Marinos. On his debut for the club, he scored in an away win against Vissel Kobe. He played 6 times for Yokohama F. Marinos in total.
From 1 July 2019, Kubo signed for Real Madrid on a 5-year contract. He was assigned to the Castilla team (Reserve team) of the Madrid based team though he played several pre-season friendlies with the first team. Ahead of the 2019-20 LaLiga season, Real Madrid announced that Takefusa Kubo would join newly promoted team RCD Mallorca on a season-long loan deal. He played 36 times last season for Mallorca scoring 4 times and assisting 5 times.
After his loan spell with Mallorca, he returned to Real Madrid. Ahead of the 2020-21 LaLiga season, he was once again loaned out by Los Blancos. This time, he joined Villarreal for the season.
As a left footed right winger, Kubo possesses very good passing and dribbling ability. But he can also play on the left wing as well. Kubo has a great attacking intelligence as he displays great vision to spot key passes that will be missed by the opponents. At 173 cm tall, he has a relatively low centre of gravity to excel in dribbling as mentioned above. Kubo has a few weaknesses as well, most notably his aerial ability. But that is to be expected given his height. Kubo is the next Asian superstar & he will be crucial to the Japanese national team in future tournaments.
