Japanese Aid: Tassei Marukawa, the Man Who Couldn’t Make the J-League, Wins MVP in Indonesia
Interview with "The Reversal of Life" From a life on the edge to a life in a mansion with an annual salary equivalent to that of a powerful J1 club!
Indonesia is ranked a lowly 149th by the Federation Internationale de Football Association (FIFA), compared to Japan’s 20th place. However, in this “weak” Southeast Asian country, a Japanese soccer player is becoming a star.
He is Taisei Marukawa, 26. Born in Hiroshima Prefecture, Marukawa went to Chuo University from Hiroshima Minami High School, a strong soccer team. Two years his senior at the university was Kyogo Furuhashi, 28, a Japan national team player for Celtic in Scotland, and five of his classmates, including Takumi Ueshima, 26, of Yokohama F. Marinos, have also joined the J-League. In contrast, Marukawa played only one official game in four years.
After job hunting, he received an unofficial offer from Nomura Securities, but he could not give up his dream of becoming a professional soccer player, so he started his professional career in the first division of Malta, a small country in Europe, in ’19. In February 2009, he sought a new home in Latvia, but his contract was terminated after one month due to a team mess. He was contacted by an Indonesian agent on SNS shortly afterward, and his life changed drastically when he went to Malta.
During my time in Malta, I was just barely making ends meet,” he said. When I arrived at the airport in Indonesia feeling like an amateur, I was immediately surrounded by reporters and had my picture taken ……. The local buzz was that “a helper was coming from Japan, an advanced soccer nation that has participated in six consecutive World Cups.
The “Japanese helper, ” who joined the club with great fanfare, played for Persebaya Surabaya of the Indonesian First Division in the 2009-2010 season, scoring 17 goals and 10 assists in 32 games. He was named the league’s player of the year, and his followers on Instagram, who numbered about 1,000 before his transfer, quickly exceeded 400,000.
He was also a great scorer, but he was not the type of player who likes to dribble and score goals,” he said.
