An Unusual Step Up in Your 30s! Liverpool’s Wataru Endo: The “Human Power” and “Presence of Children” Behind His Great Leap Forward

His first performance at his new home was calm and collected. This calmness probably comes from his many years of experience as a captain and from his other face as a father raising four children.

Born in February 1993, Endo was born in Totsuka Ward, Yokohama. He played for his hometown club, the junior high school team, and then the youth team of Shonan Bellmare, making his first-team debut in 2010, when he was 17 years old.

Koji Sorimachi, 59, then manager of Shonan, described him as “a mature player with a strong personality and the ability to think ahead, ” and he showed an appearance that was hard to believe for a high school student.

In 2012, at the age of 19, he was entrusted with the captain’s mark. The team’s coach at the time, Kije Cho (54, now at Kyoto Sanga), recalls, “Ko missed a penalty kick and we lost the game.

He grew up with the heavy responsibility and heartache of losing a penalty kick and crying when he was sent off. I thought that I could entrust him with the role of leader if he could understand his own position. He was not the type of person who would say, “I can’t do anything unless I see how my seniors look at me.

It is not often that a teenager is appointed captain of a professional team with many older players. He had won the trust of those around him.

After that, he went on to a career in which it is no exaggeration to say that he was “a captain in every environment. Not only at the Rio de Janeiro Olympics in 2004, but also in the absence of Maya Yoshida (35, LA Galaxy) in the first Moriyasu Japan team up to the World Cup in Qatar in 2010, he has been a key figure in the team’s success, as well as in his own team. In particular, his appointment to a major role at Stuttgart, where he moved in the summer of 2007, was very significant.

When I went to Stuttgart in ’19, the first thing I was conscious of was to make sure that my performance would not drop at any time. The first thing I was conscious of when I went to Stuttgart in ’19 was not to let my performance drop at any time, and to show that I always gave 100% from practice. Seeing me like that, the then director Matarazzo told me in front of the whole team, ‘You should learn from Wataru. When I was puzzled by his praise in German, he lightly translated it in English, saying, “I really appreciate the fact that you always give 100% in practice and in games, regardless of the results. That made me happy.

Endo once said, “I officially became captain of the team.

It was shortly after that that he officially became captain. The coaches have changed several times since then, but he has always been a key member of the team.

That said, Endo is not the type of player who willingly takes care of those around him, consults with them, or gets angry with undisciplined players. Instead, he respects them as human beings and sees how they behave before deciding how to respond.

In Stuttgart, there was a young player who was sent from the top team to the second team because he was late or overslept too often. He says that even there, he did not warn him, saying, “You can’t be late,” nor did he ask him why he was doing it.