Del Piero admits Japan’s national team “can beat Italy’s national team,” and is a gentleman even though he was jostled at Haneda Airport.

In mid-September, former Italian national team soccer player Alessandro Del Piero (48) was surrounded by a large number of fans as soon as he emerged from the arrival gate at Haneda Airport.

He won the World Cup in Germany and set a record for the most goals scored by an Italian club as the No. 10 scorer for Juventus FC, a prestigious Serie A club. He is the player who scored the second most goals in Italy’s history in all competitions, and is one of the players who were given the title of “fantasista,” the highest honor in Italian soccer.

The area around 45 degrees to the left was the “Del Piero zone,” a sanctuary where no one could stop him. The accuracy and beauty of his shots from there were truly divine.

Del Piero, who appeared at an event in Sapporo the previous day, referred to Japan’s victory by a wide margin in a friendly match against Germany on March 10, following the World Cup in Qatar,

He said, “Don’t worry. The current Japan national team can beat the Italian national team.

He gave the drumbeat that the current Japanese team can beat the Italians. When Del Piero returned to Tokyo the next day, his fans cheered loudly and rushed to him, holding colored paper in their hands. Del Piero was in a state of friction, but he politely responded to them without changing a single expression on his face.

In his playing days, he was a “date man” who boasted of being the most popular with the ladies among the handsome members of the Italian national team, but in his private life, he was known as a gentleman with a loving wife, and even at 48 years of age, he was still a “fantasista. Even at 48, he remained a “fantasista.