Ryo gives us a lot of good reasons to be very excited. Firstly he’s really fast, and as the likes of Walcott, Aaron Lennon and pre-leg-break Djibril Cisse have shown, being fast just by itself is the basis for a top flight career (although obviously the hope is for more).
Secondly, Ryo made a huge impression at Feyenoord and this is a bigger deal than it sounds at first. Sure, Feyenoord are poor, but in a half-year loan as a youngster it’s very hard to get game time even if you turn out to be really good later and it’s even harder to win over the fans, whose affections will be saved more for local lads who will stick around rather than temporary foreign players.
Thirdly, there’s reason to think he can develop a lot further because as with all Japanese players his development so far has been stunted by their system of developing players. Ryo at 17 was playing school football for his first 11 against local schools whereas by an equivalent age top English youngsters will be playing full international football.
So for Ryo to be this good at 19 when a lot of Japanese players don’t make club debuts until 22 is very impressive (he’s 19 but I think in football development terms he’s more like a 16 or 17 year old). Fourthly, his dribbling is seriously cool and definitely something to work with.
I’ve seen 100s of youngsters come and go and expect most to fail but I’ve got a good feeling that Ryo will have a top flight career in Europe and that’s about as sure as you can be at this stage.
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