My name is Yatao and some of you may know me from Twitter. I am a Content Creator and Origami Art Creator, Analyst working for think tank in Japan, and I pleased to have joined this team to write articles as Japanese Celtic author for The Celtic Star.
I live in Kobe(Japan) and have followed Celtic since 14 October, 2006, when I had watched the match against Dundee United FC and Shunsuke Nakamura scored a hat-trick.
I am also an enthusiastic supporter of Vissel Kobe, and I am familiar with various information and history of the J-League. I have been posting threads on trajectory and background of Celtic Japanese players on Twitter mainly since summer of 2022 in order to further deepen the bond between Celtic and Japan. This time, I’m so proud to be more committed to Celtic by joining The Celtic Star team.
I’m good at changing of viewpoints, so please expect my articles written from fresh perspective. This is my debut article on The Celtic Star…
What Yuki Kobayashi learned from two legends Shunsuke Nakamura and Thomas Vermaelen in Japan…
As you know, Cameron Carter-Vickers, who has made immeasurable contribution to the Celtic defence, can’t play the rest of the season due to post-operative recovery. Therefore, Yuki Kobayashi will probably play from start on the match against Hearts tomorrow afternoon, Sunday 7th May.
Yuki Kobayashi didn’t have much time to play through this season, but when he was called upon by Ange Postecoglou, he always calmly handled the situations and produced steady performances on the pitch. This must have been pleasant surprise for Celtic fans.
At 22 years of age, he’s relatively young for a central defender, yet one of the reasons why he he has been able to put in strong performances for Celtic is due to the experiences he has gained from playing at the highest level in Japan for about two years before joining Celtic. His career in Japan was not outstanding, but he has steadily evolved as a footballer by meeting two legends. We can find out about this from what Yuki Kobayashi revealed in some Japanese media outlets after 2020.
Kobayashi used to play at Academy of Vissel Kobe and after making his debut as top team player, he played for one season as a rental (loan) player at Yokohama FC where Shunsuke Nakamura was playing at the time, in 2020. In an interview in February 2021, just after he was rented back to Vissel Kobe, he answered as follows.
“I learned so much from Shunsuke Nakamura. Especially off-the-pitch part. Not only did he care after training, but he went to clubhouse earlier than anyone else before training and took his time to prepare for training. I was really impressed by that, and it was an opportunity for me to try to do what I learned from him,” Yuki Kobayashi said.
And the current Celtic defender added: “My teammate Thomas Vermaelen, who plays in the same position at centre-back, is a player who has had a great career at some top clubs in Europe and he always plays to a high quality in training.
“The speed of predicting opponent’s movement in his defence is very fast and excellent, and he always plays with high intensity. I have a lot to things that I should learn from him in daily training, but I want to be able to win against him and get more chance to play without being satisfied with just learning from him.”
Yuki Kobayashi also said the following in another interview in May 2021: “Vermaelen always does his best in training and he always train while assuming what can happen in the game. I have to learn his attitude towards training.
“It’s a great honour for me to be able to play with a class player like him on the same team, but as a player, I have to beat him in the position battle. I’m always working hard so that I can do it even in training.
“I want to learn more from him, and at the same time, I want to be able to play more with my own strengths. I’m not going to be the exact same player as him by just imitating his play. I want to develop so that I can express my strong points on the pitch.”
After this interview, Kobayashi was given chances to play as CB for about a month in place of Vermaelen, who was called up to Belgian national team players for the EURO. And Yuki Kobayashi contributed to the team’s winning run by taking advantage of his strong points including his accurate passing ability with his left foot.
From that time on, he had grown into a player who steadily prepared well off-the-pitch ahead of matches. This must be a consequence of him continuing to make use of what he learned from Shunsuke Nakamura. And now he continues to do it at Celtic.
On Sunday Yuki Kobayashi will surely help our team win by his own strong performance, not a substitute for CCV in tomorrow’s game.
Yatao
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