• Zidane. "We will play the classic when I play"

For the generation that in Spain grew up with Japanese series about sports children, it is difficult not to imagine the next scene in cartoons. A father raising his children every day at six in the morning to practice with the ball before he goes to work and they go to school. Every morning, Takefumi Kubo repeated this routine at his home in Kawasaki, just outside Tokyo, with Take and Eiji, his offspring. The oldest will play today against Madrid in Son Moix and the small, 12, is about to debut with the Japanese sub'15 team. Take will take his mother to the concentration of Mallorca by car, while Eiji is still in the Japanese capital with dad. The family has split to take care of their careers.

The first Japanese signing in the history of Madrid did not have time last summer to get the card. There were too many things in a very short time, from Tokyo to the Copa América, from the Madrid preseason in Montreal to Palma. Now is when you are looking for a driving school in the island city, to gain autonomy and to be able to go to the training at your leisure, from the two-story apartment that you have rented next to the Son Vida golf course.

If Take, being where he is from, managed to learn the neat Spanish he drives, it doesn't seem that the steering wheel is going to be a problem for him. In his childhood stage in the Barça quarry - it was detected by a club academy in Japan - he took the language at the international school he attended in Esplugas del Llobregat . Also the Catalan, well used now to cheer up with the Mallorcan.

Accept the challenge

From the hard experiences of other compatriots in Europe, it was clear from an early age that language would be a plus to their innate talent. Therefore, when he was forced to return to Japan, with 14 years, he proposed not to lose the treasure he carried. Your trick, watch series in Spanish. Your favorite, there is no one here to live . «He was a total fan, he knew the dialogues, all the characters, we hallucinated ...», they tell from his agency of representation, expert precisely in Japanese players. His fluent handling of Spanish impacted the white high command when they met him.

In the Bernabéu they confess that they always kept him on the radar, since he left Barcelona because of the sanction that FIFA imposed on the Catalan club for irregularities in the signing of underage players. The boy, instead of sinking to be removed from the grass from one day to another, accepted the challenge and began climbing in his country's football, in the ranks of FC Tokyo.

Barça did not want to lose track of him, convinced of his enormous projection, hence he invited him to a stage in La Masía every December. Training, vacations, greetings to former friends (intimate of Eric Garcia, now in Manchester City ) ... A way to maintain the link until he turned 18. There was also a verbal agreement of the Barca club with the Japanese to recover Take at that moment. But Barça's plans did not go well.

Coming of age

The last days of last May were stressful for the young soccer player, tempted by the greats of Europe but determined to accept the project that José Ángel Sánchez , general director of Real Madrid, presented to Manel Ferrer , one of his representatives. The PSG gave him a fortune and Ajax promised to be a starter in the first team, while Barcelona relied on his old relationship. The white club, having no extra-community free places, only offered to train with the elderly and play with Castilla de Raúl González . And, on top of that, to avoid problems with FIFA, he refused to sign any document before he came of age, on June 4.

"I want Zidane to remember my name," Take said very seriously to sentence his decision. He did not mind running out of contract for a few days playing with the Japan team - at the risk of injury -, waiting to seal his commitment to Real Madrid. Barcelona felt terrible, as in the case of Marco Asensio , another youthful pearl that Florentino Pérez snatched a few years earlier.

Then came the preseason at the orders of the French coach, the dribbles that went viral on Twitter and the proposals to go on loan. The hardness of the Second B, where the white subsidiary competes, did not motivate him much - Vinicius, the previous year, was bitten in a derbi-. The good relations between Mallorca and Madrid made the Balearic team win the race, where its impact is being translated into negotiations with potential Japanese sponsors, a battalion of Japanese journalists and record records on YouTube. "His presentation reached 230,000," says Albert Salas, head of communication for the club.

Kubo, with the Barça shirt.

Majorca's games are LaLiga's most watched third parties in the nation of Kubo, only behind Madrid and Barça. Today's is marked as the event of the day in Japan, where Take is a social phenomenon. To walk around Tokyo with some tranquility, a mask is placed on the face. If not, it is impossible.

Kubo is the icon of the Olympic team that will host next year. But it is clear that, despite the pressure in his country, if Real Madrid asks him to complete the 2020 preseason, with the guarantee of staying later in the first team, he will renounce the Games. «The good thing is that he is playing and doing well. That was his decision [to be transferred to Mallorca] and must be respected, ”Zidane dedicated yesterday, hours before facing him as an adversary.

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  • Real Madrid
  • FIFA
  • Marco Asensio
  • America Cup
  • sports
  • RCD Mallorca

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