Welcome everybody to soccer 101. My name is Taylor Rockwell, and this week, I'm very excited.

We're doing something a little bit differently because with Japan officially qualifying for the 2026 World Cup, we wanted to take a look at maybe some of the leagues around the world that we don't always focus on, especially leagues where the national teams will be at the World Cup.

So if you enjoy this approach, if you like this idea, please let us know and we'll keep it going. We're going to be spotlighting the domestic league in Japan, the J-League, the J-1 League, the J-1 League of the conference. It's been different things at different points. It's the one we almost never discuss, but it's helped develop multiple players for that national team.

It features multiple Asian Champions League winners. The teams have great names.

Graham Ruffin, I'm assuming, will be owning a Japanese club shirt at some point, unless he already does.

Graham, where are you in your shirt collection? I see you in a Japan national team shirt right now.

Yeah, Shinji Kagawa shirt, no less. Yeah, you'll just have to take my word for it as I move national team shirt right now. Yeah, a Shinji Kagawa shirt, no less.

Yeah, you'll just have to take my word for it as I move away from the microphone, which is great audio to show you.

Kagawa on the back.

I actually don't own a J-League shirt.

I did, this sounds like a story, and Joe called me out on it before we started recording.

But I did buy a Nagoya-Grampus-8

Zippy top, a tracksuit top, for a friend about a month ago, but Joe kind of speculated

that the friend might have gone by the name of Rayum Gutvin. And did they? Because I still

believe that that was the case. This friend is legitimate.

Who is? The story is he loves Japanese culture. He goes up to Japan on holiday when he can.

And he is a big Arson-Venger fan. And so that was the link of the two. He's a big football fan,

of course. So that was why I bought him that tracksuit top. From the 90s, no less. In 1995, Nagoya Scampus 8, Zippy Top. I wanted to keep it myself, but he now has it. I like that. And I like the Arsendanga reference in there. Is he the most high-profile foreign name to be associated with Japanese football in your mind? Is it him or is it Andres Iniesta? Or Zico as well. That's fair. That's fair. David Via. I mean, we'll talk about Iniesta and Via who played for Bricel Kobe, who are the current champions. But David Via played for that team, Iniesta. Wanmata, I think, had a cup of the J-League. Lucas Podolsky was out there for a while. So there's some names that have popped up in the G-League in the J-League. I am very much looking forward to this episode because this is totally up my street. This is a league with, you mentioned cool team names, that was also something that I know about this league. Cool Kits as well. And also a league that I think it's legitimate to talk about as a top, certainly like a top 20 league in the world, easy, easy a top 20 league in the world. Nobody, at least in the Western world, we never talk about this league. And so that feels like we need to address that in this episode. Dude, agreed. Because I watched a good amount of, like, I shouldn't say a good amount. I watched some J-League to prepare for this one. It's really good. It's really good. It's high quality. It's really technical. The ball moves really well. There's good passing. There's exciting moments. Even in like a one-nil game, there were plenty of exciting moments. I found it really enjoyable. I would be down to

watch more J-League. And I think some of that is definitely informed by the fact that watching

the Japanese national team, usually every four years at a World Cup, is a reminder of how good

that national team is, how, like, hard-running, hard-fighting they are for every single game,

but then how technical they can be

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