Football – goalkeeper Svend Brodersen is a star in Japan

It is currently like every year on the transfer market: footballers are traded wild until the “Deadline Day”, on September 1 at 6 p.m. And quite a few of these transfers are once again threaded by consultants without the players in question being involved. But for opportunities on Playing timeIncrease in the market value and top content, many kickers simply nod off the deals.

If you ask Svend Brodersen about these excesses in professional football, he just has to grin. Born in Hamburg, the morning training session has just come in a cabin from the morning training of his employer Fagiano Okayama, a Japanese first division club. “You can play football everywhere,” says the 28-year-old goalkeeper with a blank-shaved bald head, and adds: “There are also transfers, because you do without the Bundesliga career, but you can win so much more in other ways.” He was like this.

Brodersen has been playing in Japan for four years – and quickly became a star. On the one hand, this is due to his spectacular parades at Yokohama FC and since the beginning of 2024 in Okayama. On the other hand, “Bro”, as it is often called, also stands out away from the square. Brodersen is known as a fan of Japanese pop culture – one reason why he came to Japan at all. “You also call me Otaku here,” he says after the training and laughs. Otaku are called people in Japan who consume as much anime and manga as possible day and night – and sometimes mentally in a variety of fantasy life. Brodersen, for example, love “One Punch Man”, a story about a guy with a supernatural fist. Or “Slam Dunk”, a story about a basketball team. The list of anime, which Brodersen has already “searched away”, is of course much longer.

Why is that worth mentioning? Because Brodersen’s love for Japan’s pop culture was an important reason why he left FC St. Pauli in the summer of 2021. “I was not primarily changed because of football,” he explains. In the statement by Yokohama FC, where Brodersen hired at the time, it said: “My childhood was strongly influenced by Nintendo, Godzilla, Samurai,› Fast & Furious ‹. Since then it has been my dream to come to Japan one day. “

The step of an anti -professional? In any case, the deal had not come about through a consultant who saw the market value potential, but about discussions in the cabin of Brodersen’s club, the then second division club St. Pauli. “My contract ran out that I could have extended, but rather with a reservist role.” So he asked his cabin neighbor, the Japanese Ryo Miyaichi. “Ryo gave me a few tips.” And as a happy coincidence, the Tokyo 2021 Olympic Games were imminent – in the course of which Brodersen already revealed his attitude to football. Because the DFB had problems for the Olympic tournament, which is not very important in professional football, to find a substitute goalkeeper, many only wanted to promise if they really played. When the former youth goalkeeper Brodersen was asked, things went very quickly: “Even without playing, I was in the future!”

At the end of a tournament unsuccessful for the DFB, Brodersen did not even start his journey home again. “When I came to the country in 2021, I couldn’t say a word Japanese yet. But then I appropriated it by looking at all kinds of anime in Japanese and soon we also read manga in Japanese. It was fun that worked! «Also because of this knowledge, Brodersen is noticeable in Japanese football today. Other foreign stars such as Lukas Podolski, Andres Iniesta or David Villa did not manage to learn the Japanese language during their engagements. But Brodersen even masters the many delicate courtesy. And when he comes to media matters in T-shirts of popular Mangastory, the country cheers.

When he explained the change of German teammates, many had shaken their heads. “” Then you are away from the window, “they said.” He saw it differently at the time. In parallel to football, Brodersen studied psychology and learned the characteristics of Japanese culture. “Today I’m a quieter type than before. I concentrate less on myself and more on my environment. ”That helps in the team, but also in private.

Brodersen has also developed in sports. When the specialist magazine “Kicker” analyzed the German foreign professionals in June, only Svend Brodersen was classified as “outstanding” in addition to Nicolas Kühn from Celtic Glasgow. And so grinning says Otaku: “I found my luck in Japan.”