Maya Yoshida received a baptism of fire when he replaced the injured Jos Hooiveld less than 30 minutes into Southampton’s 6-1 defeat by Arsenal but then kept his place in the convincing 4-1 home win over Aston Villa. The team may have been stuck to the bottom of the Premier League without a single point to their name prior to the Villa visit, but they had drawn plaudits for their displays and it should be remembered that they had played all of last season’s top three teams in those opening four games. Before the Villa win the fans saw a stinging defeat to Wigan, which was not teh best performance but, ask any Southampton fan if they really expected points from Manchesters City and United, or Arsenal and they’d probably say no – the only way is up! But I digress, this is about Yoshida!
Before moving to Southampton Yoshida had spent three season in Holland’s Eridivisie, making 63 appearances for VVV-Venlo, who he had joined from the J.League’s Nagoya Grampus. His bicycle kick goal for VVV-Venlo off a corner kick on September 11th against PSV Eindhoven in a 3-3 draw earned “Goal of the Year 2011-2012″ in the Dutch Eridivisie. Between 2007 and 2009, Yoshida appeared for Nagoya 101 times, scoring 11 goals. Yoshida also captained the Japan team to the semi-final in the 2012 London Olympic Games.
Yoshida joined Southampton on a three-year contract, reported to have been at a fee of £2,000,000 and arrived at the club – after Japan national team commitments – just the Wednesday before the Arsenal defeat.
“The Premier League is a very, very high level but I’ll try to do my best to win games for the supporters and the Club. When I was in the youth team of Nagoya Grampus Eight in Japan at 15-years-old, I often watched games in the Premier League with the likes of Arsenal, Chelsea, Manchester United and Liverpool. I still like to watch and, now I’m here, I can play games in the Premier League. That’s a real success but I’m just standing on the starting line – now I want to show my quality in the Premier League”, the Japanese defender said to the official Southampton web site this week.
“It was a challenging game for me to play against Arsenal because they are a very big team,” he continued, “I enjoyed it because the Emirates is a great stadium and the opponent was very strong – and it was my debut in the Premier League. I played not-so-well in the 1st half – especially for the third goal, which was my mistake – but in the 2nd half I calmed down and was able to show my skill, I think. I have confidence that I can play in the Premier League. I am still looking forward to playing in our stadium and I want to show my best qualities to the Southampton supporters.”
Picture shows a page from JSoccer Magazine Issue 5, Maya Yoshida sharing the spotlight with VVV Venlo’s Yuki Otsu.