How Takayuki Suzuki’s World Cup Goal Changed My Life

This article originally appeared on VICE Belgium.

A chunk of wood. That’s the last trophy former Japanese footballer Takayuki Suzuki hoisted above his head after scoring for the Portland Timbers, a second-division team in the US. Their lumberjack mascot, Timber Joey, celebrates his team’s goals by slicing off a piece of a log with a chainsaw and handing it to the scorer. It was 2010, and the Timbers had just won their match against the Californian Sonoma County Sol 3 to 0.

Eight years earlier, on June 4, 2002, the Japanese national team kicked off their first match of that year’s World Cup as home players. Military fighter jets crossed the sky above Saitama Stadium as the team prepared to face their opponent, Belgium. Japanese fans had been waiting for this moment for six long years, ever since the country was selected to co-host the tournament with South Korea.

As an emerging nation on the global football scene, this was Japan’s chance to show the world what it was capable of. Suzuki only played two real seasons before this game—even though he was 26!—and hadn’t scored at all in the previous six months. Yet, he still made the final team and even kicked off the first ball.

And now, for the faithful moment. Minutes after Belgian player Marc Wilmots had scored a goal, Japanese midfielder Shinji Ono sent a long ball towards the penalty area. From behind the two Belgian center-backs emerged Suzuki. Running after the ball at full speed, he crouched, extended his right leg, and pushed the ball forward, past goalie De Vlieger and into the net.

I watched this match in school, in a Belgian classroom, as a 10-year-old kid of Japanese descent. After taunting me about Belgium’s imminent victory for what felt like an identity, my classmates finally shut their mouths and ate their words—and I jumped for joy. To me, this moment represented the culmination of so many hopes and dreams, in a place where no one else shares my identity. 

Even at that age, I remember being antagonistic towards Belgium, a place symbolizing isolation and uprooting to me. Japan wouldn’t let themselves be beaten by them, I knew that. I suddenly felt like I had 23 teammates—the number of footballers in the Japanese national team—supporting me through my solitude. Two goals followed, one on each side. At the final whistle, the teams left the pitch in a draw, 2-2, and Japan earned its very first point in the World Cup. They’ll be eliminated two weeks later in the round of 16.

Suzuki instantly became my hero. In my search for my own identity, he was my greatest hope and role model. His goal marked the beginning of an era: At the mature age of 10, all I wanted was to continue riding the highs of my World Cup dreams. And the summer transfer market would allow me to do just that.

When Suzuki joined KRC Genk, a Belgian football club he was loaned to, for the 2002-03 season amid the crackling of camera flashes, he knew the expectations were high. He was one of the very few Japanese footballers ever to be offered the opportunity to play abroad. Among the 23 Japanese players at the World Cup, only four were working in Europe. 

Suzuki’s destination was not an accident. For weeks, the Japanese industrial adhesive company Nitto Denko had been trying to get a Japanese player on the team they sponsored, KRC Genk. The president of the company’s European branch, Jos Broekmans, took charge of the negotiations himself. This was a commercial operation, first and foremost, as is almost always the case when it comes to Japanese footballers’ international transfers.

At the time, I was totally oblivious to the business logic. I lived all my summer floating on a cloud, my heart beating fast to the rhythm of the 2002 World Cup’s official anthem, my humid eyes watching over and over again the matches I recorded, my fingers flicking through my almost-full Panini album.

Having the opportunity to follow my new favorite player from closeby, in my own country, felt like a godsend. With some luck, I thought, this would even be the first time I see a Japanese—or even an Asian—blasted all over TV and newspapers. His winning the championship the same way he blew my mind in June seemed only a matter of time.

In that period, the only way I experienced football was by going to the library on Monday, picking up a paper, and scouring the results of the Belgian first division matches for Suzuki’s name. But week after week, I found nothing.

I waited 69 long weeks. The summer’s euphoria evaporated and died of a sad record. In fact, Suzuki’s goal against Belgium turned out to be the last one he scored over the following 46 matches. During my summer fever, little did I know that the peak of my fanaticism and identification with my new role model would squarely coincide with the worst moment in his career.

Sixty-nine weeks. Sixteen months. An eternity, or to be precise, 12 percent of my whole life at the time. It was massive. It took my own daughter less time to say “dad” for the first time than for him to break his dry spell. By comparison, Fernando Torres’s infamous 2012 goal drought at Chelsea only lasted 26 matches, or five months. 

On the 26th of September, when Suzuki finally found the net again, I watched the long seasons of waiting flash before my eyes. I was beyond happy on that day, and yet nothing ever felt quite the same as that 4th of June.

And that feeling paralleled Suzuki’s own career. After his failed season, he moved to a different local team in the same region, KVV Heusden-Zolder, playing half-empty stadiums most of the time. He couldn’t have been any further from the brilliance of his World Cup moment under the spotlights of TV. Even his new hairstyle, with his hair back to black, made him less radiant. 

Then, in the summer of 2004, Suzuki moved back to Japan to return to his original club, Kashima. My ego hurt from having believed so much in a player who, in the end, left with his head held down, probably without realizing what he represented to me and to other Asian kids.

This 16-month experience shaped how I experience football to this day. I’ve come to love the pain and weariness unique to fans of small teams and humble players. The habit of waiting patiently, the resilience it takes to keep believing in your team even when you can’t expect a victory—it all makes beautiful moments shine even brighter.

As a humble fan, football gives me rare but intense joys. I cherish even the difficulty and long periods of drought. I need to get down into the mud, to feel the frustration and nothingness of disappointing matches to one day raise my arms, euphoric.

This mindset reminds me of the Japanese expression “Shikata ga nai,” or “It is what it is,” the ability to maintain dignity in a situation of injustice or tragedy. For a country that has often embraced fatalism—amid two atomic bombs, detention camps, tsunamis—suffering and perseverance are a virtue.

Another principle illustrates this mentality: “Hogan-biki.” a term that comes from samurai and the tragic hero of the Heiji era, Minamoto no Toshitsune. It roughly translates to “rooting for the underdog” or “having sympathy for the weak or unhappy”. 

In a way, supporting “losers” instead of winners acknowledges our human ability to accept vulnerability and resilience, to let go of control in the face of adversity. Accepting “Shikata ga nai” in football and celebrating rare victories also applies to my support of the Japanese national team. There is always something to hope for, even if bitterness is more likely than joy.

I often wonder what it feels like to support a petrodollar-fuelled club, watching your team rack up landslide victories one after the other. The endless stream of happiness, the instant gratification—like scrolling through TikTok on an algorithmically perfected high—just isn’t appealing to me.

But over the past few years, even my love for these small wins has slowly soured. All of FIFA’s shenanigans, the World Cup in Qatar, deep-pocketed investments from totalitarian countries—nothing can reconcile me with what decision-makers in football have on offer right now in a world where everything is sold and everything is bought.

With head-spinning turnover, rich clubs getting richer, and players signing ever-more-absurd deals, it is difficult for me to feel anything pure and true for football anymore. Manchester United’s starting 11 could very well become Manchester City’s next full team in two transfer windows. Why bother becoming attached? Some archival material still brings me back beautiful childhood memories, but beyond that, I’m faced with the realization there’s not much left in the sport for me anymore.

As for Suzuki, he played again in Europe in 2006, for a Serbian team sponsored by Toyota. He then played three matches with Yokohama Marinos, his last team in the top leagues, and moved to the U.S. to another Toyota-sponsored team, the Timbers. The Japanese second division welcomed him back from Portland in 2011 before he hung up his boots in 2015, some 15 years after his bright and shining moment.

Takayuki Suzuki is still my favorite footballer. His story represents all the things that matter most to me, crystallized in one person. It’s the story of a failed transfer, of rooting for the underdog, of unexpected glory. Suzuki is not and will never be an icon—he’s just a player, who left behind more traces in people than anyone would suspect.