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Ayase Ueda's early life and childhood

Ayase Ueda's early life, childhood and career in Japan

Ayase saw many types of FWs!

Ayase Ueda(上田綺世 in kanji) was born in 1998 in the city of Mito, Ibaraki Prefecture. His parents named him Ayase, wishing the world he lives in to be beautiful. His father was a FW in a working men's league, and he became interested in soccer after watching his father score goals as a child. He has loved watching soccer since he was 3 or 4 years old, especially the goal scoring. He viewed the sport of soccer as a goal-scoring sport. At the age of six he wanted to score more goals than his father, so he started playing soccer with the Yoshidagaoka Soccer Sports Boys Club.

After that, watching foreign soccer with my father became a daily routine. He became so obsessed that he watched every game in the major European leagues as well as the World Cup and Euro tournaments.

Ayase told about those days: "Around 2005, when I was watching especially, FC Barcelona and AC Milan were strong. Barca had Ronaldinho, but I especially liked Samuel Eto'o. For Real Madrid, I liked Ronaldo, and for AC Milan, I liked Andriy Shevchenko. I also liked Hernan Crespo, Raul Gonzalez, Filippo Inzaghi, and other goal-scoring FWs."

Ayase saw many types of FWs and understood that each player had different characteristics. He saw many goals that were unique to each player, and he used all of them as references. For example, Henrik Larsson is small but has a strong heading from a move in front of the goal. He thought about how he stole the opponent's eye to make his move. If it was Inzaghi, I thought about why he was always on the end of a spill. If it was Raul, he thought about how he came up with the idea in front of the goal. He watched every play as if it were him and wondered how he could do it.

In addition, Ayase watched the games and thought for himself, to which he added communication with his father. His father was also the coach of his soccer team. He talked about soccer with his father on a daily basis, and while watching the games, his father asked him specific questions about the process of reaching the goal. He learned many things from his father and built the foundation for his career as a forward.

At this time, the soccer team he belonged to practiced only on Sundays, so he spent his weekdays after school kicking a ball in the neighborhood park until the sun went down. On Saturdays, he practiced shooting with his father, reacting to any pass with a muddy touch and kicking many into an unattended goal. From the fifth grade, he also joined a soccer school where he learned individual tactics: one-on-one, two-on-two, ball handling in tight situations, and tactical play. He learned the tactics necessary to play well in the team's weekend games.

He was selected before entering junior high school and joined Norte Junior Youth, a subordinate organization of Kashima Antlers. There he was supposed to develop his skills well, but he struggled with his physical growth during his junior high school years. He was 150 centimeters tall when he entered junior high school, but his height had grown to 170 centimeters by the time he graduated as well. Perhaps because of this, he suffered a series of injuries and illnesses during his junior high school years. Even after he recovered from his injuries, he had trouble adjusting to the balance of his body upon his return. As a result, he was not able to advance to the youth level, which is reserved for high school age players.

After failing to make it to the youth team, Ayase enrolled at Kashima Gakuen. The reason was that Suzuki, who was the coach at the time, was eager to recruit him. Suzuki felt that Ayase had a sense of scoring, which is essential for a striker, and that he excelled at it more than other players. After his enrollment, Suzuki had him refine his extraordinary talent as a scorer. Mr. Suzuki coached him to score anywhere, with his right foot, left foot, or head, and to stick to his movement and shape his own scoring patterns. Mr. Suzuki had him focus solely on scoring points. His height grew to 182 cm during his high school years, and he was able to score with a high hitting heading.

Under Suzuki's tutelage, Ayase emerged as a FW. In a prefectural tournament game in his senior year of high school, Ayase came on in the second half of a four-goal behind game and scored four goals to win the game. In league play that year he scored 33 goals in 18 games. However, there were no professional invitations, so he decided to go on to Hosei University on his coach's recommendation.

Ayase's talent blossomed at once at Hosei University. His versatile scoring patterns were highly regarded, and he was selected for the Japan national team in his junior year of college. He left Hosei University's soccer club to join Kashima Antlers in July 2019. He immediately made his professional debut on July 31 and scored his first professional goal on August 10. He established himself as a FW with 10 league goals in 2020 and 14 in 2021. He then moved to Belgian club Cercle Bruges in July 2022 and as of 2024 he is playing for Feyenoord.

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