Japanese soccer-related vocabulary?

Nice idea for a thread. I'm far from what I'd regard a "high level" Japanese speaker, but I've been trying to improve my football conversation ability lately.

Just to get the ball rolling:

守備　（しゅび）　SHUBI - Defense

Example (from this month's S-Pulse magazine):

守備面では高木和道が抜け、戦力ダウンが心配されていますが。。。
(On the defensive side of things, Takagi's departure may cause some concern about our match strength, but...)

Is this the sort of thing you meant? I like the idea of a word a day kind of thing.

 

Great idea, Dokool. My kanji knowledge is eye-wateringly poor, so I'll throw in a ridiculously easy one.

選手 = senshu (player)

 

Not a kanji thing, but I've often wondered about "middle shoot" which match commentators spout so regularly with regard to medium- or long-range efforts.

Are they really saying "middle shoot"? And if so, why "middle"? Why not "long shoot"?

 

Yes they are saying "middle shoot". Apparently the Japanese concept of 25-30 yards is pretty mid-range. Long would mean really long-distance.

I always find myself having to re-explain my holding midfield role in my recreational team, whenever I say "I play at volante". Nobody around here knows what it means.

 

Thanks!

Could we have a list of all the positions for completeness? I know some others arent directly linked to the English equivalent like トップ下 TOPPUSHITA - attacking midfielder?

I remember when Kakitani scored from behind the halfway line against France youth team, the commentator described that as a long shoot.

 

Boranchi is the problem of Japanese team.

I gurantee you all that Japan will lose from Bahrain and Qatar in the following game.

You should plan on 2014!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!


Not this year!!!!

 

I dont know if there is an English word for it... It's more about the player's positioning / running which makes him "pull out" a pass from his teammates, so essentially he made himself available to receive the ball and he felt it was going well(手応え).

 

Slight bump/addition courtesy of Shuvy.

 

I like "Gyaku-saido!" (Other side) that we used a lot when I played in Japan (our International High School in Fukuoka got stomped when we played Japanese high schools, remember this was the late 1990's, the era of Higashi Fukuoka dominating).

Anyway, gyaku-saido pretty much means "to switch sides", as in to cross the ball to the other side of the field.

 

I love sekando boru. It's something this team desparately needs to work on. We're always a step too slow.

 

Why it's called soccer in Japan instead of football like in the whole world? Anyone knows the background?

 

I'm going to go out on a limb and guess
- American influence
- sakkaa is less awkward than futtobooru and is just 2 syllables.

 

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Football_in_Japan

Japan was not occupied by the British or French, but solely by US. Thus "soccer". Before WW2 there was a Japanese name.

 

Thanks for the link. So it went like "We've got already a name for it but let's call it like Americans because... (write Your own idea here)" way. And I knew it was America influenced because football is soccer only in USA and Australia probably. I'd rather want to know why it won with football or old Japanese name and when it became more popular than those.

 

It's an interesting discussion considering baseball is largely Japanese terminology.

 

Interesting indeed.
As to why... like scotch says it probably is about just the shorter word. And "shukyu" sounds very non-modern to Japanese ears, maybe not catching the sports' western image.
Considering that I don't think there was some sort of rivalry of 2 or 3 terms for one thing. When "football" or "shukyu" were used it was an exotic sports, nowhere near a mass or working class-sports. The word "soccer" probably sneaked in during occupation and post-war Japan and it was already commonly used (on above grounds) when the sports itself became popular in the late 60s.
It would be interesting to read old news articles from that era... also for other football-related vocabulary.

 

Even if you mention American influence, it's popular mainly within imigrants from Latin America or in the East Coast where most of European immigrants came and where the 'soccer' is most popular in America. Wasn't it a park-sport in Japan early in it's development? I was about to bring out 'yakyuu' for an example because it's much more popular in America (as scotch wrote) and English (well , 'American' because noone in the world, aside from USA and few other countries like Cuba, cares about it) could be much more used so it could be intruduced only by 'beikoku' occupying forces. Maybe someone with a bigger knowledge could bring some data about time when 'shuukyuu' changed into 'sakkaa'. I wonder why this question wasn't asked before (I thought there would be an easy answer). Any help would be appreciated.