At the beginning of 2024, manga artist Yoichi Takahashi officially announced a major decision to readers.
"Due to age and health reasons, I officially announced my retirement".
Therefore, the 43-year-long "Football Player" from 1981 to the present will also come to an end in April this year.
At the moment, the story develops to the end of the Madrid Olympics where Japan plays the host country, Spain.
From the growth chapter, to the world youth chapter, the world youth chapter, and finally to the current Olympic chapter ......
It will be the last "official main line" of "Football Player" and slowly come out of everyone's sight.
This is news that has mixed feelings for all fans, but it is worth looking forward to as Yoichi Takahashi said that he is still considering a story about the future of Tsubasa Okura and others.
In fact, Yoichi Takahashi had the idea of retiring in 2021.
He cooperated with the game company KLAB, and showed the follow-up plot of the Olympic chapter in the mobile game "Soccer Player" by providing the original plan himself and KLAB was responsible for the production.
Now the latest chapter of the game is called "Next Dream", and exciting stories such as the Champions League and World Cup qualifiers will be gradually unfolded.
43 Years of **, Soccer Player" accompanied Japanese football from the trough to the peak.
In 1978, the glorious Pampas hero, Kempes, wrote Argentine football on the world map.
It was this year that Yoichi Takahashi, who saw a football match for the first time, sowed the seeds of "football is really fun" in his heart.
Although Yoichi Takahashi was keen on drawing baseball manga at first, he began to choose some themes that were less popular at the time at the suggestion of editor Haruhiko Suzuki.
The seeds sown in youth have finally sprouted.
In 1981, "Football Player" began**, and the protagonist was derived from the protagonist "Hattaro" in Yoichi Takahashi's old work "Friendship Eleven".
However, he was given another name
Large air wings. 
The name is a pun, and "Dakong" is both a surname and an echo of the first word of the work.
"The sky spreads its wings and soars towards the sky).
The legend of a generation begins.
The work is a collection of the "magic ball nirvana", which was very popular at the time, that is, adding exaggerated nirvana to the sport.
It doesn't matter if it's unrealistic, but the reader just likes it.
It's an exaggeration to say that Soccer Kid changed Japanese football, but it did push the boundaries of Japanese football.
Many of the players who have risen to prominence in Japanese football are children who grew up watching manga.
In 1981, the Japan Football Association registered 110,000 elementary school players, and in 1988, when the first part of "Soccer Player" ended**, it had increased to 240,000.
Today, there are many Japanese players playing in Europe's top five leagues.
Playing for Arsenal, Tomiyasu Kenhiro is a high-profile defender; Eintracht Frankfurt's Daichi Kamada is favored by the giants because of their outstanding performance in the Champions League.
Known as the "Japanese Messi", Hisashi Hisashi and Kaoru Mitoma, the "three-goal king", have genius-like skills and wonderful vision, just like Misakitaro and Misugi Jun possessed.
In the Qatar World Cup, Ritsu Doan, who sounded the horn of counterattack, and Takuma Asano, who laid the victory, also proved themselves on a higher stage.
In 1988, the big air wing defeated the German team and won the World Junior Championship; Thirty years later, the Blue Samurai replicates this dream in reality.
In 2024, the big air wing defeated the Spanish team and ended this legendary **; But the Blue Samurai achieved his dream one year ago before the manga.
In "Football Player", Yoichi Takahashi always instills a point of view.
"Football is our friend. ”
The first generation of Japan is accompanied by this friend and is firmly on the right path.
In the first duel between Tsubasa Okuchi and Genzo Wakabayashi, Yoichi Takahashi wrote the following words:
"This is the first match between two talented teenagers, and no one could have predicted at this moment that Japanese football will develop rapidly and soar because of them. ”
Yoichi Takahashi, from a rookie cartoonist who doesn't understand the rules of football, has become a witness to the rise of Japanese football from weakness to rise, and then gradually to glory.
No matter how classic the comics are, they will eventually have to say goodbye to the readers.
An era may end at one point, but a new era will come the next.
Chronology of "Football Players".