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Keisuke Honda: VVV's Very Own Midfield Emperor

Guido

Analyst Written on October 04, 2008

The fans call him “Keizer Keisuke”, Emperor Keisuke. It’s a fitting nickname for VVV Venlo’s Japanese midfield star. The young Japanese play-maker has been the inspirational for VVV this season and last.

Honda is the driving force in midfield for the current leader in the Dutch Jupiler League. Only 21 years of age, Honda has a mature style of play and he is already capable of dictating the tempo in a match. A pretty impressive achievement for a such a young player, active in a foreign and strange league.

Honda was brought to VVV’s attention by their former manager Sef Vergoossen. Vergoossen had trained Nagoya Grampus Eight in the Japanese J-League for a season, before returning to Holland to take over at PSV. After his return, he tipped off VVV regarding Honda.

VVV brought in Honda during the winter-break and the youngster looked pretty impressive. He managed to play 14 games and scoring one goal (from a trademark free-kick) in the second half of the season and was generally one of VVV’s best players, together with revelation Nordin Amrabat.

When the yellow-blacks from Venlo were relegated at the end of the season, everyone expected Honda to make a transfer to one of the top flight teams. None of the top flight teams were interested, however. There was some interest from J-League clubs, but Honda wanted to stay in Europe.

After playing for Japan in the Olympics, Keisuke has returned and he seems to be leading VVV to the title in the Jupiler League. His inspired passing and trademark free-kicks are exceptional this season.

Keisuke Honda takes on NEC's Peter Wisgerhof.

This warrants one important question. Why are Dutch scouts blind to Keisuke's skills? After having seen some of the foreign drab signed this summer, I’m still wondering why clubs splash out cash on players that have never played in our domestic league before, especially when you know there’s a cheap and talented alternative available from within the own leagues.

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