The greatest has retired.

Hidetoshi Nakata is someone who all Japanese people might be proud of and respect. But right after this soccer world cup he told us his retirement. And now he is trying to get into Harvard University to get MBA degree.

He had been a key player in Japanese national soccer team and a key person for development of Japanese soccer. He played in the National Under-15,-17, and Youth team before playing in a professional league, called J-league, in Japan. After few years playing in J-league, he moved to Europe. He played well in Europe and gave other J-league players broader opportunity to play abroad. He proved that Japanese players have enough ability to play abroad. Some other Japanese players followed him and play abroad now. Japanese soccer wouldn’t have been developed this much without his contribution.

It is obvious that he was a great player by only looking at his career introduced above. But I think he was not just a good player. Things that we really have to look at are his efforts. I’ve heard that he started studying Italy by himself when he was in high school. This is because he dreamed about playing soccer in Italy. At that time, no Japanese player had succeeded playing soccer abroad. Who could imagine going Europe to play soccer? Probably no one except him. So what I respect about him is the actions that he took to make his dream happen. It is easy to just tell your dream to others but difficult to actually start doing something to make it happen. What’s even more difficult is to continue doing it. Of course he sometimes must have felt depressed cuz everyone feels depression. But he believed in his possibility and kept making efforts. This is why I think he could have succeeded.

Just believing in yourself is not enough to make your dream happen. But it might help us to work hard when we feel depressed. We can achieve and gain nothing without constant and great efforts. So I believe in myself and my possibility to make my dream happen. This is Hidetoshi Nakata taught me.

When I say I’m gonna be Japanese Spielberg, people probably laugh at me. But I will laugh at people laughing at me. Cuz I think we have a huge possibility. With confident and constant great efforts, we can be anything as Hidetoshi Nakata proved it.

What are you gonna be?