Just how good is Celtic’s Kyogo Furuhashi?
Just how good is Celtic’s Kyogo Furuhashi?
Celtic striker Kyogo Furuhashi is good. But how good is he?
The end of the football season is here and I’m not ready.
Just how good is Celtic’s Kyogo Furuhashi?
Saturday 29th August 2020. Yokohama F. Marinos, the J1 League team partly owned by City Football Group and faltering Japanese champions, are winning 3-1 at Vissel Kobe. Both teams are tied up in mid-table and will remain there until the end of a season heavily disrupted by the coronavirus pandemic.
Capacity restrictions mean fewer than 5,000 supporters are in attendance at Vissel’s NOEVIR Stadium on a sunny Saturday afternoon. The away side are managed by Ange Postecoglou, an Athens-born Australian with A-League and Socceroos success under his belt before winning the title in Japan.
As the 89th minute ticks into the 90th, F. Marinos still have a two-goal cushion. Noriaki Fujimoto, who opened the scoring for Vissel Kobe to punish a spectacular goalkeeping error, pulls a goal back in the final minute of normal time. The visitors wobble and are quickly knocked over by a stoppage time equaliser, scored barely seconds after the restart.
Two substitutes combined to make it 3-3. Sergi Samper’s through ball sent Kyogo Furuhashi clear and his finish was impeccable. He took one touch on his chest before deftly lobbing the goalkeeper to leave Postecoglou to curse his luck in the technical area.
It wasn’t the first time or the last. Earlier that month Kyogo had scored against F. Marinos on the way to a penalty shoot-out victory for Vissel in Japan’s Super Cup. In October he made it 3-1 in Yokohama. A late consolation for Postecoglou’s team didn’t give him much cheer.
His team for the two J1 fixtures against Vissel featured Daizen Maeda, an industrious and talented young winger who was reunited with the Australian at Celtic, initially on loan, late in 2021. Kyogo was already at Celtic Park having been signed in the summer.
Postecoglou’s team in Glasgow has a significant Japanese influence. As well as Kyogo and Maeda, Celtic are also represented by Reo Hatate (signed from Kawasaki Frontale in January 2022), Yuki Kobayashi (from Vissel in January 2023) and F. Marinos loanee Tomoki Iwata. Australian Aaron Mooy and South Korean Oh Hyeon-gyu complete an impressive AFC contingent.
They’ve all contributed to Celtic silverware, inevitably. Kyogo is the headline act, the star of the show. Yet he was the kind of J. League player only scouts and recruiters who were really paying attention were likely to track. He wasn’t especially young – he’s 28 now – nor flashy enough to drag the world’s attention into his orbit.
He was and is a goal scorer, certainly, but Postecoglou’s own experience in Japan tipped Celtic off about a player who left Vissel having garnered little serious interest from Europe’s more celebrated leagues. He was one hell of a spot regardless of his goal tally.
Kyogo never topped the scoring charts in Japan. Last season, his first in Scotland, he scored a goal fewer than the two players who shared the golden boot. He had a better return per 90 minutes than either of them and has topped even that this season.
At the time of writing, Kyogo is the Scottish Premiership’s leading scorer and is bagging at a rate of once every 90 minutes played.
He is a deadly finisher. Though he’s averaging fewer shots this season and fewer shots on target as a consequence, he’s scoring with more of them. None of his Premiership goals have been penalties. He did take one in April and hit the post with Celtic 3-0 up at Kilmarnock after 21 minutes. Kyogo had scored the first and his team went on to win 4-1.
Look beyond the raw numbers and ruthless execution in front of goal and you’ll see there’s even more to his game. Great finishers are always great movers and Kyogo is Scotland’s finest current example. His attacking movement and runs in behind are excellent. He comes alive in the final third, playing with energy and forever sniffing out opportunities before they manifest.
In their leading striker, Postecoglou and Celtic also have a terrific technician with sharp, clever passing and natural link play with the dynamic Maeda to his left and Jota, a tricky and tightly coiled Benfica product, to his right. He’s been leading the line and smashing in goals left, right and centre for a club that’s likely to win the treble. Kyogo will be a Premiership champion for the second time.
If there’s a criticism to be made of him, it’s not really one over which he can exert much control. Kyogo is a centre forward but he’s not a burly, bustling sort who will impose himself on matches when his team are under pressure. It only happens a few times a year for Celtic but on the odd occasion when Postecoglou needs a striker to hold the ball up on his own and force his team back into the ascendancy, Kyogo isn’t the man.
That’s splitting hairs. There is no measure by which Kyogo hasn’t been a roaring success in Glasgow. The goals are plentiful and the silverware is already piling up. Along with captain Callum McGregor and the forwards playing either side of him, the 28-year-old is at the very heart of it all.
He’s exciting to watch, as players who are always on the move and never far away from making something happen usually are. Kyogo’s artistic, almost avant-garde range of finishing techniques sets him apart. According to Transfermarkt he cost Celtic €5.4m. That’s a bargain, to put it mildly.
Yet there remains a question, asked not with side but curiosity. Just how good is Kyogo? He’s performing exceptionally well in Scotland, where he’s more than made his mark by all reasonable criteria. It’s practically impossible to dig up anything for which he can be doubted.
He’s a brilliant forward whose statistical impact for his team unquestionably proves that he’s an active contributor to the glories he shares. But these are Scottish Premiership glories built on Scottish Premiership goals against Scottish Premiership defences.
Everything about watching Kyogo in 2022/23 suggests he’d score anywhere – the goals he scores are the result of his movement and finishing – but history tells us that lethal marksmen in leagues like the Premiership, the Eredivisie and Denmark’s Superliga do not necessarily master the divisions they move into.
There’s an argument to be made that we don’t know exactly how good Kyogo could be. His age places him at a stage at which he could yet squeeze out another decade but can also be expected to hit the limits of his potential sooner rather than later.
He’s scored 77 goals in two top flight divisions with matching reputations for being rather more fertile striking territories than others.
In 2022 the J1 League top scorer was Thiago Santana, a Brazilian striker for now-relegated Shimizu S-Pulse. In 2021 the honour was shared by Santana’s compatriot, Leandro Damião, and one Daizen Maeda.
The J. League is not a proven producer of strikers who go on to tear up the big time. Scotland, recently at least, is no different. To be clear: that’s no bad thing. It just is.
If it sounds like I’d be in favour of Kyogo moving away from Celtic Park to truly test himself, to really find out what his ultimate level could be in the grand global scheme of things, put down the pitchfork and listen up. I think the opposite of that and here’s why.
Kyogo is his own man with his own motivations and will make his own choices. There will be speculation about his future. He will be touted for a transfer to supposedly greener pastures, not least because he’s in his prime ‘last big contract’ phase.
But why bother? He can continue to improve with Celtic and rack up the trophies safe in the knowledge that he’ll score goals of all styles and standards without staking his reputation on landing on his feet elsewhere.
There’s a little competition for Postecoglou and the Bhoys in the Premiership and Scotland’s cup competitions but let’s face it, Michael Beale isn’t likely to be the man to bring it to the party. Celtic’s real test is in Europe and in that regard there’s plenty left to prove – for the team and for Kyogo, as a player and a scorer.
28 is a fascinating age for footballers on the cusp of possibility. One always assumes that ambition is the be all and end all for players in that position, and that the fulfilment of their ambition is defined by transfer fees or the supposed ranking of this league and that.
Sometimes the assumption is mistaken. Sometimes the smart move is not to move at all. Players can be too keen to remove themselves from the very situations in which they best thrive. Kyogo doesn’t need to go anywhere to meet his potential, nor to appease the curiosity of observers like me.
“When tweeting about these things, I've been met with a lot of common sense arguments. Common sense arguments are hard to argue against because they are inherently very easy points to make. They are robotic logic – if this, then that.
“They are also a bit of a cop-out, and are absolute strawman – but you can win a common sense argument just by its nature. It is an easy thing to say and support. You can make fairly logical points that are inherently flawed - but cannot be dismantled in reply as quickly as they can be made.
“So I get it. I don't need it explained to me why Villa are rising prices. I just find it hard to chew up and accept.”
Aston Villa compare rather favourably against some other Premier League clubs when it comes to season ticket prices but the trend is upwards, steep and poorly timed. Like James Rushton in his House of V newsletter, I get the logical arguments and I know Villa aren’t the most expensive or the worst value (I’m looking at you, Fulham).
I still think hoiking the prices up right now, emboldened by a bit of on-pitch performance for once, is a shit thing to do.
Salty beef extracts
25 Years On: Why the Predator Accelerator Is Still The Best adidas Boot Of All Time (SoccerBible)
How are English football clubs responding to the cost of living crisis? (The Observer)
Brentford’s Rico Henry: ‘Teams said I was too timid, not big enough. It gave me more fire’ (The Guardian)
Giving up my Watford season ticket was not just easy but an inevitable decision (The Guardian)
Zambia plane crash: The Dane who helped rebuild Zambia's football team (BBC Sport)
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