[5][6][7][8][9] Japan is also the country with the most comprehensively developed football in Asia in both men and women as well as in both futsal and beach soccer.

In 1930, the Japan national association football team was organised and had a 3–3 tie with China for their first title at the Far Eastern Championship Games.

At the 1968 Mexico Olympic Games, the Japan national team, filled with the top JSL stars of the era, had its first big success winning third place and a bronze medal.

UEFA and CONMEBOL aided the Japanese awareness of football by having the Intercontinental Cup played in Tokyo as a neutral venue.

[14] It consisted of some of the top clubs from the old JSL, fully professionalized, renamed to fit communities and with the corporate identity reduced to a minimum.

The Japanese national team has reached the round of 16 on four occasions – as hosts in 2002, where they were knocked out by Turkey 1–0, in 2010, where they lost to Paraguay in penalties, in 2018 where they fell 2–3 to Belgium, and in the 2022 FIFA World Cup.

[citation needed] Captain Tsubasa has also inspired the likes of prominent footballers such as Hidetoshi Nakata,[16] Seigo Narazaki, Zinedine Zidane, Francesco Totti, Fernando Torres, Christian Vieri, Giuseppe Sculli, James Rodríguez, Alexis Sánchez[17] and Alessandro Del Piero[18] to play association football and choose it as a career.

The inspiration for the character of Tsubasa Oozora came from a number of players, including most prominently Musashi Mizushima, arguably the first Japanese footballer to play abroad, and whose move to São Paulo FC as a ten-year-old boy was partly mimicked in the manga.

Other works focusing on football include Hungry Heart: Wild Striker (from the same author of Captain Tsubasa), The Knight in the Area, Days, Inazuma Eleven and Blue Lock.