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40 Premier League players have attempted more dribbles than Kaoru Mitoma of Brighton this season. 21 completed more. Yet no one in England’s upper class could claim to have spent more time agonizing over the intricate details of the diabolical art of evasion.
Mitoma’s raw game totals could be misleading given his gradual introduction into the Brighton first team. Of the individuals who have more than a few minutes, only two Premier League Average number of most successful dribbles per 90 player compared to Brighton’s master weaver.
ChelseaTrivoh Shalobah ArsenalBen White and Liverpool’s Trent Alexander-Arnold are just some of the growing list of defenders beguiled by the imaginative Mituma footwork he honed in university classrooms. Here’s everything you need to know about what the Premier League defenders could imagine as a graduate thesis.
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At the age of 19, Mitoma turned down a professional contract from J. League Super League team Kawasaki Frontale after eight years in the club’s academy. Mitoma considered he “wasn’t physically ready” and so enrolled at the University of Tsukuba, an hour and a half south, to learn more about his body with a degree in physical education.
Playing on the university side – a higher standard in Japan than in most of Europe – Mituma set about analyzing his dribbling and what made a good dribbling.
explained to the athlete. “I put cameras on my teammates’ heads to study where and what they were looking at and how their opponents were looking at them.”
In his constant search for improvement, Mituma harnessed all the expertise he could find. According to the Japanese outlet NumberWebIntrigued by the diet’s practices, Mitoma even sought out the assistant professor of Tsukuba Satoru Tanigawa, a 110-meter hurdler for Japan at the Sydney and Athens Olympics, to give him tips on his running technique.
Mituma revealed, “I knew that good players don’t look at the ball. They look forward, corner the ball without looking at their feet. That was the difference. I was one of the best dribblers at the time, but I wasn’t exceptional.”
Regardless of the limited sample size of his study, Mituma went on to explain, “I am aware of changing the opponent’s center of gravity. If I can move the opponent’s body, I win.”
At the end of his research, Mituma concluded, “My signature dribbling power has doubled.”
In his first season out of university, Mituma scored 13 goals for his boyhood team Kawasaki Frontale. This was quite a shock to everyone involved considering Mitoma had only mustered seven goals in the Kantō University top division the previous year. The then 22-year-old became the fifth rookie to record a double-double in J.League history – along with his 12th assist in the league.
18 months after handing in his thesis, Mituma penned a contract with Brighton for just €3m.
Mituma does not mentally analyze his findings amid the fury of the Premier League match. As explained after finding the net against everton in January after a knitting walk: “It was an instinct, not a thought process.”
However, after all that studying, Mitoma’s instinct caught up with his thesis – much to the detriment of the Premier League defenders.
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