The Story of the Oldest Player Ever

There have been a lot of professional footballers in the history of the world, but only one has played this long and he is not close to done. King Kazu has tackled basically every challenge you could possible come up with -- he’s a Japan legend, he built his domestic league, he played in a top five league, and he showed longevity.

Now, he is just inventing different challenges for himself because noone else has ever stayed on a professional contract this long. This entire video is his story from beginning to NOT end because he is still playing to this day and may play for quite a few more years until he is finally not able to contribute at a professional level.

Much Love,
The Zealand

Sources
► Reuters
► Wikipedia
► Daily Mail
► Express UK
► CNN
► ESPN

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[dinisalmeida]

He has just debuted in Oliveirense, becoming the oldest player ever to play a professional game in Portugal

[basileosalexios]

Kazu is a legend. Very famously when he played for Santos (in Brazil) back in the nineties, the Santos's supporter crowd was singing (in portuguese) "One, two three, put in the Japanese". After demands from the supporters the head coach subbed Kazu in and he scored the winning goal. When celebrating, he went to the Santos's supporters and made a "silence" sign with his hand moving his finger to his lips. The supporters, that had chanted him in, were completely dumbfolded as to why the charismatic japanese player was telling them to shut up after calling him in and him scoring the winning goal. Later when asked about it by journalists, Kazu just said "That's what the sign means? Shit I just saw a player do it on TV once and I thought it was a cool way to celebrate it". Priceless.

[DrZaius]

Noriaki Kasai is a Japanese ski jumper. He started his career at the age of 16 and won his first competition at 19. His last win came at age 42, he was still competitive at 48 and still active now at the age of 50. He also has 3 Olympic medals. One of them he got when he was 21, two more when he was 41.
It should be obvious that ski jumping is horrible for your joints and most athletes retire around the age of 30.
Must be the Japanese food...

[bobjuh]

He is still young, in my FM20 save my oldest player was 72. The guy was a chairman/player without who got "stuck" and never retired. I signed him, played him in the league and Champions league and he retired at the end of the season as a player.

[ANd]

Guy decided to move to Portugal because he actually is somewhat fluent in the language and knew it would be an easy fit and an enjoyable time, honestly massive props because career management-wise this was a fantastic move for him

[themadscientistfm]

He's featured on every database i've made from 1985 to 2023. Love Kazu.

[luisjesus]

You couldn't have chosen a better/worst day to post this video as I just saw Miura play a couple minutes live on my local team stadium when we were being destroyed 4-1. Just seeing Miura live made it less sad on our current situation

[ShinySwalot]

I love how his career and that of Captain Tsubasa have so many similarities!
Especially since now pro footballers admit that Tsubasa was their inspiration, yet Kazu is still going haha

[ricardoblayer]

This video broke my heart, a month ago a Portuguese news website publicised this amazing outside the area volley goal by Kazu... only today I realized it was the Brasilian left back Kazu

[andrenunes]

He played today for the first time in Portugal, becoming the oldest professional footballer to play on Portugal! Insane

[FMAdventure]

This is what I call a perfect timing: he just made is official debut for Oliveirense this Saturday morning 😊

[playerone]

Im 37 now and I'm pretty sure that if I play a football match I'm gonna break a leg or pull at least 2 muscles, respect for this dude.

[hsbase]

The man plays like he's 19 years old in his 50s. I remember seeing a clip of him full committing on slide tackles. How he's still playing is beyond reality

[ThBoss]

He played today for the first time in Portugal, like 3 hours after the video went out 🤣

[pfortner]

King Kazu is legendary.

It feels like yesterday when King Kazu was featured in 2012th Case Closed "the eleventh Striker", as this phenomenal legend that is still going in his 40's.

Let's see if I can learn something new about him.

[dronesclubhighjinks]

What an absolutely incredible story! This lady is doing her best to keep up with him: Oksana Chusovitina is a gymnast who was born in 1975. In 1988, she was the Soviet junior national champion. She then began her international career which has included competing in eight (8!!) Olympic games, the first of which was in 1992 when she represented the "Unified Team" (USSR in its final stage of disintegration). Since then, she has represented her native Uzbekistan (Olympics 1996, 2000, 2004 and many world championships).
In 1997 (the year Simone Biles was born), Oksana gave birth to a son after marrying an Olympic wrestler. In the early 2000s, her little boy was diagnosed with cancer, and there were no medical resources at home. Oksana turned to the international gymnastics community for help, and a German gymnastics family welcomed her family, got the little boy treatment, and Oksana afterwards competed for Germany (Olympics 2008, and 2012 at age 36). She continued to qualify for event finals in vault at all Olympics and many world championships!
Oksana talked about retiring, but switched her citizenship back to Uzbekistan and competed in the 2016 and 2020 Olympics at age 46, where she only just failed to make the vault final!
Oksana plans on competing in the 2024 Paris Olympics, which would be her ninth!
These athletes are absolute marvels!
Thank you for the video!

[aryanmalik]

He seems to be older than time itself.

[andrefaria]

He has been on the bench in some games and has played in a friendly game for Oliveirense. He might still play a game or two this season.

[rodrigogomesteixeira]

The funniest part is that in the current oliveirense team there is a player that goes by the nickname Kazu because when he was growing up in Brazil is idol was Kazu 😂

[Granife]

Zealand makes a video about this legend. And the same day he makes his debut for his club at 56. True legend indeed