Naohiro Takahara
is a Japanese footballer. Born in Mishima, Shizuoka, he is a striker and currently plays for Urawa Red Diamonds. He has previously played for Jubilo Iwata in Japan, Boca Juniors in Argentina, Hamburger SV and Eintracht Frankfurt in Germany. He played for Japan in the 2000 Olympic Games in Sydney but missed the 2002 World Cup, co-hosted by his home country and South Korea, because of injury. On December 3 2006, he scored his first hat-trick in the German Bundesliga in a league game against Alemannia Aachen. In January 2008 he moved to Urawa Red Diamonds for a transfer fee of around 180 million (around $1.7 million).
He was a member of the Japan team for the 2007 AFC Asian Cup and played in all the six games involving Japan. He scored 4 goals and was a joint top scorer of the tournament.
Facts
His goals and performances are celebrated by Eintracht supporters by singing to the melody of Gala's Freed from desire. After successful matches Takahara often joins the faithful to jump up and down the same way.
Takahara was the first Japanese to play in the Argentine First Division league [*].
Takahara is the third Japanese to play in Fussball-Bundesliga after Yasuhiko Okudera and Kazuo Ozaki.
National team
(Champions)
Honors and awards
Individual Honors
AFC Asian Cup Best Eleven: 2000
J-League MVP: 2002
J-League Top Scorer: 2002
J-League Best Eleven: 2002
AFC Asian Cup Top Scorer: 2007
Team Honors
FIFA World Youth Championship runner-up: 1999
AFC Asian Cup Champions: 2000
AFC Champions League Champions: 1999
Asian Super Cup Champions: 1999
J-League Champions: 1999, 2002
DFB-Ligapokal Champions: 2003
Club Career Stats
Last update: 21 October 2007
External links
Official site
footballdatabase.com
Yahoo! Sports UK
National Football Teams
This article is licensed under the GNU Free Documentation License. It uses material from the Wikipedia article Naohiro Takahara