Japan national football team: the full squad and key players after nine summer moves

Japan are coached by Hajime Moriyasu, ranked 17th in the world by FIFA as of 20 July 2026, and took 26 players to the 2026 World Cup. Ten of those 26 entries have since moved. One player was pulled out and replaced before the tournament started, and nine more changed clubs over the summer. The squad below carries clubs corrected to September 2026, which is where most lists still circulating get it wrong.

Japan national football team: the full squad

Caps and goals stand as they were on 29 June 2026, the day Japan went out. Ages are current.

Goalkeepers

Player	Age	Caps	Goals	Club
Zion Suzuki	24	28	0	Aston Villa
Keisuke Osako	27	11	0	Sanfrecce Hiroshima
Tomoki Hayakawa	27	4	0	Kashima Antlers

Defenders

Player	Age	Caps	Goals	Club
Yuto Nagatomo	39	145	4	FC Tokyo
Takehiro Tomiyasu	27	46	1	Crystal Palace
Ko Itakura (captain)	29	42	2	Borussia Monchengladbach
Shogo Taniguchi	35	41	1	Sint-Truiden
Hiroki Ito	27	28	1	Bayern Munich
Yukinari Sugawara	26	25	2	Cagliari (on loan)
Ayumu Seko	26	16	0	Le Havre
Tsuyoshi Watanabe	29	13	0	Feyenoord
Junnosuke Suzuki	23	8	0	Copenhagen

Midfielders and forwards

Player	Age	Caps	Goals	Club
Junya Ito	33	73	16	Genk
Ritsu Doan	28	69	11	Eintracht Frankfurt
Daichi Kamada	30	53	14	Crystal Palace
Takefusa Kubo	25	50	7	Real Sociedad
Ayase Ueda	28	43	18	Lille
Ao Tanaka	27	41	8	Leeds United
Daizen Maeda	28	30	5	Ipswich Town
Keito Nakamura	26	29	11	Lyon
Koki Ogawa	29	18	11	Machida Zelvia
Kaishu Sano	25	16	1	Mainz 05
Shuto Machino	26	15	5	Borussia Monchengladbach
Yuito Suzuki	24	7	0	SC Freiburg
Keisuke Goto	21	5	0	SC Freiburg
Kento Shiogai	21	3	0	VfL Wolfsburg

Twenty-two of the 26 play outside Japan. Germany has the biggest group with eight, England five, France three. Only Osako, Hayakawa, Nagatomo and Ogawa are in the J.League. Three clubs carry two Japan internationals each: Crystal Palace, Freiburg and Monchengladbach.

Nine of the squad changed clubs after the World Cup

The rosters published during the tournament are still doing the rounds, and their club column is now wrong for more than a third of the squad. Zion Suzuki, the first-choice goalkeeper, made the biggest move of the lot.

Player	From	To	Fee
Zion Suzuki	Parma	Aston Villa	£29.9m
Ayase Ueda	Feyenoord	Lille	€15m
Keisuke Goto	Anderlecht	SC Freiburg	Around €10m
Daizen Maeda	Celtic	Ipswich Town	£10m
Ko Itakura	Ajax	Borussia Monchengladbach	€3.5m
Koki Ogawa	NEC Nijmegen	Machida Zelvia	Just under €2m
Keito Nakamura	Reims	Lyon	€1m plus bonuses
Takehiro Tomiyasu	Ajax	Crystal Palace	Free
Yukinari Sugawara	Werder Bremen	Cagliari	Loan, €5.5m option

Two of those need a footnote. Sugawara belongs to Southampton and has now spent two seasons in a row out on loan, at Werder Bremen last year and Cagliari this one, so a list that files him under either club is only half right. Goto was at Sint-Truiden during the World Cup but on loan from Anderlecht, and it was Anderlecht that Freiburg paid after he scored ten in 28 Belgian league games.

Nakamura’s move is the strange one. Lyon signed him after the window had already shut, through the mechanism French football calls a joker signing, and he became the first Japanese player in the club’s history.

The captain who never played a minute at the World Cup

Wataru Endo was named captain when Moriyasu announced the squad in May. He had been carrying a foot problem since surgery in late February, lasted only the first half of the warm-up against Iceland on 31 May, and aggravated it there. Moriyasu took him out of the squad days before the opening game. Endo announced his retirement from international football in the same week, on 73 caps and four goals.

Shuto Machino came in as the replacement and inherited the number six shirt. Ko Itakura took the armband and has kept it since. So anyone reading a pre-tournament squad sheet is looking at a captain who has retired and a player who was never there.

Japan’s key players

Ayase Ueda leads the squad for international goals with 18 in 43. He won the Eredivisie golden boot last season with 25 in 31 games, his first as Feyenoord’s undisputed starter, and Lille paid €15m for him at the end of August.

Takefusa Kubo reached 50 caps at 25. Real Sociedad have had him since 2022 and Japan build the right side of their attack around him.

Junya Ito is next on the scoring list with 16 in 73, and at 33 he is the senior attacking figure in the squad now that Endo has gone.

Ko Itakura captains the side and organises the defence. His club career has come full circle: Monchengladbach sold him to Ajax for €10.5m in 2025, then bought him back a year later for €3.5m on a deal running to 2030.

Yuto Nagatomo is the outlier. He turns 40 on 12 September 2026 and has 145 caps, which is more than any two other players in this squad put together. He is seven short of Yasuhito Endo’s Japanese record of 152.

How Japan did at the 2026 World Cup

Japan opened with a 2-2 draw against the Netherlands, Kamada equalising late. Then came the best performance of their tournament, a 4-0 win over Tunisia in Monterrey, with Kamada scoring inside four minutes, Ueda twice and Junya Ito once. A 1-1 draw with Sweden then settled the group: Netherlands seven points, Japan five, Sweden four and through as one of the best third-placed sides, Tunisia out with none.

Brazil ended it in the round of 32, winning 2-1 through a stoppage-time Martinelli goal in Houston on 29 June.

The finishing position, 21st and out in the first knockout round, undersells the football. Japan scored eight goals across four games, more than at any previous World Cup. Their old best was six, in 2018.

Japan’s record at the World Cup

Year	Result	Goals for
1998	Group stage	1
2002	Round of 16	5
2006	Group stage	2
2010	Round of 16	4
2014	Group stage	2
2018	Round of 16	6
2022	Round of 16	5
2026	Round of 32	8

Eight tournaments, 29 matches, eight wins, and no run past the round of 16 yet. In Asia the record reads very differently. Japan have won the AFC Asian Cup four times, in 1992, 2000, 2004 and 2011, which is one more than Iran or Saudi Arabia and the most of any country.

Who is missing

Kaoru Mitoma tore a hamstring playing for Brighton shortly before the squad was named and did not make it. Takumi Minamino had been out since December with a ruptured anterior cruciate ligament in his left knee. Minamino is the bigger loss on paper: his 26 international goals put him well up Japan’s all-time scoring list, clear of anyone currently in the squad. Maya Yoshida, third on the caps list with 127, played in the Iceland friendly in May but did not travel to the World Cup.

When Japan play next

Two Kirin Challenge Cup friendlies at home. Uruguay visit Q&A Stadium Miyagi on Thursday 24 September, kick-off 19:05 local time, which is 15:35 IST. Venezuela come to the Edion Peace Wing in Hiroshima on Monday 28 September at 19:25 local, 15:55 IST. Those two games will produce the first squad Moriyasu has named since the World Cup, and the first read on who he keeps for the next cycle.

Quick answers

Who is the captain of the Japan national football team? Ko Itakura. He took the armband when Wataru Endo was withdrawn from the World Cup squad in June 2026, and Endo then retired from international football.

Who is Japan’s most capped player? Yasuhito Endo, with 152 appearances between 2002 and 2015. Yuto Nagatomo is second on 145 and the only active player in the top three.

Who is Japan’s all-time top scorer? Kunishige Kamamoto, with 75 goals in 76 games between 1964 and 1977. The closest anyone has come since is Kazuyoshi Miura’s 55.

Where do Japan’s players play their club football? Mostly in Europe. Twenty-two of the 26 are at clubs outside Japan, eight of them in Germany and five in England.

How far have Japan gone at a World Cup? The round of 16, four times, in 2002, 2010, 2018 and 2022. They have never reached a quarter-final.

For more squads broken down the same way, read our guides to the Belgium squad, the Croatia squad, the Netherlands squad and the India squad.

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