is a former

Japan Japan ( ja, 日本, or , and formally , ''Nihonkoku'') is an island country in East Asia. It is situated in the northwest Pacific Ocean, and is bordered on the west by the Sea of Japan, while extending from the Sea of Okhotsk in the north ...

ese

football Football is a family of team sports that involve, to varying degrees, kicking a ball to score a goal. Unqualified, the word ''football'' normally means the form of football that is the most popular where the word is used. Sports commonly c ...

player. He played for Japan national team.

Club career

Watanabe was born in

Fujieda is a city located in Shizuoka Prefecture, Japan. , the city has an estimated population of 145,032 in 59,480 households, and a population density of 750 persons per km². The total area of the city was . Fujieda is a member of the World Health O ...

on September 10, 1972. After graduating from

Chuo University , commonly referred to as or , is a private flagship research university in Tokyo, Japan. Founded in 1885 as Igirisu Hōritsu Gakkō (the English Law School), Chuo is one of the oldest and most prestigious institutions in the country. The univer ...

, he joined

Kashiwa Reysol is a Japanese professional football club based in Kashiwa, Chiba Prefecture, part of the Greater Tokyo Area. The club plays in the J1 League, which is the top tier of football in the country. Their home stadium is Sankyo Frontier Kashiwa Stadiu ...

in 1995. He played as regular player from first season. The club won the champions at

1999 J.League Cup Statistics of J. League Cup, officially the '99 J.League Yamazaki Nabisco Cup, in the 1999 season. Overview It was contested by 26 teams, and Kashiwa Reysol won the championship. Results 1st round *Consadole Sapporo 1–0 ; 0–3 Avispa Fukuoka ...

. At the

Final Final, Finals or The Final may refer to: *Final (competition), the last or championship round of a sporting competition, match, game, or other contest which decides a winner for an event ** Another term for playoffs, describing a sequence of cont ...

, he scored a tie goal in the 89th minute and he was selected

MVP In team sports, a most valuable player award, abbreviated 'MVP award', is an honor typically bestowed upon an individual (or individuals, in the instance of a tie) whose individual performance is the greatest in an entire league, for a particu ...

. The club also won the 3rd place in

1999 File:1999 Events Collage.png, From left, clockwise: The funeral procession of King Hussein of Jordan in Amman; the 1999 İzmit earthquake kills over 17,000 people in Turkey; the Columbine High School massacre, one of the first major school shootin ...

and 2000 J1 League. He retired end of 2004 season.

National team career

On August 13, 1997, Watanabe debuted for Japan national team against

Brazil Brazil ( pt, Brasil; ), officially the Federative Republic of Brazil (Portuguese: ), is the largest country in both South America and Latin America. At and with over 217 million people, Brazil is the world's fifth-largest country by area ...

.Japan National Football Team Database
/ref>

Club statistics

/ref>

National team statistics

References

External links

*

* 1972 births Living people Chuo University alumni Japanese men's footballers Japan men's international footballers J1 League players Kashiwa Reysol players Men's association football defenders Association football people from Fujieda, Shizuoka {{Japan-footy-defender-1970s-stub