Football team Deportivo eye Japan´s Matsui: reports

Spanish side Deportivo la Coruna have made an approach for Japan midfielder Daisuke Matsui, currently with French side Grenoble, Japanese reports said Monday.

The 29-year-old, whose playmaking creativity and passing vision has won him plaudits, has played a key role in a national side that has made it to the final 16 of this year’s World Cup for the first time on foreign soil.

The attacking right-midfielder has also attracted interest from other sides in France, Russia, and Ukraine, said the Nikkan Sports. German and Italian clubs have also expressed their interest, the Sports Nippon said.

The rise of the thin-framed Matsui, standing at 175 centimeters (five foot nine inches) and weighing 64 kilograms (141 pounds), has pushed Japan’s freekick specialist Shunsuke Nakamura, once a core member of the Blue Samurai, to the substitutes’ bench.

Matsui, who has been capped 27 times for Japan since October 2002 and scored one goal, has started and shined in all three of Japan’s World Cup Group E games in South Africa against Cameroon, the Netherlands and Denmark.

He has played for Grenoble since 2009 and scored four goals, after a spell at Saint-Etienne in 2008-2009.

Matsui scored 15 goals in 119 games with Le Mans from 2004 to 2008, after making his professional debut at Kyoto Sanga of Japan in 2000.