The older he gets, the better he gets, Zlatan Ibrahimovic once said. “Just like red wine.” The eccentric Swede has scored more than 300 goals. Not in his entire career, but just after his 30th birthday. It wasn't until he was 41 that he said goodbye to the football stage.
Values that are hard to beat. But at 41, Kazuyoshi Miura wasn't even in the late autumn of his career. The 57-year-old Japanese wants to enter his 40th professional season in the spring. “I still have a contract for one and a half years. I think it's a natural evolution,” he told Kyodo News. The striker is currently on loan from Japanese second division club FC Yokohama to fourth division club Atletico Suzuka. In the past half-year he appeared eleven times for Suzuka, but failed to score.
Miura was born in February 1967. At the age of 15, he traveled alone to Brazil. Four years later, in 1986, he signed his first professional contract with the legendary FC Santos, the former club of Brazilian football legend Pelé. The Japanese also played in Europe, albeit only briefly. In Italy he played for Genoa CFC (1994/1995), a few months in Croatia for Dinamo Zagreb (1999) and in Portugal for Oliveirense (2023/2024). His stint in the Portuguese second division only ended last summer.
The eternal “King Kazu”
He has held the title of oldest professional footballer in the world since 2017, when, at the age of 50, he surpassed the legendary Englishman Stanley Matthews. This is not the only reason why the professional is a hero in his homeland, where he is affectionately known as “King Kazu”. For the Japanese national team, with whom he won the Asian Championship in 1992, Miura scored 55 goals in 89 international matches between 1990 and 2000. This makes him the second best goalscorer in his country.
Even if he no longer has an age record to break in professional football, there is still no end in sight. Miura emphasizes that his passion for football is “always great” and will not diminish: “Stopping is not an option. I want to play as many minutes as possible.”
