"I want to create a place in Germany where Japanese people can grow as people through soccer."

The two founders of the team met in high school.
Representative Takashi Yamashita is a 17th-year student at Takikawa Second High School, a powerhouse soccer team, and Shinji Okazaki is a 19th-year student. The two have been working hard together for a year.

In 2014, Okazaki was playing for Mainz 05 in the German Bundesliga, and Yamashita was working in Germany providing local support to Japanese soccer students studying abroad.

Okazaki often heard stories from Yamashita about Japanese soccer students studying abroad.

Many of them traveled to Germany alone and played in the non-professional amateur category, but the environment that Okazaki heard about the soccer students in question was beyond his imagination.

Young Japanese players have enthusiastically jumped into an environment that is completely different from Japan in every way, including language, culture, and prejudice, in order to fulfill their dream of becoming professional players. However, without preparation or adaptation, the "challenge" turned into "recklessness," and many players gave up on their dreams halfway through.

In comparison, even Okazaki, who played in the extremely favorable environment of the Bundesliga, felt the difficulty of succeeding overseas, and recalls that when he learned that there were many Japanese players struggling in amateur environments that were even less well-equipped than his own, he developed a genuine sense of respect for them.

However, they were concerned about the situation in which players who had gone to the effort of leaving Japan to pursue their dreams and trying their luck overseas were giving up for reasons other than soccer, and the two began talking about what they could do to support such players.

In 2014, I founded FC BASARA MAINZ with the desire to share what I learned in Japan and abroad through soccer and to support Japanese people.