Soccer Star 'King Kazu' Signs for a New Club Aged 57
He's probably the world's oldest professional soccer player and Kazuyoshi Miura has announced he's not done with the sport yet.
Miura, who is 57 and is often known as "King Kazu," has joined Japanese club Atletico Suzuka.
"I'm at quite an age," he said in a Tokyo news conference.
Yes he is.
Miura, who once played for the Japanese national team, began his soccer career in 1986, before most current professional players were even born.
That was a time before the Berlin Wall in Germany came down, Hirohito was still Japanese emperor and mobile phones were the size of a brick.
Many of his contemporaries retired long ago, but the forward wants to keep going.
He has joined Suzuka, in the fourth level of Japanese soccer, on loan from second-division team FC Yokohama.
Miura scored two goals in his first spell with the Suzuka club in 2022 before leaving for Portugal.
He has just spent two seasons on loan with Portuguese second-division team Oliveirense, where he only played a few games and didn't score any goals.
Earlier in his long career, he scored 55 goals in 89 appearances and was a star with Japan's national team in the 1990s. He was part of the team that won the Asian Cup in 1992.
"Retiring isn't an option. I want to play as many minutes as I can in games," Miura said at a news conference.
He has played professionally in Brazil, Italy, Croatia, Australia and Portugal. He made his debut in 1986 with Brazilian club Santos, a side made famous by Brazilian star Pele.
He's been recognized by Guinness World Records as the oldest professional soccer player to score a competitive league goal and as the player with the most decades playing professional soccer at five.
In 2017, he also became the oldest player to feature in the Pro Evolution Soccer video game series!
