Brighton and Hove Albion star Kaoru Mitoma has joked that Arsenal ace Takehiro Tomiyasu will now be angry with him.
Don’t worry too much – two of Japan’s biggest players aren’t about to end their friendship.
However, Mitoma has risked some stick from the £20million Arsenal defender after forgetting all about him.
Mitoma has featured on a Premier League video on TikTok in which he was quizzed about Japanese players.
The Brighton wide man was asked to name all 11 Japanese players who have featured in the Premier League over the years.
Mitoma got some fairly notable names like Hidetoshi Nakata and Shinji Kagawa, as well as Junichi Inamoto and Shinji Okazaki.
Mitoma even got Kazuyuki Toda, who joined Tottenham in 2003 – a year after impressing for Japan at the 2002 World Cup.
Toda only played four times for Spurs so we wouldn’t expect many to have got that one right!
Mitoma did, but then managed to miss out Tomiyasu before realising the Arsenal man was the final answer he needed.
The interviewer asked just how on earth Mitoma could possibly miss Tomiyasu out given that the two are close friends off the pitch.
Mitoma admitted that Tomiyasu will probably be angry with him now having forgotten all about him in this quiz as the Brighton man laughed off his mistake.
Kaoru Mitoma and Takehiro Tomiyasu flying the flag for Japan
You can now make an argument that Mitoma and Tomiyasu are the best we have seen from Japan in the Premier League.
Nakata was a huge name but only spent a few months at Bolton Wanderers, the final games of his career before retiring early at the age of just 29.
Kagawa excelled for Borussia Dortmund but was just never able to recapture that form at Manchester United and quickly returned to Germany.
Inamoto never quite lived up to the hype and the same goes for Ryo Miyaichi, who was also at Arsenal.
Okazaki did win a Premier League title with Leicester but Mitoma and Tomiyasu have now shown their qualities in the top flight whilst having so much more ahead of them.
That’s exciting for Japan, who will now hope to see more of their talents end up in the Premier League with Mitoma and Tomiyasu.
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