On Friday 1st July on the official start of the new season Inter have completed the full signing of wing back Yuto Nagatomo, who regular readers of my blog will know i've been backing since his first games for Inter when he signed on a loan contract in January, during his loan period with us he appeared 19 times in Serie A, Coppa Italia & Champions league games scoring twice. The deal to buy out Nagatomo's contract with Cesena for 6.5 million Euros with a wage of 1.5 million per year for 5 years includes joint ownership of defender Luca Caldirola (who joined Inter at the age of 8) & striker Luca Garritano (who joined Inter at the age of 14) Caldirola who is a Under 21 international will be available for Inter's 1st team squad and Garritano who is a Under 17 International will be available for our Primavera team.
Yuto Nagatomo was born on September 12th 1986 in Saijō, Ehime, Japan.
In 2007 Yuto was chosen as a designated player for development by the J-League and the JFA, this enabled him to register as a J-League player while still playing for his university, in that year he played one J-League Cup game for FC Tokyo & also the Japanese Under 22 team for the Olympic qualifiers.
He officially signed for FC Tokyo in 2008 and earned his first international cap just five months later on 24th May 2008 in a friendly against Cote d'Ivoire. His first International goal came against Syria on the 13th November of that year. He was also a member of the Japanese Under 21 team for the 2008 Olympics. In his four years at FC Tokyo he made 84 appearances.
Nagatomo's Italian journey started in July 2010 when he was signed on loan by Cesena where he played as the starting left back, due to his impressive performances for Cesena & Japan in the 2011 AsianCup he was fully signed by Cesena in January 2011, but his performances had also gained the attention of Inter too and before he played any matches as a full Cesena player he was loaned out to Inter in exchange for Davide Santon becoming Inter's first ever Japanese player, his debut for Inter came on the 6th February wearing the number 55 shirt, replacing Wesley Sneijder in the game against Roma that Inter won 5-3, in Inter's next game against Juventus he came on as a late substitute, impressing enough to be given a starting place in the line up against Fiorentina & Cagliari. He then showed his versitility by playing on the right for the whole 90 minutes against Sampdoria. His first goal came from a Kharja assist in the 5-2 thrashing of Genoa.
On 15 March, to show solidarity with his home country during an awful time he paraded the Japanese flag (with the writing "You'll Never Walk Alone") around the pitch during a Champions League match against Bayern Munich. Inter then were drawn against German club side Schalke 04 in the quarter-finals of 2010-11 UEFA Champions League. Nagatomo, along with international teammate Atsuto Uchida who plays for Schalke both became the second and third Japanese footballer to play in the quarter-finals of UEFA Champions league (Keisuke Honda was the first playing for CSKA Moscow during 2009-2010 season).
So now Inter & Nagatomo are looking forward to the 2011/12 season where Nagatomo hopes to move towards his dream of becoming the best wing back in the world for the greatest team in the world.
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