ROUGE Mémoire
Junichi INAMOTO
Presentation
Retired
JAPAN| Born | Sep 18, 1979 Yusui, JAPAN | |||||||||
| Age | 44 years old | |||||||||
| Size | 1.81 m | |||||||||
| Weight | 75 kg | |||||||||
| Position | Creative midfielder | |||||||||
| Arrival(s) |
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| Departure(s) |
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| Numbers | 6 | |||||||||
| Honours | Coupe d'Asie des Nations (2000) Intertoto (2002) | |||||||||
| Selections | Japon A | |||||||||
| Career |
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A year after signing Bocanegra, Stade Rennais FC signed another international player who was out of contract in 2009. Japanese midfielder Junichi Inamoto had achieved notoriety thanks to his excellent World Cup campaign in 2002, ended his tour of European clubs in Brittany. The first Japanese player to ever represent Rennes, Inamoto seemed to be a complementary player for the team, technically agile both as a ball-winner as well as getting the ball forward. Having been sent off in the second game of the season away at Nice, he then suffered from the fierce competition for places in midfield, with the likes of Cheyrou, Lemoine and Tettey, but in particular from M’Vila, in spite of a good game against a weak Grenoble side (4-0 win). Given another chance in the heavy 0-3 home defeat against Valenciennes, he paid the price for a poor display. Antonetti didn’t pick him again before the winter break. Keen to get some game time to give him a chance to play in the South African World Cup, he returned to the Land of the Rising Sun in January 2010 for just 150,000 Euros, having made just 5 appearances at Rennes.