Introducing: the Blue Lock Project
Inspired by the anime and manga series, my football manager Blue Lock project aims to take Japanese football to the top in the most dramatic way possible. 232 of Japanese football's under 18 prospects have been brought together under one roof in Berlin, Germany, where they will compete against each other and against the world to become the very best in football and one day bring the World Cup to Japan.
These 232 will form our first generation, and every season, a new batch of Japan's top prospects will walk through our gates aiming to prove themselves where it matters most.
Competition will be brutal. In Blue Lock, players are not judged by how fancy they look on paper but rather how well they perform on the pitch. In the end, only 10% of the people in the building are going to make it to the first team, and I predict that only 1% of the first generation will actually make that final World Cup winning squad.
Those who fail to cut it here will be sold away from Blue Lock and will be banned from ever playing for the national team forever.
But, focusing our attention on the present, our journey will begin with the first test here in Blue Lock, where we will have an intra-squad tournament over the preseason to decide where everybody will spend the first season. This will be called...
The Selection Tournament.
Everybody will be randomly grouped into teams of 11, and those teams will face each other n an elimination tournament. The winning 11 will be the official starters for the first team this season, while the runners-up will form the first team bench, and the best standout talents from the losing teams will form the extra squad depth. They will be the ones to take on the German 3rd division this season.
From there, the second group of standouts will form our B team and will compete against other b teams in lower leagues, and the third-rate standouts will form our under 19 team. Everyone else will be sent out on loan to our many affiliate clubs and will have to spend the season fighting for their place in the squad from the outside.
And with that, my most ambitious challenge yet begins. I really wanted to share this challenge with somebody, so if you manage to read all that, please give me your thoughts.