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The Belgian city of Sint-Truiden, home to just over 40,000 people and situated in the Flanders region, might not seem like a natural stopping point for up-and-coming footballers, but for Arsenal‘s latest recruit Takehiro Tomiyasu and other promising Japanese stars, it is fast becoming the go-to destination in Europe.

In November 2017, DMM.com, a Japanese e-commerce and online entertainment company bought the remaining 80 per cent shares in Sint-Truiden football club (STVV), having scooped up 20 per cent earlier that year. Since January 2018, 14 Japanese footballers have signed for STVV.

Speaking to i, the club’s chief executive officer Takayuki Tateishi says the decision to purchase STVV was twofold: to help grow Japanese football and to act as a cultural bridge between the two countries. There is plenty of evidence from STVV’s transfer dealings over the past four years to support the first point.

Daichi Kamada’s spell on loan in 2018-19 acted as a springboard to establish himself as a regular starter for Eintracht Frankfurt; Wataru Endo helped VFB Stuttgart achieve promotion to the Bundesliga and has since become the club captain; Yuma Suzuki is tipped by Tateishi to be the next export and was linked with a move to Nottingham Forest on transfer deadline day.

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But Tomiyasu, the very first recruit after DMM’s takeover, is the biggest – and most lucrative – success story to date. Now 22, Tomiyasu signed as a fresh-faced 19-year-old in January 2018 after establishing himself as a regular starter for local club Avispa Fukuoka, before moving on to Bologna in Serie A and now Arsenal in a deal worth just shy of £20m.

Tomiyasu was strongly linked with the Gunners’ north London rivals Tottenham earlier on in the window, before they capitalised on Barcelona’s well-documented financial woes to buy the Brazilian Emerson Royal instead. But according to Tateishi, Tomiyasu had attracted Premier League interest long before committing pen to paper with Arsenal.

“Two years before Tomiyasu left for Bologna there were already enquiries from Premier League clubs – West Ham, Crystal Palace and Everton,” he told i. “But we agreed that it was too soon for him to take the step from the Belgian league which is the reason he went to Bologna first.”

It was a series of moves that worked well for all parties. During an 18-month spell with STVV, Tomiyasu made 40 appearances and won the club’s player of the season award in his only full campaign to earn them a sizeable €9m (£7.7m) transfer windfall from his switch to Bologna. STVV will also earn a cut from his subsequent move to Arsenal.

While in Italy, Tomiyasu developed his defensive skills further, either as a right-back or in the middle. Last season, Tomiyasu ranked top in Bologna’s squad for aerial duels won, second for interceptions and third for tackles attempted. And pertinently given Arsenal’s current issues at the back, he didn’t make a single defensive error leading to a goal in his two years in Italy.

“He can use his left foot and right foot at a high level, he is quick, good at heading and quick to understand tactics,” Tateishi says. “But he’s still only 22 and has the potential to improve.”

When asked what Tomiyasu could work on specifically, Tateishi is unequivocal in his response. “The Premier League is more physical than Serie A. If Tomiyasu wants to adapt to English football he needs to work out and gain more muscle!”

Despite advising Tomiyasu to make use of the facilities at Arsenal’s London Colney training base, Tateishi is convinced that he can thrive in English football. “He has already proven himself in Italy. He has the ability to succeed.”

And he might not be the last player to arrive in the Premier League via a stint in northern Belgium.

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Soccer Aid is returning for its tenth year, having secured former England international Gary Neville, Paul Scholes, Fara Williams and England’s all-time top scorer Wayne Rooney for this year’s squad.

Established in 2006 by Robbie Williams in aid of children’s charity UNICEF, Soccer Aid sees professional players and celebrities competing in an 11-a-side match between England and a team representing the rest of the world to raise money for this important cause.

Rooney said: “Pulling on an England shirt is always special, so I’m absolutely delighted to be doing that again in Soccer Aid for UNICEF this September.

“Managing the England team last year was great but being around the players made me want to lace up the boots again – now I’ve got that chance, one last time.

“Soccer Aid for UNICEF has been a massive force for good since it started back in 2006 and I know the public will support us again this year by purchasing tickets, which are now on sale.”

But who’s in the line-up for the competing squads this year?

Here’s everything we know so far.

Who’s in the line-up for Soccer Aid 2021?

As with previous years, two teams comprised of ex-professionals and celebrities compete as England and World XI or ‘The Rest of the World’.

Confirmed for the England squad so far are:

• Olly Murs
• Wayne Rooney
• James Arthur
• Paul Scholes
• Gary Neville
• Paddy McGuinness
• Jamie Redknapp
• Chunkz
• Fara Williams
• Mark Wright
• Liv Cooke
• Kelly Smith
• David James
• Aitch
• Max Whitlock
• Jamie Carragher
• Joel Dommett
• Mo Farah
• Lee Mack
• Shaun Wright-Phillips
• James Bay

Confirmed for the World XI squad so far are:

• Usain Bolt
• Tom Grennan
• Roman Kemp
• Kem Cetinay
• Ore Oduba
• Roberto Carlos
• Patrice Evra
• Nigel De Jong
• Martin Compston
• Pablo Zabaleta
• Chelcee Grimes
• Shay Given
• Rivaldo
• Demot Kennedy
• Yungblud
• Big Zuu

Who will be managing the 2021 Soccer Aid teams?

Sven-Göran Eriksson will return to the England dugout for management duties, with Micah Richards, David Seaman and Williams joining his team.

Harry Redknapp will manage the World XI once again. Judy Murray and Robbie Keane will assist him.

When is Soccer Aid 2021 taking place?

The tenth Soccer Aid event is set to take place at Manchester City’s Etihad Stadium on Saturday 4 September, with kick-off scheduled for 7.30pm.

While last year’s event occurred behind closed doors due to the coronavirus pandemic, tickets are now available for purchase for this exciting charity event.

Will Soccer Aid 2021 be shown on TV?

Yes. As with previous years, the match will be televised on ITV.

How can I get tickets for Soccer Aid 2021?

Tickets are now on sale from the Soccer Aid website.

Adult seats are priced between £20 and £75, while children’s seats run from £10-50.

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His critics decry his autocratic brand of leadership but when it comes to football, nobody can accuse Viktor Orbán, Hungary’s populist right-wing prime minister, of being a plastic fan.

Indeed a tale from Orbán’s youth highlights his love of the game – and hints at what it would mean for him to see Hungary reach next year’s World Cup finals in Qatar.

Retold in a recently published book about Orbán, Pál Dániel Rényi’s ‘Must-win – Football and Power in Orbán’s World’, it dates back to 1982 when Orbán, who played for his local club, Székesfehérvári MAV Előre, up to U18 level, was on army service and sneaked out of the barracks to watch the famous Italy-Brazil match in that summer’s World Cup. When his breach of discipline was discovered, he was locked up for three days.

Fast forward to the present and the country which England visit for tomorrow’s opening World Cup Group I qualifier has benefitted from over €2bn worth of investment in football since Orbán embarked on his current spell in office in 2010.

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This includes €1bn spent on new stadiums, while at grassroots level more than 1,300 pitches have been built or renovated to replace those that disappeared in the post-Communist chaos of the 1990s.

As for on-field results, György Szöllősi, editor-in-chief of Nemzeti Sport, a daily sports newspaper, is quick to list landmarks such as the national team’s first big-tournament participations since the 1980s (at EURO 2016 and EURO 2020) and last season’s return to the Champions League after 25 years of Ferencváros, Hungary’s most popular club.

Now for the next target. “Since 1986 we’ve not qualified for any World Cup so this is the next big task – and that’s why we need to beat England this week which is obviously not very easy,” laughs Szöllősi, who is also president of the Hungarian Sports Journalists’ Association and a friend of Orbán.

The venue of tomorrow’s match, the €500m, 67,215-capacity Puskás Aréna – where Liverpool, Manchester City and Tottenham Hotspur all played European fixtures last term – is significant too in the story of Hungary’s football recovery, according to Szöllősi.

He describes it as a “very strong symbol” of restoration, having risen on the site of the old Népstadion, which was opened by the Communist regime in 1953, the year before Hungary finished as World Cup runners-up, but whose construction was never actually completed as football in the country began a slow decline.

“After the revolution [in 1956] the biggest stars of Hungarian football emigrated – [Ferenc] Puskás, [Sándor] Kocsis, [Zoltán] Czibor – and 12,000 registered football players left Hungary.” In the past decade, by contrast, the number of registered players has risen from 125,000 to 250,000.

“The football restoration project is really close to his [Orbán’s] heart,” says Andy Clark, a British football journalist based in Budapest, who has seen a deep-rooted pessimism start to shift.

With memories still fresh of Hungary’s EURO 2020 efforts – including a 1-1 draw with France at the Puskás Aréna – tickets for this month’s qualifiers against England and Andorra sold out within days. That said, the polarised nature of politics ensures less enthusiasm elsewhere.

“Some non-Orbán fans don’t want Hungary to do well as it would vindicate him,” adds Clark, explaining how when Hungary qualified for EURO 2016, a post on the prime minister’s Facebook page said: “Told you so.”

Orbán’s opponents point to the €2.5bn spent overall on sport by Fidesz, the ruling party, and contrast it with expenditure on hospitals and education (albeit, a cynic might add, just as much has been spent on anti-immigration campaigns or asserting a tighter grip on the media).

To achieve such investment in sport, the government set up a corporate tax-break scheme, TAO, allowing companies to pay 70% of their tax directly to development programmes in football, handball, basketball, ice hockey, volleyball, and water polo.

The level of state control is another concern, with critics highlighting the number of clubs run by politicians or companies close to Fidesz. By way of example, the man behind the rise of top-flight leaders Kisvárda, Miklós Seszták, is a former minister of development.

The owners of Honved, meanwhile, run the company which operates Hungary’s southern border fence. And while the combined income of NB1 clubs has grown to around €135m, around 80% is estimated to come from state sponsorship, begging the question of what happens if another government came in which looked less favourably on football.

There are also questions asked about the productivity of several heavily funded club academies, with one source citing a culture of cronyism impacting on coaching appointments. Puskás Akadémia, the club in Orbán’s home town of Felcsut, produced national-team players Roland Sallai and László Kleinheisler but they hardly came cheap given the €100m received in funding over the past decade.

As it happens, the new star of Hungarian football, Dominik Szoboszlai, was coached by his own father, Zsolt, before completing his schooling in Austria. Still, as Orbán’s supporters would note, the mere presence of a €20m (£17.1m) Hungarian footballer – the fee that RB Leipzig paid Salzburg this summer – can only be another sign of progress after those long decades of decline.

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“A long ball came forward and it was flicked on. I took one step into a sprint to cover in behind and I heard a cracking noise that sounded like a breaking bone but was actually my Achilles tendon tearing. I chased back towards the goal, which was silly, and then left the pitch in agony. I thought that was my career done. I wasn’t far wrong.”

Michael Hefele is speaking from Huddersfield Town’s training ground, where he now works in just about every role he is allowed to engage in. He is – as will come as no surprise to anyone who has ever met Hefele – smiling and bouncy, like a puppy being allowed off the lead for the first time.

But it wasn’t always that way. Hefele went through a year of rehabilitation on his Achilles, subsequently broke a bone in his foot (he believes his body shape changed after surgery), suffered three months more in recovery and was then made to train with the Under-23s at Nottingham Forest. In December 2020, almost two years after the initial injury, Hefele twisted his knee, which demanded further operations. Instead, the German central defender called time on his career. His legs and mind had been through the mill.

“When your recovery is so long and so hard, it becomes difficult to take mentally,” he says. “I was at a very low point and went through some dark times that led me to see the game differently. When everything is going well, everyone is slapping you on the back. But when you are not there, nobody is there for you; it is dark black. Nobody really appreciates or understands how worthless you feel. Then you really learn who your friends are and who really cares for you. You become just a toy, and if you’re broken everybody forgets about you. But it wasn’t my fault. I didn’t suddenly decide to tear my Achilles.

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“I don’t know if there is enough support for those sorts of problems. The game advertises itself well in terms of helping people, but the truth is that there are times when nobody can help you. You are an open secret: nobody can make your leg better. I was confident enough to go my own way and make something of it, but I have seen people who break down. It’s incredibly hard. There are too many times when you are expected to fight your way alone.”

Hefele “making his own way” led him back to Huddersfield Town, a club where he became a cult hero after helping them into the Premier League in 2017 and enjoyed a fabulous connection with the supporters. Club and player now enjoy a perfect relationship: he does as much as he can with as many people he can, and they let him because his enthusiasm is infectious.

Hefele helps out with the coaching, learning from the staff as he completes his badges. He shadows Head of Football Operations Leigh Bromby. He is currently studying on a two-year sporting director course. He asks for information from the marketing team. He sits in board meetings to understand the work involved in the day-to-day running of a football club. You get the sense that if a member of the canteen staff phoned in sick, Hefele would be only too happy to don an apron.

“I’m so lucky that I have found a home at Huddersfield Town,” he says. “We are one big family in a hard industry. Lots of people say it but here, they mean it: everybody is the member of the family. I don’t yet know where my direction is going, but it’s about giving myself as many options as possible and creating expertise in every area.

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“But it will be a role where I can influence things. I’m not happy to sit in a chair in an office and chill out and not be arsed to do anything. I have to achieve because this is my second career, my second chance. I want to constantly strive for the next level, to raise the standards. If I can do that by 0.5 per cent, wow – then I’ve made a difference. And I need to pay the trust back that Huddersfield gave to me.”

The only problem with retiring young is that you spend time with players on the training ground with those who you wish you could still call your peers. Huddersfield Town’s squad contains three players older than Hefele. Does he not wish he was still playing every week?

“I play a couple of passes or do a few kick-ups and then my knee blows up. I’m in pain 24-7. It’s hard to take and it will always be hard to take; I could cry every day. But I’m in a process where I adapt to a new life. You have to move forward and I want to climb a new mountain. I’m loving my life again.”

Hefele is giving himself plenty of options. At 30, he has plenty of time on his side. He speaks extensively about the positive flipside to retiring early allowing him to submerge himself in the culture of a club that ultimately will allow him to pick where he believes he is best-placed to make a difference. But whether it is as a youth coach, head coach or sporting director, Hefele is keen to point out that there will be one pervading philosophy that he sticks to, one that he has learnt across his career for better and for worse.

“It’s about treating people with respect,” he says. “Diversity; that’s what football must always be about. It doesn’t matter what job I’m doing or what job someone else is doing, what their religion or ethnicity is. Everybody must be equal. How you deal with other people, how you treat them, how you look after them; that is how you become successful. Nobody must ever be made to feel worthless or slip under the radar. People in football can forget that. Apart from winning headers, that is my strength. Oh, and always having a big smile.”

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