Former Super Eagles’ striker, Peter Utaka has revealed the factors that helped him end the season as the highest goals scorer in Japan’s second division, J-League 2 which wrapped up Sunday after a pulsating run of 42 league games.
Megasportsarena.com reports that the widely travelled hitman, who began the season on a high and ended in a rollercoaster climax last weekend, revealed that it was made possible by dint of hard work, favour from God and immense support from all his teammates.
The last milestone for the itinerant attacker fondly called ‘Manpo’ came on an evening he failed to save Kyoto Sanga from defeat, but he ended the season with 22 goals to become the fourth player and first African to separately win the top scorer’s award both in the Japanese top flight J-League and J-League 2.
The former KVC Westerlo of Belgium striker, who has also played previously in Sweden and China, also equaled his season high tally of 22 goals, same he achieved in the Belgian second division in the 2007/08 campaign with Royal Antwerp and became the record scoring African to emerge top of the charts five times in four countries.
En route to enacting his latest milestone across four different leagues, Utaka led the scorers’ chart from the very first game of the season to the last, thereby becoming the first player to achieve that feat in Japan, with 20 of his 22 coming from open play, out of which 10 were achieved in the first half.
He scored only two goals from the penalty spot to cap a great season during which he showed great consistency, despite having to play four games in a week in the league’s 42-game schedule and Japan Cup games; but he has now revealed that hard work, coupled with the vast experience he has of playing in The Land of The Rising Sun helped him achieve all the aforementioned feats.
Utaka told SCORENigeria: “Playing in Japan and in the marathon competition was not something that came easy. (However), I knew how to handle the pressure of playing lots of games in Japan. Hard work was also something that had me going because I knew what I wanted.”
