This one asks you to care about a team before it asks you to believe in the animation, and if you say yes, it owns you. Kamiya coming home from Italy with the "courageous captain" title still hanging off him, walking into a Kakegawa High squad that has rotted since his day, is pure melodrama fuel, and the show knows it. Tsuji plays the bored kid who does not want any of this, and watching that wall come down is the actual sport here. Episodes 2, 9 and 13 are where it lands the punches, the ones fans of the 1993 Aoki Densetsu Shoot bring up when defending it to strangers. The match animation will not save you, so the emotion has to, and often it does. You either drop it by episode three or you are still thinking about Kakegawa a year later.

Hideto Tsuji is a student at Kakegawa High School who shows little interest in the school's soccer team, which has lost much of its former strength. Atsushi Kamiya once captained that same team and has gone on to worldwide fame with a well-known Italian club, where he is celebrated as its courageous captain. When the two cross paths, their encounter marks the beginning of something new. A 13-episode sports TV anime from 2022.