Hiroki Abe

Hiroki Abe's career is a reminder that talent and timing are two different things. Born in Tokyo on 28 January 1999, he broke through at Kashima Antlers as a teenager and in 2019, at twenty, signed for Barcelona to play with their B side. For a Japanese player of that age, it was a genuinely startling move, and the expectation that came with it was enormous. What followed was harder. Long injury layoffs cost him the stretch of uninterrupted football a young attacker most needs, and the trajectory people had sketched out for him never quite materialised. He later returned to Japan and played in the J1 League with Urawa Red Diamonds, and he has been called up to the national team. At 171 cm he was never going to overpower anyone; his game was about receiving in tight space and turning forward, which is a skill that depends on sharpness and rhythm, exactly the things injuries take away first. That he is still competing at all strikes me as the most impressive line on his record.

Name (English)

Hiroki Abe

Name (Japanese)

安部裕葵

Reading

あべ ひろき

Born

January 28, 1999 (age 27)

Zodiac / Chinese zodiac

Aquarius / Rabbit

Origin

Tokyo, Japan

Height

171 cm

Occupation

association football player

• Instagramhttps://www.instagram.com/hiroki.abe_official/
• Wikipedia (English)https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hiroki%20Abe
• Wikipedia (Japanese)https://ja.wikipedia.org/wiki/%E5%AE%89%E9%83%A8%E8%A3%95%E8%91%B5
• Wikidatahttps://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q27917453

Tags

• Tokyo
• association football player

Last updated

2026-08-07

Facts are limited to publicly available information up to 2024; non-public or unconfirmed items are omitted. English text is machine-assisted (facts translated by Sonnet, "My Take" written by Opus 4.8). The Japanese page is the source of record.