Masakiyo Maezono

Masakiyo Maezono, born in 1973 in Satsumasendai, Kagoshima, played for the Japan national team during the stretch of the 1990s when football in Japan stopped being a niche interest and became something the whole country watched. He is 170 cm, which is small at that level by any measure, and he got there on technique and nerve rather than physique. That was quietly instructive to a lot of people at the time. What genuinely interests me, though, is the second act. He moved into work as a tarento on Japanese television and also took up beach soccer. In 2013 he was arrested on suspicion of assaulting a taxi driver while drunk and released the next day pending a decision; he has since supported self-help groups for recovery from alcohol dependence. Retired stars often spend the rest of their lives being a museum exhibit of their own best season, trading on a highlight reel until the audience moves on. Maezono instead built a working life in the present tense, in a medium that has nothing to do with the one that made him famous. Being willing to start over as a beginner in public, after having been genuinely great at something, takes a kind of lightness most people can't manage.

This take was written by generative AI, one per person, from publicly reported facts (editorial policy). It is a reading of the record, not reporting.

Name (English)

Masakiyo Maezono

Name (Japanese)

前園真聖

Reading

まえぞの まさきよ

Born

October 29, 1973 (age 52)

Origin

Satsumasendai, Kagoshima Prefecture, Japan

Height

170 cm

Weight

66 kg

Occupation

association football player / tarento / beach soccer player

Zodiac / Chinese zodiac

Scorpio / Ox

Works summary

Appearances

37 (1996–2022)

By year (titles with a known year)

1996: 2, 1997: 1, 2011: 1, 2012: 1, 2014: 2, 2015: 6, 2016: 5, 2017: 3, 2019: 3, 2022: 2, year unknown: 11

Debut work

いじめ、カッコ悪い。

Filmography / notable works

• Instagramhttps://www.instagram.com/maezono_masakiyo/
• Xhttps://x.com/zono23
• Wikipedia (English)https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Masakiyo%20Maezono
• Wikipedia (Japanese)https://ja.wikipedia.org/wiki/%E5%89%8D%E5%9C%92%E7%9C%9F%E8%81%96
• Wikidatahttps://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q495816

Tags

• Kagoshima Prefecture
• association football player
• tarento
• beach soccer player

Last updated

September 29, 2026

Facts are limited to publicly available information up to 2024; non-public or unconfirmed items are omitted. Works and profile fields sourced from Wikipedia reflect content as of 2026-08-26. English text is machine-assisted (facts translated by Sonnet, "My Take" written by Opus 4.8). The Japanese page is the source of record.