Takashi Usami

Takashi Usami carries a burden most players never have to: he was compared to himself, at nineteen, for the rest of his career. Born May 6, 1992 in Nagaokakyō, Kyoto, a 178 cm forward and winger, he came through Gamba Osaka's youth system and arrived in the first team as the player Japanese football had decided would be next. Then came the move to Europe, and the years that did not go the way the story wanted. The lazy verdict is "unfulfilled potential," and I think that verdict says more about the people issuing it than about him. He went abroad, hit a level that did not accommodate him, and came back — and he is still playing top-flight football for Gamba in the J1 League. Consider what that requires. Every match, he plays in front of people who remember the teenager and measure him against a version of himself that existed for about two seasons. Continuing to show up under that particular weight strikes me as harder, and more admirable, than the early brilliance everyone actually talks about.

Name (English)

Takashi Usami

Name (Japanese)

宇佐美貴史

Reading

うさみ たかし

Born

May 6, 1992 (age 34)

Zodiac / Chinese zodiac

Taurus / Monkey

Origin

Nagaokakyō-shi, Kyoto Prefecture, Japan

Height

178 cm

Occupation

association football player

• Instagramhttps://www.instagram.com/takashi_usami.39/
• Wikipedia (English)https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Takashi%20Usami
• Wikipedia (Japanese)https://ja.wikipedia.org/wiki/%E5%AE%87%E4%BD%90%E7%BE%8E%E8%B2%B4%E5%8F%B2
• Wikidatahttps://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q367474

Tags

• Kyoto Prefecture
• 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.