On July 15th J-league club Kashima Antlers announced the transfer of the FW Yuma Suzuki to the Belgian league club Sint-Truidense. This comes just days after the club sold Hiroki Abe to Barcelona, and they now prepare to lost yet another key member of their squad.
The Japanese striker born on the 26th April 1996 and was raised on Kashima Antlers youth before becoming a member of the first team from 2015.
From 2015 to 2019 he made 97 appearances for the club, scoring 27 goals.
Here are Yuma Suzuki’s last words as a Kashima player:
“I decided to join Sint-Truidense. I know that in Japan we are in the middle of the season but, considering my age, I decided to accept this opportunity”
“In the last few years, I had mixed feelings about joining a foreign club or stay at Kashima. Watching the players of my generation going abroad, sometimes I felt my choice to play in Japan was not the right one. Anyway, now I can [say confidently] that the choice to stay at Kashima until now was the right one.”
“Thanks to all the people who worked with me, I was able to grow as a football player and also as a man.
“From Europe, I`ll show everybody I can also grow more and more from now on.”
“For me, this club is like my home. It’s special, and it will be always inside my heart. Thanks for the 17 years from when I joined Kashima during elementary school”
At Sint-Truiden, Suzuki will be linking up with fellow Japanese players Kosuke Kinoshita and Wataru Endo.