Cerezo Osaka midfielder Hiroshi Kiyotake’s highly-awaited return to the J.League will be delayed for at least a week, according to local media.<\/p>\n
The Samurai Blue midfielder returned to the J1 club this winter after his four and a half seasons in Europe concluded with a disappointed run for Sevilla last fall.<\/p>\n
But after experiencing discomfort in his right thigh, the 27-year-old is expected to be absent from the squad when Cerezo host Jubilo Iwata in Saturday’s season opener.<\/p>\n
“He’s not at 100 percent,” manager Yoon Jong-hwan told\u00a0Nikkan<\/em>. “The fans want to see him play so we thought about starting him (on the bench), but in his current condition we’ll have to leave him out for the opener.”<\/p>\n Kiyotake first played for Cerezo between 2010 and 2012, making his way into the starting\u00a0following the departure of former teammate Shinji Kagawa for Borussia Dortmund.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Cerezo Osaka midfielder Hiroshi Kiyotake’s highly-awaited return to the J.League will be delayed for at least a week, according to local media. The Samurai Blue midfielder returned to the J1 club this winter after his four and a half seasons in Europe concluded with a disappointed run for Sevilla last fall. But after experiencing discomfort in his right thigh, the 27-year-old is expected to be absent from the squad when Cerezo host Jubilo Iwata in Saturday’s season opener. “He’s not at 100 percent,” manager Yoon Jong-hwan told\u00a0Nikkan. “The fans want to see him play so we thought about starting him (on the bench), but in his current condition we’ll have … Continue reading “Cerezo returnee Kiyotake expected to miss J.League opener”<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":90,"featured_media":1459,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[32],"tags":[165,164,127,381],"class_list":["post-1458","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-japan","tag-cerezo-osaka","tag-hiroshi-kiyotake","tag-j-league","tag-j1-league"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/football-tribe.com\/asia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1458","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/football-tribe.com\/asia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/football-tribe.com\/asia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/football-tribe.com\/asia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/90"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/football-tribe.com\/asia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1458"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/football-tribe.com\/asia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1458\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/football-tribe.com\/asia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/1459"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/football-tribe.com\/asia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1458"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/football-tribe.com\/asia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1458"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/football-tribe.com\/asia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1458"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}