FC Tokyo on Wednesday announced the arrival of striker Peter Utaka on a year-long loan from Sanfrecce Hiroshima,\u00a0the last in a series of moves the club have made this winter to establish themselves as legitimate title contenders\u00a0in 2017.<\/p>\n
In a simultaneous announcement, Sanfrecce revealed that they had acquired the former Nigeria international on a full transfer from Shimizu S-Pulse, with whom he made his J.League debut in 2015.<\/p>\n
Utaka\u00a0joins a squad brimming with attacking talent, including current all-time J1 scoring leader Yoshito Okubo, two-time Golden Boot winner Ryoichi Maeda,\u00a0Rio Olympic standout Shoya Nakajima, and London Olympic\u00a0star Kensuke Nagai.<\/p>\n
The 33-year-old, who joined S-Pulse in 2015 after three seasons in the Chinese Super League, scored nine goals that year before spending last season on loan at Sanfrecce. He flourished at Edion Stadium, netting 19 goals and sharing\u00a0the season’s top scoring honours with Vissel Kobe ace Leandro.<\/p>\n
“I look forward to meeting our enthusiastic supporters, but first\u00a0I have to train hard to improve my fitness,” Utaka said in a press release issued by\u00a0his new club.<\/p>\n
As per the terms of the loan, the\u00a0striker will not be allowed to play\u00a0for Tokyo in any officially-sanctioned matches against Sanfrecce.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
FC Tokyo on Wednesday announced the arrival of striker Peter Utaka on a year-long loan from Sanfrecce Hiroshima,\u00a0the last in a series of moves the club have made this winter to establish themselves as legitimate title contenders\u00a0in 2017. In a simultaneous announcement, Sanfrecce revealed that they had acquired the former Nigeria international on a full transfer from Shimizu S-Pulse, with whom he made his J.League debut in 2015. Utaka\u00a0joins a squad brimming with attacking talent, including current all-time J1 scoring leader Yoshito Okubo, two-time Golden Boot winner Ryoichi Maeda,\u00a0Rio Olympic standout Shoya Nakajima, and London Olympic\u00a0star Kensuke Nagai. The 33-year-old, who joined S-Pulse in 2015 after three seasons in the … Continue reading “FC Tokyo sign 2016 Golden Boot winner Utaka”<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":90,"featured_media":1610,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[32],"tags":[418,127,381,417,211],"class_list":["post-1609","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-japan","tag-fc-tokyo","tag-j-league","tag-j1-league","tag-peter-utaka","tag-sanfrecce-hiroshima"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/football-tribe.com\/asia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1609","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=1609"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/football-tribe.com\/asia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1609\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/football-tribe.com\/asia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/1610"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/football-tribe.com\/asia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1609"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/football-tribe.com\/asia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1609"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/football-tribe.com\/asia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1609"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}