Shogun Soccer Scouting #10: Sota Kitano
Clever & Technical, Bursting Forward from Between-the-Lines
A problem I have is that I don’t get to talk about enough players/teams/matches because I spend so long on any particular single newsletter. I watch so many J.League games that I don’t end up talking about which I feel is a waste. This is my first attempt to strike a balance between quality and quantity.
For comparison, here are my latest medium~long reads:
I’ll blabber more in detail about how I’m struggling to approach this at the very end of this newsletter. Anyway, on to today’s topic. Since we’re on #10 of this series I thought it was only right to focus on… Sota Kitano!
tl;dr (too long; didn’t read)
Live wire in attack and defense. Excellent technique for all on-ball actions and drives team forward with his ball-carrying.
Date of Birth: August 13, 2004
Age: 20 years old
Nationality: Japan
Position: #10 Attacking Midfield, #8 Box-to-Box Midfield
Club: Cerezo Osaka (J1)
Squad Number: #38 (2025 season)
Height/Weight: 1.72m // 60 kg (Source: SoccerDigest)
Sota Kitano was born in Wakayama Prefecture and was scouted by Cerezo Osaka’s youth teams at an early age from his local club. Moving with his family to Osaka, Kitano worked his way through the entirety of Cerezo’s youth system before joining the First Team in 2022 as a 17 year old. He slowly earned cameo appearances before getting regular minutes in the last few months of the 2024 season under the previous manager Akio Kogiku. Now under Arthur Papas in 2025, Kitano has won a regular spot in the starting XI. Sota Kitano should be well known already to foreign scouts considering his ample experience with the Japan youth national sides (the U-15/16/17/19s), especially his participation in the 2023 U-20 World Cup.
Sota Kitano plays primarily as a #10 behind the striker but has adapted to play from slightly deeper as a #8 box-to-box midfielder as well.
DATA NOTE: Data visualizations are from the 2024 season. Player radars are from both the 2024 and 2025 seasons.
VIDEO NOTE: Sota Kitano plays in Centrally, wears #38 and has dyed blonde-ish hair. Cerezo’s kit colors are pink with white lettering (home), and white with pink lettering (away).
Let’s get started!
In Defense
Kitano defends quite well from the front. Whether part of a Midfield 3 or simply playing as the #10, he is tasked with pushing up next to the Striker and pressing the back-line. While occasionally I think he doesn’t quite cover the midfielder he’s leaving behind him with his cover shadow, overall he does a good job.
When he and Cerezo’s 1st Line of Press are bypassed, Kitano doesn’t stop. He is quick to hustle back and is quite adept at intercepting and tackling from the opponent receiver’s blindside. In this season Kitano has also been trusted with a more box-to-box role deeper in midfield due to his good defensive work-rate as he is alert on defensive transitions.
In Attack
Passing
Kitano doesn’t provide much ball progression with his passing as he doesn’t often play balls from deeper areas. Even when he drops to receive, he prefers to make combination plays and lay-offs, acting as a mobile pass-and-move platform to progress forward. Kitano’s combination play is a big factor in how Cerezo can push into the final 3rd (alongside his ball-carrying/dribbling). Overall, Kitano is very good at moving a team through zones (defensive 3rd to middle 3rd, middle 3rd to final 3rd) in this manner rather than playing direct vertical passes from deep himself.
NOTE: Remember, the below data is from the 2024 season!
In the 2024 season, his passing under pressure was an issue, especially on his weaker left foot. This can be something defenders can try to force in the future to dilute Kitano’s impact. I would certainly be interested in how he fares in StatsBomb’s data this season as I believe he has improved significantly in his passing, although it’s clear he is still very Right Foot reliant. It’s important to keep in mind his role in the team is to take a lot of risk in finding ways to move the ball forward. In addition, Kitano’s crossing isn’t very effective (well, in terms of completion rates compared to positional peers in the league) which seems odd considering his technique in other passing aspects. Kitano, surprisingly isn’t a high volume shot creator. Some of this is tactical as a lot of shot creation is coming from the wide areas, especially crosses via Lucas Fernandes.
Shooting
This is an area I feel that Kitano could improve, which might sound odd given he has scored 4 goals already but albeit from only 2.67 xG. His shot maps from both the 2024 and 2025 season does show that he could improve his shooting locations.
From watching a lot of his footage however, I do think even his outside-the-box shots are fairly central and often done with a clear sight of goal. This is especially more-so given the situations he takes these are on counters or transitions. Even with these caveats, I do think Kitano could divert some of his outside-the-box shots into being more patient and creating chances for his teammates instead.
Kitano frequently tries to curl the shot with his Right foot rather than striking with full power. However, that lack of power does mean Goalkeepers can get saves especially when he wasn’t able to hit it exactly into the corners as he had hoped. Another aspect to note is that Kitano is quite adept at shifting the ball quickly with his feet to get a shot off under pressure.
Dribbling & Carrying, Receiving & Turning
A defining trait of Sota Kitano is his excellent technique, especially his ball control. The ball sticks like a magnet to his feet and he plays with such quick, light touches that paired with his natural agility allows him to glide around the pitch. Aligned with his technique, Kitano has a good understanding of the space around him so that he can turn, twist, or even leave the ball to move across his body to receive in the most optimal way the situation demands. Kitano’s ability to drive forward with the ball is a huge part of Cerezo’s ball progression. When Kitano can build momentum (this part is key) he can beat his man on the dribble (even a few nutmegs to boot) and can push deep into the final 3rd or the opponent box.
Movement & Physical Attributes
Even when deployed as a box-to-box #8, Kitano prefers to occupy higher spaces initially. At most he drops into the middle 3rd to receive from the defenders. He is quite patient sitting behind the opponent’s 1st Line of Press. He is always on the move to receive again after making the pass which can make him really hard to catch once he starts exchanging with his teammates. A frequent move he makes is shifting out wide to receive in the gap that stretches open between the opponent’s Full Back and the opponent’s Winger/Wide Midfielder (see example below & in videos). This gives him the space to turn forward and accelerate play through his dribbling or a passing.
Kitano is extremely effective in the middle-3rd as he can accelerate the tempo of Cerezo’s possession & drive them forward into the final 3rd. Even more-so in counterattacking situations where he excels, although as discussed in previous sections he could try to move closer to goal for a shot or playing in a teammate, even if he does have an opening.
In the final 3rd, he makes smart movements to create openings to receive himself while he also pauses on the ball to attract a defender’s attention, only to then play a pass into a now-open teammate. While he can make runs to get on the end of crosses, given his stature, he is most effective when patiently waiting for cut-backs at the top of the box. Even when under pressure, he can shift his feet quickly to get a shot off in these situations.
A concern most people have when it comes to agile, technical Japanese #10s is their physicality. However with Sota Kitano I don’t think that’s a huge issue (with caveats that I still don’t think an immediate move to the Championship is ideal, for example). What’s remarkable is that he rides contact quite well for his size and is able to use his low center-of-gravity to keep the ball and escape under pressure. Overall, Kitano is a player that performs at high intensities, zipping around the pitch with a lot of sprints and acceleration/deceleration events across the 90 minutes. What’s also clear from viewing footage of him is that Kitano’s exertions are used for both attacking and defending efforts. In terms of ball-winning while he is clearly not the biggest or toughest, he makes up for it with his intensity and anticipation to win ground duels.
An issue is that while he is not by any means slow, his speed isn’t quite at the top tier either. This makes it all the more clear that you probably don’t want him shunted out wide as a winger.
After around a dozen or so games in 2025, he has already surpassed his previous minutes record set in the 2024 season. Having played the majority of minutes for Cerezo Osaka, Kitano is very clearly a nailed-on Starting XI player now.
2024 (J1): 9 90s, 810 minutes
2025 (J1): 13.1 90s, 1181 minutes (after Matchday 13)
Data & Miscellaneous
The player radar is fairly straightforward and aligns with what I’ve talked or shown in the previous sections.
As discussed in the “Shooting” section, despite his good np-xG and goals, Kitano also doesn’t quite get shots on targets as often as he should. While he has racked up a few assists this season, it’s also clear that they don’t have high xA values in general. The data radars don’t show a whole lot of defensive activity, but the footage shows that he is a good presser and works hard in tracking back that the simple “counting” stats (at least the ones here) don’t quite capture.
Summary
Sota Kitano has really burst into prominence in the past few months with scintillating performances in the J.League. I find him interesting as he breaks assumptions one might have of a technical Japanese #10. Although I do feel that in general, the generation of players in the past five or so years are coming of age with a lot of physical tools ready in-hand compared to before.
Sota Kitano’s main attributes are his tidy technical qualities, especially in dribbling and passing. I do think a rather weak Left foot hinders his ability to have even more of an impact though. His agility and ball-carrying, especially in transition situations allow him to create a lot of shooting opportunities for himself, although the location of these shots could be improved to maximize his goal scoring (or simply create for others instead). The data shows that overall Kitano is not the most secure passer across various ranges but with the contextual caveat that he has a role in the team to do a lot of this high risk-taking with his passing. Kitano doesn’t directly make the “progressive pass” but he is more of a pass-and-move mobile platform for circulating the ball and helping the team find ways to move it forward.
The Eredivisie could be a good fit for his excellent technical skills to shine. The Bundesliga would be the most likely if a top-5 league team were willing to take the plunge without monitoring his adaptability in a non-top 5 league first. His ideal destination is a team that really loves having the ball with teammates that are closely related with each other so that Kitano can knit things together with his combination play synergy. Since his debut back in 2022, Kitano has slowly showed glimpses of talent which finally burst forth in 2025. I do believe Sota Kitano to be a special talent but he will need to be very careful with choosing where his first European destination will be…
I’m still trying to figure out the format of these shorter reads. Let me know what you think in the comments!
Thanks for reading!
I was originally going to call the shorter format "Shogun Soccer Scouting Shorts" but... I wound up having a similar word count to the regular length stuff just with far less video so 😅. I do think the biggest time sink is the video stuff. I do not have WyScout so I have to cut & edit everything myself based off the time-stamps I make in my notes. Then chopping it to a dozen or so different categories which includes tasks like making sure there’s a certain limit to duplicates across categories, all the additional annotations and effects, etc. all of which takes up a lot of time.
This time around I decided to just do two very basic categories which cut down my work by a lot. For different positions I might need to expand a bit more (especially Center Backs) but I’m feeling OK with this method now. It might be interesting to keep the dozen or so categories but really refine my clip selection to 10 clips or a time limit of 5 minutes? This time I only worked off of 9 full matches rather than the 15 or so I normally use which helped too.
Again, let me know your thoughts below (or call me, beep me, if you want to reach me).
Resources, Limitations, etc.
Video analysis: DaVinci Resolve 18
Tactical diagrams: Tacticalista
Time period: 2025 J1 Season (9 games)
Footage: Broadcast footage, no tactical camera
Stats: StatsBomb, FBref, Transfermarkt, WyScout
Player radars: Ben Griffis