Shogun Soccer Scouting #14: Riku Handa

Game Intelligence Off-and-On the Ball, in Defense & Attack

Jul 31, 2025

It’s been a busy summer! Lots of players moving to Europe over the past few months, perhaps I’ll make a roundup post when the transfer window closes to put all of my notes/thoughts about these players in one place. Recently I’ve been doing a lot of media appearances:

“Celtic AM”: Discussed Hayato Inamura, also Shin Yamada
“Vilfort Park”: Discussed Sho Fukuda

TBA: Discussed Kota Takai with “An Echo of Glory” (Spurs fan podcast), Junnosuke Suzuki with “Absalons Radio” (FC Copenhagen fan podcast), etc.

I talked about Japan at the EAFF Cup, before and after the competition:

“The Korean Football Podcast”, Episode 6: The 82nd Korea-Japan Match Preview
“J-Talk Podcast”, Episode 578: Japan Win the EAFF Cup, return of J.League action, and more

One of the players I mentioned in the J-Talk pod is the topic of today’s report: Riku Handa, Gamba Osaka’s Right Back.

Let’s get started!

tl;dr (too long; didn’t read):

Intelligent positioning as “Inverted” or “Traditional Wide” Full Back. Defensively capable, although mixed record in 1v1s. Facilitates possession in defensive & middle 3rds but lack of (direct) final 3rd impact and ball progression from deeper.

Date of Birth: January 1, 2002
Age: 23 years old
Nationality: Japan
Position: Right Back
Club: Gamba Osaka (J1)
Squad Number: #3 (2025 season)
Height/Weight: 1.76m // 63 kg (Source: SoccerDigest)
VIDEO NOTE: Gamba Osaka’s HOME kits are blue and black stripes with white lettering, black shorts and socks & AWAY kits are white shirt, socks, blue shorts with black lettering. I’m using footage from the 2025 J.League season. He wears #3 and is a Right Back.
DATA NOTE: The StatsBomb data viz are from the 2024 J.League season.

In-Possession

Handa’s best attribute is his game intelligence. His frequent scanning is the source of his understanding of space and teammates. Within Gamba’s possession scheme, Handa supports the ball-holder with his good positioning.

In the defensive and middle 3rds, he is more of a receiver than the passer in these zones. Handa doesn’t hold on to the ball long as he isn’t a high volume dribbler/carrier. In fact, he is not a high volume ball progressor in general through his carries or his passing which feels rather odd for an “inverted Full Back”. I do think he could do more from here, however, in the first two 3rds of the pitch his role is to create space for the actual ball progression players on the team, the Center Backs and Center Midfielders. In the build-up phase he inverts into central midfield when one of the double pivot (Neta Lavi, Tokuma Suzuki) drop to split the Center Backs. A regular aim is to open up passing lanes for the winger and from there, Handa frequently makes underlapping runs in the middle 3rd to pull opponents away or receive the ball in advanced positions.

In the final 3rd, Handa again is more of an outlet out wide or close support frequently rotating with teammates in half-space or central areas. He’ll use quick combination plays to get past opponents as he is not much of a direct 1v1 dribbler. If you check his data radar you’ll see that he has a very high dribbling success rate but a big factor is that he performs so very few dribbles anyway.

Of course, he can still do more traditional full back jobs and push forward with the ball in wide areas or make overlapping runs. This is often seen in counterattacking situations or after a switch of play to his side (the winger ahead of him having made a diagonal run inside to create this space). Handa is especially good at chest-ing down lofted balls to the flanks and driving forward.

One main issue with Handa is that he is not much of a goal threat, neither by himself nor through directly assisting teammates to do so. As part of his rotations with teammates, he can do the occasional box crashing when an attacker drops deep/outside the box but actually taking shots is a rare occurrence. I always feel like Handa could do a bit more given the decent positions he can find himself in. However, within the context of Gamba Osaka, Handa is trying to position himself in a way to setup the wingers and other attackers to do the real damage instead.

Passing

Handa’s passing is done in tight spaces all across the width of the right side half of the pitch. As mentioned in the previous section, he doesn’t have a big ball progression role in the team with his passing in the defensive 3rd. With his quick feet in crowded areas he plays a lot of lateral short/medium passes to circulate the ball in the middle 3rd with midfielders and attackers as he works with them to patiently find spaces in the opponent block.

Handa doesn’t get involved in chance creation very often, indeed his crossing numbers are extremely low for a Full Back and he doesn’t play many through-balls as well. However, what he does do are some useful medium-long balls sitting from a deeper position. He makes these lofted passes for wingers running behind, the type of dinked balls over the opponent defense for teammates to run onto.

A few concerns can be that he’s not particularly great under pressure in the defensive 3rd (from 2024 season StatsBomb data, see all of the violet colored passes in deeper areas) and he does occasionally get the weight of passes wrong. This is probably something prospective teams will want to dig deeper on with other/more data available compared to myself. An issue is that it’s hard to evaluate someone like Handa given that even advanced stats (action-based value models) are still predicated on the player touching/passing the ball when I feel he’s doing a lot without doing that. Clearly his value doesn’t quite show up in the progressive passing or other simple passing metrics found in event data.

Duels & Physicality

As a Full Back he is tasked with the responsibility of defending the flank 1v1 against wingers. Given his agility allows him to align with the pace of an attacker with measured, paced steps. Despite his positive traits, I do think Handa can get wrong footed or simply mistime stepping in (unable to then shift weight quickly back across) when attempting to win the ball. The problems are exacerbated when he is unable to slow opponents down and the attacker has all the speed/momentum to their advantage. Of course, there is also a caveat to consider that Handa can be isolated against the opponent without much support from his teammates which is a tactical trade-off of how high-and-wide Gamba’s wingers are. Lastly, he’s certainly does get stuck-in when challenging for the ball.

Looking at Handa’s physical traits, he is not an all-action type but chooses his moments (with the additional caveat of team style factoring into physical metrics). When the need arises he has a burst of acceleration to keep track of attackers or on the ball, the ability to push the ball forward into space. His good sprinting speed/acceleration is useful in longer bursts in defensive transition moments and for short bursts when covering out wide.

Do note that he has had some injury issues. The most prominent being the two separate cases of a fibula shaft fracture that kept him out for 101 days in the 2023 season and 64 days in 2024 (notably missing the Paris Olympics) respectively, according to Transfermarkt. Nevertheless since his ascent to the J1 level he has been a regular part of the starting line-up, able to at least play in over 20 90s in every season for Gamba so far.

2023 season: 1930 minutes, 21.4 90s (22 J.League starts, 23 appearances)
2024 season: 1887 minutes, 21.0 90s (21 starts, 24 appearances)
2025 season: 2150 minutes, 23.9 90s (24 starts, 24 appearances) at end of July 2025 // Matchday 24

Block Defending, Interceptions

Gamba Osaka are usually defending in a mid-block and Handa does his part keeping the line, quickly shuffling his feet and orienting his body as the play develops. He’s got good awareness to quickly step forward to intercept vertical passes into the opponent winger. As mentioned elsewhere, he’s able to do this from a variety of defensive positions too.

Box Defending, Aerial Balls

An interesting part about Riku Handa’s game is that he has good aerial ability. To be sure, he’ll have difficulties when challenging the bigger strikers in J1 but overall far more adept in the air relative to most Full Backs in the league. This also lets him get the occasional header shots from set-pieces.

Inside the box in general, he takes up good positions to clear or block danger. It’s to his credit that he has been trusted as an emergency Center Back a few times this season (Kyoto Sanga in a Back 4 and Sanfrecce Hiroshima in a Back 3 after a red card). Even so, I’ll be clear that I don’t think Center Back is a feasible position for him outside of emergency cases. I suppose you could squint and have him play on the Right of a Back 3 if a team is very inclined to rotate and push him into midfield or wider but that is veering a bit too far into tactical hypotheticals.

Covering, Defensive Transitions

Handa shines in defensive transitions as he has a good burst of acceleration. As a strong sprinter, he often stops opponents on counterattacks sometimes before they completely develop. While I’ve talked a lot about Handa inverting in-possession, this is also a defensive measure as in central-ish positions he is usually closer to the action to win the ball back immediately after a turnover which is something you’ll see quite often in the footage.

Summary

Born and bred in Yamagata prefecture, Riku Handa came through Montedio Yamagata’s youth system. At the age of 23 already has quite a number of games at the professional level, after becoming a regular from the age of 19 for Montedio Yamagata in the 2021 season. He also has considerable experience at the youth international level, most notably for the U-17s and U-23s which is where I imagine a lot of international scouts first sighted him. Handa is yet to make a full national team debut although he was called up to the squad in March 2023 (first friendlies after the 2022 World Cup).

Riku Handa is a subtle but confident defender, particularly in a block and in defensive transition. The setup of the team means that he is entrusted with a lot of the defensive load, especially in transition phases (inverting in possession also becomes a form of rest defense in central areas). Along with being assigned as an auxiliary Center Back, his value as a defender is demonstrated quite well.

Handa has the skill set of a “modern full back” with intelligent positioning and timing supporting his passing/receiving. One can imagine giving him more reign over the flank and giving him more attacking impetus as he does have the physical ability to blast up-and-down the flank if necessary like a “traditional” full back as well. However, his value really comes from his ability to sustain possession and create space for the attackers in dangerous areas in the middle and final 3rd. I do think his final output is repressed somewhat because of various tactical tweaks. As a result he is not often in the limelight, especially as he isn’t a particularly flashy player on the ball. Like I said in previous sections, I do feel that a good chunk of his impact is when he is not touching the ball so a lot of the “event data” type statistics don’t fully capture his style of play. Nevertheless it is true that his actual final 3rd output can be quite poor in terms of direct chance creation and the fact that he rarely takes opponents on the dribble.

I admit I struggled to forecast where Riku Handa can end up (this is something I’m still trying to get a handle of in general). His unique abilities are interesting but to get the maximum out of them also requires a particular tactical setup that may limit the number of potential suitors. Of course, Handa can still be used in a more traditional sense and be a fairly dependable, defensive Full Back with a solid technical floor. I do think he does have a ceiling when considering his mixed 1v1 defending, slight lack of press-resistance and direct build-up involvement, along with his lack of final 3rd impact. I definitely don’t think he’s got enough to be at the top end of the table in the big European leagues. To my knowledge he has been linked to Turkey and Scotland in previous years but seemingly declined those offers. I do imagine much like Sota Kawasaki that he’s been waiting for better teams/leagues to pop up. He’ll be 24 in January 2026 so while obviously not old, he’d need to hit the ground running if he is to make it into a top 5 league as career age curves present a narrow window of opportunity. I think that a mid-tier Bundesliga side is his “ceiling” as a final destination, either a direct transfer or the 2nd step after a year or two in the Belgium/Netherlands.

Thanks for reading!

Shogun Soccer Scouting #12: Hayato Inamura

Ryo Nakagawara

Jun 23

Read full story

Shogun Soccer Scouting #13: Kota Takai