The 2026 World Cup has kicked off, co-hosted by three nations: Canada, Mexico, and the United States. 

For readers living in North America, this is a rare summer, one in which soccer is woven into everyday conversation. MLS continues to grow in popularity, and European league matches are now a routine sight on sports bar TVs. Even so, soccer in America remains a developing sport compared to football or baseball.

Japan's situation is, in some ways, similar. Since making its World Cup debut in 1998, Japanese soccer has grown to the point where it regularly sends players to Europe's top leagues. But it has only been part of the national sporting fabric for about three decades.

What's striking is that, within that short history, Japan has built up an unusual cultural asset: soccer manga. What follows is a look at three works that could only have emerged from a soccer-latecomer nation, offered as companion reading for the World Cup.

BLUE LOCK — A Survival Game in the Name of the Nation

BLUE LOCK, by Muneyuki Kaneshiro and Yusuke Nomura, rewrites the classic sports-manga formula of "friendship, effort, victory" with considerable nerve. To produce "the world's most egoistic striker" capable of winning Japan a World Cup, 300 high school forwards are gathered in a facility and culled through a survival-format competition.

The premise evokes Squid Game more than Captain Tsubasa, and that's exactly the point: the engine of the story is not the aesthetics of team sport but the logic of a death game. Anyone eliminated forfeits their shot at the national team forever. The only way to survive is to outmaneuver your own teammates. The "friendship" element of classic sports manga is replaced here by rivalry on the cut line, with selfishness reframed as the highest virtue.

What the cast unleashes in this extreme environment is a parade of superhuman finishing shots and idiosyncratic one-liners. Once you've picked a favorite character, half the fun is scanning real-life starting elevens for someone who fits the same archetype.

DAYS — One Mediocre Player Changes a Team of Elites

Tsuyoshi Yasuda's DAYS sits at the opposite pole. The protagonist, Tsukushi Tsukamoto, has no competitive experience before enrolling at a soccer powerhouse high school. His athletic ability is unremarkable, and there's no hint of innate talent. For readers expecting the acrobatic set pieces of Captain Tsubasa or BLUE LOCK, he is a strikingly thin presence at the center of the page.

The work's distinct move is to view the struggles and growth of gifted players, on and off the pitch, through the eyes of a benchwarmer who barely registers in athletic terms.

Tsukushi never stops running, and his clumsy intensity gradually nudges his more talented teammates past their own ceilings. The accumulation of small moments, where one person quietly pushes another forward, gives the story the raw heat specific to high school sports. Team sports, it turns out, make an ideal stage for a coming-of-age ensemble drama about growth and mutual support.

Sayonara, Football and Farewell, My Dear Cramer — Soccer From Another Vantage Point

Naoshi Arakawa's linked works Sayonara, Football and Farewell, My Dear Cramer stake out yet another position. The protagonist, Nozomi Onda, is technically the equal of any boy on her team. But due to physical-size differences, she is barred from taking the field in official matches. Before skill or passion can even enter the equation, an inborn condition stands in her way.

The narrative center here is neither a comeback from defeat nor a giant-killing run. It's the question of where a character who has been outside the framework of the sport from the start can begin her own story.

In the sequel, Farewell, My Dear Cramer, Nozomi joins the women's soccer club at a local high school known for being weak, and meets teammates burning with their own love of the game. Phrased that way, it sounds like the start of a satisfying underdog run. But what becomes more visible, as these girls pour their passion into soccer, is the unfavorable environment surrounding them.

That gap is captured in a line from the club's faculty advisor in Volume 1: "Is there any future in girls’ soccer?" By focusing equally on the girls' devotion to the game and the barriers that limit their opportunities, Arakawa gives his clean, restrained artwork a sense of real-world weight.