{"id":55652,"date":"2023-06-02T16:50:40","date_gmt":"2023-06-02T07:50:40","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.theguardian.com\/world\/2023\/jun\/02\/japan-ageing-footballers-over-80s-league-soccer-for-life-tokyo"},"modified":"2023-06-02T16:50:40","modified_gmt":"2023-06-02T07:50:40","slug":"japans-ageing-footballers-get-their-kicks-in-over-80s-league","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/eastasianews.net\/wp\/?p=55652","title":{"rendered":"Japan\u2019s ageing footballers get their kicks in over-80s league"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>Soccer for Life league in Tokyo has about 40 players, enough for three teams, playing 30-minute matches<\/p>\n<p>There are mops of silver hair, Bobby Charlton combovers and a fair number of creaking knees. But the Red Star and Blue Hawaii football teams can be forgiven for the hesitant start to their match: every man on the pitch is older than 80. Within minutes, though, they are running freely \u2013 and moaning at the referee \u2013 as they roll back the years with every pass and tackle.<\/p>\n<p>With a combined age in four figures, the 22 men are defying the passage of time in the Tokyo Soccer for Life league for the over-80s, a sporting expression of Japan\u2019s status as a \u201csuper-ageing\u201d society where the average male life expectancy is 85.<\/p>\n<p> <a href=\"https:\/\/www.theguardian.com\/world\/2023\/jun\/02\/japan-ageing-footballers-over-80s-league-soccer-for-life-tokyo\">Continue reading&#8230;<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Soccer for Life league in Tokyo has about 40 players, enough for three teams, playing 30-minute matchesThere are mops of silver hair, Bobby Charlton combovers and a fair number of creaking knees. But the Red Star and Blue Hawaii football teams can be f&#8230;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":151,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"sns_share_botton_hide":"","vkExUnit_sns_title":"","_vk_print_noindex":"","sitemap_hide":"","_veu_custom_css":"","veu_display_promotion_alert":"","vkexunit_cta_each_option":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[41,627,88,203,42],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-55652","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-asia-pacific","category-football","category-japan","category-sport","category-world-news"],"veu_head_title_object":{"title":"","add_site_title":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/eastasianews.net\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/55652","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/eastasianews.net\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/eastasianews.net\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/eastasianews.net\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/151"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/eastasianews.net\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=55652"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/eastasianews.net\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/55652\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":55653,"href":"https:\/\/eastasianews.net\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/55652\/revisions\/55653"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/eastasianews.net\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=55652"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/eastasianews.net\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=55652"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/eastasianews.net\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=55652"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}