![]() ![]() "At home, he always let me be free," Endo says. When her father was on the field, he was coach, but at home he was solely a dad. She played on a coed team, mostly boys, a few girls - no one paid much attention to gender. "Don't play in the house" was never a rule. Her father's a coach, and balls were everywhere. Endo and her family lived on a hillside, her parents' low-slung, more modern house next door to her grandparents' traditional Japanese wafuu home, with bamboo floors and kawara roof.Īs the youngest of four kids - a sister and two brothers, all of whom played soccer - Endo learned to dribble when she learned how to walk. It's home to Nanko Park, the oldest park in all of Japan, where cherry blossom trees flourish along the rim of a lake. Shirakawa, Fukushima, once a castle town on the border between civilization and the wilder Kanto region, has an old-timey, picturesque charm. Here's how an earthquake, a nuclear disaster, a family's love and enduring bravery created one of the most electric young players in the game. In a conference room with a glass wall, she sat beside Saki Watanabe, a member of Angel City's street outreach team who also translates for Endo. She wore a cornflower blue beanie, a black zip-up sweatshirt, floral bike shorts and white high tops covered with a rainbow of Adidas trefoils - clothes that express her playfulness. On a rainy March morning in Santa Monica, California, Endo walked into Angel City headquarters, a building with a warehouse vibe, a reclaimed shiplap wall and triumphant photos. And you are: her extraordinary control is born out of extraordinary circumstances, each touch informed by her story. ![]() Watching her feels like witnessing something personal - a private relationship between ball and human. ![]() She can also juggle while jump-roping.) When the ball drops, it's because she wants it to. She can juggle the ball thousands and thousands of times in a row, high and low, low and high, outside foot, inside foot, laces, shins. She listens to whatever music she feels like in that moment, whether calm and slow or fast-paced and intense, and she takes one exquisite touch after another. If you were to show up an hour early to an Angel City game and skip the very cool fan fest activities happening outside BMO Stadium, you could behold the vision that is Jun Endo juggling: the stadium still mainly empty, the pink-haired 22-year-old Japanese midfielder is alone on the field with headphones on, in communion with the ball. How an earthquake, nuclear fallout and family made Jun Endo one of the world's most electrifying players You have reached a degraded version of because you're using an unsupported version of Internet Explorer.įor a complete experience, please upgrade or use a supported browser ![]()
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