Yumeki Yokoyama (横山夢樹): A J1 Dribble Rank Built on 241 Minutes

Can 241 minutes of J1 football support a dribbling rank of 2nd in the league? That is the first question a recruiter will put to anyone recommending Yumeki Yokoyama, and the honest answer is not yet. What the minutes can do is tell a scout where to look, and the record behind them is longer than the J1 sample suggests.

Yokoyama, born on 23 September 2005 and now 21, is a right-footed attacker who plays as a right-sided attacking midfielder and functions as a wide forward in possession. Football LAB lists him as an offensive half (OH). He spent 2024 and 2025 at FC Imabari, through the club’s promotion from J3 to J2, and joined Cerezo Osaka permanently on 12 January 2026. The fee was not disclosed by either club. He wears 14 at Cerezo and has come through Japan’s youth sides from U-19 to U-23, including the January 2026 U-23 Asian Cup.

From J3 to J1 in three seasons

The useful sample sits below J1. Across his two Imabari seasons he played 2,978 league minutes and produced 23 goal contributions (12 goals, 11 assists), 0.70 per 90. More telling than the total is that the rate rose after promotion: 0.64 per 90 in J3, 0.76 in J2, against a harder league.

Why the Imabari rows can be trusted and the J1 row cannot: 1,555 and 1,423 minutes are each well past our 900-minute threshold, and the two seasons point the same way. The J1 row is a small sample. 241 minutes is 26.8% of the threshold, and one goal more or less would move his rate by 0.37 per 90, which is the entire figure. The transitional competition sits in between: more minutes, but half of his appearances off the bench and against a mixed level of opposition, so it is context rather than evidence.

Two calculations from the same records sharpen the picture. His shot volume went up after promotion, from about 52 shots in J3 (3.01 per 90) to about 69 in J2 (4.37 per 90), a rise of 45% per 90, while his conversion fell from 11.5% to 8.7%. Across both seasons he scored 12 goals from roughly 121 shots, 9.9%. He shoots more than he finishes, which is common for a carrier who gets into the box by beating a man rather than arriving on the end of a pass. And at Cerezo, adding the transitional competition to J1 gives 1,067 minutes in 2026 with five goals and one assist, 0.51 per 90: lower than his Imabari rate, as a step up in level would predict, but not a collapse.

The dribble signal, and how far to trust it

Football LAB’s Chance Building Point (CBP) scores credit each action by how much it advanced the team towards a goal. In the 2026/27 J1 season his dribble score is 3.92, ranked 2nd among tracked J1 players. His overall attacking score ranks 23rd, goal 29th, cross 32nd and shot 60th. Pass reception is 131st and pass 208th. At the bottom, defence ranks 300th and ball-winning 349th.

The shape is clear even if the level is not. Almost everything good he does starts with running at a defender, and almost nothing comes from receiving between the lines or passing through them. That is a coherent profile, not a noisy one.

How far to trust it: these are ranks, not percentiles. Football LAB does not publish the size of the pool behind each rank, so we cannot say whether 2nd is the top 1% or the top 5%. More importantly, the ranks rest on the same 241 minutes as the table above. A dribble rank is built from a few dozen actions in four games, and one strong afternoon can carry it. The gap between his dribble rank and his shot rank is the part we would bet on holding. The exact number 2 is the part we would not.

What the shape says about fit

At 172cm he is a carrier and isolation dribbler on the right, not a physical or aerial wide player. Cerezo use him alongside Shinji Kagawa in a set-up that tries to get him one against one rather than ask him to combine in crowded central areas or track back for long spells.

That points towards technical, transition-minded sides and away from leagues built on duels and aerial contests. The Belgian Pro League is the obvious structural comparison: it has been a recurring first stop for technical J.League attackers, as our STVV corridor and Ando at Antwerp pieces set out. He has not left Japan, so there is no outcome to compare yet.

The risk is the other half of the CBP sheet. Defence at 300th and ball-winning at 349th mean any coach who asks his wide players to press in a mid-block or drop into a back five would be testing the least proven part of his game. His middling pass and pass-reception ranks say the same thing from the other side: the output today depends on the dribble.

Paper trail: contract, value and interest

His contract is reported to run to 30 June 2027. That date comes from a third-party database, not a club statement, and salary or release-clause terms are not public. Market-value estimates sit in a €600K to €740K range across data providers; they are algorithmic estimates, not a club valuation or a disclosed fee.

European interest is reported, not confirmed. Links to Fortuna Düsseldorf and Royal Antwerp trace to a January 2026 report from an unnamed foreign outlet, relayed by Japanese media in August 2026 alongside a public comment by UK-based scout Andreas Anderson, who named him as a player worth tracking in an under-scouted market. That is one scout’s opinion and one unsourced report. No contact between Cerezo Osaka and any European club has been reported.

Standard non-EU work-permit rules would apply to any move. Belgium has historically been comparatively accessible for young J.League players, but eligibility would have to be checked against the specific club and its quota at the time.

Conditions for a different call

Upgrade to REALIZED: a completed move to a European club. A confirmed transfer would close the WATCH call as realised, and we would then track whether the dribble profile carries over.

Downgrade to MONITOR: once his 2026/27 J1 minutes pass 900, if his CBP dribble rank has fallen outside the league’s top 20, or if by the end of the 2026 calendar year he is still under 450 J1 minutes. Either would mean the signal this report rests on did not survive a real sample.

Verdict: WATCH the gap, not the rank

The dribble signal is real and already visible: in the Imabari output that grew after promotion, in a shot volume that rose with it, and in a J1 CBP profile with a consistent shape. Certifying it needs a full J1 season. Until then the number to watch is not the rank of 2nd but whether the gap between his carrying and everything else holds once the minutes are there.

Assessed 3 September 2026, revised 15 October 2026, by Choi Bong-jin, Far Post Analytics. Figures are current through the 29 August 2026 J1 fixture and have not been refreshed for this revision.

Review set 2026-10-15: we will reassess on 31 December 2026. If he reaches 900 J1 minutes with his dribble CBP still among the top ten in J1, we will publish a full update to this report; the verdict stays WATCH until then.