(Xports News Reporter Yoon Jun-seok) Maya Taguchi, who has been attracting great attention as a new promising star in the Japanese badminton world with her outstanding appearance, even being told that she “looks like New Jeans Hani,” suddenly resigned from the Japanese national team.
An official announcement was made that the reason was knee management and physical condition issues, but Yuta Watanabe, the mixed doubles partner who also resigned, revealed the reason that he could not repay the sponsors who currently support him in the case of national team activities, leading to various interpretations and controversies surrounding the reason for his resignation both inside and outside of Japan.
Japanese media outlet ‘Daily Sports’ reported on the 30th (Korean time) that “female badminton player Maya Taguchi has resigned from the Japanese national team,” and detailed the official announcement from Taguchi’s team, ACT SAIKYO.
According to reports, Taguchi had been invited to represent Japan, but after careful consideration, he decided to decline the offer.
The team explained, “At this point, we have decided that ‘knee care and strengthening’ is the top priority,” and “We have made this decision because we judged that it is difficult to take full responsibility for activities according to the Japanese national team schedule with the current condition.”
In fact, Taguchi had a history of suffering a knee injury last year. The team focused on physical management and recovery as the reason for the representative’s resignation, and did not use any expressions that denied or questioned the Japanese national team’s activities themselves.
However, what catches the eye is the resignation of Taguchi’s mixed doubles partner, Watanabe.
Watanabe also announced his resignation from the Japanese national team on the same day. He said in a personal statement, “I resigned from the Japanese national team in 2026. The reason is because I felt that I would not be able to sufficiently repay the sponsors who supported me.”
‘Daily Sports’ also reported that Watanabe’s resignation is the second year in a row. Given that it is a remark made by a leading athlete who has won bronze medals twice at the Olympics, it appears to be causing quite a stir in Japan.
In particular, considering the fact that Watanabe directly mentioned that he would not be able to ‘repay sponsors’ if he played for the national team, some are interpreting that this resignation was due to realistic concerns between national team activities, personal sponsorship, and financial interests, beyond a simple condition issue.
However, no additional explanation has yet been provided from the player or team level regarding this.
Taguchi is a player who has both performance and topicality. She won a gold medal in women’s doubles at the 2023 World Junior Championships, and recently teamed up with Watanabe in mixed doubles to win the All-Japan Championships last year.
In particular, as her excellent appearance was highlighted along with the expectations, she is receiving a lot of attention at a young age.
In this situation, when news of the national team’s resignation broke, various interpretations naturally followed both inside and outside of Japan.
However, no explanation or additional background has yet been revealed that Taguchi and Watanabe’s two issues are directly connected.
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Reporter Junseok Yoon jupremebd@xportsnews.com
