Taishi Brandon Nozawa

When Royal Antwerp FC signed Taishi Brandon Nozawa in June 2025, he replaced Senne Lammens as the club's first-choice goalkeeper. The move, for a reported fee of €1.0 million and a four-year contract, took the Okinawa-born keeper out of the J.League and into the Belgian Pro League, where he made around 30 appearances in his first season and kept a clean sheet in roughly a quarter of them.

The route there ran through Ginowan and Nagata Dragon FC, then FC Ryukyu, whose youth setup he joined in 2014 and left in 2017. FC Tokyo took him next. He spent 2018 and 2019 in the J3 League with the club's U-23 side before stepping up to the senior squad in 2020, the year FC Tokyo won the J.League Cup.

The middle stretch was spent elsewhere. A loan to Iwate Grulla Morioka from 2021 to 2022 brought 36 appearances across J3 and J2. He returned in 2023 and became a regular starter.

With Japan's youth sides he has won two continental titles: the AFC U-16 Championship in 2018 and the AFC U-23 Asian Cup in 2024. At the 2024 Paris Olympics he reached the quarter-finals with the under-23 team, having travelled as a backup goalkeeper. He has also been named in senior Japan squads, among them the 2023 AFC Asian Cup, but as of early 2026 he had not played a senior competitive match and remained on nought caps.