English Dub Review: Shoot! Goal to the Future “Old Friend”

Overview:

The Kakegawa High School soccer team has one more chance. If they lose this practice game, that’s the end of the team. Naturally, they have a difficult task ahead of them.

Our Take:

The original team Kakegawa was supposed to play against backed out at the last minute. That’s okay because Kamiya called in a favor to another Kakegawa team alumni: Kazuhiro Hiramatsu. He coaches the Kakegawa Weeds soccer club and agrees to have his team play the game.

Kakegawa’s teamwork is sloppy as always, Kazama’s directions are contradictory and he gets mad for no reason, and the two guys who were on the fence rejoin the team.

They play better in the second half of the game, but they don’t play well enough to win. On the bright side, the game ends in a draw. Therefore, the team is safe for now. It’s also revealed that they actually played against the Kakegawa Weeds reserve team and they struggled. They still have a long way to go and so far, their improvement has been very minimal.

This episode is full of more of the same tropes I don’t like about the show. The melodrama is kept to a minimum here at least, but the episode is still frustrating. For example, Kazama tells Tsuji to always pass the ball to him, then immediately gets mad at him when he does just that. I don’t like any of these characters, but it’s hard for me to say who I like the least.

Since Kamiya is still keeping the team alive, there might be some hope. However, my expectations for the team are pretty low given what I’ve seen so far.