- Everton are preparing an offer for Feyenoord striker Ayase Ueda
- The 27-year-old scored 25 Eredivisie goals this season – the division’s top scorer
- His story is one of the most compelling in European football right now
His name has been in the Everton transfer conversation for a few weeks now. Yesterday it moved to a different level – an offer being prepared, a price gap identified, a story with real momentum. But for a lot of Blues, the question remains: who exactly is Ayase Ueda?
Here’s everything you need to know.
The journey that brought him this far
Ueda was born in Mito, in Japan’s Ibaraki Prefecture, in August 1998. His father played football at an amateur level and by all accounts was his earliest coach – the relationship that shaped his positioning, his movement, and the goal-scoring instincts that define him now.
He wasn’t a hyped teenager. No elite academy pathway, no early fanfare. He went to Hosei University, which is unusual for a player who would end up being one of the most prolific strikers in European football. It was there that his talent finally started turning heads properly — he earned a call-up to the Japan national team while still a student, which is the moment the narrative changed.
He turned professional with Kashima Antlers in 2019, scored 10 goals in his first full season and 14 in his second. By 2022, he was ready for Europe. Cercle Brugge in Belgium paid €1.3m for him – a fee that looks faintly ridiculous now – and he repaid them with 23 goals in 42 appearances across his one season there. Feyenoord came calling in August 2023, paying around €7.8m, and that is where the story really takes off.
What he does – and why the numbers are hard to ignore
In 2025-26 Ueda started all 31 of Feyenoord’s Eredivisie matches and finished as the division’s top scorer with 25 goals. A goal every 90 minutes. Over 100 shots taken across the season. He takes 3.62 shots per 90 minutes, which places him among the most aggressive forwards in the league. His non-penalty expected goals per 90 minutes sits in the top one percentile of Eredivisie players. These are not soft numbers.
He is a pure centre-forward. Not a false nine, not a wide forward asked to play centrally — a proper number nine who lives in the box, demands the ball early, and finishes with his right foot, his head, or whatever presents itself first. Robin van Persie, who knows a thing or two about penalty-box instincts, has been effusive about him. Feyenoord built their attack around him last season and finished second in the Eredivisie, qualifying for the Champions League in the process.
Add eight goals in nine World Cup qualifying appearances for Japan and you have a player operating at the peak of his powers across every competition he touches.
The questions Everton fans are right to ask
None of which means the Premier League is a foregone conclusion. The Eredivisie discount argument is real – the Dutch top flight is a decent European league, not an elite one, and the step up to English football has humbled plenty of strikers who looked unstoppable before they arrived. Ueda has never played at this level. Nobody can tell you with certainty how he adapts.
His age, 27, is worth considering too. He is not a project; he is the finished article. That cuts both ways. You are getting the best version of Ayase Ueda right now, but at 27, his peak years are finite. At £20m, you are buying a striker for perhaps four productive seasons if everything goes well.
And then there is the World Cup. Japan are in North America this summer and Ueda will be their first-choice striker. A strong tournament – entirely plausible given his form – pushes his value up and his availability back. Neither helps Everton’s negotiating position.
So why are Everton right to pursue him?
Because the alternative is worse. David Moyes needs a striker. A proper, first-choice, start-every-game number nine. The options at £20m in this market are limited. Ueda is the Eredivisie’s top scorer, 27 years old, under contract until 2028, and available – at a price, admittedly, but available.
Feyenoord want €30m-€35m. Everton are preparing an offer in the region of £18m-£20m. That gap needs bridging. But the profile is right, the timing is right, and the need is urgent.
Sometimes a transfer is complicated but the answer is simple. This looks like one of those.
