In a competitive topic, especially in sports, skills are everything to debate your case. The same can be said for hit Japanese Manga “Blue Lock,” centered around players becoming the best attacking Forward (Striker) out of 299 other Japanese players, to come out as the best soccer player in Japan, then the world. Number 1 striker, Rin Itoshi, has kept the title as “Best” in the Blue Lock Program, with no real competition to combat against him.
When Rin was younger in his adolescence, he had admired his older brother, Sae Itoshi, who had been a big inspiration and a model to Rin, due to his work ethic and skills in football, inspiring Rin to pursue the sport, working to become the 2nd best striker, behind his brother. Eventually, later on in his life, around 16 years old, Sae gets scouted from the biggest club in the world, Re Al, and leaves for Spain. After a few months pass by, Rin is still hard at work, training by himself, until he hears his brother arrive back to Japan, but is much different than before. He’s much more stoic, cold and harsh to his younger brother. Sae states that he changed his mind and instead wants to become the best MIDFIELDER, not striker (which is almost a completely different position than being a striker), but Rin objects to that statement, making Sae make a deal with him. His deal was that if Rin can beat Sae in a one-on-one match, he’ll share that dream with Rin again, but when Rin accepts it, he gets a sudden reality-check that Spain changed Sae, due to the constant racism he received and forced skill evolution, making him levels above Rin, destroying his mentality and ego.
When Rin finally meets again with Sae in the soccer field, he gets a cold reality check that all of the training he did from his last confrontation with his brother, working through the whole Blue Lock program, and for his debut match against the U-20 World Cup, Itoshi Sae is still levels ahead of him, with Sae easily making quick work of Rin’s whole team and him, humiliating him multiple times by showing their skill gap in skills and tactics, showing his superiority. During the WHOLE time the viewers have EVER seen Sae Itoshi, we have never seen him actually start trying or even SWEAT when playing, showing the immense skill gap between the two of them, and the difference between Sae and the rest of the characters we know of so far.
The only argument that Rin fans have that he is better than his older brother is that he had intercepted the ball one time, but that was only due to a state that the athletes refer to called “The Flow,” making athletes perform at their top quality, only being able to intercept the ball, not gain possession from a non trying brother against Rin’s whole team. Other than that, Sae has been shown and demonstrated that he is, without a doubt, the best U-20 player in all of Blue Lock.
