For any young man in Japan looking to get into professional soccer, enrollment in Yasu High School in Shiga Prefecture would be a good decision. This school has graduated several pros in Japan and is continuing to build a reputation for soccer skills since winning the National High School Soccer Championship in 2006. In case you don’t believe them, they posted a promotional video on YouTube showing a brief minute-and-a-half flurry of fancy footwork along with surprisingly good cinematography for a high school video.

Before the main feature, why not take a look at Yasu High’s first video from 2011 showing a bevy of fancy trick shots and dribbling. It has some pretty impressive stuff packed into a three-minute video, but the quality looks like something you’d expect from high school.

This video racked up around 250,000 views and received largely supportive comments like “great!” and “way good footwork.”  However, as one comment mentioned, “Awesome! But, the video was poorly composed.”

With that in mind, about a year and a half later on 18 July, Yasu High School struck back with a more highly polished video demonstrating their skills once again.

http://youtu.be/x-vRwiU7z_E

Although it’s a briefer video we can now see the difference good lighting can make. You could almost swear you were watching professionals in an ad for some big corporation. Only on YouTube for a few days, this video has already scored over 90,000 views and comments such as “the pride of Shiga” and “I like it! I’m a fan of Yasu.” It also already picked up more “thumbs up” than the previous video.

So if your high school soccer club is planning on making a promotional video, remember not to skimp on production value. It can make a big difference! Of course, being ridiculously well-skilled helps too.

Source: YouTube 1, 2 via Iroiro (Japanese)