Hirotoshi Buratsuta

Buratsuta is a heavyset, aging man whose scalp is bald across the crown. Thick eyebrows sit over narrow black eyes with tiny irises, and he is nearly always turned out in businesslike attire such as a suit.

At his core Buratsuta chases money and little else, an executive with almost no sporting ambition. Japan's Round of 16 exit at the 2018 World Cup left him untroubled, since the union's books were healthy and, to his mind, that meant the national team had no real problem. He is certain the country will never lift the trophy and openly mocks Anri Teieri for daring to hope otherwise. Viewing football strictly as a business, he believes the association exists only to guard the team's image, a delusion that left him blindsided when Blue Lock's players tore through his U-20 side. The global embarrassment that followed cemented his standing as a nuisance nobody in the sport respects, and both squads jeered him for it. He also comes off as seedy, letting his gaze drift to Anri's chest, and after his loss he shamelessly tried to take credit for founding the very project he wanted gone.

Buratsuta and Anri Teieri stand at opposite poles of the game: she dreams of a World Cup crown and sees Blue Lock as a factory for elite strikers, while he writes the whole thing off as wasted money and effort. His pragmatism turns to servility around Sae Itoshi, whom he flatters relentlessly, granting him free rein to handpick anyone for the rebuilt Japan U-20, even a Blue Lock forward, despite loathing the program. When Sae asked to join that squad as one of the so-called Buratsuta 3 to chase a match against Spain, the chairman waved him through and brushed aside the vetting the other reserves still had to face.