A team can’t always attack. When the ball gets into the hands of the opponents it’s up to the defenders to snatch the ball back and pass it back to the super flashy strikers to score another goal. None is more uniquely qualified to defend the territory of Inazuma Eleven than Kabeyama, the surly and steadfast defender of the team.

Rocking the Hissatsu “The Wall”, very little gets past Kabeyama in any game that the team participates in. After all, nothing stops players in their tracks better than a gigantic wall of earth popping up in front of them. It’s not always about the mega blasts or the dragons, sometimes something simple like this can be very effective as well, and surprisingly flashy too.

Sometimes the team depends a little too much on Endou. When the enemy gets an overwhelming advantage and starts flinging everything plus the sink at the goal post, Endou is left to defend the goal in a very Shounen way by never giving up no matter how battered he gets from continuously blocking plasma blasts from his opponents.

That’s where Tachimukai comes in. He starts out to be very unconfident and unsure in himself. It goes so far that most of his early goal keeping Hissatsu were basically copy pasted from Endou like Majin the Hand. Later on, he comes into his own and creates his own technique Mugen the Hand, that while it sounds similar to the very techniques that Endou uses, is actually unique in its principle and is very Asura like.

Ichinose was initially childhood friends with Domon, a player on the team, and Aki, one of the managers. He was injured at some point during his childhood and had to be brought away to undergo copious amounts of surgery. Later on, he reunited with his childhood friends and joined up with Endou’s team because of his love for soccer.

While not a main character in the series, he develops in his own way throughout his character arc and it culminates in the very pretty and fancy Hissatsu The Phoenix. It is a combination attack that he does with Domon and Endou, showing that his power really comes true when his love for soccer and the friends around him work in tandem.

Tsunami is one of the many players in Inazuma Eleven that initially started as an opponent of theirs before being converted over to their side through the power of friendship. He plays as one of their defenders alongside the unflappable Kabeyama, but his defending style is less about stopping the players in their tracks but more along the lines of redirecting the ball.

He is also capable of striking at the goal, as most players in Inazuma Eleven are capable of. Most of his Hissatsu are water based if you couldn’t already guess from his name. His signature Hissatsu is Tsunami Boost, which really brings into question his naming abilities but not his soccer ones, as it’s indeed flashy and never fails to blast past the many goal keepers in the series.

Gran is one of those players on Inazuma Eleven that could carry an entire team by himself. He was part of the Aliea Arc teams. Gran was so powerful that he was made captain of the most powerful Aliea Team, Genesis. Genesis was the only team that did not get any power-ups directly from the meteorite and was in fact forced past their limits by training against the meteorite soccer players.

He and his team mates became so powerful that a physical limiter needed to be placed on their bodies lest their natural strength tear themselves apart. He boasts flashy Hissatsu like Ryuusei Blade and Super Nova, both capable of tearing apart any team’s defenses into shreds. Good thing he joined up later, right?

Kidou is initially the captain of a rival team in the opening arc of the anime. He acts like a prick most of the time and is an even bigger prick to his own sister, Otonashi Haruna. However, it is all an act on his part, because he has been threatened with being unable to reunite with his sister if his team does not win every match that they play. He has gone so far as to hurt his body with sacrificial Hissatsu just to win matches.

As a player, Kidou is not simply good at shooting powerful techniques like the other players. He is able to tactfully direct the team from his position as a midfielder to score as many goals with as little effort as possible. His signature technique is Koutei Penguin, a carry-over from his time with Teikoku Gakuen. It requires two others to support him lest he gets injured, which shows the nature of his play style quite succinctly.

Afuro was the antagonist of the Zeus arc. Zeus was a godlike team that decimated every opponent that they had without a care in the world. Sometimes, the rest of the team would simply sit back while Afuro would singlehandedly score countless goals against their hapless opponents. This was due in part to a steroid-like substance that the entire team was hopped up on called Aqua of the Gods.

When battling against Raimon, Afuro could move so fast that it was as if time would stop using the Hissatsu Heaven’s Time. This rendered players like Kabeyama almost worthless against him. Even his shoot Hissatsu God Knows was able to decimate Endou’s signature move God Hand with ease, proving who the better God was. It was only when Endou became a devil with Majin the Hand did Afuro finally lose. But man is this guy flashy.

We can’t have a list about Inazuma Eleven without the protagonist, now can we? Endou is the one character that keeps the series grounded amidst the flurry of tournaments and multiple characters continuously being introduced. In the confusion of Hissatsu, viewers can always depend on Endou to use God Hand to stop practically any shoot that comes near his goal post.

He became such a good goal keeper that he actually left the goal post multiple times just to see if he could score against the rival team. And would you know it? He became a part of multiple combination Hissatsu like The Phoenix and The Earth, scoring multiple times against the opponent. I’m pretty sure there’s a rule against that, but it’s Endou. He’s the Chuck Norris of anime soccer, so nobody really cares.

Fubuki Shirou is that one guy that charms the pants of you but you really don’t want to get close with, because he’s kinda insane. Ever since his family died in an avalanche, Fubuki has started to have Multiple Personality Disorder. In his normal personality, he is a powerful defender, able to redirect the attacks of the enemy strikers. When his brother Atsuya takes over, he becomes a berserker striker, essentially plowing through the enemy with abandon.

When he regains control over his personalities, he becomes one of the best strikers in the team, comparable to Gouenji. His single person Hissatsu Wolf Legend is a sight to behold throughout the series. And when paired up with Gouenji, they create one of the coolest Hissatsu in the first series ever, Crossfire.

Gouenji is practically one of the first people in the series to have a super cool technique that can mess up the opponent big time. His Fire Tornado came in a flash and decimated the enemies of Inazuma with reckless abandon. His power only continued to grow throughout the series as he matured as a player and a person, getting out hits like Bakunetsu Screw.

When the team starts to mature and grow together, he combines his fire element with Fubuki’s ice to create one of the coolest Hissatsu ever, crossfire. It is so simplistic in its execution that it almost appears to be elegant. The combination of frost and flame never fails to destroy just about anything in its path. It has one of the least flashy animation, but its power is so OTT that it becomes flashy in of itself.