Takuma Asano has made a strong start to life with Hannover 96, impressing coaches and making a goalscoring debut in pre-season.

On Friday and Saturday last week, Hannover played a couple of pre-season friendlies, against Ramlingen-Ehlerhausen and Havelse. Asano played 45 minutes in both matches, his first appearances for his new loan club.

His debut was very impressive, as he scored two goals and assisted another. He also hit the crossbar with a powerful header, so he was unlucky not to bag himself a hat-trick. You can check out the highlights below:

In the second match Asano couldn’t get on the scoresheet again, despite putting a lot into the match. German outlet SportBuzzer write that he ‘made a positive statement’ with his body language, spurring his teammates on to victory, and mixing with supporters after the game.

It’s no surprise Asano is making a strong start to his pre-season matches, as reports from training in Hannover suggest he’s been impressing coaches ever since arriving at the club.

After a difficult and generally unsuccessful season with Stuttgart last year, hopefully Asano will get his career back on track in the coming campaign.