Due to illness, Kenji Yoshida had all but given up on his dream of participating in professional sports. Yet, by becoming the general manager of a local soccer team in Cambodia, he found a way to realize it at last.

Yoshida, 32, moved to the Southeast Asian country in June 2014 to work for TriAsia Phnom Penh Football Club. The soccer team, currently called Cambodian Tiger FC, was then owned by a Japanese trading house.

But just six months later, the company decided to dissolve the team, citing financial difficulties. Yoshida left the company, and acquired the team for free, using his own savings of around ¥5 million ($42,000) to pay its players’ salaries.

The team was comprised of Cambodian players who used to play in refugee camps during the country’s civil war, and Japanese players who had been members of Japan’s professional J-League teams but saw little playing time.

“I was worried about what would happen to those players who had devoted their whole life to soccer,” Yoshida said.

So he spent his days and nights searching for a company or individual interested in becoming the owner of the Cambodian professional soccer team, and found a prospect two months later.

Becoming the team’s general manager was the realization of a dream that illness had seemed to put out of reach.

While in junior high school, Yoshida, who hails from the city of Fukuoka, developed a kidney disease called nephrosis syndrome.

Although Yoshida loved sports, the disease restricted his involvement in physical education and club activities at school.

After graduating from Yokohama National University, Yoshida joined an information technology company, but quit eight years later to pursue his dream of working in the sports industry.

“I wanted to do something related to sports because I wasn’t able to fully pursue that passion during my boyhood,” Yoshida said.

The Cambodian economy has grown at a rapid pace since the civil war ended some 20 years ago, and soccer is becoming increasingly popular. But many citizens remain impoverished, with few households having money to spend on sports.

Yoshida thus started a project to donate soccer balls to Cambodian children with financial backing from Japanese companies.

“I hope our team can give a dream to people in this country,” Yoshida said.