Sports

Grass Leagues

Like Japan and Korea, long-lost Asian nations can develop football from the bottom up

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Grass Leagues
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If, for even a day, FIFA based their world rankings on GDP, some of the traditional football powers and World Cup favourites would be looking up at teams that will not be in Brazil or are not expected to be there for too long. Asia is home to some of the world’s biggest economies but none are yet major powers in the planet’s favourite game. As well as economic heft, China, India and Indonesia account for around half of the world’s population but success in football has eluded them. Japan, South Korea, Iran and Australia (the latter has been a member of the Asian Football Confederation since 2006) will be at the World Cup but none are expected to be a serious contender. The two East Asian powers are the continent’s most successful and have sights set on progressing past the first round, but it would be a surprise if they make it past the quarter-finals. Only South Korea has ever done so until now and that appearance in the last four in 2002 came on home soil.

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At the first seven World Cups, Asian teams made little impression. It wasn’t represented in the first two in 1930 and 1934, though in 1938 a Dutch East Indies (present-day Indonesia) team headed to France. India qualified in 1950 but withdrew after administrative problems and because they wouldn’t be allowed to play in bare feet. South Korea booked a berth in 1954—just a year after the devastating civil war; the team touched down in Switzerland less than 24 hours before their opening game with the mighty Magyars of Hungary (the favourites, who surprisingly lost in the final against West Germany).

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That was it until 1966, when the world noticed Asian football for the first time. North Korea went to England, unknown and unrated, but shocked the planet with a 1-0 win over Italy. Then, supported by English fans, it raced into a 3-0 lead over Portugal in the quarter-final, before being unable to stop an impressive, Eusebio-inspired comeback.

That was as good as it got for Asia until 2002, when the tournament came to the continent for the first time. In total, only four Asian teams have survived the group stage: North Korea in 1966, Saudi Arabia in 1994, South Korea and Japan in 2002 and 2010.

Pele said in 1977 that an African team would win the World Cup by the end of the century. He was wrong, of course, but nobody has been making similar predictions about the teams from the east. There are ambitions and increasingly money in Asia but not an expectation of success.

Asia, of course, started later. India’s football history goes back further than most, but the continent’s first professional league only kicked off in 1983 with the five teams of South Korea’s K-League. A decade later, Japan’s J-League was launched with fanfare. Getting started in a serious way almost a century after the English kicked it off meant that European and South American football got the biggest of headstarts.

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If South Korea and Japan showed the way, nations such as Iraq, UAE and Kuwait had their time in the sixties, seventies and eighties but did not have the consistency to repeatedly qualify for the World Cup. They lacked the youth development systems, infrastructure, facilities and professional leagues necessary to become a serious football power.

Youth development has long been an issue. All over Asia, national teams and clubs have gone about development the wrong way. Famous coaches and players from around the world have been tempted east to lend their skills. Brazilians, Germans, French, English etc have appeared with great fanfare, but few lasted long or made much impact. In West Asia, for example, there has long been significant money available to spend on the game. Even as far back as the ’70s, the UAE shocked England by tempting the well-respected (if not well-loved) coach of the English national team, Don Revie. In the next few decades, star players like Gabriel Batistuta, Ronald De Boer and Fabio Cannavaro would play in the UAE and Qatar. But the owners, often powerful sheikhs, did not have much patience. They saw big names as a way to bring instant success. Sometimes they did but the glory was short-lived without the foundations to back it up. Numerous coaches were replaced. Between 1994 and 2014, the Saudi national team made over 20 coaching changes.

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Such scenes were played out all over Asia. Some countries did not have spare money to spend on developing football, but plenty have, and are spending it on the wrong things. Investing in grassroots can take years, even decades, to bear fruit and not many people in charge are prepared to wait so long. Spending money on coaches poses no problem, but spending money and time on training coaches—to learn how to coach young players—is a little different.

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Two Nations S. Korea’s Lee Chung Yong wrestles for control with Iran’s Ehsan Haji Safi

Football has long been seen as a battle for prestige by the rich and powerful. Indeed, it’s a signifier of power, and this has been another weak point of Asian football. Politicians have rarely been able to leave the game alone. All over Asia, the popularity of the sport among the public has been seen as a threat and an opportunity for those in power—to get involved in football, bring success and increase political standing. Any Iranian president knows that football can’t be ignored; this is why ex-president Mahmoud Ahmadinejad and his government became increasingly involved in the game. To no one’s surprise, this has not been to the benefit of Iranian football.

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A love of the European game also does not help, especially in Southeast Asia. Take a walk around Kuala Lumpur, Bangkok, Singapore or Hanoi and the numbers of locals sporting shirts of European, and especially English, club teams is striking. This effect is often overblown—it is possible to have healthy local scenes as well as interest in the big European leagues—but the glamour that the English Premier League possesses can turn heads. It makes it a little harder for the local leagues to build their brand when they are constantly compared to the world’s best by young and demanding potential supporters. An inferiority complex can sometimes infect national teams too, and it was not until recently that the big boys of Asian football actually started to believe they could compete with the best.

The sheer size of the Asian continent also does not help. Standards vary to an incredible degree and it makes it hard to build a continental identity and sense that there is a common goal. Different regions (and sub-regions) push and pull in different directions. On a practical basis, organising regular tournaments is difficult and an exercise in travel and frustration.

It is true to say that only recently have some Asian nations got the respect they deserve. The opportunity for Asian players to move outside the giant continent is limited and still open mostly to Koreans and Japanese. This is slowly changing but players (the possibility for coaches moving overseas is not yet near) need to get as much international experience as possible. Again, due to power and politics, some owners of West Asian clubs have not allowed their stars to head to Europe—they were too important.

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However, much can be done, as Japan and South Korea demonstrated and these examples are finally being emulated. Japan devised a well-funded, comprehensive and structured youth development system in the early ’90s. The different prefectures worked together and were divided into regions, who then worked together to send the best players to national elite centres. At the same time, schools, private clubs and universities—traditional routes for potential players—were coordinated with. Now China, a country with a small football-playing population, has started to follow Tokyo. After years of hiring famous foreign coaches and qualifying for only one World Cup (back in 2002, with no goals and no points), the Middle Kingdom has finally realised that investing in youth is the only way forward. The more countries follow this model, the better for the likes of Japan and Korea, who need a higher standard of regional competition in order to help them challenge the best in the world.

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At the 2014 World Cup, Japan and South Korea are Asia’s best hopes of progressing past the group stage. While there are hopes that Iran and Australia would do well too, it is important that the two East Asian powers do well again and demonstrate the only one way to sustained international success: long-term planning, investment at the grassroots and an overall national strategy. It may not be the most exciting road to sustained success but it is the only one that can take Asian football to the next level.

John Duerden is the Asian football correspondent for The Guardian, BBC Radio 5, ESPN, World Soccer and AP

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