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Asian Debate: Does Australian Football Need To Become More Asian?
The A-League needs Asian technique in order to improve...
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Jan 25, 2010 4:23:00 AM
By John Duerden
Goal.com Asia is contacted on a regular basis from clubs, agents and scouts from around the world looking for the next big star to emerge from the continent or just a decent player at a reasonable price.
Some of those come from Australia. The A-League has been up and running since 2005 yet is still largely unknown to fans in Asia. This is natural. Five years is hardly a long time in football and the average football fan in the Asian Football Confederation has little interest in the domestic leagues of other members.
While there are clubs down under with little interest in the talent on their doorstep, others are more receptive to the idea of Indonesians, Thais, Koreans and Chinese players heading south. Melbourne Victory are an obvious example with Thailand’s Surat Sukha showing his skills to the fans of the A-League’s best-supported club on a regular basis.
Until now though, the big-name Asian stars from bigger footballing countries have not yet travelled for a taste of football in the southern hemisphere. Attracting such players is not easy for Aussie outfits. The salary cap in place for each club mean that any genuine star from the likes of Japan, Korea and West Asia would have to take a considerable pay cut to head down under.
There is a way around this as each club could utilize its ‘marquee spot’, which enables one player to be paid outside the cap. Whether any Asian player has enough pulling power for the local audience to warrant this is another question.
Song Jin-hyung is perhaps the best known Asian player in the A-League at the moment. Just before he moved to Newcastle Jets in 2008, the South Korean was a promising young player on the books of FC Seoul along with the up-and-coming Lee Chung-yong and Ki Sung-yong. Song failed to impress coach Senol Gunes enough to get more than the occasional piece of playing time in the K-League and chose to move to Australia, a move seen at the time by Seoul as a reasonable one.
The midfielder has impressed down under with his skills and attitude. The trail may have been blazed but has not yet been followed. One reason is that a move to the A-League at the moment would damage the chances of a Korean or Japanese player being selected for the national team.
Another is that the move doesn’t seem to have helped Song as a player. When the midfielder returned to his homeland last year to participate in the Asian Champions League with the Jets, coaching staff from his former club went along to take a look. Seoul were shocked by what they saw as a complete lack of technical development in the player since he had left Korea.
While former friends Ki and Lee had broken into the national team and big money moves to Europe, it was even felt that Song had gone backwards in his time with the Jets. So surprised were the staff that FC Seoul, a club known for helping young players develop, no longer recommends the A-League as a possible destination to any footballer that leaves the club.
The A-League has this reputation of being one in which technique comes a fairly distant second to power. Last year, a team newly-promoted to the J-League scoured Australian football but failed to find a player that it felt was as good technically than any of its squad which had just finished a J2 season. Korean teams get around this by focusing on Australian defenders to their backlines where, it is felt, that a lack of technique is outweighed by physical strength and power.
Such tales make it tougher to attract top Asian talent but veterans could provide the answer. A couple of seasons for players coming to the end of their careers will put the A-league on the Asian circuit. The sunshine and the prospect of English education for their children can appeal to older players who are readying to settle down with their families.
These big names may not be the forces they once were but if former World Cuppers like 2002 hero Ahn Jung-hwan, who played with the idea of the A-League before playing in China, and Japan 2006 skipper Tsuneyasu Miyamoto, another who is open to moving to an English-speaking country, could be tempted, then at least headlines will be made and the A-League’s profile raised.
Australian football needs Asian players, not for the commercial reasons that are usually mentioned, and probably wouldn’t materialize anyway, but to help the game develop.
The Australian brand of physical and direct football could do with an injection of Asian technique and pace and this dose needs to be a hefty one - a player here and a player there has little effect. Asking Asians to play Aussie-style football is perhaps not the way forward; rather asking teams to play more ‘Asian’ while retaining the Australian spirit and toughness may be the recipe for success.
John Duerden
Asia Editor
john.duerden@goal.com
Some of those come from Australia. The A-League has been up and running since 2005 yet is still largely unknown to fans in Asia. This is natural. Five years is hardly a long time in football and the average football fan in the Asian Football Confederation has little interest in the domestic leagues of other members.
While there are clubs down under with little interest in the talent on their doorstep, others are more receptive to the idea of Indonesians, Thais, Koreans and Chinese players heading south. Melbourne Victory are an obvious example with Thailand’s Surat Sukha showing his skills to the fans of the A-League’s best-supported club on a regular basis.
Until now though, the big-name Asian stars from bigger footballing countries have not yet travelled for a taste of football in the southern hemisphere. Attracting such players is not easy for Aussie outfits. The salary cap in place for each club mean that any genuine star from the likes of Japan, Korea and West Asia would have to take a considerable pay cut to head down under.
There is a way around this as each club could utilize its ‘marquee spot’, which enables one player to be paid outside the cap. Whether any Asian player has enough pulling power for the local audience to warrant this is another question.
Song Jin-hyung is perhaps the best known Asian player in the A-League at the moment. Just before he moved to Newcastle Jets in 2008, the South Korean was a promising young player on the books of FC Seoul along with the up-and-coming Lee Chung-yong and Ki Sung-yong. Song failed to impress coach Senol Gunes enough to get more than the occasional piece of playing time in the K-League and chose to move to Australia, a move seen at the time by Seoul as a reasonable one.
The midfielder has impressed down under with his skills and attitude. The trail may have been blazed but has not yet been followed. One reason is that a move to the A-League at the moment would damage the chances of a Korean or Japanese player being selected for the national team.
Another is that the move doesn’t seem to have helped Song as a player. When the midfielder returned to his homeland last year to participate in the Asian Champions League with the Jets, coaching staff from his former club went along to take a look. Seoul were shocked by what they saw as a complete lack of technical development in the player since he had left Korea.
While former friends Ki and Lee had broken into the national team and big money moves to Europe, it was even felt that Song had gone backwards in his time with the Jets. So surprised were the staff that FC Seoul, a club known for helping young players develop, no longer recommends the A-League as a possible destination to any footballer that leaves the club.
The A-League has this reputation of being one in which technique comes a fairly distant second to power. Last year, a team newly-promoted to the J-League scoured Australian football but failed to find a player that it felt was as good technically than any of its squad which had just finished a J2 season. Korean teams get around this by focusing on Australian defenders to their backlines where, it is felt, that a lack of technique is outweighed by physical strength and power.
Such tales make it tougher to attract top Asian talent but veterans could provide the answer. A couple of seasons for players coming to the end of their careers will put the A-league on the Asian circuit. The sunshine and the prospect of English education for their children can appeal to older players who are readying to settle down with their families.
These big names may not be the forces they once were but if former World Cuppers like 2002 hero Ahn Jung-hwan, who played with the idea of the A-League before playing in China, and Japan 2006 skipper Tsuneyasu Miyamoto, another who is open to moving to an English-speaking country, could be tempted, then at least headlines will be made and the A-League’s profile raised.
Australian football needs Asian players, not for the commercial reasons that are usually mentioned, and probably wouldn’t materialize anyway, but to help the game develop.
The Australian brand of physical and direct football could do with an injection of Asian technique and pace and this dose needs to be a hefty one - a player here and a player there has little effect. Asking Asians to play Aussie-style football is perhaps not the way forward; rather asking teams to play more ‘Asian’ while retaining the Australian spirit and toughness may be the recipe for success.
John Duerden
Asia Editor
john.duerden@goal.com
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