What will it take for club football in Australia and Asia to be more respected by the rest of the world? Right now all players dream of making it in Europe and, as a result, the best of them go to Europe.
I believe something should be done to enable Asia to rival Europe. We have enough countries for it to happen — although admittedly most of them are not ‘big’ in international football terms.
The AFC should be doing some serious work on identifying talent early and, more importantly, keeping that talent in Asia. They should also try to get more money into the Asian Leagues in order to buy the bigger name players so it can have the marketability of the European league.
The crowds in leagues such as Japan and Korea are great, but they need to have those crowds in the smaller nations too. Nothing is worse than watching the empty stadiums in the Asian Cup. A lot of the players who play in Asia have the skill to play in Europe but don’t due to minimal scouting of them and, in some cases, cultural differences.
I live in hope that one day all young players dream of not only succeeding in Europe but in Asia as well.
Midfielder
Guest
Brad there is a lot of money in Asia, while Europe may be number one and still will for decades to come, that is no reason to say that Asia will not have a pill of money soon so large that big Asia clubs will have buying power to compete for many players who would in the past gone to Europe.
Brad
Guest
There is no comparison between European and Asian football leagues. European football leagues have rich histories and traditions, countries such as Japan, Korea and Australia simply can't compare with this. I think competitions like the A-League ,and the J and K Leagues, are on the right track but still have a long way to go. Its like comparing a hundred year old tree to a sapling, even if you water and nourish the sapling as much as you can in the short term, its going to take a very long time for it to get to where the 100 year old tree is at.