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On Monday evening, at a five-a-side kickaround game in my neighbourhood, I caught up with a friend, a personality manager-agent with lots of footballers on his books. He’d just got back from Japan after having meetings with J-League clubs about one of his players.
The player was perhaps short of European quality but ideal for Asia; Japan was going to be an important rung on the ladder of his career.
In the short time he was there – it was a veritable whistlestop – my friend managed to catch a J-League match live.
He wasn’t that impressed. “I tell you, our A-League is just as good,” he said.
I was surprised; mostly because in the past I have seen myself the yawning gap in technical standards between our top respective J-League and A-League teams.
“Yeah,” he went on, “but football isn’t all about technical skills; it’s also about a bit of this.”
He threw out his elbow and mimed a popping sound. “Japanese players just don’t know how to handle it.”
Which, in truth, faintly appalled me but my friend was right. In the hour that followed I got muscled off the ball repeatedly by a player, an ex pro, who had no qualms using his body to stop me getting up the
field.
It happens every minute of every A-League game. Australians are very good, it must be said, at physical football. Our opponents, club and international, have long bemoaned our style of play, especially in the days before Guus Hiddink and Pim Verbeek.
Some of our storied players were, in virtual effect, thugs.
In the Asian football firmament, we are known as the tough guys. And because of this, our Asian rivals don’t like playing us. It’s never fun to be on the wrong side of the pitch when coming up against an Australian footballer.
I’ll be the first to admit I’ve long derided this characteristic of our national football character and craved the opposite – it is a major theme of my book 15 Days in June – but perhaps there is some mileage to be gained from it when it comes to advancing our progress as a football nation.
If Japan remains the technical benchmark for Asia (which, I’m sure we can all agree on is correct; only Korea comes close), and Australia flies the flag for biff, surely some sort of mutual benefit could be derived.
Leaving aside the obvious issue that we would be aiding and abetting our main World Cup rival (and vice versa) but keeping in mind the overall aim of raising the level of Asian football in general, I think
there is room for an exchange of wisdom between A-League and J-League clubs; specifically handing over some J-League players to A-League clubs to “toughen” them up and returning the compliment so that some of our less technically adept players can improve their base skills.
Short of being regarded as official transfers as such, it could be something that is treated as a quasi-exchange program, two-way traffic that takes place in the off-seasons of both leagues.
It is perhaps fanciful, as it would involve Australia ostensibly admitting we fall short of the Japanese when it comes to o jogo bonito, but the whole point of the exercise is our young players becoming better all-round footballers, and that is worth showing some humility for, is it not?
The Japanese have shown more than enough of that since 1945. Now it’s our turn.
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