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A round of mixed results in the AFC Champions League will have left A-League fans scratching their heads this week. Hopes were high after Newcastle Jets held Nagoya Grampus to a credible draw at Mizuho Stadium. But with Kawasaki Frontale dishing out a footballing lesson to a stunned Central Coast Mariners, the question remains: can A-League clubs ever compete with the Japanese?
A few home truths need to be faced before A-League clubs can think about bridging the gap.
Without wishing to employ the words “technical and tactical,” Australians need to see beyond the impressive budgets and Brazilian wizardry available to many Japanese clubs and start recognising what ideas we can borrow to improve our own football.
And we should start by looking at training methods.
Is it any wonder that Kawasaki Frontale employed two converted midfielders in the form of Yusuke Mori and Kazuhiro Murakami to play as attacking wing-backs?
It’s not just because Mori and Murakami have spent most of their careers as midfielders that they looked so accomplished going forward.
Instead it’s the fact that Japanese players are drilled incessantly in the art of close control and ball skills.
And when I say drilled, I don’t mean a few training sessions a week by the time they are in their twenties.
Japanese players are considered by FIFA to be the most technically accomplished in the world at age sixteen because by that time they have been practicing ball skills for at least ten years.
The school system helps – Japanese children are used to drilling endlessly in any number of topics – and that kind of regime helps condition young footballers to put in the practice required to become a professional.
And the kind of football demanded by Japanese coaches, with players interchangeable and adept at playing any number of positions, is what encourages teams like Kawasaki Frontale to play the combination football that so embarrassed the Mariners.
Elementary mistakes don’t help, of course, and after Hiroyuki Taniguchi scored most of his ten goals last season with his head, you’d think a Central Coast defender might have picked up the little midfielder in the box.
It’s not like Lawrie McKinna even needed to watch last season’s DVD – Taniguchi scored from a header against Nagoya Grampus just last week.
Speaking of Nagoya, they looked fairly uninspired against Newcastle Jets, with Gary van Egmond’s side slightly unfortunate not to go on and win their clash at a balmy Mizuho.
I’m not sure where “Dutchy” pulled the idea that Nagoya are one of the favourites to reach the final from – personally I thought Grampus might struggle to get out of the group stage – and they were comfortably beaten by Kawasaki Frontale in the J. League last weekend.
But once again it was a Japanese player in Keiji Tamada – not the much-vaunted Davi – who did the damage against Newcastle, and the Jets were slightly fortunate that last season’s J. League Rookie Of The Year Yoshizumi Ogawa was in unusually quiet form.
All the imports in the world don’t change the fact that Nagoya’s exciting teenager Sho Hanai or Kawasaki’s one-club man Kengo Nakamura are locally produced.
Even Kawasaki’s Chong Tese is a product of the Japanese youth system. He may be a North Korean international, but the star striker was born and raised in Nagoya.
Football Australia has taken steps to redress the issue by introducing a much-needed Youth League, but it’s of little value unless Australian clubs start to implement some of the training regimes that are bringing Japanese teams so much success.
And having joked a couple of months ago to Simon Hill that I could see Kawasaki putting ten goals passed Danny Vukovic, I’m a little alarmed that my facetious prediction wasn’t that far off the mark.
It took the Socceroos thirty-two years to make a second World Cup finals appearance.
I hope it doesn’t take that long before A-League teams can compete on a consistent basis with their Japanese counterparts.