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.
Mike Tuckerman
Expert
A FIFA official mentioned it to me at the Club World Cup in Yokohama in 2008.
AKITOD
Guest
Mike I was wondering where the quote/stat came from where FIFA says Japanese children are the best techically in the world at 16?
Mike Tuckerman
Expert
zachary - four different clubs have won the J. League in the past five seasons, and a total of five different clubs have lifted the title since 2000.
zachary
Guest
the Japanese league is a promotion/relegation system with no sallery caps so all the tallent is in the top one or two teams (the tip of the sword) becouse of the sallery cap all the tallent in the A-league is spread out across ten teams! (blunt stick) there like ten men in the ocean who cant swim and are dragging each other down. i`d like to see the top teams in the state leagues compete in asia, i think they would do a better job
clayton
Guest
we already compete with the j-league clubs. so far the tally is a 2 leg win over kashima, 5 losses (including victory`s losses) against gamba, a draw against grampus and a loss against frontale. apologies for any mistakes in my tally. none of these games has been a 10 goal Andorra vs Spain type game ... in the euro qualifiers you will see some teams that simply cannot compete and shouldn`t be there. but thats not us. we have a professional league. our players get scouted and recruited by teams from other leagues. maybe people have different definitions of the word "compete", cos I`d say we are competing right now. equal to? no. on top of. no. but competing with? yes.
David V.
Guest
I'm assuming the two sports coexist nicely in Japan. The Japanese are notoriously poor both in goal and in front of goal, but their creative ball-playing talent would put many countries to shame and is the equal of many European and South American countries in this department. You can find good creative Japanese talent even in the weaker sides, even in J2.
ohtani's jacket
Guest
In Japan you've got the unique situation where highschool baseball is almost as important as pro-baseball, so the participation numbers are still high. A lot of young males are attracted to football -- and not only Japanese football, but world football -- but young people are a smaller demographic than older, staunch baseball fans. One thing I'll say for football in Japan is that the administrators have been extremely successful at making it anything more than a fad. It's unlikely that they'll ever catch baseball, but they're firmly entrenched as number two. Of course the goal was to overtake baseball. If you judge it by that standard, they failed rather miserably in the wake of WC 2002, but still I think they've done exceptionally well.
Ben of Phnom Penh
Guest
There is some truth to the adage, Midfielder. Certainly the older generation (50's and above) are almost universally baseball supporters however in the under 50 bracket you see many more football supporters. That said there are no shortage of kids pitching baseballs in the parks of Tokyo so I'd say the younger crowd is more of a mix between the two. What I find odd is how Nagasaki is so strong at school level football yet has no J-1 or J-2 side (V-Varen Nagasaki are trying to break into J-2). Certainly the game is growing in Japan though Mike has a far better understanding as to how this is happening as most of my knowledge is a result of drinking too much Yebisu with Japanese football fans in my old haunt of Nippori.
Midfielder
Guest
Ben Baseball over 40's game ... football under 40's game ... any truth to this sometimes thrown about line for Japan and sport.
jimbo
Guest
More like modelling ourselves on the Dutch - a defensive Dutch team palying a long way from home and playing for a nil nil draw. Sack Pimbo now before its too late!
Ben of Phnom Penh
Guest
Peter-ga, don't underestimate the power of baseball in Japan. Football is still a distant second to baseball however the fact that the Blue Samurai can take on the world whereas the baseball side cannot is a powerful force for promoting the World Game. I know many, many Japanese who can't even name all the teams in the J-League yet will fly halfway round the world to watch the Blue Samurai in action. As more youths move towards football I expect Japanese football to continue to move forward. What Mike is talking about is our need to reach the level of the Japanese and the gaps that exist between the domestic competitions. The paths may be different however the benchmarks are quite similar. Hence Japan provides a very good meter as to the development of domestic football in Australia, and let's face it, they are direct competitors at club level and hence comparisons are valid.
peter_ga
Guest
Yes, A-league clubs have competed with J-league clubs, starting with sydney fc getting home and away draws to urawa. Japan is a country with a large compact rich population. Given these factors, and the premier position of soccer in their country, their league should be a first level competition instead of closer to a third level competition like the A-league. We should look to countries like Holland, Portugal, even Croatia, for our foreign models.
Ben of Phnom Penh
Guest
One interesting point that is that we are often comparing apples and oranges. The average Japanese pupil is brought up in a very different cultural system to that of an Australian pupil. Japanese students have a far greater cultural tolerance of drills and working on detail. Australian students have a far greater cultural tolerance for failing, and hence experimenting and succeeding. In short there will have to be different approaches to reach the same result. I believe that we will match the Japanese in the end, however they have a good decade's head start so for the next ten years I'm expecting us to compete well, have the occasional victory, however on balance be on the receiving end at club level. Regardless of the results I'm already enjoying the ride. Adelaide v Shimizu S-Pulse; you think we organize a friendly?
Eamonn
Guest
Not sure anyone suggests Mike that Japanese players don't play in Europe..merely they don't play in the numbers required to produce a team better than the J-League can produce. Any evidence this is changing? Australia has...what 150 playing in Europe, still not one in the last 16 of the Champions League, but out of that lot we get a few into the main leagues. Maybe with the strength of theJ-League the Japanese don't need as many but they need more if they are to go to another level. As for Japanese scoring goals...evidence suggests otherwise....they can't, not really, not yet, not outside of Asia, in the World Cup where it counts. Look at the last World Cup and the one in France...even the one in Japan...if they could score they would have progressed much further in all tournaments...they created a million chances were a joy to watch but embarrasing in front of goal....everytime.
Mike Tuckerman
Expert
Absolutely dasilva. Imagine a team combining Japan's wonderful playmaking abilities with Australia's mental fortitude and imposing physique. They'd be a force to be reckoned with, I dare say!
dasilva
Roar Guru
Fair enough Mike I guess you can't really say Japan doesn't produce good strikers or can't score goals. It's just that they do produce better midfielder then they do strikers. Australia generally don't produce too many well class playmakers to the levels of a Nakamura or an Endo. Japan doesn't seem to produce strikers to the qualities of let say a Viduka or Scott McDonald (even if they don't really show that at international levels).
Mike Tuckerman
Expert
dasilva - that issue was an explanation of why J. League clubs prefer Brazilian strikers. I have never suggested there's a lack of "good strikers" in Japan. It's not an issue that I care that much about, but when I see Australian fans consistently suggesting that a) Japanese players don't play in Europe, and b) that Japanese players can't score goals, I find it's just as easy to let the facts speak for themselves.
dasilva
Roar Guru
Mike It seems strange going on about they have scored goals. Haven't you wrote in your blog before about lack of good strikers in japan due to cultural reasons (fear of losing face).
Mike Tuckerman
Expert
Art Sapphire - I'm not sure that Yasuhiko Okudera would agree with the statement that "(t)he only decent half decent Japanese forward who ever made a bit of a name for himself overseas was Takahara in Germany." Not only was Okudera the first ever Asian player to score in the European Cup when he did so for 1. FC Köln against Nottingham Forest in the 1979 semi-final first-leg, but he also managed a decent return of 34 Bundesliga goals in a German career spanning a decade - long before the Japanese game was ever professionalised. As for having so-and-so many Brazilians in a top-scoring chart being a "savage indictment" - again, it bears scratching the surface. Most playmakers in Japan are Japanese. Last year Yoshito Okubo (now at VfL Wolfsburg) and Yoshizumi Ogawa scored 11 league goals, as did Marcus Tulio Tanaka - while Minoru Suganuma, Hiroyuki Taniguchi and Shinji Okazaki chimed in with 10. Only one of those players is an out-and-out striker (Okazaki) and that's not to mention that fact that fellow strikers Atsushi Yanagisawa scored 14 league goals and Shingo Akamine 12 goals themselves. The idea that Japanese players can't score goals is a myth (they clearly can), as is the fallacy that Japanese players don't play in Europe (Nakamura, Okubo, Hasebe, Honda, Ono, Morimoto, Matsui et. al. suggest as much).
dasilva
Roar Guru
Albert ross Adelaide United lost 5-0 in aggregate over two legs Mariners only needed one game and lost 5-0 over just one match.