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The debate over promotion and relegation in Australia reminds me of South Korea in 2011, the year before it was introduced. The ‘Let’s wait/It’ll be great/It won’t work here mate’ to-and-fro.
Football folk tend to be conservative, viewing change with suspicion but then adapting to it very quickly once it happens. Introducing three points for a win in England in 1981 had its opposition (and still does) but within weeks, it had been largely accepted and was then slowly adopted by everyone else.
In Korea what happened when and since relegation came into play was what often happens when there is a big change after polarising debate: it is not the promised land that its supporters claimed it would be, but neither is it the dystopia narrated by naysayers.
My status as the 21st most influential person in Korea football in 2009 (as voted by 442 magazine) meant that it was only right and proper that I attended a few discussions in Seoul. Around the same time my team Blackburn Rovers, helpfully, started to flirt with the drop from the English Premier League.
The arguments for and against would mostly be familiar ones to Aussie fans, though every country is different of course.
Korea is certainly unique in its football culture. There had been a quick experiment in 2006 to have promotion but the winner of the all second-tier playoff (defeating a deeply Christian team called Ansan Hallelujah that, instead of a pre-match huddle, lined up in the shape of cross before kick off and prayed. Journalists dreaded interviews with the players as they usually ended with enthusiastic invitations to attend church the following Sunday) then refused to take their place in the top tier.
The introduction of genuine promotion and relegation in 2012 happened for three main reasons.
The first was that there was growing pressure from the AFC. The confederation had long complained that one of the continent’s strongest leagues, and the dominant power (more so at the time than now) in the Asian Champions League, did not have promotion and relegation. This is going to happen more and more in regard to Australia. The AFC is going to push.
Second and more pressing was the match-fixing scandal of 2011. It was a major outbreak and shocked authorities and everyone else. It resulted in a massive drive to make the game more professional and that had to extend as far down the pyramid as possible.
And there was already a second tier. It was a question of trying to make this as competitive as possible.
So the initiative came from the K-League working with the support of the KFA, not the clubs themselves as may have to happen in Australia.
The main argument against relegation was that if a club went down, the owners would pull the plug.
The change in thinking at the top was that this may not actually happen and in most cases it probably would not. The second division is not the end, especially as it grows and improves.
The right-thinking owners would see it as a challenge to get back to the top tier as soon as possible, and if they didn’t and really wanted to bail then so be it: for the league a bit of short-term pain would, hopefully, be worth it for long-term gain.
It took relegation a while to get going (the K-League’s split system, where the 12 teams split into two groups near the end, does not help. This takes attention away from the bottom half).
There has been mostly yo-yoing between the top two flights and it was not until last season that the second tier started to show some life. A new team in Seoul E-Land spent a bit of cash, got former Vancouver Whitecaps coach Martin Rennie and plenty of talented and experienced Koreans.
There was a real promotion battle with improving and ambitious teams willing to spend to get into the top tier. This group of three or four teams is starting to lift standards.
The relegated teams have been reasonably enthusiastic, Gyeongnam – a team that was struggling before the drop – perhaps excepted, but the real test will come this season.
Busan I’Park is a former Korean and Asian champion but has been badly run and poorly financed for years. Even so, it was still a shock to see a former powerhouse take a tumble in 2015.
I spent some time with the club during pre-season in Thailand, and there was a determination to get back into the top tier. Some said relegation was the wake-up call needed. Time will tell.
Korea’s relegation experiment has been a modest success despite the fact that it was thrown together quickly. The second tier is slowly improving and there is a hope that this season Suwon FC, the first team to be promoted that had not come down from the first division, can shine.
Nobody is expecting a Leicester-like scenario but you never know. With promotion and relegation, such dreams are possible.
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