Until now Japan has not exactly been a common destination for Australia Footballers. Currently only one Australian is listed on a J-League team (Eddy Bosnar at JEF United ) while a further two (Mark Rudan and Ufuk Talay) are plying their trade at second division team Avispa Fukuoka.
This is all about to change however with news last week that the J-league has allocated a fourth foreign visa place on their squads for next year to Asian only players.
This is an excellent move by the J-League and one that the A-League should seriously consider following. Arguably the best national league in the Asian Confederation this move by the J-League should help strengthen its exposure in the Asian marketplace. Up til now most of the foreign players have come from Europe and South America (similar to the A-league). This has lifted the standard of play but hasn’t brought in the international viewers.
With the clubs looking to fill these spots we can expect an influx of 33 Asian players into J-league teams (Division 1 and 2). It would be reasonable to expect that vast majority of these players to come from South Korea, China and Australia as these countries will have players of decent standard for a reasonable cost. A splattering of Middle East players could be expected as well but majority of players from these countries may demand wages beyond what J-League Clubs would be willing to pay.
So it is not unreasonable to expect 5-10 current A-League players making the move to the J-League next year. These will most likely be experienced players who are doing well in the A-League but who are not considered Marquee. Joel Griffiths, Michael Thwaite and Alex Brosque would just be a few of the players the Japanese would be looking at wooing over.
There is little the FFA can do to stop this exodus initially as the J-league operates on much larger budgets than we do (18 of the top 20 clubs by revenue in Asia are Japanese) and will have more money to tempt players there. The best thing for the FFA to do is continue to grow the competition here in Australia and abroad. With this in mind the FFA should follow the Japanese lead and change one of their 4 Visa player spots to be an Asian only allocation. We, like Japan, need to start building our brand into the Foreign Markets of China, India, South Korea and Indonesia.
Jess Fink has also made this the theme of his blog yesterday and I totally concur with him. There still seems to be a perception that we are the leading Asian Country. Truth be told we are nowhere near the standard of the J-league at this time but if we are ever going to challenge them we need to take steps now not wait for another 10 years.
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Tuesday, September 2, 2008
Here Comes The Japanese Raiders
Posted by againstthecrossbar at 5:02 PM
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5 comments:
hi, i am over in japan ATM (teaching english holiday) and from what i have seen of the standard of the j-league, dunno how many of our players will get raided ...
talay and rudan aren`t doing badly, but they haven`t exactly set the world on fire, their team is mid - lower table in the J2.
and a guy who was the player of the year last year - griffiths, comes over and fits in well for a short spell with a J2 club. would he warrant a start at a good J1 club? dunno.
bosnar has had a solid career in holland. and he came over to play with relegation fodder.
i am thinking it is more the lower league euro based aussie talent that could get targeted, rather than a-league based players.
anybody that came over would have to be tactically and culturally flexible. j1 isn`t the championship. don`t know how much they go for the old blood and thunder stuff.
will be interesting to see how this all plays out.
in terms of recent WC performance, numbers of players in the big leagues, and player numbers in secondary euro leagues, Australia are leaders.
in terms of quality of our league and the financial strength of our teams, we are nowhere near the front.
clayton
Good points Clayton but a couple of things. The lower league Euro Aussie players are no better than the best player son the A-League.
For instance Kisnorbo isn't any better than a Jade North
Will certainly be interestign to see which Aussies (if any) end up in J1.
jade north is a better player than kisnorbochamp (you can almost think of them as one player, they have so much in common).
but i think he is atypical/unusual. he and archie thompson are the only current a-leaguers i can think of who have looked comfortable in supporting roles in the national team.
you are correct that spread of talent in europe is pretty wide. some of the guys in europe would embaress themselves if they came home - they wouldn`t be good enough.
but i would put bosnar above kisnorbochamp. he never shined in the big leagues, but seems a good footballer. with a footballer`s brain. i think he should have had more time in the national team setup.
i think the bosnar or better is the type of player they are looking for. older, but not too old. who fits that bill? chippers is in that category i think, sterjovski too ... i can`t think of too many.
guess we`ll find out soon enough how it all pans out.
i could be so very very wrong about this issue. everything i commented before can pretty much be thrown out the window.
a couple more a-league team performances like last night (and sfc`s hitouts last year were very respectable too) and the j-league recruiters will be very very impressed.
clayton
It was a very good display last night and I would assume that Travis Dodd and Eugene Galekovic have now place themselves firmly in the crosshairs of a few J-League sides
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