15 Feb 2010(Mon)

The East Asian Championship may attract little attention throughout the rest of the world but it should serve as an interesting point of reference to observers in the United Kingdom, following as it does an almost identical template to the old Home Internationals. The British Home Championship was the world’s first ever international football tournament, pitting England, Scotland, Wales, and Ireland (later Northern Ireland) together in round-robin competition on an annual basis from 1884 – some 46 years before the inaugural FIFA World Cup – and lasting exactly a century until its eventual demise following the 1983-84 season. Alongside contemporary sociopolitical factors such as hooliganism and the Troubles, reasons cited for its cancellation include fixture congestion and declining supporter interest, but recent nostalgia for the old British derbies has given rise to a resurrection of sorts in the form of the 4 Associations’ Tournament, whose first edition will be played in the Republic of Ireland next year.

 

The inaugural hosts take the place of England, meaning that the new competition becomes an all-Celtic affair but undoubtedly lacks its greatest potential draw. The Football Association are said to agree to the idea of a relaunched Home Championship in principle, but fear that fixture congestion makes English participation impractical – which may as well be a paraphrasing of Phoebe Buffay’s immortal line: ‘I wish I could, but I don’t want to’.

 

In any case, the Irish (and indeed their three opponents) will certainly hope to fare much better in their new adventure than the Japanese national side did as hosts of the East Asian mini-league this month. Negative press has surrounded Takeshi Okada and his squad since even before the tournament kicked off, with a 0-0 draw in their warm-up match with Venezuela on 2 February serving as a dismal prelude to a similar goalless stalemate in Japan’s opening fixture with China four days later. Attendances were highly disappointing – the hosts were booed off then by a half-full Ajinomoto Stadium before beating Hong Kong 3-0 in front of just 16,368 at the National Stadium in their second game, while the two matchdays not involving the home side attracted less than 7,000 supporters between them. Finally, even when crowds did pick up for the decisive match with South Korea last night, Japan were beaten 3-1 in a game where just about everything that could have gone wrong for them did just that. As his opposite number, Huh Jung-Moo (who looks more and more like ‘Beat’ Takeshi Kitano every time I see him), danced on the touchline in celebration, Okada was left to defend both his position and his target of a semi-final appearance at the World Cup in front of a nation baying for blood.

 

There were, of course, a number of mitigating circumstances. The fact that the tournament kicked off a full month before the start of the club season (with the Japanese squad meeting up in Kagoshima just 24 days after the Emperor’s Cup final brought an end to the 2009 calendar) meant that neither individual players nor the team as a collective ought to have been in much better condition than they would be for any other pre-season friendly. This most likely affected attendances too, as did the absence of star names plying their trade in Europe where domestic competition takes precedence over international matches on dates not pre-approved by FIFA. Eventual champions China undoubtedly benefited the most from the resultant levelling of the playing field, and whereas Japan and South Korea have the small matter of a World Cup to prepare for, glory in East Asia really was the be-all-and-end-all for Gao Hongbo and his men.

 

Still, however immaterial Japan’s ‘failure’ at the East Asian Championship may indeed be when viewed in such practical terms, the psychological effects of the critical fallout and the forwards’ continued woes in front of goal could prove an unwanted distraction ahead of the considerably more important challenges that await. Okada is under pressure, and attempting to instil a siege mentality into his squad might now be his only option given that much of the bad feeling stems from above. The repeated outbursts from Motoaki Inukai may well be justified were they aired in private, but for the president of the JFA to speak so vociferously to the press about his national team and manager is surely both unprofessional and entirely unhelpful.