What bona fide stars does Japan field? Shinji Kagawa? How many players does Japan have in the top leagues (I honestly don't know - not aware of many in the BPL, am aware of a number in the Bundesliga and ignorant re other top leagues)? Looking at their list of recent callups to their National side, they had about 13 players in the Bundesliga, Serie A, BPL and La Liga combined. That number is not all that different from what a similar list for the USMNT would look like (Howard, Guzan, Dempsey, Cameron, Shea, Cherundolo, Johnson, Williams, Chandler, Jones, Parkhurst, Bradley, Gooch immediately spring to mind)
but you have to cross out our dual nationals. Williams, Chandler, Jones don't count in this. It's players developed in the J-League, and transferred over. But players like Nagatomo, Kawaga, Keisuke Honda, Okazaki, etc.
If we define Germany, England, Spain and Italy as big leagues we have 9 by my count. Just going off Japan's wiki list they have 11.
I don't see the J-League ahead of MLS "by miles". The difference seems to be significantly smaller than that, at least using this measure (of course, this is not a perfect measure as it could be that higher salaries in the J-League make Europe less attractive (I don't know if this is fact eve, just a theory) OR that once you add in foreign players developed in a local league, the MLS looks better). I don't see anything to date that indicates that this allegedly better development platform is helping the Japaneese National Team achieve better results than what the USMNT has achieved.
But by the same token, the J-League develops relatively few players who are not eligible for the JNT. Najar, Kamara, Espinoza (not to mention still young and developing, eg Nagbe, Fagundez) are all 'MLS-developed' who (could/do) play for other countries. Now this is an NT thread, so if one wants to narrowly focus on the question of 'Does the J-League develop more JNT players who go and play in top leagues than MLS does for the USNT?', OK. But that's not what I'm seeing argued. I don't know if growing players for the JNT is a primary mission for the J-League, but their foreign player restrictions are much more stringent than MLS. Figuring out ways to give USA youngsters more playing time in MLS is one thing. But simply counting the number of Japanese nationals in top European Leagues and comparing that to the USA-MLS total is a bit of a red herring, if the issue is 'who is better at bringing along young guys who will be good enough to play in the Bundesliga, EPL?'
Japan of course has the same work permit/foreign player slot restrictions that Americans do. And they're even worse because more Americans should in theory be capable of getting a Euro passport. Personally I think the argument is a waste of time. While MLS and the J-league have been around for about the same time, MLS has only truly been serious about youth development for ~4 years. There were few incentives for teams to develop their own players until the homegrown signing rules were put into effect. We're only just now seeing players brought the MLS academies get senior USMNT caps (Hamid, Agudelo, etc..................Najar for Honduras). I know we're American and we're impatient.................but we simply have to let the system build year after year after year.
Do they, though? Here's the Japanese national team pool, per Wikipedia: Premier League: 2 Bundesliga: 9 Serie A: 1 La Liga: 0 Here's the US: Premier League: 4 Bundesliga: 6 Serie A: 1 La Liga: 1 Each has 12 players in the big 4. You can argue about prominence and playing time, but I don't think you can say they're ahead "by miles" or have more players in the top leagues "by far" when there are actually about the same number. And yes, Michael Bradley, Clint Dempsey, and Tim Howard are world class players. I don't know how you're defining "world class star" but as one data point, there is just one Japanese player on the Guardian Top 100 (Shinji Kagawa, at #94); the US has none. I don't think either league has any real breakout international stars yet.
What american is in La Liga? Boca isn't. Also, we really shouldn't be counting the Germericans and maybe some of the guys in the UK too.
The "Germaricans" you may have a point with...all but Cherundolo came up in German systems. So if the argument is about MLS as a development system, sure. As for the UK...all of the American players in the Premier League (Howard, Guzan, Cameron, Dempsey, Shea) played in MLS before moving over. I actually undercounted by one somehow. So. Take out the five German-Americans brought up in German systems, add the one Premier Leaguer I left out, and you have twelve Japanese and eight Americans in the Top 4--still not a huge disparity.
Dolo played college ball, he's as american as apple pie. Not referring to him. If you expand to the top 10 leagues, the disparity will grow.
If you glance at some J.League rosters on Wikipedia, you'll notice that the disparity of the number of Japanese vs. Americans in top European leagues is far smaller than the disparity of number of Japanese on J.League rosters vs. American on MLS rosters. I found that interesting.
If you want to see when the J league got serious about player development check out there website. http://www.j-league.or.jp/eng/activities/index_05.html (near the bottom) Kind of interesting to see how they went about it. Starting in 2002.
Actually, just thinking about it...this in itself is a huge sign of progress for MLS. Of the 8 Americans in the national team pool currently playing in the Top 4 leagues in Europe who grew up in the United States, only 2 of them (that I can think of) skipped MLS and went straight to Europe from college: Onyewu and Cherundolo--both of whom are now over 30. In fact, in the national team pool, there aren't really very many of the "skip MLS" players playing in Europe at any level. Joe Gyau, Alejandro Bedoya...anyone else?
Oh--Parkhurst is another US-based Bundesliga player. So that gives us 9 (+4 Germans) to Japan's 12. Actually, it doesn't. In the Japanese NT pool you have: Netherlands: 2 Belgium: 1 Russia: 1 South Korea: 1 UK Championship: 1 UAE: 1 In the USA you have: Mexico: 6 Netherlands: 1 Belgium: 1 Austria: 1 Turkey: 1 Germany 2nd: 2 Spain 2nd: 1 UK Championship: 1 Norway: 2 Sweden: 1 Denmark: 1 That's 7 Japanese Abroad, and 18 Americans. If you consider Mexico a "top 10" league, the USA is well ahead--and even if you don't, it's pretty even all down the line.
The hit rate for the straight-to-Europe crowd has never been that great. A lot of academy washouts. Maybe it's the culture shock of going from US youth teams to more serious, competitive, and cutthroat Euro youth teams. Maybe it's just the regular attrition of prospects. Maybe it's both. Ultimately, it just hasn't been that successful.
Mexico is certainly better than Sweden, Norway, Austria and it's probably even or slightly better than Belgium or Denmark and the 2nd divisions.
On reflection, though, Mexico might not be a fair comparison. There would probably be more Japanese players in the South Korean league, for instance, if it weren't for the Asian confed's ridiculously strict foreign player limits.
I personally do not believe is judging players by their league position. Landon Donovan has spent most of his career in MLS and he is still one of our best players. Just because he plays in MLS doesn't mean he is an MLS average player. Some countries simply have more players stay home than others. Russia has a very good national team, but very few players in the "top leagues" because they can find quality wages and comfort of home in their domestic league. Mexico has a similar situation. When people use the phrase, "well Mexico doesn't have as many players in Europe as the US," it's meaningless. The Mexican league pays very well and many Mexican players would prefer to stay home and make money playing in a prestigious league than go abroad. On the flip side Colombia has hardly any players in their domestic league because it's so poorly managed and paid.
We also might want to consider that like Mexico..................the "middle class" players get paid pretty darn well in the J-league. Much better than in MLS where the stars and elite kids get money. So the Japanese version of Michael Parkhurst or Clarence Goodson would stay in Japan.