This is all pretty stupid. UEFA is not to the AFC what the EPL is to League One. In other words, you don't get promoted to UEFA or relegated to the AFC based on how good/bad you are. These are purely geographical conferences. Israel is the one exception because it was so ostracized by many members of its own conference that it had no choice but to go to another conference. And enough with this "Australia isn't Asian" crap. What is "Asian" anyway? I can't see how you can include such a diverse array of peoples such as Syrians, Indians, Chinese, and Filipinos as Asian, but suddenly exclude Australians as white outsiders. That just relegates "Asian" as some kind of disrespectful miscellaneous category that throws in all those non-whites together into one category. Australia belongs in the AFC a million times more than Korea belongs in UEFA.
Exactly, in the Gold cup was 10+ years ago now and since then we've not guested in any tournaments. Mexico's almost a permanent 'guest' in the Copa America, but frankly I think that if we correctly leveraged both our influence (which our politicians are terrible at doing) and the gyopo populations we have in latin america (significantly more than japan) I can't see why we can't take that second spot.
Don't forget Brazil has the largest Japanese population outside of Japan and Peru had a Japanese immigrant as a president. I don't know what we have but the Brazil/Japanese population alone must be formidable.
good point Koreano and another point I'd like to share is the fact that if we do indeed move to UEFA, those who complained about AFC middle-eastern ref's won't have to complain about that no more .
It's only 1.5 million aparently and that's pretty much it .. we have a pretty large community in brazil as well as in argentina and other countries. As for Fujimori .. suffice to say he's a negative for japan, particularly when they sheltered him from prosecution by the peruvian authorities. He wasn't selected because of any sizeable japanese population there.
getting invited to a tournament is one thing but korea will not and I'm pretty sure CANNOT join uefa its just ludoucris
FYI if Wiki is to be believed: Brazil 48K Koreans Argentina 22K Koreans Mexico 12K Koreans Guatemala 10K Koreans Paraguay 5K Koreans Anyway would be nice to at least play some friendlies against full strength SA sides, maybe in London.
I think a better short-term solution would be for the KFA to put up some dough and compete in Copa America or even the European Championships. But then again, we still have to think about what true long-term benefit this will bring. Not much, methinks.
This is ridiculous. Even ignoring the geographic craziness of it all, UEFA is a crowded competition which would only serve to make it virtually impossible to get into the WC where the KNT has learned a lot / the most the hard way. First we need to spank an established program in the WC to get any legit rep. As much as I love the 2002 squad, there were a number of lucky breaks there. No getting destroyed by an Argentinian squad. No losing to Uruguay who we fought well against, but seemed to be in the passenger seat of. Second, we need the KFA to be willing to sacrifice whatever monies they get by having friendlies at home. We should be the "we'll go anywhere for a good fight" side that teams want to face to challenge themselves in a friendly. But seriously. I can't believe I wasted time writing two posts for something that will NEVER happen.
Why don't we just arrange for a lot of friendlies with quality teams instead of trying to force ourselves into a league we don't belong?
That was the team's early stage under Hiddink. I remember that Cha Duri and Lee Dong-gook were there. I also remember that Lee Dong-gook missed a shot almost point blank range. And Canada won that entire tournament.
Not that I agree with Koreano, using excessive competition as a excuse is the poor man's way out. Why would anyone sacrifice money?
LOL I'm loving this. Thanks for all your inputs. This is very very interesting. 1 point I would like to stress though. WHY would you want to play friendlies at home? How will korea further develop by doing that? Isn't that why we have friendlies? You gain more from playing away matches, in places like Istanbul, Paris, Moscow. This has been the sole reason as to why we failed to qualify to the next rounds in the world cup because we played too many ********in friendlies at HOME. From now, I would like Korea to play their friendlies away. Last but not least, please keep this thread constructive. Thank you
Nobody treats friendlies seriously .. certainly not the level that would lead to our improvement. Playing against even the least competitive south american team in the Copa America would be leagues above playing spain in a friendly, simply because there's incentive to play hard.
Nobody treats friendlies seriously .. certainly not the level that would lead to our improvement. Playing against even the least competitive south american team in the Copa America would be leagues above playing spain in a friendly, simply because there's incentive to play hard.
I don't think purpose of a friendly is to primarily develop the KNT but rather to raise funds for the KFA. I don't have a problem with this as the KFA isn't funded by taxpayer Won. And I don't playing away friendlies will bring immediate benefits. Sure, there will be some intangible benefits by playing in front of a hostile away crowd but do we really need that? Lets comparelaying at home saves time, raises funds, and keeps our players in mint condition. Traveling requires time, expenses, and does not keep our players in mint condition. Also, I don't think our failure on the World stage is directly attributable to the fact that we played friendlies at home. The root cause is probably poor development of the domestic league if anything else. As such, let me pose the question - why should the KFA and the K-League have to suffer - release their players for prolonged durations, incur opportunity cost (revenue generated at home) to bang on an uncertain and intangible return? I don't think the K-League should have to incur this form of "taxation" or "public service" just because we want to realize some immediate short-term benefits. Again, the end of the equation is money. While playing friendlies abroad is great - it is quite expensive to do so.
Let's leave the problem with the domestic league alone here. We all know that it is the foundation of a country's football level. We can't and haven't been doing much, and perhaps we're the only country in EAFF minus those minnows not to have the pro/relegation system in place and we're so called the oldest league in Asia. I will stop there. Now most of our players are plying their trade in Europe/west... It would make more sense to have our friendlies being arranged there instead of korea. Just take a look at park, he couldn't handle the travelling anymore... so enough with home friendlies... it takes away the most vital element and also hides our true ability.
It also baffles me as a follower of K-League, with such meek development, organization so on and so forth, the league has been the most successful league in Asia with the most AFC Champions League titles to-date. It means, we can't really blame lack of development in the League. Korean football players have talent, and this is why most still croak K-League >> J-League, but I beg to differ.
But I'm confused. What you're suggesting is that the K-League should sacrifice itself - but for what benefit? Again, having relegation system doesn't equate with having the better league but that's a different topic (I don't think Korea should adopt this format). Actually, most of our players are playing domestically (and in Japan) so it would not make sense to make our arrangements in Europe.
Anyways, I'd love to continue this discussion but I have to watch Secret Garden before I hit the sack.
It's a chicken and egg question. It's always going to be like that. I def dont want the league to be sacrificed but I also think it has to go both ways. The K-League hasn't achieved much compared to our neighbors in terms of ramping up the league. The only upper hand we have are the results in the AFC CL. How much time can we hold on? How many times do genuine football fans in Korea have to be let down? This is why I believe is becoming an 악순한.. the never-ending demise.... They're making the same mistakes over and over again. Verdict is: The Korean Team's standard and achievements immensely overshadows the quality of the League. It's now time for K-League to catch up to the standards. I'm hearing this new president for K-League has been on board. We all know the League hasn't been making ANY money, they're losing money and it's so friggin sad they can't get anyone to be the main sponsor of their own league while we have korean conglomerates sponsoring world's biggest footballing events around the globe (FIFA WC) and sponsoring other leagues in the form of the A-League. For people who can't get even the fundamentals right, I'm sorry to say but we're not showing much progress since 1983. Anyway, I'm glad I can share my viewpoints here.
LOL same... this is what I like about bigsoccer. Pure discussions and exchanging view points. This is why I fail to stop coming back again and again.
Hey guys. I'm from Brazil and I am half-japanese. So I can tell you for sure, 1.5 million is a number from the 20th century, by now the number of japanese-brazilians (inclunding those who live abroad) is around 2,7 ~ 3,0 million, just to be clear. Cheers.