Search: 'Hidetoshi Nakata'

The marketing prospects Japanese players offer are causing people to overlook what a fine player Bolton have signed in Hidetoshi Nakata, believes Justin McCurry

There was a certain inevitability about the cynicism that greeted the arrival of Hidetoshi Nakata at the Reebok Stadium. In persuading the unsettled Japan midfielder to move to Bolton from Fiorentina, Sam Allardyce had, so the received wisdom goes, ensured the club a steady income from replica-shirt sales, television coverage in the Far East and household corporate names on pitch-side sponsorship hoardings. After all, other Japanese players to have signed for Premiership clubs – remember Akinori Nishizawa and Kazuyuki Toda? – have done little to dispel the notion that they are anything more than cash cows in football boots.

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Australia may be getting a slightly easier ride to the World Cup by joining the Asian qualifying system, say Matthew Hall, but naturally, this one's all about money

Don’t get confused. Australia’s entry into the Asian Football Confederation is not about a fairer passage to the World Cup finals. Although taking part in a genuine qualifying campaign of up to 16 games, home and away (rather than beating American Samoa 31-0 then facing a rampant Uruguay in a play-off) is an excellent side dish, the main meal is about something a little more complicated: money.

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It's not just the English who have trouble with players breaking curfew or wayward young stars, writes Justin McCurry

Though the media spotlight was firmly on the squad of Japan players preparing for their second World Cup qualifying match, away to Singapore at the end of March, it was difficult not to think, too, of the players who had been left behind. Their omission was not down to injury, poor form, family crises or intransigent club managers, but a badly timed bout of the “English disease” of training-camp indiscipline.

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When the World Cup ended, many thought Japanese football would slump but, as Justin McCurry reports, the exact opposite has happened

Strange things are happening at Gamba Osaka. It isn’t just that the perennial underachievers are closer than ever to winning J-League hon­ours; they are doing so in front of crowds not seen since the heady days of the league’s launch ten years ago.

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Japanese journalists have made more of a mark here than their players. In the first of two articles on Asia, Justin McCurry explains what they are writing about

Japanese footballers, or so the punditry zeitgeist goes, are a talentless bunch, courted by the likes of Bolton and Portsmouth only to generate income – buy one, and get planeloads of spendthrift groupies free. In Japan, most of the salivating is being done not in boardrooms, but in tabloid newsrooms, where the ad­ventures of Yoshikatsu Kawaguchi, Junichi Inamoto et al generate acres of copy – some of it funny, much of it banal, but all of it gratefully received by the football-loving public.

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