The J-league revolutionised Japanese football

SUCCESS IS so synonymous with the Japanese way of life. Be it science or soccer, the country has always shown something exemplary to lead the field of excellence. There is no magic in this. Everything is accomplished by a strict sense of discipline and a meticulous approach, which is the mainstay of Japanese philosophy. The latest in the saga of achievements is winning the bid to host 2002 World Cup soccer bid alongside Korea. Contributing immensely to both economics and pride, this will be the first time Asia will host an edition of the World Cup. And the path to the World Cup, both in terms of performance and organisation, has been realised by the success of the professional league popular as the J-League that revolutionised Japan's footballing status giving it a new identity.

Junichi Miazaki is one of the new breed of officials representing the modern face of Japan football. The soft-spoken middle-aged coach led a clutch of young university boys team to Calcutta to participate in the Sahara Cup football. Miazaki, who is also a professor of physical education at Aoyama Gakuin University for almost 12 years, tried to recount the progress of the sport and evaluated the shortfalls following the initial euphoria brought about by the introduction of J-League. He is presently one of the coaches training the team for its preparations for the World Universities football scheduled to be held in August.

The 39-year-old Miazaki began his career in 1988 after graduating with a degree in coaching. He played for Tusukuba University as a midfielder and latter took to sports academics more seriously and completed a Masters Degree in physical education before joining as a lecturer. He said the transformation brought about by the introduction of the professional league has taken the country to be among the very best in the world. This also helped in dispelling the amateurish mind-set, giving way to a new format that aimed at a systematic development of the game.

Miazaki said the best the J-League did was making the game financially solvent. ``We could make a lot of money from the professional league. Apart from enriching the teams, who got the most of the sponsorship, the Japan Football Association reaped the most of the benefit by way of registration fee from the clubs, he said. ``With the financial status rising manifold, JFA earned the means and the motivation to concentrate on developing the game in the country, he added.

``The steps that were followed were basically two-staged: one of them was to improve the coaching system of Japan. Before J-League was started there was coaching system but it was not practically oriented. Beginning with its drive to introduce professionalism, JFA made a project aimed at improving the coaching system. The coaches were sent abroad to learn the new techniques and methods. These coaches then came back to take up coaching programmes across the country. The main aim of JFA was to bring about a qualitative change in training and the effort proved a success bringing about the transformation in Japan football, Miazaki said.

The next objective was the ``training-centre system. This system aimed at spotting young talent across the country, bringing them together under a coaching programme. ``It also worked out the coach-student ratio quite successfully. The country was divided into eight areas and programmes implemented accordingly in each area. Nothing was thought on the lines of an academy or sports- centre like you have the SAI centres here. It was just a system that aimed at a sustainable development programme with constant upgradation to train players in the proper scientific way. In order to have a strong foundation you need to start from the base. We brought almost all the schools and clubs under the system, making it a total approach. This helped in creating a national pool. ``Now with the inputs from the coaches, we make our selections and make the national teams of all age groups. We start the scouting from the age of nine for the national pool as the children in Japan take to football at the age of around seven or eight. He said.

Miazaki said the system fetched good results, ``We are the runner-up in the World Youth Cup (under-20) and also performed very well in the Olympics while the senior team became the Asian champion. Football has really caught on the imagination of the younger generation and the sport is the most popular game in the country now.

Going further, he said the Japanese football gained mainly from the sound economy that existed when the J-League was introduced. Many big companies like Toyota, Sumitomo, Kawasaki came forward to sponsor. As J- League has teams representing each city, these organisations patronised teams representing the cities and towns. Thus the corporate teams were abolished and cities got the stress. This brought about an almost uniform regional development programme, which was the main thrust of J-League. Thus was the rise of teams like Yokohama Marinos, Jubilo Iwata, Kawasaki Verdi. With the cities getting the importance, the crowd involvement has also increased, as people in the respective areas love to associate themselves with their city or the town, Miazaki explained.

There has also been a period of doldrums in Japanese football due to economic slump. This brought down the money flow into the game. ``But now with the economy looking up the situation has improved again and things appear to have stabilised a lot. I think it is a passing phase and things will fall into places soon, he said. Added to this is the fact that ``we have the World Cup next year and that has revved up the spirits. The national team is also doing well with lot of players like Nakata gaining importance in Europe. There is tremendous enthusiasm regarding the grandest show and I feel it will do a lot of good for the game. As far as money is concerned, JFA will surely have its best chance of filling its reserves.

On this subject he said the World Universities football at China will be another big challenge for Japan this year. ``We put lot of importance behind this visit to India. And the Sahara Cup has been a great success for us. We have played five different teams representing five different styles. This will help us in gaining insight into the different systems of play. He said that he was quite happy with the way his players performed and the team reached semifinals impressing as one of the most dynamic teams in the tournament. ``On the way to the semifinals, we played the East European giants Yugoslavia, the Latin Americans in Chile, and the Middle Eastern countries in Jordan and Bahrain. This has definitely proved to be a grand experience for our team, he said about the tournament.

``After evaluating our performance we will redraft the team. Next we have the Denso Cup in Japan, which involves all the University sides. That will serve as the next base for selection. Continuing our preparations we plan an `Italia Camp and follow that up with the Japan- Korea universities meet. We will then have East Asian camp in May before we come up with the final selection for Beijing, Miazaki concluded.

AMITABHA DAS SHARMA

Kolkata

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