From: MLINDROOS@finabo.abo.fi (Marcus Lindroos INF)
Subject: Japan (& soccer in the US)
Organization: Abo Akademi University, Finland
Date: Tue, 17 Nov 1992 14:43:29 GMT
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INTERNATIONAL HERALD TRIBUNE took a look at the Japanese pro league a few days
ago. Interesting news to a fan of North American soccer, for the Japanese
will have to solve the same kinds of problems that the Americans and Canadians
are facing.
---
The new Japanese professional soccer league will start in May 1993. There is
widespread fan interest, the final game (to be played on Nov.23) of a 
preliminary tournament involving all ten teams is already a 56,000-seat 
sellout. "Within five to ten years, soccer will overtake baseball as Japan's
most popular sport," one league official said. Not only that, Japanese soccer
people see the new league as a major step to raising the standard of soccer and
propelling the national team into the 1994 World Cup finals. Japan already won
this year's Asian championship.
---
Corporate sponsors have invested heavily in the league. Okasan Securities Co.,
(finances), Shiseido Co. (cosmetics) and Nisshin Flour Milling Co. and many
more have promised to pay $645,000 a year each as sponsors. Nine teams receive
direct financial aid from wealthy companies, the best-known of these is perhaps
Mazda who financed the $1.5 million transfer of English star Gary Lineker to
Grampus Eight of Nagoya. But individual initiatives on behalf of the local
soccer communities are also important, Grampus Eight was founded as the result
of massive write-in campaign (100,000 responses!) demanding a pro soccer team
for the city. Strangely, the sponsors will not be allowed to display their
logos on the uniforms of the teams. Instead, they may use stars such as Lineker
for endorsing their products. "Although the finance industry is in hard times
after the end of the bubble economy, we look to the J-League to improve our
image in the long term," said an official of Okasan, which has signed a
three-year sponsorship contract. For many sponsors, financing a soccer team is
a way to put something back in the communities their employees live in.
---
S-Pulse of Shimizu (a port city of 240,000 some one hour by train from Tokyo)
is unique in that the club has no single corporate sponsor. Instead, 100 local
companies and 1,650 individuals put up money to found a club. "I did it for the
love of my city," said Haruo Sugiyama, owner of a fruit and cake shop, who paid
$4,000 for 50 shares. "I don't expect to make any money from the shares for 10
years," he said. "There were so many applicants they had to draw the names in a
lottery."
---
Shimizu is Japan's answer to Naples or Glasgow, where children play soccer as
soon as they can walk. The city's soccer tradition began in the 1950s when
several teachers started to promote it in schools. "I'd like to play for
S-Pulse when I grow up," said Takeshi Suzuki, 8. "All the boys in my school
play. Maybe we can beat the famous European teams one day."
---
One local official said the city government was strongly backing the
development of soccer to combat worsening morale in a city hard hit by the
decline of its traditional industries - shipbuilding, aluminium production and
fishing.
---
Of the S-Pulse's 25-man squad, 15 come from Shimizu and four are Brazilian. The
coach is also Brazilian, Emerson Leao, a former goalkeeper on Brazil's national
team.
---
All the side's home games in the preliminary tournament attracted a full house
of 15,000 to the team's new stadium. Hundreds of fans have joined a supporters'
club.
===============================================================================
It is interesting to compare the United States and Japan. The Americans are on a
different planet as far as soccer experience is concerned. Their national team
is regularly attracting 30,000+ crowds to their home games. They have won the
CONCACAF championship and have held their own against Italy, Portugal and Ireland
in the US Cup. There are several top-class Americans playing soccer in Europe
whereas the Japanese haven't had a single truly great player since Yashuko
Okudera (a long-time Bundesliga star) retired in the 1980s. The 1984 Olympic
tournament was a sellout (including 103,000 at the Pasadena Rosebowl for the
final game), millions of kids are playing the sport and half a dozen NASL teams
regularly drew 20,000 fans or more. In contrast, the Japanese have never hosted
a single "important" tournament (except the European/South American World Club
Cup finals), never had a professional soccer league before...
---
And yet the US soccer scene seems to be all gloom and doom, the "experts" claim
the sport will never succeed in the States. Is it only a question of attitudes?
How can Japanese companies, with all things working against them, start a new 
pro soccer league while American TV companies and sponsors by and large
continue to ignore the sport no
matter how successful the national team exhibition games are? Even
soccer fans (in r.s.s and elsewhere) are questioning the future of soccer in
the US. Perhaps the USSF and local soccer teams
should do as the Japanese did, arranging write-in campaigns aimed at potential
sponsors and owners? Why is it that American soccer fans, living in the land of
the individual initiative, repeatedly fail to make television and business
aware of the sport's existence?
---
Soccer can do everything it does in Europe and Japan in the States as well, if
given the chance. Unfortunately, the "important" people all seem to be against
soccer. As the Japanese have showed, no pro league can exist without money 
and long-term investments. Right now, it looks like the 1994 World Cup will be
played in front of average crowds of 70,000 people - yet Sports Illustrated,
CBS, ABC etc. won't care. I hope I am wrong, but...    

 
MARCU$
Newsgroups: rec.sport.soccer