After the end of the national football team's round of 12 matches, Wu Lei has recently resumed training at espanyol clubs. In the waiting hall for returning to Europe, Wu Lei is the only foreign player in the national football team at present, and almost the entire Japanese team players have to return to their respective clubs in Europe. Such a scene makes Chinese fans envious, how big is the gap that Wu Lei said?
At the same time, a Japanese media report also made Chinese fans smell a strong "Versailles". The Japan Football Association plans to establish a training base for the Japanese national team in Germany. As a permanent facility, Japanese players who play in Europe can train, rehabilitate and other activities, and the Japanese national team can also be used as a training ground when they go to Play in Europe. The Japanese Football Association said, "Now only players who stay in Europe can form two sets of squads, and more and more Japanese players are joining European clubs." Usually, when the club is on vacation, you can come here to train, and physical and psychological physiotherapy is very necessary. ”
As of June this year, data show that there are currently 451 Japanese players in European leagues, including 250 in German leagues, and some play in other lower European leagues. Japanese football does not only pin its hopes on staying in europe's five major leagues, which is also the conceptual gap between Chinese football and Japanese football.
The going out of Japanese football didn't happen overnight
As early as the 1970s, Yasuhiko Okuter, the first Japanese foreigner to stay in the Ocean, appeared in the European arena. At that time, Japanese football sent national team players to Germany for training in order to improve the level of the national team, and the head coach of Cologne at the time, Hans Weissweiler, felt that Yasuhiko Okuter was at a good level and offered a professional contract. At first, Okodera himself was reluctant, but the Japan Football Association believed that this would help promote the professionalization of Japanese football, and they coordinated with Furukawa Electric to reserve a position for Okodera, persuading Okodera and his family, and finally contributing to the birth of Japan's first foreign player. Ordela's performance did not disappoint, making 24 appearances in his first season in the Bundesliga, helping Cologne win the 1977/1978 Bundesliga and DFB-Pokal doubles.
After the 1998 World Cup in France, Hidetoshi Nakata landed in Serie A. Three times shortlisted for the "Golden Globe Award" 50 candidates, but also let him become the original business card of Japanese football in Europe, opening the door to exchanges between Japanese football and the world.
After the 2010 World Cup in South Africa, Japanese players began a large-scale wave of staying in the ocean. At this time, after experiencing the initial "Golden Dollar Era", the Japanese professional football league began to embark on a stable operation and sustainable development of the survival path, and the Japanese Football Association required that clubs must ensure financial balance. In addition to finding ways to increase income, the most direct way for clubs is to control the salary level of players. At that time, the average J1 league player received a basic annual salary of less than 10 million yen (about 590,000 yuan), while the J2 league had less than 2 million yen (about 120,000 yuan) a year.
At the same time, Japanese football, which has embarked on a professional path, has a rapid growth in the football population and the emergence of young players under the dual track of the campus system and the youth training system. On the one hand, the size of the J League itself cannot meet so many player jobs; on the other hand, excellent young players do not see a day in the J League, so they look overseas and seek new opportunities.
Clubs in European leagues are also very willing to bring in these young Japanese players. First, the performance of predecessors such as Hidetoshi Nakata and Shunsuke Nakamura proved to Europeans that Japanese players are trustworthy and can even serve as the core of the team; and the performance of the Japanese national team at the World Cup in South Africa is also impressive.
Japanese players are good value for money. Keiyuki Honda, Maya Yoshida, Shinji Okazaki and others all joined European teams without a visa, and the Bundesliga Club Dortmund only spent 350,000 euros (about 2.68 million yuan) to get Shinji Kagawa, while Yuto Nagatomo and Uchida Takashi were only more than 1 million euros (about 7.64 million yuan). In addition to the transfer fee, the salaries of these Japanese players are also cheaper than signing European players of the same level.
The Japanese players themselves have never been too ambitious, and most of them have joined the lower ranked teams in the five major leagues, and even the teams in the sub-leagues. In addition to the top five leagues in Europe, Japanese players have spread all over the world.
Takumi Minamino (front right) who plays for giants Liverpool in the Premier League
Known as the first person in the future of Asian football, Jiu Jianying
Thick and thin. When a group of players are active in overseas leagues at all levels, it is a matter of course that Takumi Minamino, who plays for the giants Premier League Liverpool, is known as the future first person in the Asian football world.
Chinese football staying in the West should break the "gilded" idea
This scene at the airport made Wu Lei feel mixed. After returning to Spain, he wrote in his weekly diary that he had heard the saying that the Japanese team had a base camp in Europe, and although there was an epidemic at the end of last year, Japan's overseas players still formed a complete team to play international friendly matches in Europe. Even their team managers are based in Europe and are ready to help the players with all sorts of things.
As the "hope of the whole village", Wu Lei has a strong sense of crisis, "I have called more than once for our players to come out and take a look and feel the european football atmosphere and environment. In fact, I also know in my heart that going abroad at my age is fundamentally difficult to bring a qualitative leap to the national team. He hopes that his experience of staying in The West will influence more young people and make the process of learning and progressing in playing football in The study and progress of playing in the West become more meaningful.
Wu Lei in the Sino-Japanese War
Chinese football has also had a wave of foreign waves, but the starting point is different. Staying in the West is more for the purpose of "gilding", rather than learning the "True Scriptures". For young players, staying in the ocean allows them to get the opportunity to play, go overseas to experience different football cultures and training models, and if they can really play famous, they will not worry about finding a satisfactory home in China. For the agency, as long as a young player runs "export to domestic sales" can make money.
Such an operation is a small cleverness with Chinese characteristics, and it is not of much benefit to the long-term development of Chinese football. The so-called "staying in the ocean" is like the hairy crab that returned from the "bath" in Yangcheng Lake, and its value can rise, but it cannot improve its core competitiveness. Counting up, before Wu Lei, only Sun Jihai, Fan Zhiyi, Li Tie, Yang Chen, Xie Hui, Zheng Zhi, Shao Jiayi and a few other people who had landed in the mainstream European leagues could be called "successful", and in the Chinese foreign legion, such a success rate was even less than 10%.
In order to promote the healthy development of professional football in China, the Chinese Football Association has carried out drastic reforms in the past two years, making corresponding provisions for various financial indicators such as club expenditure, annual salary of players, and club bonuses. Now that the income level of local players in the Chinese Super League has been greatly limited by the Football Association, staying in the future will be an alternative way out for young players to stay in the west, motivating them to step out of the comfort zone of the domestic league, and Chinese football can no longer play behind closed doors.
Column Editor-in-Chief: Chen Hua Text Editor: Qin Dongying Caption Source: Xinhua News Agency
Source: Author: Qin Dongying