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• James Eastham takes you over the biggest stories from The America's.
  Email James with your view on football james.eastham@sportingbet.com

  Latin Quarter
  Regular readers of this column will know I’m no fan of the Brazil team that are installed as second favourites to win the World Cup. But Selecao manager Dunga might have found a couple of saviours. They’re called Carlos Queiroz and Sven Goran Eriksson.

  Most observers think the group of death at this summer’s tournament is Group G That’s certainly how it seemed when the draw took place in Cape Town on December 4. Five-times winners Brazil head the pool. Next are Portugal, semi-finalists four years ago and bejewelled by the presence of Cristiano Ronaldo, one of the world’s finest three footballers. The so-called third team are Ivory Coast, the first African team to rank in the top 10 in the outright betting a month before a World Cup tournament begins and led by Didier Drogba, a player who has just completed the most prolific league season of his career. North Korea make up the numbers.

  On seeing the draw, and given some of the perplexing choices that Dunga has made (Gilberto Silva is his midfield sentinel, Luis Fabiano his preference to lead the attack), I was genuinely excited at the prospect of opposing Brazil to get out of the group, something that has not happened since the World Cup became a 24-team tournament in 1982.

  But I’m getting cold feet. I’m starting to re-think. The reason I’m coming to the conclusion that Brazil will get through the group – and might even be a worthwhile bet to win Group G at 1/2 (1.50) – are the questionable credentials of the men leading the other two competitive sides in the group.

  Carlos Queiroz was an excellent assistant to Sir Alex Ferguson at Manchester United, but lasted just a single season as Real Madrid coach and has struggled since becoming coach of Portugal job two years ago. The Iberians laboured during their World Cup campaign as the team spirit that Luiz Felipe Scolari carefully built and cultivated during five years in charged slowly died. Queiroz has done nothing to solve the ‘Ronaldo’ conundrum, either. The Real Madrid star continues to perform like a shadow of his real self in the qualifiers. Confidence is low going into the finals.

  Ivory Coast took the remarkable step of appointing Eriksson two months ago. That’s the same Eriksson whose reign as England manager was solid but unspectacular and who lasted less than seven months in the Mexico job before being relieved of his duties at a point where the country appeared set to miss out on the finals for the first time in two decades.

  With Queiroz and Eriksson in charge, can Portugal and Ivory Coast really pose a threat to Brazil in the group stages? The Selecao are still far too short to lift the trophy (5/1 or 6.0), but I’ve slowly come round to the idea that they’re now worth supporting in the group stage. There are plenty of question marks hanging over the five-times champions as the finals approach – but whether they’ll get out of the group is no longer one of them.

  
  

• James Eastham takes you over the biggest stories from The America's.
  Email James with your view on football james.eastham@sportingbet.com

  Latin Quarter
  Inter's 1-0 defeat at the hands of Barcelona – a result that saw the Italians through to the Champions League final 3-2 on aggregate – split opinion around the world. Was the rearguard action mounted by the 10 men of Inter (Brazilian midfielder Thiago Motta was sent off for a flailing elbow in the 28th minute) a magnificent example of dreaming up a gameplan and then executing it perfectly, or was Inter coach Jose Mourinho guilty of an anti-football approach that robbed the neutral of the potentially beautiful sight of Barcelona defending their trophy in Madrid on May 22?

  I fall firmly into the former category, but what's clear is that Mourinho would have been wasting his time coming up with his 'they shall not pass' gameplan without the presence of Javier Zanetti and Esteban Cambiasso. The two Argentinians were magnificent from beginning to end. Zanetti was a calming presence in the immediate aftermath of Thiago's expulsion and ensured his team-mates remained focused on the game rather than warring with their Barca counterparts as the teams headed down the tunnel at half-time. Back out on the pitch, he was a colossal figure in the second-half, shutting down Inter's left flank, thereby cutting off Barcelona's attacking threat on that wing.

  Playing in front of Inter's back four, Cambiasso was an equally important figure. Every time Barcelona approached Inter's goal, Cambiasso was five metres from the ball, closing down an opponent, sticking out a leg to intercept a pass or block a shot and even finding time to look this way and that to direct his team-mates into the right position. They say it’s easier to destroy than create a masterpiece. If you want someone to blow up a building, Cambiasso's your man.

  Their performances make you wonder why on earth Diego Maradona thinks it is a good idea to take Argentina to the World Cup finals without either man in the squad. Zanetti is Argentina's most-capped player with 136 appearances. His experience, not to mention his versatility (he can play in either full-back position or across the midfield) would be invaluable, but Maradona prefers to go to South Africa without the Inter captain.

  Football fans around the world remember the pivotal role Cambiasso played in Argentina's sparkling start to the tournament in Germany four years ago, but Maradona seems to consider the 29-year-old former Real Madrid too limited for a place in the Albiceleste’s 23-man party this summer. In the light of their recent performances, both decisions are baffling.

  Last week, we reflected on Argentina's attacking talents, but the concern remains that Maradona's team will be top-heavy this summer. It’s unthinkable that a man that won the World Cup in 1986 alongside the brilliantly dogged Sergio Batiste would underestimate the value of the 'workers', but with Zanetti and Cambiasso set to miss out on this summer’s finals, you have to wonder what’s going on in ‘El Diego’s’ head.

  
  

• James Eastham takes you over the biggest stories from The America's.
  Email James with your view on football james.eastham@sportingbet.com

  Latin Quarter
  Diego Maradona has spoken. Argentina have a more talented pool of strikers to pick from than any of their World Cup rivals, but it seems the man whose job it is to pick the final 23 has made up his mind which ones will go to the finals.

  In an interview last week, Maradona made it clear that Lionel Messi (no surprise there), his son-in-law Sergio Aguero, Real Madrid striker Gonzalo Higuain and Carlos Tevez will be on the plane to South America. That leaves only one striker’s place up for grabs: it will go to either in-form Inter front man Gabriel Milito or veteran Boca Juniors goalscorer Martin Palermo.

  Maradona has been criticised for one thing and another ever since he became Argentina manager, but few will argue with his decisions up front. If I had a minor gripe, it would be that Lyon’s brilliantly aggressive Lisandro Lopez, who has done so much to help his side reach the Champions League semi-finals for the first time in their history, deserves to still be in the running for a place, but this is essentially a quibble about reserves. Through that interview last week, any concerns that Maradona’s squad selection might be so erratic that some of the world’s best strikers would miss out on the finals have been put to bed.
  
  The fact that Lisandro and, possibly, Milito won’t be going to South Africa says everything about Argentina’s attacking strength. What other World Cup contenders wouldn’t give for such quality cast-offs! England have the peerless Wayne Rooney, and Peter Crouch, whose international scoring record is excellent, but Jermain Defoe and Emile Heskey have rarely excelled outside the confines of domestic competition. Italy are still looking for a successor to Christian Vieri, while Spain, for all their brilliance, will be slightly nervous on hearing that Fernando Torres will spend six weeks recovering from a knee injury. The back-up for the Liverpool striker and his attacking partner David Villa ranks somewhere between poor and non-existent.

  The situation is even worse for France: unless Greek League top scorer Djibril Cisse (Panathinaikos) receives a World Cup call-up, les Bleus will be without a single player who has managed 12 goals or more in the league this season. And in-form front men are hardly thick on the ground in Germany, either.

  What a contrast with Argentina. If Milito makes the trip, it will mean Argentina’s five strikers have scored 105 goals (and counting) between them in Europe’s top three leagues this season. All but Aguero have broken the 20-goal barrier. There isn’t a nation on earth that can compete with those sorts of figures.

  Of course, Diego might just be pulling our leg. Knowing him, he might be bluffing: maybe he’s not made up his mind after all. Not that it really matters. Argentina have so many fantastic strikers to pick from, even Maradona’s severest critics must admit this is one decision he can’t really get wrong.

  
  

• James Eastham takes you over the biggest stories from The America's.
  Email James with your view on football james.eastham@sportingbet.com

  Latin Quarter
  Last Friday night, Inter and Brazil goalkeeper Julio Cesar silenced some of his doubters by producing a decent performance in the Nerazzurri’s 2-0 win over Juventus. His display in Inter’s latest crucial match will have allayed some fears over his form – although some critics will tell you the Brazil and Inter number one simply hasn’t been the same player since he crashed his Lamborghini on February 21.

  Cesar suffered bruising to the face and appeared uncharacteristically uncertain against Chelsea in the Champions League three days later. Inter’s title charge has faltered in the past two months, but it would be inaccurate to point the finger of blame entirely at the goalkeeper.

  Something of a late developer, Cesar was largely unknown before he joined Inter in 2005, but has been considered one of the world’s best four or five goalkeepers during the past two seasons. The fact that he was only third-choice at the World Cup four years ago when he was already 26 years old tells you how long he has had to wait for his time in the spotlight – and even after erstwhile Brazil number one Dida’s decline, Julio Cesar had to wait his turn, only unequivocally winning the number one shirt three years ago.

  Cesar’s current form is worrying because recent history shows that it’s almost impossible to win the World Cup without a top-class goalkeeper. For all his critics, Fabien Barthez was superb throughout the 1998 World Cup and never made a crucial mistake in a high-profile match in a France shirt. Four years later, Brazil’s first-choice Marcos was one of the best goalkeepers at the 2002 World Cup. Four years ago, Italy’s Gianluigi Buffon was the outstanding goalkeeper at the tournament when the Azzurri lifted the trophy for a fourth time.

  National team manager Dunga has shown no inclination to ditch the goalkeeper that’s performed so well for him since he became Selecao boss, but Cesar’s wobbles must be a concern. Having played in front of one of the most underrated goalkeepers of his era, the consistently reliable Claudio Taffarel, Dunga knows better than most the importance of having a trustworthy figure between the posts. And Heurelho Gomes, in such fantastic form at Spurs at the moment, must wonder if he’s left it too late to catch the manager’s eye. Having performed heroics in Tottenham’s 2-1 win over Arsenal in midweek, Gomes made more crucial saves as Spurs beat Chelsea by the same scoreline last weekend. He will doubtless keep up the pressure on Julio Cesar in the remaining weeks of the season.

  Brazil are not the only country concerned about the lack of a quality number one, of course – among the other top eight sides in the World Cup betting, England, Argentina, Germany and Holland are arguably worse served than Brazil – but Cesar’s faltering performances are just another reason why I find it impossible to back Brazil at ridiculous odds of 5/1 win the trophy this summer.

  
  

• James Eastham takes you over the biggest stories from The America's.
  Email James with your view on football james.eastham@sportingbet.com

  Latin Quarter
  It's one of those problems that coaches supposedly love to have, and it will be fascinating to see how Diego Maradona solves it. Right now, Marseille midfielder Lucho Gonzalez is the best Argentinian playmaker on the planet. Yet he's not even sure of a place in the World Cup squad.

  On Sunday night, Gonzalez – or ‘Lucho', to give him the name that adorns his blue and white shirt in the south of France – set up three of Marseille's goals in their 4-0 win over Nice. That puts Lucho top of the assists chart with 11 for the season.

  Lucho became the most expensive signing in Marseille's history when he joined the club for 18m euro from FC Porto last summer. "It's a long time since the French League has seen a player of his calibre," said OM manager Didier Deschamps in a rare burst of excitement when he finally put the seal on the deal.

  But the love affair between player and club started badly. A knee injury picked up during pre-season training ruled out Lucho for the opening six weeks of the 2009-10 season, scuppering Deschamps' plans to build his new-look side round the wily skills of the man from Buenos Aires. And when Lucho eventually returned, he looked anything but the star Deschamps had claimed.

  Sluggish and regularly caught in possession by the overbearing bruisers that clog up midfields in the French League, he struggled to adapt to the pace of the game and spent most of his time operating on a much slower wavelength than his team-mates.

  No wonder fans were worried about what they were seeing. Since the start of 2010, however, the Lucho-Marseille marriage has sparked into life. Having survived the tricky settling-in period, both parties now understand each other a lot better and the results are a joy to watch.

  Lucho dictates the play, controls the pace of the game and feeds team-mates on the left and right with a range or short and long passing that few, if any players in the French League can match. Authoritative yet understated, it's now abundantly clear why the Portuguese press nicknamed him El Comandante (‘the commander') during his four-year spell in the Portuguese League.

  Last month Lucho earned his place in Olympique de Marseille folklore by setting up the opening goal in their 3-1 Coupe de la Ligue victory over Bordeaux. It was the club's first trophy in 17 years, so l'OM's fanatical fans will always affectionately associate the player with a special night in history.

  Thanks to their win over Nice on Sunday, Marseille are now 4pts clear at the top of the league table. They have a game in hand on all rivals but Bordeaux, effectively making the title a two-horse race. By the end of the season, the 29-year-old playmaker might well be seen as the man who inspired l'OM to their first league title triumph since 1992.

  The next challenge would be the World Cup in South Africa – but only if he's there, of course. Lucho has won an Olympic gold medal and starred at the World Cup finals four years ago but none of that guarantees his seat on the plane. Right now he's one of dozens of players more hopeful than confident of landing a place in the squad.

  National team boss Maradona paid Lucho a visit at the Marseille training ground last month, so the great man clearly hasn't forgotten about El Comandante. ‘El Diego' has a host of talented playmakers and attackers to pick from – but any Marseille fan right now would tell you travelling to South Africa without the wonderful Lucho would be sheer madness. Give it a few weeks, and we'll know if Maradona agrees.

  
  

• James Eastham takes you over the biggest stories from The America's.
  Email James with your view on football james.eastham@sportingbet.com

  Latin Quarter
  I came across an interview with former Uruguay striker Enzo Francescoli in a French magazine this weekend. Francescoli was one of the stars of the 1980s. Perhaps star is the wrong word. Much of the interview was dedicated to the fact that Francescoli was a Uruguay icon without ever playing for one of Europe's top teams.

  Francescoli burst onto the world football scene in 1984 when he was voted South American Footballer of the Year (an accolade available only to those playing on the continent). In those pre-internet days, it was hard enough for players performing at the highest level in one of Europe's top leagues to gain international recognition, so you can imagine how little the wider world knew about Francescoli before he played for Uruguay at the 1986 World Cup. And when the finals came around, it was still difficult to see what the fuss was all about. Uruguay kicked and bullied their way out of the group stages only to get eliminated by Diego Maradona's Argentina in the second round. Francescoli had little chance to shine.

  Looking back, the player reckons that being born in the same era as Maradona (‘El Diego' was a year older) counted against him. "If Maradona hadn't existed, I'm sure people would have followed my performances more closely," he told So Foot magazine.

  The two players' destinies were most closely linked in 1989. Olympique de Marseille president Bernard Tapie's limitless ambition led him to try to sign Maradona from Napoli, only for the deal to fall through. To whom did Tapie turn to appease the fans? Francescoli, who had recently completed two years for Matra Racing Paris. Francescoli stayed only a season at Marseille, although that was long enough for him to inspire a 17-year-old Marseille-born youngster on the books of Cannes, a rival club based a couple of hours to the east along the Mediterranean coastline. That youngster was Zinedine Zidane, who would later go on to name his first-born son Enzo in honour of his idol

  "It was difficult for South American players to adapt to life at the big European teams. When I arrived in France, everything was more professional, on and off the pitch. It was all new to me compared to being in Argentina and Uruguay. The reason why I didn't play for one of Europe's biggest teams? I never got the opportunity," says Francescoli.

  The situation has barely changed since. Look around Europe's top side and you won't see any Uruguayans. Diego Forlan failed to settle at Manchester United and is still waiting for another break. Despite scoring 116 goals in six Liga seasons, he's playing for Atletico rather than Real Madrid or Barcelona. Among the other players likely to be in Oscar Tabarez's World Cup squad, fewer than half play in one of Europe's strongest five divisions.

  This summer's World Cup gives Uruguay's best players a platform on which to parade their talents, but even if they progress from a first-round group containing France, Mexico and hosts South Africa, it's unlikely any of them will be snapped up by Europe's greatest clubs.

  Some people's faces just don't fit. If you're a Uruguayan footballer, that's been the case for a long time.

  
  

• James Eastham takes you over the biggest stories from The America's.
  Email James with your view on football james.eastham@sportingbet.com

  Latin Quarter
  When Carlos Tevez left Manchester United last summer, he was looking for a side that would truly value him and where he could fully express himself. He's found it.

  Last Monday night Tevez turned a drab 0-0 draw into a 3-0 win for Manchester City over Wigan Athletic by scoring a hat-trick in 13 minutes. Last Saturday, in the evening kick-off away to a struggling Burnley, he found the net again, scoring the third goal in City's stunning 6-1 win. That was his 26th goal of 2009-10, the highest tally he's ever managed in a single season.

  When Tevez quit Old Trafford in search of new employers, Manchester United fans were sorry to see him go. They appreciated the way in which Tevez played for them – wholeheartedly and uncomplainingly while living in the shadows of Cristiano Ronaldo and Wayne Rooney. In two seasons on loan at the club, Tevez started 49 league games and came on as a substitute in 14 others, scoring 19 goals. Those stats show he was less important than Ronaldo and Rooney to the team – and the final straw was that United waited too long to offer him a permanent deal.

  There has always been a question mark over exactly what kind of a player Tevez is. A small, stocky and powerful striker, he sets up chances for team-mates, but less prolifically than conventional deep-lying attackers such as Dennis Bergkamp or Roberto Baggio. He scores goals, but not in the same quantities as Fernando Torres or Didier Drogba. The general feeling about Tevez as his two-year stay at United came to an end was that he was a jack of all trades but master of none.

  Yet Tevez's value has swollen since moving to City. In a season in which Emmanuel Adebayor has understandably functioned less fluently than normal since the Togo team bus came under attack before the African Nations Cup in Angola and Roque Santa Cruz has spent almost the entire season on the sidelines, Tevez has emerged not only as a talismanic figure through his attitude and endeavour, but he now matches others as a pure goalscorer. When the accolades for the best player of the season are handed out, Tevez will be on the podium alongside Rooney and Drogba.

  Last July, Sir Alex Ferguson expressed unequivocal views on Tevez: "In my opinion, I don't think he was worth £25m. He was popular with the supporters. The fans quite rightly have their heroes and I was happy to go along with the deal as long as it was the right one but, quite simply, he is not worth "25m."

  This from a man that spent £31m on Dimitar Berbatov. Last Saturday, United, without the injured Rooney, lost 2-1 at home to Chelsea. That defeat handed Chelsea a potentially decisive lead in the Premier League title race. On the day, Berbatov was one of United's most disappointing performers.

  A couple of hours later, Tevez scored his goal against Burnley. You have to ask if Ferguson sold the wrong player last summer.

  
  
• James Eastham takes you over the biggest stories from The America's.
  Email James with your view on football james.eastham@sportingbet.com

  Latin Quarter
  L'Equipe's headline said it all: "Messi comes from another planet." The French sports daily was not the only bystander in awe of the little Argentinian's virtuoso display on Sunday night.

  Anybody who witnessed his remarkable hat-trick against Real Zaragoza – his second consecutive triple in league games, with a brace of goals in Barca's 4-0 Champions League win over Stuttgart sandwiched in between for good measure – would have agreed. There is something other-worldly about his form at the moment.

  Messi has now scored eight goals in eight days. He's netted 11 times in Barcelona's last five games. Ten times in their last four games. That's once every 36 minutes in his last four outings.

  We're witnessing a brilliance the game has rarely seen since Diego Maradona, the player to whom Messi is most often compared and now his national team manager, was in his 1980s prime. Not that Maradona ever scored 25 goals in a European league season. Or 48 (and counting) over two seasons.

  To illustrate their tribute, L'Equipe printed a picture of Barcelona manager Pep Guardiola, hand over mouth in shock at another piece of magic from his creator-cum-goalscorer. Guardiola performed with some great players in his time – Michael Laudrup, Hristo Stoichkov, Ronaldo and Romario – but none possessed the accumulation of gifts that Messi is revealing to the world with such disarming regularity that he makes the implausible looks mundane.

  Yet a thought occurred to me as Messi ran rings around the Zaragoza defence, slipped his way past defenders, jinked one way then the other. The thought was that, given how brilliantly the 22-year-old is playing at the moment, Argentina won't win the World Cup and he won't be the player of the tournament.

  Since the start of the 1990s, when club football started to rival international football as standard-bearer of the game, every player that has entered the World Cup finals as the world's greatest footballer has emerged diminished on the other side. In 1990, Marco van Basten – twice Ballon d'Or winner and the star player in the Dutch side that had lifted the European Championship two years earlier – cut a peripheral figure when Holland's challenge for global success fizzled out. Four years later, the world lacked a single great player and then Ronaldo, who went into the 1998 finals as the finest footballer on earth, was eclipsed by Zinedine Zidane in the final.

  In 2002, Zidane was unequivocally the world's greatest talent, yet injury restricted him to just one appearance in France's aborted World Cup defence. And in Germany four years ago, Ronaldinho – whose performances for Barcelona in the run-up to the finals were comparable to those Messi is producing now – proved a damp squib.

  So no matter how well Messi is playing, you'd be wise to avoid him when the ‘Player of the Tournament' prices open up. It's a notoriously difficult market to get right – who would have plumped for Salvatore Schillaci in 1990, or Oliver Kahn in 2002? – but the best piece of advice you can have is to back ABM (Anyone But Messi).
  
• James Eastham takes you over the biggest stories from The America's.
  Email James with your view on football james.eastham@sportingbet.com

  Latin Quarter
  The English say that a week's a long time in football. If you're Gonzalo Higuain, four days is enough to turn your season around.

  Higuain was the fall guy following Real Madrid's Champions League last 16 elimination at the hands of Lyon last Wednesday. The day after the game, local papers in Madrid reported that Real team-mates had pointed the finger of blame at the 22-year-old Argentina international striker.

  Higuain was accused of playing too individually, twice shunning the option of passing to team-mates in better positions in order to shoot at goal himself. Real's best chance to go 2-0 up following Cristiano Ronaldo's sixth-minute opener also fell to Higuain – but after deftly rounding Lyon goalkeeper Hugo Lloris, he shot hit the inside of the post, rolled across the line and away from the net.

  Had that effort gone in, Real would have almost certainly reached the quarter-finals of the competition for the first time since 2004. As it was, they ended up going out of the competition at the last-16 stage for the sixth successive season.

  Whatever the truth of the follow-up stories in the papers, there was no doubt some team-mates were angered by Higuain's display. Ronaldo glared at Higuain and threw his hands up in despair at one point during the match.

  Yet Higuain is an easy figure to sympathise with. Almost forgotten amid Real's arriving armada of foreign stars last summer, the France-born striker (his dad was playing as a professional over there when Gonzalo came along) kept quiet and buckled down to pre-season training alongside more celebrated attackers Ronaldo (80m euro), Kaka (56m euro) and France international striker Karim Benzema (35m euro). His attitude and work-rate impressed Real Madrid coach Manuel Pellegrini, who, against the odds, has handed Higuain a first-team shirt for most of the season. Going into the second leg against Lyon, Higuain was one of Real's most important players: he'd netted 18 goals in 25 Liga and Champions League games.

  So the setback against Lyon went against the grain – and, just as the vultures were circling, Higuain did what all great players do by bouncing back at the first opportunity. On Sunday night, the centre-forward scored a hat-trick in 21 minutes in Real's 4-1 win at Valladolid (and, just to show there were no ill feelings, Ronaldo set up two of them). That put Higuain second on 19 in the Liga scoring charts behind Lionel Messi, whose hat-trick earlier in the day against Valencia (Barcelona won 3-0) lifted him to 22 in 23 matches.

  Having scored the winner in Argentina's 1-0 victory over Germany in Munich's Allianz Arena a fortnight ago, Higuain's place on the plane to South Africa is almost booked. That's why national team coach Diego Maradona – spotted sunning himself at Marseille's training ground last week – will have paid far greater attention to the Sunday night hat-trick than the midweek misses.
• James Eastham takes you over the biggest stories from The America's.
  Email James with your view on football james.eastham@sportingbet.com

  Latin Quarter
  In the week that Brazil beat Republic of Ireland 2-0 at the Emirates Stadium in London and competition for places in Brazil's World Cup squad intensified after the latest round of individual performances, one ageing superstar out of contention for the summer finals passed the latest milestone of his remarkable career.

  Ronaldo Luis Nazario de Lima – better known as Ronaldo – turned out for Corinthians in their 1-1 draw against Botafogo in the Paulista Championship last Thursday night. The game was exactly a year to the day after the former Barcelona, Inter and Real Madrid star made his first appearance for the Sao Paulo club in a 2-0 win over Itumbiara.

  Given that some commentators predicted Ronaldo's return to his homeland would effectively mark the end of his playing days in any meaningful sense, it's worth noting just how consistently brilliantly he's performed over the past months. He's played 42 games, scoring 24 goals; he's helped Corinthians win the Paulista Championship, contributing a tally of 10 goals in 14 matches; he was an integral member of their Brazil Cup-winning side, earning the club a place in this year´s Copa Libertadores, the continent's top cup competition; and he's dramatically improved the club's income: some reports say he has generated more than a third of the Corinthians' $38m sponsorship package.

  That he's played 42 games in a year is impressive enough alone given he's a 33-year-old striker who has suffered multiple knee operations during a brilliant but injury-ravaged career. Having been an effervescent natural force as a teenager at PSV Eindhoven and Barcelona, Ronaldo suffered a series of devastating setbacks that restricted him to just 36 league appearances between the 1998 and 2002 World Cups (being Ronaldo, he scored 24 times in those matches). Turning out for Brazil at the 2002 World Cup finals in South Korea and Japan was a minor miracle; becoming the first player to score eight goals in a single tournament since Gerd Muller 32 years earlier ranks as the most astonishing comeback in football history.

  The greatest striker of the modern era? Possibly. The greatest since Marco van Basten? Certainly. There was much to admire about Ronaldo's game – his pace, his direct running, his movement – but it was his stats that always elevated him about the rest: 217 league goals in 287 European games, 62 goals in 97 Brazil appearances and 15 goals at World Cup finals (that's more than any other player). And he did it all with a smile on his face – which is why he was so popular with fans and team-mates alike.

  The Champions League and Copa Libertadores are the only major prizes missing from his list of honours, although he has the chance to partially rectify that by playing for Corinthians in the Copa Libertadores this year. Ronaldo says he'll play until 2011, and then retire. We won't see him at the World Cup in South Africa this summer. The truth is we'll never see another striker like him again.

• James Eastham takes you over the biggest stories from The America's.
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  Latin Quarter
  One of football's contradictions for people my age is that the phrase ‘The Beautiful Game' is often used to describe the way Brazil interpret the world's most popular sport – and yet, for those of us in our early 30s, Brazil's defenders have been arguably more impressive than their attackers since we were old enough to understand what was going on.

  The first World Cup I remember was 1986 (I admit perhaps I would see things differently if I could recall the great 1982 Brazil side containing Zico, Falcao, Socrates and Cerezo) and the player I look back on most fondly from that era is their beautifully polished centre-half Julio Cesar. Brazil boasted marauding right-back Josimar and brilliant striker Antonio Careca, but Julio Cesar – a player for whom the phrase "Rolls Royce of a defender" may have been invented – was the best.

  Nothing got past him during those finals, and I remember wondering why it took so long for one of the world's top clubs to sign him up (he joined Juventus in 1990). France international striker Stephane Paille, a former team-mate of his at French first division club Montpellier and the 1988 French Footballer of the Year, told me that Julio Cesar was the best defender he ever faced. "You could give him a 10-yard headstart and he would still catch you up," Paille said wistfully.

  At the 1990 World Cup, Carlos Mozer – fondly recalled as one of the best defenders ever to grace the French game thanks to three brilliant years at Olympique de Marseille, whom he helped to win three consecutive league titles and reach the 1991 European Cup final – and Ricardo Gomes, who, like Mozer, starred for Benfica before moving to French football, marshalled the defence. No Brazilian stood out in that particular side as they went home before the quarter-finals for the first time since 1966, but Mozer and Gomes did as well as anybody in Sebastiao Lazaroni's struggling side.

  In 1994, Brazil owed their fourth World Cup triumph to Romario's sharp finishing (he scored five times, including twice in the knock-out stages) and a cast iron-defence. Gomes was due to captain the side at the finals but injury forced him out before the first game, and Ricardo Rocha limped off during their opening encounter. But such was Brazil's strength in depth in defence that Marcio Santos emerged as the tournament's best centre-half and Aldair, who made more than 400 appearances for Roma during the era where Serie A was the finest league in the world, was not far behind. Aldair was one of Brazil's best performers in 1998, too, when you might have said he had to do the job of two men because he played alongside Junior Baiano.

  I mention this because Lucio – one of the stars of Brazil's fifth World Cup victory in 2002 – turned in a performance last week that suggests Brazil's defence will be in safe hands again in South Africa this summer. The 88-times capped defender was superb as Inter beat Chelsea 2-1 in the Champions League last 16 first leg at San Siro: when not harrying opponents into mistakes, he was throwing himself into well-timed tackles, carrying the ball out of defence or telling less accomplished team-mates where to stand. With his hunched shoulders and spindly arms, Lucio may look like an old man, but he certainly doesn't play like one. It was the best individual defensive display I've seen this season.

  So when people talk about Brazil's legacy, I'm surprised that their defending gets overlooked. It was reassuring to see Lucio play in a style that – for people of my age – is just as much a part of ‘The Beautiful Game' as a Pele pass and a Zico free-kick.

• James Eastham takes you over the biggest stories from The America's.
  Email James with your view on football james.eastham@sportingbet.com

  Latin Quarter
  Argentina's unconvincing 2-1 win over Jamaica earlier this month pushed the number of players coach Diego Maradona has used since he took over as national team manager beyond 100 – but, before you sharpen your tongues to give ‘El Diego' another lashing, be aware that this friendly was only ever planned to be for home-based players, and therefore the boss was always likely to hand out a sprinkling of new caps, no matter how deserved they were.

  A more legitimate question is why a friendly for domestic league players was scheduled in the first place – wouldn't it have been more useful to play in Europe or simply wait for next month's eagerly-awaited meeting against Germany at the Allianz-Arena? – but if we learned one thing from the match, it's that Martin Palermo is likely to be on the plane to South Africa. After the game, in which Palermo scored an 83rd-minute equaliser, his seventh goal in 12 international appearances, Maradona reportedly said it was 80 per cent certain that 36-year-old Palermo will be in the party of 23 for the World Cup finals.

  There's some truth in the view that Maradona has a great deal of attacking talent to choose from (although I don't believe Argentina's squad, or what most people expect Argentina's squad to be, is quite as strong as many make out), but the manager has fallen between two stools throughout his reign, which has been detrimental for the team. He has always been reluctant to sacrifice any of his smaller, technically gifted players (Lionel Messi, Carlos Tevez and son-in-law Sergio Aguero being the most notable examples) in order to make room for the sort of target man who might actually make their attack more effective.

  I attended the France v Argentina friendly at Marseille's Stade Velodrome 12 months ago Argentina used Sergio Aguero and Lionel Messi in attack, the leggy Jonas Gutierrez on the wing and deservedly won 2-0 – yet some journalists had already identified the problem, and wanted to see Maradona experiment with a bigger, physically powerful striker in the coming games (Chelsea's Franco Di Santo, on loan at Blackburn this season, was a name frequently cited). Instead, Maradona has followed the same course of using smaller, nimble men.
  
  Palermo, of course, earned a surprise recall after nine years in the international wilderness at the start of the season and scored a decisive goal in a crucial World Cup qualifier against Peru last October. Given that his strike helped keep Maradona in his job, it's perhaps no surprise that Maradona intends returning the favour.

  If Palermo turns out to be Argentina's attacking saviour in South Africa, however, it would be almost as big a surprise as 38-year-old Roger Milla scoring four times for Cameroon at the 1990 finals. In the end, you can theorise about whether a big man up front would improve Argentina's performances – but if the right player doesn't exist, there's no point persisting with the strategy, or contemplating it in the first place.

  Messi, Aguero and Tevez are all shoo-ins for World Cup places, but the striker I'd like to see on the plane alongside them is Lisandro Lopez. He's a terrier-like player, whose attitude, workrate and versatility (you can play him as a centre-forward, deep-lying striker or on the wing) would be fantastic assets in a tournament. After 62 Portuguese League and Champions League goals in 134 appearances at FC Porto, he joined Lyon for a French record fee of 24m euro last July and has netted 17 times in 30 games since.

  Right now, Palermo is far more likely than Lisandro to make the World Cup squad and be in the team for Argentina's opening match against Nigeria on June 12. For my money, that's one decision ‘El Diego' has got wrong.

• James Eastham takes you over the biggest stories from The America's.
  Email James with your view on football james.eastham@sportingbet.com

  Latin Quarter
  The topic of full-backs has become a hot one in football. Writer Jonathan Wilson, whose book Ínverting The Pyramid: A History of Football Tactics´ won an award for Football Book of the Year last year, has claimed that the sides with the best full-backs have won all recent World Cups.

  Heres what he's talking about: Lilian Thuram and Bixente Lizarazu in 1998, Cafu and Roberto Carlos in 2002 and Gianluca Zambrotta and Fabio Grosso in 2006. You can't argue with that. The best pairs of full-backs carried home the trophy every time.

  Regular readers will know I´m no fan of the current Brazil side - in fact, I'm willing to bet anyone who listens that Dunga won´t be chaired around the pitch as winning manager in Johannesburg on July 11 – but I have to admit the Selecao have two cracking right-backs available. Dani Alves has wowed followers of La Liga over the past couple of seasons, with his marauding runs down the flank one of the stand-out features of Pep Guardiola's all-conquering Barcelona side. And Maicon, of Inter, is now indisputably Serie A´s finest full-back after making remarkable progress in the five or six seasons since I first saw him performing as a solid but unspectacular right-back at Monaco, the Principality-based club that was his route into the European game when he arrived from Cruzeiro.

  To fulfil Wilson's theory, though, you need a top-class full-back on the other flank as well. That's where Brazil fall down..

  Since Roberto Carlos retired from the international game after the World Cup in Germany four years ago, Dunga has handed opportunities to more than half-a-dozen candidates. Marcelo, Juan, Kleber, Andre Santos, Fabio Aurelio and Michel Bastos have all have their chance, but none has performed well enough to end the debate.

  So here we are, just four months before the finals and none the wiser about who will line-up in Brazil's opening game against North Korea on June 15. Some say Roberto Carlos should be called out of international retirement. Others reckon the right thing is to move Dani Alves from right to left, which is what Dunga did at the Confederations Cup last summer.

  In Dunga's shoes, I'd probably plump for the latter - although the fact he's choosing between a guy who turns 37 in April and a man who would play out of position sums up the seriousness of the situation.

  Getting back to Wilson, if you want to use his full-backs theory to inform your betting at the World Cup finals, there really are only two sides to back. France and England boast the finest four full-backs - Bakary Sagna, Glen Johnson, Patrice Evra and Ashley Cole - between them in the best league in the world. Two right-backs, one English, one French. The same on the left.

  Cole and Evra are the sort of options Dunga can only dream about. If Wilson's right, that great big hole in defence may prove Brazil's undoing.

• James Eastham takes you over the biggest stories from The America's.
  Email James with your view on football james.eastham@sportingbet.com

  Latin Quarter
  Highly-regarded football writer Gabriele Marcotti (who writes for The Times and the Wall Street Journal, among others) described Robinho's loan move from Manchester City to his former club Santos (completed last week) as one of those transfers "that can genuinely help all parties." City manager Roberto Mancini will certainly be glad to get rid of the £32.5 million record signing – the Brazilian has barely turned in a decent performance since the elegantly-tailored Italian replaced Mark Hughes at Eastlands manager six weeks ago – and Santos will be delighted to welcome back their prodigal son five years after selling him to Real Madrid for a fee around £12 million.

  The reason Marcotti calls the move as a good one for Robinho is because the 26-year-old attacker looks almost certain to play every week at Santos, which will increase his chances of being included in Dunga's 23-man Brazil squad for the World Cup finals. Playing regularly under Dunga's nose can hardly be a bad thing as he attempts to rebuild his reputation following 18 largely unsuccessful months in England.

  The question I'm asking is: does Robinho deserve to be an important member of the Brazil squad in the first place? I have to admit, I've watched his performances since he first move to Europe five years ago, and I'm still trying to work out what all the fuss is about.

  Entertaining one week, anonymous the next, Robinho largely played the role of a fringe figure at Real Madrid, apart from an excellent 2007-08 season preceding his move to City. At 23, it looked as though Robinho might be on the point of maturity – but following his arrival in England, Robinho's career stalled and then went backwards. A glaring disparity between the quality of his home and away performances for City called his attitude into question, while talk of rifts with manager Hughes and other members of the City squad merely added to the picture of a player unhappy with life in the north-west of the country.

  The player Robinho most reminds me of is Jay-Jay Okocha, the former Nigeria playmaker who starred for his country at the 1994, 1998 and 2002 World Cup finals. The marvellously gifted Okocha was capable of wonderful cameo performances and occasionally bewitching moments of skill, but fans who paid to watch him regularly will tell you he could also be frustrating. Like Robinho, Okocha would often seem more interested in producing moments of skill for skill's sake rather than putting his talents to the wider use of the team. It was hardly a surprise that Okocha ended his career having failed to inspire any of his top-flight European sides – Eintracht Frankfurt, Fenerbahce, PSG and Bolton Wanderers – to either a league or knock-out cup victory.

  Will Robinho end up being like Robinho? We'll see. Right now, his only aim is booking a place on Brazil's World Cup plane. But in 10 years' time, I'm not sure we'll be talking about Robinho as one of Brazil's greats

• Jesse Fink our Asian Football correspondent brings you news from Asian Football.
  Email Jesse with your view on football jesse.fink@sportingbet.com

  Asia View
  Australia’s opponents at the World Cup would already have thought they had the wood on Pim Verbeek’s struggling unit – struggling in the sense of actually having enough personnel to form a unit, with those troublesome injuries to Harry Kewell and Mark Bresciano – but even they must be pinching themselves at how the Socceroos manager could come up with such an ordinary provisional 31-man squad for South Africa 2010. Especially when he had plenty of better options.

  Three absentees stand out: Eddy Bosnar of Shimizu S-Pulse, Sasa Ognenovski of Seongnam Ilhwa Chunma and Simon Colosimo of Sydney FC. All central defenders, the team’s weakest position. All have been playing regular first-team football and excelling for their respective (and dominant) clubs in the Japanese, Korean and Australian leagues, Ognenovski also backing up in the Asian Champions League.

  Yet they have been overlooked for Michael Beauchamp of Al-Jazira in the United Arab Emirates, where he has hardly figured since joining from Danish side Aalborg in 2009; Shane Lowry, a young bolter just out of his teens who is signed with Aston Villa but has been loaned out to Leeds United in the Championship; and Jade North, a player who couldn’t cut in the K-League with Incheon United and had to go to the Arctic Circle to belatedly get club football with Tromso.

  What a slap in the face for Eddy, Sasa and Simon. A double slap when it was Verbeek who made it clear early on in his tenure as Australia coach that any player who wanted to be part of his World Cup plans had to be playing regular football, week in, week out, in a top league. Craig Moore’s inclusion was bad enough if expected but this just takes the cake. At the very least, if not good enough for the final 23-man squad, Bosnar, Ognenovski and Colosimo deserved to be picked for the provisional group of 31.

  Verbeek has been shown up for being a manager who plays his favourites and ignores form. He has opted for personality over performance. It is a preposterous joke that would be funny were it not that he has been entrusted with a job where he has been entrusted with a massive responsibility: to give Australia its best chance of progressing through the group stages into the second round and possibly beyond.

  How he can claim that he has given Australia its best chance is beyond me. It does not stack up.

  Just this week the Yorkshire Evening Post described Lowry’s performance against Bristol Rovers thus: “Never looked at ease and was guilty of indecision when Kuffour set up the visitors' goal at the back post. The threat to Rovers came solely from the right and Lowry seemed lost beyond the halfway line.”

  In the same week that the provisional World Cup squad was named! What a glowing endorsement! And this in the face of consistently strong performances from Bosnar, Ognenovski and Colosimo. Bosnar’s Shimizu is leading the J-League after 11 rounds, and has lost just once. He has scored two wonderful goals from deadball situations, the most recent a 40-metre cannon against Kyoto Sanga last week. Ognenovski’s Seongnam is in third place after 11 matches, having played one less than leaders Ulsan Horang-I and can go top the next round. It has also at time of writing made the ACL round of 16. Colosimo’s Sydney FC won the A-League premiership and grand final.

  All of that effort and excellence for nothing. It’s a disgrace.

  The full squad is: Mark Schwarzer (Fulham, England), Brad Jones (Middlesbrough, England), Eugene Galekovic (Adelaide United, Australia), Adam Federici (Reading, England), Craig Moore (uncontracted), Lucas Neill (Galatasaray, Turkey), Luke Wilkshire (Dynamo Moscow, Russia), Scott Chipperfield (Basel, Switzerland), David Carney (FC Twente, Netherlands), Mark Milligan (JEF United, Japan), Jade North (Tromso, Norway), Michael Beauchamp (Al-Jazira, UAE), Shane Lowry (Aston Villa, England), Rhys Williams (Middlesbrough, England), Jason Culina (Gold Coast, Australia), Tim Cahill (Everton, England), Brett Emerton (Blackburn Rovers, England), Mark Bresciano (Palermo, Italy), Vince Grella (Blackburn Rovers, England), Brett Holman (AZ Alkmaar, Netherlands), Carl Valeri (Sassuolo, Italy), Mile Jedinak (Antalyaspor Kulubu, Turkey), Richard Garcia (Hull City, England), Nicky Carle (Crystal Palace, England), Tommy Oar (Utrecht, Netherlands), James Holland (AZ Alkmaar, Netherlands), Harry Kewell (Galatasaray, Turkey), Josh Kennedy (Nagoya Grampus, Japan), Scott McDonald (Middlesbrough, England), Dario Vidosic (Nuremberg, Germany), Nikita Rukavytsya (FC Twente, Netherlands).

  
  

• Jesse Fink our Asian Football correspondent brings you news from Asian Football.
  Email Jesse with your view on football jesse.fink@sportingbet.com

  Asia View
  A rather momentous event took place at the bottom of the world on Sunday and you’re probably hearing about here for the first time on Sportingbet.com.

  A team from Papua New Guinea, PRK Hekari United FC, qualified for the 2010 FIFA Club World Cup by beating the champions of New Zealand, Waitakere United, 4-2 at Fred Thomas Park in Auckland on aggregate over two legs in the OFC Champions League final. The Port Moresby side had won the first 3-0 with striker Kema Jack contributing three goals over the two legs.

  So what? Well, in the big scheme of things, it’s important. Not only has a side outside Australia and New Zealand qualified for the CWC for the first time in history but the win gives added credibility to moves to merge the Oceania Football Confederation into the Asian Football Confederation.

  Waitakere and Auckland City, two sides in the New Zealand Football Championship and a rung below the A-League’s Wellington Phoenix, have not been disgraced in four CWCs getting beyond the playoff for the quarter-finals for the first time in 2009, with Auckland City beating Al-Ahli of United Arab Emirates 2-0 before getting shellacked 3-0 by Atlante of Mexico but finishing a creditable fifth by beating Congolese side TP Mazembe 3-2. (In 2006, Auckland did not have to contest a playoff to get into the quarter-finals and lost the fifth-place playoff to Jeonbuk Hyundai Motors of South Korea 3-0.)

  So for a ragtag XI from a rugby-league mad nation in the Pacific to beat the might of New Zealand’s best amateurs is a wonderful achievement, doing so with a mix of Papuans, Fijians and Solomon Islanders. Tommy Mana, Hekari’s assistant coach, called it “a great moment in the history of football in the island nations” but didn’t get too carried away. “We know the [CWC] is another step and we'll work on that.”

  General manager Vonnie Eteaki Kapi-Natto said, “I’m sure this will be good motivation for our children and young people because they’ve see that their brothers can compete and win at this level.”

  He’s right. It’s sterling stuff and a great moment for football in the Pacific and Oceania.

  What it also does, though, is take the idea of absorbing the OFC into an eastern zone of the AFC beyond the realm of fancy and make it very feasible. Auckland showed it could compete against the best of the Middle East at the 2009 CWC, New Zealand accounted for Bahrain in their World Cup playoff and now with a PNG side putting Auckland to the sword in the O-League the potential of the federation cannot be denied.

  The OFC could well hold its own in the AFC, should such a marriage come to pass.

  If FIFA overlords are really serious about advancing football in the Pacific then ironically the endgame must be dissolving the OFC altogether.

  There is a famous line from an unnamed American officer during the Vietnam War: “It became necessary to destroy the town in save it.”

  For a long time it’s been a quote that sums up the senselessness of war. But apply it to football and the OFC, and it starts to make all sorts of sense.

  
  

• Jesse Fink our Asian Football correspondent brings you news from Asian Football.
  Email Jesse with your view on football jesse.fink@sportingbet.com

  Asia View
  So what can be gleaned from the Asian Cup draw just held in Doha, Qatar? The conventional belief is that Group D, which holds defending champions Iraq, DPR Korea, United Arab Emirates and Iran is the “Group of Death” (is there a tournament where at least one group doesn’t have that sobriquet applied?) with all four teams rather evenly balanced, but the biggest shock could come in Group C, where at least one of the two best teams in Asia, Australia and Korea Republic, stand a very real chance of being knocked out in the first round by Bahrain, who have always provided tricky opposition to teams visiting the Gulf.

  Bahrain was unlucky to lose its World Cup qualifying playoff against New Zealand –Sayed Mohammed Adnan duffing the penalty that would have taken the game in Wellington to extra-time – and will be looking to restore some lost pride.

  The Bahrainis have played the Australians four times since 2006, with Australia winning all four, but the last time they played in the Gulf, in a World Cup qualifier Manama in November 2008, the Socceroos snaffled a last-gasp 1-0 victory and didn’t deserve to go home winners.

  Against 15-time opponent Korea Republic, the Bahrainis have won twice, both victories coming in Asian Cups in Jakarta, Indonesia, and drew 2-2 in their last meeting, in February 2009, in Dubai.

  Which means they give the big teams a run for their money and especially in the Middle East, where Australia and east Asian sides rarely flatter. Consider, too, the fact that Bahrain will also have just gained some valuable match practice at November’s Gulf Cup in Yemen.

  My esteemed football-writing colleague Mike Tuckerman wrote an editorial in Australia during the week calling into question whether Australia could in fact be called underdogs, with most concern about the void that will be left after the World Cup with the departure of coach Pim Verbeek, the retirement of a clutch of senior players and the reality that most of Australia’s Europe-based stars won’t come due to the Cup clashing with the second half of their domestic seasons. Unlike Australia, most other top Asian nations only have a sprinkling of European-based players so can avoid that tricky dilemma.

  My gut feeling is that Australia will take an experimental squad with one eye to building a competitive team for Brazil 2014 but not completely disavow the need to be seen as a good upstanding member of the Asian Football Confederation and so bring one or two stars. But I’m not sure they can be guaranteed passage through to the next round.

  Bahrain coach Milan Macala insists, “There are no favourites right now; we cannot say there is a strongest group or a weakest one. Every group has dangerous teams and it will not be easy to pick who will come out of the first stage.” He also says of the Socceroos’ club availability headache: “They might not be able to play with a complete team.”
  I tend to agree. There are real odds stacked against the Aussies but the betting odds might not reflect that and should provide good value. As with each and every Asian Cup game, you can follow the action here at Sportingbet.

  
  

• Jesse Fink our Asian Football correspondent brings you news from Asian Football.
  Email Jesse with your view on football jesse.fink@sportingbet.com

  Asia View
  It was most interesting that a week after I wrote my “Asia View” column for Sportingbet imploring Iran to see some sense and retain the services of Afshin Ghotbi for the Asian Cup, that he has been talked up as a possible successor to Pim Verbeek as coach of Australia – by Verbeek himself.

  "Afshin Ghotbi passionately loves football and I am sure Iran will be a very tough team under his leadership,” Verbeek told a reporter in Australia. “There are not many coaches who know Asian football as well as he does. In fact, I think he is a great candidate to take over Australia after the World Cup.”
  
  Knowing both men personally and the way things work in the  international coaching job market, you can now narrow the odds on Ghotbi possibly landing the Australian coaching job. (Verbeek announced weeks ago that he would be taking on a talent-identification role with the Moroccan FA after South Africa 2010.)Verbeek is very trusted by the people who matter in Australian football: Socceroos head of delegation and Football Federation Australia board member Phil Wolanski, head of high performance John Boultbee, chief executive Ben Buckley and national technical director Han Berger. Along with chairman Frank Lowy they will be the brains trust that will decide on a successor for Verbeek.
  
  Outside of Berger, though, and glorified fan Wolanski, who’s a mate of Lowy and a Sydney property developer best known for quietly suggesting the name of Guus Hiddink to the Westfield billionaire when he decided to sack Frank Farina in 2005, there isn’t a lot of football nous between them. Buckley comes from Aussie Rules. Boultbee from rowing.
  
  Importantly Verbeek will be consulted on his successor. “We respect his views, of course we will get his views, we would be foolish not to,” said Buckley recently, not mentioning the fact that without Verbeek he and his friends would likely not have much of clue where to even start.
  
  Which is why Verbeek’s public support of Ghotbi is very significant. He has not made any declarations of support for any other candidate. And Ghotbi, as I wrote for Sportingbet last week, is under something of a job cloud in Tehran, with the dark storm known as Sven-Göran Eriksson brewing on the horizon.
  
  I contacted Ghotbi apopros of this development and he was in Doha, Qatar, getting ready for the Asian Cup draw that takes place this weekend.
  
  Ghotbi was focused only on Iran and expressed to me his gratitude to the Iranian people for their support over the past few weeks, possibly the most stressful of his career.
  
  But the man has in the past made known his interest in taking on the coaching reins of an A-League team, as I reported in Australia last year. To get the Socceroos job, coaching the number-one ranked Asian team, would be another step up. Ghotbi would relish the challenge and, like his friend Verbeek, loves Australia. He also has a girlfriend who wants to come Down Under and study.
  
  Whether the FFA brains trust thinks he has the cachet to lead the team is another matter entirely. Ghotbi’s biggest achievement outside of steering Iran to the Asian Cup was an Iranian championship with Persepolis. There will be a pile of CVs a foot deep on Boultbee’s desk from other aspirants, many with European or South American experience.
  
  But no one thought Verbeek, with a similarly middleweight CV, had what it took when he landed the role in 2007 and he took Australia through Asian qualifying with nary a hiccup. They have a tough group in South Africa but Ghotbi and Hiddink think they have what it takes to cause a few surprises – and those two men know Verbeek and what he is capable of achieving more than anyone.
  
  So keep an eye on Tehran, Sydney and Doha in coming weeks. There will be more fascinating twists and turns to come. 
  

• Jesse Fink our Asian Football correspondent brings you news from Asian Football.
  Email Jesse with your view on football jesse.fink@sportingbet.com

  Asia View
  Who would want to be Afshin Ghotbi? The coach of the Islamic Republic of Iran was given two games to rescue the country's hopeless bid for South Africa 2010 and almost pulled off a miracle. Then he managed to keep his job and get Iran to Qatar 2011, the tournament that will mark the end of his contract. But half a year out from the Asian Cup he is already a dead man walking, according to reports coming out of the Middle East.
  The agent of career death in Ghotbi's case is Sven Goran Eriksson, a failure with England, Manchester City and Mexico (and most likely Ivory Coast at the coming World Cup) but apparently the stuff of the Iranian Football Federation's dreams: a “big name” foreign coach that will lead the country to inevitable glory against the continent’s major powers.
  Sure. Just like Luiz Felipe Scolari has done with Bunyodkor. Or Dick Advocaat did with Korea Republic in 2006. Or Peter Reid recently with Thailand. The less said about them the better.
  And didn’t Iran flirt with a “big name” just before the World Cup, Javier Clemente, who made all the right noises when he came to Tehran from Bilbao but then decided he couldn’t meet the most basic requirements of his new job and actually live in the country?
  Ghotbi, who replaced the two pretenders who stepped in for Clemente, Ali Daei and Mohamed Mayelikohan, didn’t promise to reinvent the wheel and not all the team’s results were impressive in getting to Qatar – Iran lost to Jordan in Amman and had narrow wins over Singapore and Thailand – but he added stability to the team and brought in a clutch of new players to shake up a playing unit that felt entitled and was basically, not to mince words here, lazy.
  The problem for Ghotbi now is that the IFF doesn’t care much for laying the foundations for long-term success. They are impatient. If something is there to be fiddled with, it will be fiddled with (which is why FIFA from time to time punishes them for “government interference”.) Unlike a few seasons ago, when he was coach of championship-winning Persepolis, Ghotbi is no longer flavour of the month with the nation's footballerati. They’ve seen that’s he’s just as human as anybody and can mistakes on the pitch and off. He attended the inauguration of President Mahmoud Ahmadenijad, which put him offside with some pro-democracy campaigners (but who singularly failed to appreciate what kind of choice Ghotbi would have had in the matter).
  So while IFF president Ali Kaffashian was moved in the past 24 hours to overrule his vice-president Mehdi Taj (who wants Eriksson) and give his Iranian-American coach some reassurance – “Ghotbi will be Iran coach until the end of the 2011 AFC Asian Cup” – the rider that followed that statement was of more import: “However he must take advice from the technical committee.”
  This clearly puts Ghotbi at odds with the IFF as he has made it clear several times that he is “the only person authorised to make decision on technical matters”.
  One thing I have learned observing Iranian football over the years is that no statement, no matter how unequivocal, can be taken as gospel.
  Ghotbi, with his extensive experience as a coach in Asia, is the right man to lead Team Melli to the Asian Cup and Eriksson, who has never coached an Asian side and is an expensive failure wherever he’s been, is not. But that will not stop the IFF from making another harebrained appointment (Ghotbi’s was a rare moment of intelligence).
  They should, however, listen to advice when it’s given, and the best of all came this week from the nation’s biggest football star, former Bayern Munich forward Ali Karimi. “Team Melli needs stability at the moment. It’s none of my business but I think the IFF officials should keep the current coaches in place for the upcoming competitions,” he wrote on his personal website. “We don’t have enough time for the 2011 Asian Cup and it is a fact that changing [coaches now] is not a good solution.”
  Makes all sorts of sense. But in Iran sense rarely wins when it comes to football politics.

• Jesse Fink our Asian Football correspondent brings you news from Asian Football.
  Email Jesse with your view on football jesse.fink@sportingbet.com

  Asia View
  Something rather sinister sounding and called the National Football Congress has apparently arrived at “seven recommendations aimed at helping the FA of Indonesia develop the game”.
  None of them, unfortunately, call for the head of PSSI president Nurdin Halid, who has presided over what can only be described as the worst 12 months in the history of Indonesian football. No wins for the national team, failure to qualify for the Asian Cup, a loss to Laos in the SEA Games, a shambolic 2022 World Cup bidding campaign, a worsening problem of crowd violence and, most embarrassingly, a catastrophic foray for Persipura Jayapura in the Asian Champions League.
  To date, the Indonesia Super League champions have shipped 21 goals in four matches, including a 9-0 humiliation at the hands of Changchun Yatai.

  But according to Halid, everything is keen and peachy.
  “Since I was elected as chairman in 2003, I have carried out lots of reforms at PSSI, such as drawing up new statutes complying with those of FIFA.”

  Well, whoopy do.
  The man – who has spent time in jail over customs violations in his business dealings – should be thrown out on his ear.
  Immediately.

  A nation as football mad and full of potential as Indonesia should not be ranked #138 in the world. That’s below Barbados, a country the size of a postage stamp. It’s one ahead of Maldives, another island archipelago, but bear in mind Indonesia has 230 million people. The Maldives has 385,000 and very soon will be playing its football under water. Not good enough.

  And now, with Persipura’s shellacking in the ACL, by rights it should have its representation in Asia’s premier club football competition taken away forthwith. I’d go so far as to ban Indonesian teams altogether for bringing Asian football into disrepute.
  Neither will happen, though, because the PSSI is politically important to the ambitions of Asian Football Confederation chief Mohamed bin Hammam in his bid to topple Sepp Blatter as the president of FIFA.
  Yet something has to give.

  Look at tiny Singapore as a counterpoint, a country that is physically dwarfed by Indonesia but in football terms stands over its neighbour like a colossus.

  Singapore Armed Forces has been an ornament to the ACL this season, coming through its qualifying playoff against Muanthong United of Thailand and, despite clawing just one point from four matches, giving good account of itself against some big teams: Suwon Samsung Bluewings, Henan Construction and Gamba Osaka. In four games it has leaked nine goals: what it took Persipura just one match to achieve.

  Coincidentally the Singaporean FA, the FAS, is also releasing its own blueprint for the future, a five-year Strategic Plan, and will make it public this week. But unlike the situation facing Indonesia, you actually feel there is some real hope for it. “Football in Singapore is on the right path and we are heading in the right direction,” says Zainudin Nordin, the FAS president.

  And he’s right. A commendable ACL performance. A bronze at the SEA Games. A red-hot tilt at qualifying for the Asian and World Cups. And a league that isn’t a byword for corruption and crowd violence.

  Indonesia has 57 times more people than Singapore, 3000 times the space and five times the GDP.

  Something isn’t right. It’s time for Halid to go.

• Jesse Fink our Asian Football correspondent brings you news from Asian Football.
  Email Jesse with your view on football jesse.fink@sportingbet.com

  Asia View
  One thing demonstrably proved by Bunyodkor's catastrophic 3-0 defeat to Zob Ahan in Group B of the AFC Champions League last week is that money cannot and will never buy you success.

  Luiz Felipe Scolari, the former Selecao and Chelsea coach, came to Tashkent in June 2009 in a blaze of publicity, promising to repay the £12 million per year (the highest salary in world football) he was being paid by turning the Uzbek champions into the biggest side in Asia.

  A year and a bit on, he's proved an unmitigated disaster. Explaining the loss to the Iranian smokies at Esfahan's Foolad Shahr Stadium, he said: "I made the wrong substitutions and I did them too late. Today's loss is completely my fault."

  Then why on earth is he being paid £12 million? For that kind of money, and with the sort of pedigree Scolari has, you don't make such basic mistakes.

  But he did in Esfahan and he did in the quarter finals of the ACL in 2009, throwing away a 3-1 first-leg advantage over Pohang Steelers to lose the second leg 4-1 to the eventual champions. Worse, the four goals Bunyodkor shipped all came in the second half.

  A guy on £12 million a season surely knows that if you need to protect a two-goal advantage for 45 minutes you put ten men in defence and dig in like it's the Somme. Instead Bunyodkor's players looked so listless, unorganised and slow they might as well have been stoned.

  One such loss was bad enough. Two is unacceptable. Three and Scolari can pack his bags and leave Uzbekistan with his tail between his legs.

  So this week's return leg at the JAR Stadium in Tashkent is a must-win not just for Bunyodkor but Scolari's survival as a coach in Asia and no less than his continued tenure as one of the world's big-name managers.

  Rivaldo is slated to return from the ankle injury that kept him out of the first leg to rejoin compatriot and last season's ACL top scorer Denilson and Macedonian striker Stevica Ristic, so Zob Ahan's defenders will have their work cut out for them.

  Bunyodkor has lost once in the past two seasons in the Uzbekistan Professional Football League and has not tasted defeat on its own turf in two outings in the ACL. The closest it came was last season, to another Iranian club, Sepahan, the game finishing 2-2.

  So Mansour Ebrahimzadeh's men will be making history if they can come away with consecutive wins over Uzbekistan's football royals.

  On their ACL form so far – a 1-0 win over Abu Dhabi's Al-Wahda, a 2-2 draw with Saudi giants Al-Ittihad and the crushing win over Bunyodkor – I think Zob Ahan might just be up to the task. Iranian football is restoring some continental pride after a couple of tough years domestically and internationally and to see Iranian sides topping very tough Groups A and B, undefeated after three rounds, is testament to its potential.

  Scolari will use all his considerable wiles to stop them but don't ever discount a team with momentum, no matter where they come from, nor how unfashionable. Football is still a game where anything can happen.

  And, as always, you can bet on this and each and every ACL match here at Sportingbet.

• Jesse Fink our Asian Football correspondent brings you news from Asian Football.
  Email Jesse with your view on football jesse.fink@sportingbet.com

  Asia View
  Within 22 minutes of their AFC Champions League group encounter, Kawasaki Frontale was three goals up on Melbourne Victory, outside of Sydney FC the best club in Australia. Melbourne hadn't even had a shot.

  Not one. Against a J-League team putting out far from the best lineup. If ever there was a set of numbers that sharply delineated the gulf in class between Japanese and Australian that was it. But typically the Australian commentary team proffered their excuses, pointing out the 2008/09 A-League champions had just played a grand final on the Saturday night.
  
  Tired legs. Jetlag. Yada yada yada. The reality, though, is that Kawasaki was simply faster, better organised, sharper on the ball, inventive, flamboyant but restrained, unafraid to play Melbourne at their own physical game and, most importantly, hungrier. This is in a game that both sides simply had to win but only one went out there with any conviction.

  Even when Kawasaki's North Korean striker Jong Tae-sae was red carded in a ill-tempered incident late in the first half and the Japanese side went down to ten men, Melbourne simply had nothing but a few isolated strikes late in the second half in response. Kawasaki even managed a fourth before Melbourne, too, went down to ten.

  No excuses. For the second time in succession Melbourne, a club with pretensions to be a brand in Asia, has been shown up for being out of its depth on the continent.
  It's as confounding as the Poincare Conjecture, but a Russian mathematician just cracked that after others spent 100 years trying.

  So I'll give it a stab right now: Australia simply has to work harder. It needs to be fitter. It needs to import better coaches versed in the art of short-passing football and instill a prison-camp mentality around the club. The better east Asian sides simply have that veneer of class across the park that only comes from sheer hard work.

  Pim Verbeek, the Australia national-team coach who has worked both in Korea and Japan, told me some time ago in east Asia the football is "focused on combination and ball possession" and while this doesn't always translate into what Verbeek might call "efficiency", ie: scoring goals, it made for some beautiful football. Add some Brazilian strikers, individuals who know better than most how to shred the onion bag, and you have some formidable opposition, as Australia is finding out.

  Until such a technical revolution takes place, then, the chances of an Australian team taking Asian football by the scruff of the neck and establishing some hegemony on a consistent basis, just like the Japanese and Koreans, is a pipedream. Occasionally an A-League side might produce shocks, as Adelaide United have a habit of doing quite well, but consistency and attractive football will always be elusive.

  And so Australian football sides in Asia will always be a lucky dip. On a good day they might win. But on a bad day, they will lose and lose awfully.

  For that reason in the Asian Champions League, and here at Sportingbet, your money will always be better spent on Japanese and Korean sides.
  With Australian ones, just like the way they tend to play, you really are taking a wild punt.

• Jesse Fink our Asian Football correspondent brings you news from Asian Football.
  Email Jesse with your view on football jesse.fink@sportingbet.com

  Asia View
  J-League hard to predict

  It's said one day it could be one of the biggest leagues in the world and if the opening two rounds of action is anything to go by, Japan's J-League could well be the real deal. Big and ever-growing crowds, bumper TV ratings, attractive football, decent talent on show, some topsy-turvy results and not a single side that has lost two on the trot make it a hard league to predict.

  On the opening weekend popular Kashima Antlers gave a taste of what to expect as they chase a fourth consecutive championship, accounting for Urawa Red Diamonds 2-0 at Kashima Stadium but coming unstuck against Kyoto Sanga a week later, drawing 1-1. Urawa recovered from their opening week disappointment and defeated FC Tokyo 1-0 at home.

  Fellow title favourites Kawasaki Frontale haven't dropped any points, however, prevailing 2-1 over Albirex Niigata then 3-2 over Nagoya Grampus, which was coming off a brilliant win against Gamba Osaka in the opening week.

  Resurgent outfit Shimizu S-Pulse was flattered with a 1-1 draw in Hiroshima but rejoindered with a 3-0 win over Montedio Yamagata.

  The talk of the league, though, is newly promoted Vegalta Sendai, which finds itself in the unexpected position of topping the table, albeit only after two rounds, having defeated Jubilo Iwata 1-0 and Omiya Ardija 3-1. They have a good chance to go further ahead against 15th-placed Kyota Sanga this weekend.

  The other notable statistical aspect is the lowly position of Gamba Osaka in 13th position with a loss to Nagoya and a draw with crosstown rivals Cerezo, following on from its defeat in the Super Cup and limp showing Asian Champions League, but it's early days so no cause for panic stations yet for Akira Nishino's side, who are too good to remain anchored there for long.

  Personality wise, the league has been enlivened with the return to domestic football of national-team talisman Shunsuke Nakamura for the first time in eight years, following his unsuccessful stint with Espanyol in the Primera Liga after turning heads at Celtic.
  And he made good on his promise for new club Yokohama F. Marinos after missing the opening round loss against FC Tokyo, providing the cross for Yuzo Kurihara to open the scoring against Shonan Bellmare, which finished in a canter for the hosts, 3-0.

  And it's Nakamura again who will be on everyone's lips when 6th-placed Yokohama take on 2nd-placed Kawasaki at its 72,000-capacity Nissan Stadium this weekend and he comes up against fellow national-team icons Junichi Inamoto and Kengo Nakamura.

  Nakamura says his "aim is to win the J-League title" and who's to doubt he has what it takes to deliver? Though his Spanish adventure was ill starred the guy oozes class and is only going to get better as he settles back into the rhythm of the J-League.
  It's going to be a cracker. Don't miss it.

• Jesse Fink our Asian Football correspondent brings you news from Asian Football.
  Email Jesse with your view on football jesse.fink@sportingbet.com

  Asia View
  And so, for the first time in two decades, the Asian Cup will go ahead without any representation from South-East Asia, Thailand and Singapore missing out on their 11th-hour chances to scrape into Qatar 2011 with losses in Tehran and Amman.

  It is a massive blow not just to the ASEAN Football Federation, which represents 11 nations of the 46-member Asian Football Confederation, but the integrity of the Asian Cup itself.

  Having a quarter of its member nations unrepresented hardly enhances the AFC's most important tournament. Nor does the idea that a region of half a billion people who might otherwise have tuned in to watch it will likely ignore it altogether, with no team to support.

  The most recent Asian Cup, 2007, held in Vietnam, Indonesia, Thailand and Malaysia, of course, was ASEAN all over, and will be remembered fondly for the colour, number and passion of the Indonesian fans in Jakarta if not so much for the hosts' football, bar Vietnam, which made the quarter-final stage.

  But some of ASEAN's results showed future promise: Thailand's 1-1 draw with eventual champions Iraq, Vietnam's 2-0 win over UAE and 1-1 draw with Qatar, Indonesia's string of narrow losses to Bahrain, Saudi Arabia and Korea Republic. Only Malaysia was awful from go to whoa.

  That nascent promise, however, was not seized upon by any ASEAN nations in this qualifying campaign, Malaysia and Indonesia consistently poor, Vietnam only able to win its first match and then falling to pieces, and Thailand failing to capitalise by winning enough at home despite generally putting in some commendable performances. Tiny Singapore was the best of a woeful bunch, punching above its weight by beating Jordan at home and the Thais away and being handicapped when it mattered by and AWOL captain and some unfortunate injuries and suspensions.

  Of the five ASEAN teams in the Asian Cup qualification phase, only the Lions can hold their heads high.

  Such an unmitigated disaster is perhaps the reason why there has been a stepping up of efforts within some quarters of the ASEAN Football Federation to have Australia admitted as a full member. Having any places taken away for future Asian Cup qualifying campaigns would be a political and economic catastrophe for football in the region.

  ASEAN officials, however, should have a legitimate gripe with the AFC given the federation is using the AFC Challenge Cup, Asia's second-tier national competition for so-called "emerging associations", as a backdoor to the Asian Cup by allowing handpicked "developed associations" and "developing associations" to participate. Because of these pragmatic rules, 2008 winners India and 2010 winners North Korea are taking their places at Qatar when the rigours of a full Asian Cup qualifying campaign might have easily seen them miss out.

  The decision-making process is unfair and unjust and needs to be made accountable.

  That, though, shouldn't absolve ASEAN of its collective failure to step up and push forward as a football bloc within the AFC. It will have been seriously embarrassed by its no-show at Qatar 2011 and undoubtedly implement measures to avoid such an event ever repeating.
  The importance of saving face is an intrinsic aspect of being Asian. But, in ASEAN football's case, losing it as it has so badly might be a blessing in disguise.

• Jesse Fink our Asian Football correspondent brings you news from Asian Football.
  Email Jesse with your view on football jesse.fink@sportingbet.com

  Asia View
  It's a massive week for Asian football, with qualifying for the 2011 Asian Cup to finally wrap up, nearly two years after the whole shebang kicked off in April 2008 with a first-round playoff between Lebanon and the Maldives to see who would join the second-round group stage of 20 teams.

  Yemen, Hong Kong, Indonesia, Malaysia, Vietnam and Lebanon are out already. Bahrain, Japan, Uzbekistan, China, Syria, Iran and UAE are through. Australia should be with them, but is paying the price for a halfhearted and disorganised campaign and has to avoid defeat by Indonesia in Brisbane to qualify. Kuwait and Oman are pitted in a blockbuster in Muscat, the Omanis having to beat Kuwait to have any hope of qualifying. Then there's the huge game at the Azadi in Tehran, Thailand hoping to make history by defeating Team Melli in probably the most intimidating stadium in world football. History because the Thais have never beaten Iran in 11 meetings since 1972. But they can still qualify if Singapore and Jordan, playing in Amman, grind out a draw.

  Singapore's is probably the fairytale story of the entire qualifying phase.

  The Lions haven't appeared at an Asian Cup since 1984, their one and only experience of Asia's premier tournament and they only got there by virtue of being host nation.
  While no match for the Iranians with a 1-9 aggregate home and away, Radojko Avramovic's side humbled the Jordanians at home and scored a memorable win over the Thais in Bangkok, a key result that has left them with a real chance of achieving an unlikely passage to Qatar.

  The Iranians should be too good for the Thais, which means if Singapore can win in Amman they will be through. Match records are no help in divining who the winner might be, however, as the two sides have only met twice, their first match a 2-1 win to the Jordanians in a friendly in Zarqa in 2008.

  Understandably, Jordan isn't giving the visitors any advantage, having them train on an undersize training pitch while the home team lords it over them 50 metres away on a proper-sized one. Singapore has already made a complaint to the match commissioner.

  The Lions have also been severely weakened by the withdrawal through injury of Shaiful Esah, Khairul Amri and John Wilkinson, the suspension of Mustafic Fahrudin and a missing skipper, of all things, in Indra Shadan, who has sensationally pulled out due to "personal issues".

  But they have a fabulous striker in Aleksander Duric, an irrepressible, seemingly inexhaustible two-foot-tall 39-year-old naturalised Bosnian who is one of the great stories of world football, having scored more goals in the S-League and the Singaporean national team than he has made appearances, and he's had about 300 of them since arriving in the island state from Australia in 2000.

  What Roger Milla was to the African continent, Duric is to Asia and it would be a fitting end to his career for him to appear at an Asian Cup, having already gone to an Olympics – but as a canoer. For Bosnia-Herzegovina.

  Just another example of how Asia never ceases to amaze.

• Jesse Fink our Asian Football correspondent brings you news from Asian Football.
  Email Jesse with your view on football jesse.fink@sportingbet.com

  Asia View
  Wellington Phoenix is a team you might not have heard that much about, but you will soon and get used to hearing a lot more about them. The New Zealand franchise in Australia's A-League has made a charge in the six-team finals series and if it can beat Newcastle Jets at home on March 7 will face either Melbourne Victory or Sydney FC for a place in the grand final. (Yes, Australia is one of those odd little backwaters on Planet Football that doesn't have a first-past-the-post championship in place.)

  But that's not why Phoenix is of import here.

  What is fascinating about Phoenix and its irrepressible rise to the top of Australasian football is that according to Asian Football Confederation president Mohamed bin Hammam, it won't exist as of 2012. You see, the President doesn't like the fact it is a club that comes from a place that isn't a part of the AFC. Never mind the fact that there are a bunch of foreign sides running around in Singapore's S-League. Consistency has never been the AFC's strong suit.

  To that end, Bin Hammam has ordered Phoenix's owners and Football Federation Australia to have the club registered as a wholly "Australian entity" by his deadline or else the A-League faces the expulsion of its teams from the Asian Champions League.

  Under the 2012 plan, all New Zealand players will be considered foreigners and so Australian players will have to make up the bulk of the squad. As it stands the ratio is the other way around.
  Not surprisingly, Phoenix top brass is decidely unimpressed and they have every right to be. In 2009/10 Phoenix has had the best crowds in the league outside traditional fan stronghold Melbourne and provided some desperately needed excitement and pizzazz to a season that hitherto was conspicuously falling short in both departments. So the club is well within its remit to ask of the FFA what it is doing to protect them and its own investment in the future of the league.

  "The AFC basically wants us out of the A-League but we've reached a stage now where we need to know our future and we want answers," says chief executive Tony Pignata. "We need to know where we stand beyond 2011 because without knowing our future it is very difficult to secure players and sponsors.

  "What we want above all else is an A-League licence for ten years beyond 2011 and I reckon we deserve it after what we have achieved this season."

  I can only agree. Without the Phoenix, season five of the A-League would have been an unmitigated disaster. The FFA should show some spine and back the Kiwi club to the hilt. If the AFC wants a strong confederation it must realise that having a strong football following in New Zealand aids and abets Australian football. But with New Zealand having qualified for the World Cup at the expense of Bahrain with a team largely made of Phoenix players, he has blinkers on and steam coming out of his ears.

  The clear and present problem for the FFA is that it's in the midst of trying to woo important Asian members of FIFA's executive committee to support the Australia 2018/2022 bid. Standing up to fellow of members of the AFC and asking for a fair go in the face of bureaucratic bullying is not really considered the "Asian way".

  But, just to be crude for a moment, who gives a toss? Australia owed Hammam a debt of gratitude when it joined the AFC but that debt isn't locked in for perpetuity. As we've seen in the past few days, the Qatari head of the AFC has no qualms throwing his significant weight behind the Qatar 2022 bid – an outrageous position when he's supposed to be totally neutral. What loyalty, then, should the Australians show him?

  And in any case the AFC needs Australia, its top-ranked nation by a considerable margin, as much as it needs the AFC. Without Australia, those extant four automatic World Cup spots look decidedly fragile and Asia can certainly let go of any pretensions it entertains of having five.

  Australia and New Zealand have fought many important wars together and their respective national teams have played head-to-head over 60 times since 1922.
  For that reason alone, FFA owes its friends across the ditch a lot more effort and commitment than it is showing. But when the Phoenix situation is factored in, that effort and commitment becomes a sacred duty.

• Jesse Fink our Asian Football correspondent brings you news from Asian Football.
  Email Jesse with your view on football jesse.fink@sportingbet.com

  Asia View
  China has been a byword for crummy in football for some time, both on the pitch and off. Bad results. Poor behaviour. Rampant corruption.

  But all that changed over the weekend when the national men's side won the four-nation East Asian Football Championship in Japan, overcoming Hong Kong and Korea Republic (their first win over the Taeguk Warriors ever) and drawing with the home side.

  New Chinese Football Association chief Wei Di, just two weeks into the job, has been quick to play down the significance of the tournament victory and he's right – it ain't no World Cup – but the win does serve as a nice gee-up for the new Chinese Super League season, which starts in late March, and gives renewed hope that China, under freshly installed manager Gao Hongbo, can do better than its second place at China 2004 and make a real tilt at the Asian Cup next year in Qatar.

  The CSL, especially, badly needs a good news story. The ongoing inquiry into match-fixing and illegal betting has implicated nearly two dozen officials, coaches and players since it began last year and there are fears, not quite allayed, the 2010 season will not start on time.

  That remains to be seen but what will give fans of the Chinese game some succour is the fact the core of the team plays in the CSL, they didn't concede a goal in three matches, scored five and did it all with a young side. It was a great show of faith by Gao in China's future stars and he is to be congratulated for having them play with such control and discipline – something you don't often say about Chinese teams, which have reputation for indulging as much in kung fu as they do football

  For a country so blessed with great athletes and bursting at the seams with people, this is where China should be: at the top of the Asian football pyramid. Not languishing in their current FIFA ranking of #87, tenth best on the continent, behind the likes of Iraq, Bahrain, Uzbekistan and North Korea.

  Wei might not want to get too far ahead of himself right now but if China can turn in a good Asian Cup, return its ranking to the mid 30s (its best position was #37 in December 1998) and claim some big scalps along the way, a World Cup in China sooner rather than later is inevitable.

  And FIFA won't need any convincing of how big an event that could be. For now, though, the CSL needs to seize this opportunity its been given by the national team and restore some dignity and pride in the league. Beijing Guoan was the champion in 2009 and this season it should be a four-way tussle between Beijing, big-spending Shanghai Shenhua, Shandong Luneng and Chanchung Yatai.

  The dark horses are 2010 ACL qualifiers Henan Construction and Tianjin Teda, coached by legendary Dutchman Arie Haan. All well worth a punt. And, naturally, you can bet on all the teams and matches here at Sportingbet.

• Jesse Fink our Asian Football correspondent brings you news from Asian Football.
  Email Jesse with your view on football jesse.fink@sportingbet.com

  Asia View
  The new FIFA world rankings are out, and for Asian viewers the most interest was in Yemen's astonishing 25-place jump to #105, their best result since 1995, with Tajikistan leaping 17 places to #168. But those nations are outside the top 100. The real interest is in the top 100, where Thailand was the biggest mover, seven places to #98, breaking into the century crowd for the first time since June 2008.

  In January the Elephants accounted for Singapore, drew with Jordan and lost to the Poles, hardly anything to write home about, but they are still in the hunt for the Asian Cup in 2011 (they must defeat Iran in Tehran on March 3) and that is something freefalling Indonesia (down 16 places to #105) cannot boast.

  The Indonesians didn't win a match (albeit they played very few) in 2009 and kissed goodbye to their faint Asian Cup hopes by losing to Oman in Jakarta last month.

  The Thais are reaping the benefits of some big-picture thinking in their coaching (first Peter Reid, now Bryan Robson) while the Indonesians are paying for their narrowmindedness. Benny Dollo is surely helming his last game for the Merah Putih when they take on Australia in Brisbane next month.

  The Indonesians haven't been in the top 100 since October 2005 and hit #153 in December 2006. They haven't won a match since their 4-0 win over Cambodia in December 2008. For a country of Indonesia's population and potential, their current ranking is a disgrace.

  No wonder the people behind the Indonesia 2022 World Cup bid have decided to pack it in. They're dreaming.

  It's an anomaly, then, that Indonesia has an Asian Champions League entrant, Persipura Jayapura, and could have had two, if Sriwijaya had not succumbed to Singapore Armed Forces FC in the semis of the qualifying playoffs.

  Thailand, sadly, has none, Thai Premier League giants Muangthong United losing in their playoff final on penalties to SAFFC.

  It was a pulsating match by all accounts, my former ESPN colleague Antony Sutton, who was there, describing it in his "Jakarta Casual" blog as a "great advertisement for South-East Asian football… as football matches go this had everything. Thrilling end to end stuff, chances, good saves, a boisterous (away) support, controversy. Everything in fact except goals."

  In the end SAFFC won the shootout 4-3 after the game finished scoreless, but Muangthong should have won in open play. Ivorian striker Christian Kouakou left his scoring boots at home, spurning several chances.

  The Thais might be cooling their heels in the AFC Cup this year, but mark my words: the game in the kingdom, repechaged by the astonishing boom of the Premier League, is on the up and in 2011 the Asian Football Confederation must review its allocation of places to Thai teams. They should have one automatic spot at the very least.

  And should the national team fail to win in Tehran on March 3, they can still hold their heads high. Something Indonesian football cannot.

• Jesse Fink our Asian Football correspondent brings you news from Asian Football.
  Email Jesse with your view on football jesse.fink@sportingbet.com

  Asia View
  The international transfer window closed on Sunday, involving fewer tens of millions than in seasons past and, turning to this part of world, revealing much of how Australian players are regarded in China and how much Australian players regard the Chinese league.

  Crystal Palace midfielder Nicky Carle, starved of first-team action at Selhurst Park and desperate to get some game time to put himself in the frame for World Cup selection, flew east during the window to meet officials from Shaanxi Chanba, an unglamorous side from Xi'an in the Chinese Super League.

  At present, four Australians play in the 16-team competition and, because of the higher wages on offer to imports, the numbers are growing. According to his Sydney-based agent, whom I met for a coffee a week ago, the money was "massive". But there was a complication – namely how much did Australia coach Pim Verbeek rate the Chinese league? There was no point, after all, in Carle leaving for China if it meant he wouldn't get on the plane to Johannesburg in June. Fortuitously, I got to ask the great man myself during another café chinwag in Sydney and he spelled it out clearly: he rated it on a par with Australia's A-League. A summation that doesn't correlate with China's generous four Asian Champions League places to Australia's two.

  Carle had left the A-League to help his dreams of being a Socceroo. So it was no surprise when Carle decided to turn the Chinese offer down and instead decided to take his chances, once again, at Palace. It was serendipitous. Carle turned in an excellent performance for the Eagles over the weekend against Peterborough United. He backed up in the club's most recent match, the loss to Newcastle United. With the club in administration and docked ten points by the FA, a hard-fought relegation dogfight might be just what Carle needs to convince Verbeek that he deserves to be a passenger on that green-and-gold-liveried Qantas jumbo. Perth Glory's Mile Sterjovski, another fringe Socceroo similarly contemplating the Chinese option, didn't take up a loan move to Shandong Luneng but unlike Carle he may live to rue his decision.

  He has just been ruled out for the rest of the A-League season with a back injury, torpedoing his hopes of making it to the World Cup. Fellow Glory World Cup hopefuls Jacob Burns and Chris Coyne, another pair eyeing loan moves, will be playing out the season with the West Australian club and hoping that will be enough to convince Verbeek of their qualities. (The club had formerly been resigned to losing all three players.) Will that be enough? It's unlikely. But it's a great challenge and that desperation to be noticed will spur Burns's and Coyne's teammates to a better level of performance. For that reason keep an eye on Perth in the finals. They could offer good value. Presently placed in fourth spot, two points ahead of Wellington and Newcastle with two games left to play, away against Sydney FC this weekend and at home to Brisbane Roar, they look assured of a top-six finish.

  Glory is coming off two good wins against Central Coast and Wellington Phoenix after their 6-2 shellacking in Melbourne on January 16 and might just be hitting their straps at the business end of the season.

• Jesse Fink our Asian Football correspondent brings you news from Asian Football.
  Email Jesse with your view on football jesse.fink@sportingbet.com

  Asia View
  One point of difference Asian football can frequently offer over the big European leagues is unpredictability. Very few competitions are dominated in the manner, say, Manchester United and Chelsea dominate the Premier League, AC Milan and Inter Milan Serie A and Barcelona and Réal Madrid the Primera Liga.

  In Korea, Suwon Samsung Bluewings and Seongnam Ilhwa Chunma are as close as you'll get to a duopoly. In 2009 Jeonbuk Hyundai Motors won its first championship since joining the league in 1994. Suwon (2) and Seongnam (4) were the only teams to win the K-League more than one title between the years of 2000 and 2009.

  In 2010, the dark horse is FC Seoul. It can boast three championships, its last coming in 2000, but finished runners-up in 2008 and third in 2009. It also held first position for 12 consecutive weeks up until round 26 but fell away in the last four rounds. New coach Nelo Vingada has inherited what many regard as the best in the league and it is a side burning with ambition, talent and money.

  In the J-League, Kashima Antlers is a rare exception to the Asia vs Europe rule, having won the past three championships and aiming for a fourth in 2010. Since the J-League's inception in 1993 it has amassed seven titles and finished runners-up twice. No other club comes close.

  In 2010, however, look out for Shimizu S-Pulse to put a few noses out of joint. It finished seventh in 2009 but briefly held first place, overhauling Kashima after round 28. New recruits include the towering Australian central defender Eddy Bosnar from relegated JEF United and Shinjo Ono from VfL Bochum in the Bundesliga. The side also has a bona fide star in Japan international Shinji Okazaki, who scored 14 times in 2009 and bagged a hat-trick for Japan against Togo in a friendly in October, a small part of the impressive 15 he collected in the international calendar year.

  In Australia's A-League, just five seasons old, Melbourne Victory has been the dominant side in championships and terrace support but with only ten teams at present and a generous finals system (six of the ten qualify for K-League-style championship finals) virtually any team from first to eighth is capable of winning the title. To give you an idea of how topsy-turvy it can be, 2007/08 winners Newcastle Jets finished dead last in 2008/09.

  At time of writing the 2009/10 season is less than half a dozen games away from drawing to a close for the finals series, but I've been really impressed with the rise of Wellington Phoenix, currently sitting in fifth after 22 rounds. They might not win the title this year – I'm putting my money on Sydney FC – but with a great new recruit in Eugene Dadi and Paul Ifill and a group of players under the shrewd tutelage of a World Cup-bound coach in Ricki Herbert, many of whom are going to South Africa 2010 themselves as members of Herbert's 23-man All Whites squad, they can only get better in 2010/11.

  Elsewhere in Asia, keep tabs on the progress of Saudi Arabia's Al-Ahli, Iran's Zob Ahan, China's Henan Construction, UAE's Al-Jazira and Qatar's Umm-Salal.

• James Eastham keeps us up to date with the news back home European Football this week.
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  Focus on Europe
  In my lifetime, every side that has won the World Cup has had a very good or excellent goalkeeper. Which is why Fabio Capello must privately have reservations about his team’s chances of lifting the game’s most prestigious prize on July 11. England’s lack of a good goalkeeper is their Achilles heel.

  Nery Pumpido (1986), Bodo Illgner (1990), Claudio Taffarel (1994), Fabien Barthez (1998), Marcos (2002) and Gianluigi Buffon (2005) all made significant contributions to their side’s triumphs. The least decisive in open play was Illgner, although even he saved a penalty from Stuart Pearce in the penalty shoot-out and kept clean sheets in two of their final three games en route to victory. Four years ago, Buffon gave the best series of goalkeeping performances I’ve seen at a World Cup, although Oliver Kahn, for runners-up Germany, ran him close four years earlier.

  The three goalkeepers likely to make Capello’s squad are David James, Robert Green and Joe Hart. All three names make you wince, for different reasons. James, now 39, became England’s number one following David Seaman’s demise in 2002 but has struggled to adapt to the nature of international football. Prone to lapses of concentration, he has made too many high-profile errors to be considered anything other than a liability for England.

  Green, who plays for West Ham, is solid and unspectacular but has little international experience and has never played in the Champions League. Is he good enough to keep goal for England at the World Cup finals? We don’t know. The same applies to Hart, who has had a good season on loan at Birmingham City, but joined Blues on loan in the first place because Manchester City wanted a goalkeeper with greater experience. Hart has made 86 Premier League appearances.

  The top flight of English football boasts plenty of excellent goalkeepers, of course – but none of them is English. Of the 20 number ones in 2009-10, six – Petr Cech (Chelsea), Heurelho Gomes (Spurs), Brad Friedel (Aston Villa), Pepe Reina (Liverpool), Edwin van der Sar (Man Utd) and Shay Given (Manchester City) – would walk into Capello’s side were they eligible. Every single outfield player is among the best in their position in the finest league in the world. The goalkeepers are lagging far behind.

  Can Capello compensate for such obvious shortcomings between the sticks? The Italian’s tactics and the presence of a fully-fit Rio Ferdinand and John Terry will ensure England defend well. But during the seven games that every team needs to play to win the tournament, there comes a moment where the goalkeeper alone needs to produce a moment of decisive brilliance. That’s the area where England are most likely to fall down this summer.

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  Focus on Europe
  In the old days, taking a job abroad used to be regarded as a particularly testing challenge. "He'll need at least six months to settle in," they said whenever a player or manager swapped his homeland for foreign shores.

  Not any more. In these times of globalisation, when a player is as likely to cross a border as move from Liverpool to London, the demands for instant results, no matter where you're from, have never been greater.

  To me, doing well in your first year in a foreign country is still a considerable achievement, which is why Carlo Ancelotti's debut season at Chelsea deserves closer inspection. The low-key former AC Milan manager has earned scant praise from the British media during his first 12 months at Stamford Bridge, but he's done an excellent job.

  He took over at a club that had gone three years without winning the Premier League. The club's last full-time manager, Luiz Felipe Scolari, had been handed millions of pounds to rebuild the squad but lasted seven months before being hastily packed off with a substantial compensation package after results failed to match investment.

  Ancelotti took over as a new period of austerity set in. Unlike his predecessors, the Italian was not allowed to delve into the transfer market. Instead, he was told to get on with the job of improving a bunch of players in situ when he arrived. £18m Russia wing-back Yuri Zhirkov was already on his way into the club when Ancelotti became boss. And Daniel Sturridge, a talented young striker from Manchester City, was hardly an Ancelotti signing. Instead of complaining, Ancelotti simply got on with the job.

  As he’s done all season. Quietly, diligently and effectively, Ancelotti has won the respect of his players and peers by going about his daily work and staying out of the limelight as convincingly as some of his predecessors hogged it. While the likes of Rafa Benitez have pleaded for more money, Ancelotti has simply shrugged and said he's happy to work with the squad he's got. Even when he lost Didier Drogba, Michael Essien and Jon Obi Mikel to the Africa Cup of Nations, there was no moaning. He shuffled his pack and got on with it.

  Ancelotti's attitude in front of the cameras has also been a refreshing change. He has indulged in none of the mind games that are such an unnecessary feature of the modern game. He says what he thinks, in pretty basic English, and moves on. And he refuses to dwell on refereeing decisions.

  During the season run-in, Chelsea have been without Essien and Ashley Cole, but Ancelotti has refused to look for any excuses. The media may find him boring, but his approach is a refreshing change in an era of back-page ‘wars of words’ and continually overblown spats.

  Chelsea's 2-0 win at Liverpool at the weekend means they are top of the Premier League table by a point with one game to go. They face Wigan Athletic at Stamford Bridge on the final day of the season. This time next week, Ancelotti may be celebrating winning the Premier League title in his season in charge. From what we've seen so far, it couldn't happen to a nicer guy.

• James Eastham keeps us up to date with the news back home European Football this week.
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  Focus on Europe
  All the major issues in Europe’s premier competitions have still to be decided – the title races in the continent’s top divisions remain open, and the finals of the Champions and Europa Leagues take place next month – yet the media has already turned its attention to potential managerial changes taking place over the summer.

  Stories surfaced in England last week that Sir Alex Ferguson will retire at the end of next season – rumours the Manchester United manager was quick to deny – and the English dailies had a field day speculating over who might replace the man that has been at the helm of Old Trafford for 25 years. One paper suggested Ferguson would like to see David Moyes, a fellow Scot, rewarded for eight years of excellent service at Everton by being his successor, while others pointed to Aston Villa’s Martin O’Neill as the man most likely to get the job.

  Another name that is never far from people’s lips – or the top of the betting market, for that matter – when talk turns to the next United boss is Jose Mourinho. The Inter manager has some pretty serious business to complete in Italy over the next four weeks – retaining the Serie A title and becoming the first manager to lead Inter to Champions League victory since 1965 (the competition was called the European Cup in those days) but there is little doubt the man the English press christened ‘The Special One’ will return to the Premier League one day.

  Right now, however, I’d bet his next move will not be across the English channel, but instead across the Mediterranean Sea to Spain. If Fergie stays on at Old Trafford for two more years, the job Mourinho most covets at Old Trafford won’t be available until 2012, and what other English posts would tempt him? Liverpool? Too much catching up. Chelsea? Been there, done that. Vacancies at Manchester City and Arsenal are unlikely to occur any time soon.

  Should Inter win the Champions League this season – and what a magnificent achievement that would be – Mourinho will almost certainly walk away, just as he did after guiding FC Porto to success in the same competition six years ago. Which makes this the perfect moment to take over at Real Madrid.

  Mourinho has already received the blessing of Cristiano Ronaldo, Real’s star signing, who said recently: “He is a special coach. He has shown that he is one of the best in the world so maybe people don’t like him because he is top, his character, he is a special person. I know him very well. I like him a lot. I know his character, he is a winning guy.”

  The opportunity to work in the Spanish capital would be too good to turn down for a man who has publicly on several occasions that he wants to become the first coach to win Europe’s three major leagues – England, Italy and Spain – and then go on to manage his country. Two down, two to go. Should a ‘next manager of Real Madrid?’ market open, there’s only one man to back.

• James Eastham keeps us up to date with the news back home European Football this week.
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  Focus on Europe
  On Sunday afternoon, Arsenal’s slim Premier League title hopes evaporated in humiliating fashion. Leading 2-0 and cruising to victory against a poor Wigan side, the Gunners somehow managed to concede three goals in the final 11 minutes as the Latics came from behind to record a remarkable 3-2 win. They also earned a fortune for punters brave or foolish enough to have backed the lowly hosts at 799-1 in-running.

  This is the fifth consecutive season that Arsenal players will go away on their summer holidays without a medal to add to their collections. As usual, the press inquiry will begin – and, as ever, Arsene Wenger’s many friends in the media will make excuses for the Gunners’ latest season sans silverware.

  There is much to admire about Wenger’s stewardship. He is one of the few managers in the game who actually thinks it matters whether the club makes a profit or a loss at the end of the financial year. Unlike some of his counterparts, he appears to realise that spending money that doesn’t exist will result in meltdown. That’s why we won’t see Arsenal doing a Portsmouth as long as Wenger is in charge.

  The style of football he insists on playing enriches all our lives. Wenger’s commitment to an entertaining, passing game has made Arsenal every bit as attractive to watch now as they were dour in George Graham’s day, even if his tactical inflexibility doubtless made it much easier for Lionel Messi to score four goals in a single game when Arsenal came unstuck at the Nou Camp a fortnight ago.

  There are two areas, however, where I feel it is impossible for Wenger to be let off the hook. The first is in goal, where Wenger’s failure to sign a top-class replacement since Jens Lehmann left the club two years ago has led to a series of mistakes. Number two Lukasz Fabianski handed Wigan their equaliser on Sunday afternoon and, save for a virtuoso display against Barcelona in the opening 20 minutes of the first leg, number one Manuel Almunia has rarely looked anything other than an average goalkeeper in an Arsenal shirt. Wenger needs to face up to the fact that now is the time to spend whatever is required to bring one of the world’s top goalkeepers to the Emirates Stadium.

  Wenger’s attitude towards domestic cup competitions is also unforgiveable. He has used the English League Cup as a breeding ground for young players for so long that journalists now appear to judge the Arsenal manager on totally different criteria to his peers. Yet the manner in which the Arsenal boss effectively threw away Arsenal’s best chance of winning a trophy this season by playing a severely weakened side at Manchester City in the quarter-finals (Arsenal lost 3-0) was appalling. If Arsenal fans want to know why their club has ended up without a trophy yet again, they need look no further than that night’s team sheet.

  Unless Wenger’s addresses these two shortcomings, Arsenal’s run without a trophy will head towards the 10-year mark.

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  Focus on Europe
  The morning after Manchester United's Champions League exit at the hands of Bayern Munich last week, the British press largely pointed the finger of blame for United's unexpected defeat at the club's young full-back Fabio, who was sent off when United led 3-1 on the night. Predictably, Sir Alex Ferguson looked elsewhere, labelling Bayern's players "typical Germans" for crowding round the referee and persuading Mr Rizzoli to dismiss the Brazilian.

  Five days later, though, and I'm absolutely flabbergasted that the one man that has escaped almost Scot-free (pardon the pun) from the wreckage of United's wholly avoidable and frustratingly premature exit is Ferguson himself. How on earth can the man that oversees United's transfer be absolved of blame for United's elimination when he comprehensively failed to bulk up United's attacking options last summer?

  You may recall that during the last summer close season Cristiano Ronaldo flew the nest for a move to his beloved Real Madrid for 80 million euro and Carlos Tevez turned down United's belated overtures in order to move across town to join rivals Manchester City. In order to replace the departed duo, Ferguson saw fit to splash the cash on Wigan Athletic winger Antonio Valencia and ageing, injury-prone ex-England striker Michael Owen. At the time those moves seemed insufficient – and events since have proved they were too little done too cheaply.

  Valencia has done well on the wing, but was never going to come close to replacing the 22 league goals a season Ronaldo averaged during his final three years at the club. Owen's appalling injury record meant he was always a long shot to adequately succeed the departed Tevez as either a goalscorer or useful team member, able to play a series of games as a starter or substitute. Hindsight is a wonderful thing, but Owen has started only five league games in a United shirt, making a further 14 substitute appearances, and played no part in their run-in since injury ruled him out in February.

  So effectively United have been operating with just two strikers – Wayne Rooney and Dimitar Berbatov – for most of the season. Ferguson pursued the signature of Lyon striker Karim Benzema, but when the France international chose to join Real Madrid last July, the United boss made no obvious attempt to sign a similarly talented striker. Italian youngster Federico Macheda has barely featured, while reserve-team striker Danny Wellbeck was allowed to join second division Preston North End on loan in January.

  That's why United lost against Bayern, and why they've picked up just one point from a possible six in their last two league games against Chelsea (1-2) and Blackburn Rovers (0-0). When Rooney hobbled off against the Germans, United had no-one to come on to replace him. In those two league games, Berbatov led the line, but what United needed was a top-class striker to play alongside him.

  The irony is that when United famously won the Treble in 1999 they had four top-class strikers to rely on – Andy Cole, Dwight Yorke, Teddy Sheringham and Ole Gunnar Solskjaer. Cole and Yorke's goals got them to the Champions League final and then Sheringham and Solskjaer scored the winning goals on that unforgettable night in May against Bayern Munich.

  Eleven years on, against the same opponents, the picture could have not been more different. Deep down, I reckon Ferguson knows that not buying well last summer has cost him the chance of a third European crown.

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  Focus on Europe
  The longest wait in French football came to an end on Saturday night when Marseille beat Bordeaux to win the French League Cup. The last time Marseille won a trophy of any kind was way back in 1993, when a Basile Boli header earned ´l'OM´, as they're they're known, their one and only Champions League.

  I was there at the Stade de France on Saturday night and, as so often happens in finals, the eventual winners took the lead just as their opponents were controlling the game. A Souleymane Diawara header from a corner gave l'OM the lead, and when substitute Mathieu Valbuena put Marseille 2-0 up with just 21 minutes to go, Bordeaux knew the game was over.

  The final score was 3-1, but the feeling at the final whistle was as much relief as euphoria. Seventeen years without a trophy is simply too long for a club of Marseille's magnitude. Throughout their barren spell they have retained the sort of popular appeal other French clubs envy. At Stade de France, Marseille's supporters outnumbered their Bordeaux counterparts two to one. When Lyon dominated French football, winning seven consecutive titles from 2002 to 2008, Marseille continued selling more replica shirts.

  Marseille's problem has been channelling the passion their followers feel for the club into sustainable success. The port city on the south coast of France is a volatile place. During the barren years, l'OM chewed up managers at a rate of one a year. Presidents came and went at a similarly furious rate. Such frequent changes of policy have made it difficult for the club to fulfil its potential

  But there is genuine hope that the Coupe de la Ligue triumph will mark the start of a more stable chapter in the club's history. Margarita Louis-Dreyfus, widow of the club's billionaire former owner, Robert Louis-Dreyfus, seems happy to ensure l'OM's financial security. President Jean-Claude Dassier maintains the sort of low profile that makes him a useful antidote to some of the club's wilder fringes. And manager Didier Deschamps is a club legend who has a habit of winning trophies. Who was the captain that lifted the European Cup when Marseille last one something one balmy night in Munich in May 1993? A 24-year-old Deschamps.

  Having spent Sunday afternoon celebrating on an open-top bus in front of 15,000 fans in the Old Port part of the city, Marseille's players were given a well-deserved day off on Monday before resuming training on Tuesday morning. At the time of writing, they are one of six sides separated by just three points at the top of the Ligue 1 table. And, unlike Bordeaux and Lyon, their chief rivals for the league crown, Marseille are already out of Europe, meaning they can focus all their energies on the domestic prize.

  Marseille are 4.0 (3/1) for the title, behind champions Bordeaux (1.83 or 5/6). Right now, l'OM are easily the most sensible of those two betting opportunities. For Marseille, the next couple of months could turn out to be the most successful for nearly two decades.

• James Eastham keeps us up to date with the news back home European Football this week.
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  Focus on Europe
  With five games to go in the English Premier League, Liverpool lie sixth, a four-point gap separating them from hallowed fourth place. Rafa Benitez promised fans that the mighty Reds would claim a Champions League spot – but his promise rings increasingly hollow.

  Manchester City (4th) and Tottenham (5th) not only have more points on the board than Liverpool; they also have games in hand. City's fabulous 6-1 win at Burnley last weekend means they're on 59pts, while Spurs are just one point behind. So even if Liverpool were to win their remaining five games – and that's a big if, considering they face Chelsea on May 1 – City could beat them to fourth spot purely by picking up 12pts from their remaining six games.

  Where would a fifth-place finish leave Benitez? The Spaniard will surely claim the Gods have worked against him this season, but that excuse will gain little credence outside all but the staunchest Benitez supporters. He's a victim of his own questionable man-management style, failure to build a top-class squad despite ample financial support from the Liverpool owners and baffling team selections.

  In a way, Benitez's fall-out with Albert Rieira characterises everything that's got wrong at Anfield under his rule. The Spanish winger gave an interview to a Spanish radio station in which he called Benitez's management style into question, notably saying communication between the pair was virtually non-existent. Benitez reacted by slinging Rieira out of the squad and speaking to CSKA Moscow over the possible sale of the player for £6 million. So, yet another Benitez signing is set to leave the club for a small loss, with many fans left scratching their heads about why Benitez signed the winger in the first place.

  Liverpool fans are understandably concerned that finishing outside the top four this season would mark the start of an inexorable slide. Manchester City have riches that the Reds could only dream of, Harry Redknapp has build the sort of squad at Tottenham that shows Benitez has frittered most of his money away and Aston Villa have enough good young English players to maintain their challenge for a top-four place over the next couple of years. When Liverpool finished outside the top-four in Benitez's first season in charge in 2004-05, the blow was amply cushioned by winning the Champions League, and Liverpool regained a top-four position the following season through a lack of competition. The scenario is totally different this time around.

  The most crushing blow of all would be the departure of Fernando Torres. The Spaniard has so far said he'll stay at Anfield regardless of where they finish this season, but the idea that one of the world's greatest strikers will remain loyal to a club that cannot promise Champions League football is unthinkable. Ask yourself how many players of his calibre perform for second-tier teams. David Villa and…. that's it.

  We're witnessing the dying embers of Benitez's Anfield reign whichever way you look at it. Either he stays and will oversee their decline, or he'll leave, and someone else will come in, sort through the rubble and try to put the pieces back together. I wouldn't wish that job on my worst enemy.

• James Eastham keeps us up to date with the news back home European Football this week.
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  Focus on Europe
  Much derided and little loved, the Europa League is doing its best to make the critics think again. Ridiculed for its name, format and the number of games the winners have to play to finally get their hands on the trophy (17, or 23 if your journey starts in the first preliminary round), events over the past seven days have shown that the competition has a heart and soul.

  Fulham's recovery from an early David Trezeguet goal to win 4-1 at Craven Cottage last week, thereby knocking out Juventus after La Vecchia Signore carried a 3-1 lead into the second leg, was one of the finest comebacks by any English side in a European tie. Two of the great names of European football, Marseille and Benfica, played out a thrilling encounter at Stade Velodrome on France's south coast before the Eagles of Lisbon scored a late winner to reach the last eight. Anderlecht recalled their golden years by beating Hamburg 4-3, only to lose 6-5 on aggregate. And Werder Bremen and Valencia scored four times each on German soil as the Spanish side progressed on the away goals rule.

  There was a time in the 1990s when the Uefa Cup – as it was called then – was of a higher standard and more difficult to win than the old-format European Cup. This came about because only the champions from each nation qualified for what was supposed to be Europe's premier competition, meaning the second, third, fourth and fifth-best teams from the continent's top leagues – Italy, Spain, France and Germany – competed for the secondary pot. You ended up with a topsy-turvy situation where Marseille had a relatively simple route to European Cup success in 1993 (they finished ahead of Rangers, Club Bruges and CSKA Moscow in the group stage that preceded the final) whereas Uefa Cup winners around the same time often had a tougher assignment.

  To redress the balance, Uefa transformed the format of the Champions League, allowing more and more sides from Europe's top leagues to take part while squeezing champions from Europe's weaker leagues out of the competition. The Uefa Cup had to absorb those rejects, and domestic cup holders, too, when the European Cup Winners' Cup was disbanded in 1999.

  No wonder the Uefa Cup suffered an identity crisis. But after years of soul-searching there are signs the Europa League – as it is now called – has finally found a role again. A more balanced group stage, where teams play every other side in the group home and away rather than either home or away, has given the competition greater credibility. And last week's fabulously enter last 16 has earned the tournament positive publicity.

  The quarter-final draw threw up some delightful ties: Hamburg face Standard Liege, Fulham play Wolfsburg, Valencia take on Atletico Madrid and Benfica meet Liverpool. I'm backing Benfica (6/1) to win the tournament. But the most pleasing thing of all is to see a once-great competition on the road to recovery.

• James Eastham keeps us up to date with the news back home European Football this week.
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  Focus on Europe
  It's one of football's enduring mysteries that the pioneering French have conceived so many of the world's most famous competitions and yet chronically fail to win them – at club level at least.

  The only French winners of the European Cup / Champions League in its 55-year history were Olympique de Marseille in 1993, and that triumph was tainted by disgrace as Marseille had their French league title taken away from them for match-fixing the same season. Paris-Saint-Germain were the only club to win the now defunct European Cup Winners' Cup, in 1996, while no French club has lifted the Fairs Cup / Uefa Cup / Europa League in its 40 years of existence.

  The historic stats are poor, but French clubs might be on course for one of their most successful seasons ever. Last week Lyon recorded the greatest result in their history by knocking Real Madrid out of the Champions League at the last-16 stage. Seven days later Bordeaux carry a 1-0 lead from their first leg in Piraeus into their second meeting against Olympiacos, making them clear favourites to go through (they're 1/12 to do so and 8/15 to win in 90 minutes on the night).

  The picture is similarly positive in the Europa League. Last Thursday a late Hatem Ben Arfa header gave Marseille a 1-1 draw at Portuguese league leaders Benfica in the Europa League last 16. Thanks to that excellent result, Marseille are 11/20 favourites to go through to the next round. And Lille produced one arguably the most impressive performance of the night by beating Liverpool 1-0 thanks to a late goal by 19-year-old Eden Hazard, current French Young Player of the Year. Lille – who lie fourth in France's Ligue 1 – are 21/4 to win at Anfield in 90 minutes and a tempting 9/10 to go through (Liverpool are  4/5 favourites).

  Should Bordeaux, Lille and Marseille all go through, France will have four clubs in the last eight of Europe's two major competitions for the first time since 2004. That's a big if, but the possibility reflects the improvement in the standard of French football that has been obvious to regular watchers of French first division games this season.

  The reason is simple: money. The French League's current TV deal dwarfs their previous contracts and the money has finally trickled through to leading clubs. Lyon forked out 70m euro – a French record – on four players last summer; Marseille set a new club transfer record by buying Argentina midfielder Lucho Gonzalez from FC Porto (18m euro); and Bordeaux splashed out 15m euro to make Yoann Gourcuff's loan move from AC Milan permanent. Even second-tier clubs such as Rennes and Lille found 11m euro and 8m euro respectively to sign Guinea striker Ismael Bangoura and Ivory Coast international Gervinho.

  So as French clubs head for their best spring in years, now is the time to consider some options in the outright markets. Lyon and Bordeaux are 14/1 and 20/1 respectively to win the Champions League while Marseille and Lille are 10/1 and 18/1 respectively in the Europa League. To cover all bases, however, I suggest you simply back a French side to win either competition – so get on France in the ‘Country of Winner' markets at 8/1 (Champions League) and 7/1 (Europa League). Back the French renaissance is underway before the bookies are alive to it.
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  Focus on Europe
  Is this the most exciting European season ever? That´s a strange question to start any blog – how do you measure excitement, for one thing, and what constitutes a European league season? – but hear me out and maybe you'll agree.

  Only two months of the regular European league campaign remain, yet thankfully for neutral and partisan followers alike, we have open, exciting title races in every single one of Europe's five major leagues. Normally, one of the Big Five divisions – the English Premier League, Spanish Liga, Italian Serie A, German Bundesliga and French Ligue 1 – has been sewn up by now. But this season things in all five countries are still up for grabs.

  The latest round of fixtures showed just how unpredictable things are. In England, Manchester United moved to the top of the table thanks to a 1-0 win at Wolves while Arsenal stayed two points behind by beating Burnley 3-1. Chelsea – who had a weekend off because of FA Cup duties – are sandwiched between the pair.

  In Spain, Real Madrid staged a remarkable comeback to beat Sevilla 3-2 thanks to an injury-time winner. Having trailed 2-0, Cristiano Ronaldo inspired Real's game's fabulous denouement and ensured Galacticos 2.0 maintain their 100% home record this season (13 wins out of 13). Barcelona dropped points at Almeria (2-2), which puts the Big Two level at the top of the table on 62pts from 25 games – with Barcelona ahead by just +2 goal difference.

  Inter and AC Milan played out goalless draws against Genoa and Roma respectively in Serie A, which means only four points separate the city rivals. When Jose Mourinho's Nerazzurri beat Leonardo's Rossoneri 2-0 on January 24, it looked as though the Scudetto destination was decided, but Milan have won three of the last four to keep the race alive.

  Things are even tighter in Germany, where just three points separate Bayern Munich, Schalke and Bayer Leverkusen. Across the border in France, the top two sides Bordeaux and Montpellier played out a 1-1 draw on Sunday night, which means the pair are tied on 52pts (although champions Bordeaux have two games in hand).

  The advantage of having such an exciting season finale is that betting opportunities still exist in all five major divisions. Four of the favourites – Barcelona, Bordeaux, Bayern Munich and Inter – are odds-on prices (i.e. smaller than 2.00), but larger odds on the likes of AC Milan (4.00) and Schalke (8.50) will attract plenty of attention for bettors looking for higher returns.

  It's time to place your bets, folks: my selections across the five major leagues would be Bayern (1.25), Inter (1.30), Bordeaux (1.50), Real Madrid (1.90) and Manchester United (2.30). Some of those teams may be too short individually for a lot of bettors, but if you fold the quintet into an accumulator, you'll be paid out at odds between 11.00 and 12.00.

  That's a big if, of course – but that's what betting is all about.

• James Eastham keeps us up to date with the news back home European Football this week.
  Email James with your view on football james.eastham@sportingbet.com

  Focus on Europe
  This is the week where the World Cup starts. Not the tournament itself, of course – but the round of friendlies taking place during the first week in March sounds the starting gun for the countdown to the finals.

  In some countries, pivotal decisions have already been made. The squad that France manager Raymond Domenech announced for Les Bleus' fixture against European champions Spain at Stade de France on Wednesday was the last he will name before picking his final group of 23 players for the finals in South Africa, which is why last Thursday's disclosure was so eagerly awaited. There's still time for peaks and troughs of form, plus injuries, to play some men into contention and others out of it, but you can bet Bordeaux centre-half Michael Ciani, Marseille midfielder Bruno Cheyrou (both picked for the first time) and Cheyrou's Marseille team-mate Hatem Ben Arfa (recalled thanks to his recent sizzling form) will be feeling a lot more confident than Philippe Mexes and Patrick Vieira this week (both left out).

  With squad and starting XI places up for grabs, intrigue and excitement surround many of this week's fixtures – how will Argentina get on against Germany in Munich, will Brazil finally solve their left-back problems when they face Republic of Ireland at the Emirates Stadium in London and will Spain invoke another night of boos for Domenech in Paris – but what really don't matter are the results.

  Not one bit. If you look back at previous World Cup finals, there's absolutely no correlation between how a team fares in their last few friendlies leading up to the tournament and how they perform once the competition gets under way.

  I was lucky enough to be in France in the run-up to the 1998 World Cup, and there were few signs in their preparatory games that they were going to conquer the world a few months later. I remember a 3-3 draw against Norway in Marseille in February, in which Zinedine Zidane showed flashes of the skill that would captivate the world for the next eight years, but in which Aime Jacquet's carefully selected back four played like strangers (three of them went on to be regulars in the defence that formed the bedrock of World Cup victory). A month later, an air-kick from goalkeeper Lionel Letizi (who didn't make the final 22) handed Russia a second-minute lead in a friendly in Moscow and France spent the next 88 minutes failing to muster anything resembling a half-decent attacking move.

  Four years later Brazil's build-up was similarly unimpressive. Wins against such mighty outfits as Iceland, Malaysia and a Catalonian XI did little to persuade the critics that coach Luiz Felipe Scolari knew what he was doing – but, of course, he knew all along, as Brazil proved by cruising to the title in South Korea and Japan.

  So from a betting perspective, the advice this week is obvious: look at the prices of the sides you fancy to win the World Cup before the friendlies, and check them again afterwards. If the prices move favourably, place your bets.  This is one of the few weeks before the finals where you might find some value.

• James Eastham keeps us up to date with the news back home European Football this week.
  Email James with your view on football james.eastham@sportingbet.com

  Focus on Europe
  The English don't need much excuse to crow about their successes (one can only imagine how long and loudly Britain's tabloid newspapers will trumpet should  Rio Ferdinand lift the World Cup trophy on July 11), which is one reason why Barcelona winning the Champions League was such a delight last season.

  Aside from the obvious joy of watching such a delicious football team be crowned the best in the world (I make no apology to South American football fans for saying that the Champions League is the finest tournament on earth), there was something satisfying about seeing Manchester United utterly outplayed – and I say that as someone who tipped United to win on the night.

  More than any other people on earth, the English love to look for omens, most of which end with the English winning something. United's defeat to Barcelona was a blow for those (all English, of course) who considered a Red Devils triumph inevitable, purely on the grounds that Sir Alex Ferguson was destined to win the trophy two years on the run.

  It has happened so many times before. Remember Euro '96? Certain cheerleaders before the tournament honestly believed England were destined to win the tournament just because they were the host nation and had lifted the World Cup on home soil 30 years earlier (as if the number 30 actually means something).

  Remember the 2001-02 Champions League? United manager Ferguson planned to retire at the end of that season (he eventually changed his mind) and the final was scheduled to take place in Glasgow, Fergie's birthplace – so, naturally, some concluded that their opponents were virtually wasting their time turning up in the knock-out rounds. Nobody told Bayer Leverkusen, who beat United on away goals in the semi-finals.
  
  There was also the 2006 World Cup, when England were bound to get revenge on Portugal for their quarter-final defeat at the European Championship finals two years earlier, and then go on to meet Germany in the final 40 years after beating West Germany in the World Cup final. Right? Wrong. Portugal knocked out England on penalties again (and the Germans lost to Italy in the last four).
  
  Even managers get involved. I remember that, after England were knocked out of the 1998 World Cup by Argentina in the second round on penalties, Glenn Hoddle said that it took a couple of minutes for events to sink in because he couldn't believe his team was out. A sense came through in his words that Hoddle felt England were pre-destined to go much further. Which might explain why his team didn't feel the need to practice penalties.

  It's ironic that England is the betting capital of the world and yet its football culture invests so much faith in fate. Believing that something is pre-ordained is the antithesis of sound wagering. Before placing a bet, it makes sense to explore every meaningful factor rather than buying into tabloid talk about things that are ‘meant to be'.

  So if anybody tells you United are going to win the Champions League because it's 20 years since Fergie first started collecting trophies at the club, or that Cesc Fabregas will lift the ‘Cup with the Big Ears', as the French call it, because the final Estadio Santiago Bernabeu, home of Real Madrid, great rivals of his boyhood idols, Barcelona, is staging the final, then breathe deeply, smile sweetly and tell them to move along.

• James Eastham keeps us up to date with the news back home European Football this week.
  Email James with your view on football james.eastham@sportingbet.com

  Focus on Europe
  Next week the Champions League – the world`s premier club competition, regardless of what fans in South America think of the Copa Libertadores – returns to action, with four games scheduled. AC Milan v Manchester United, Lyon v Real Madrid, Bayern Munich v Fiorentina and FC Porto v Arsenal. Next week we'll look in detail at all the fixtures and assess who are more likely to make it through to the quarter-finals.

  In World Cup years, it's always worth looking through the squad lists of clubs that make it to the Champions League knock-out stages as a guide to which nations might succeed at the World Cup finals a couple of months later. If lots of players from a particular country are good enough to play for the Champions League´s foremost contenders, then the country in question has a decent shot of reaching the latter stages of the World Cup later that year.

  For a good example, cast your mind back to 2002: Carsten Ramelow, Oliver Neuville, Bernd Schneider, Lucio amd Roberto Carlos met in the World Cup final in Yokohama just 46 days after facing off in the Champions League final between Real Madrid and Bayer Leverkusen in Glasgow (Michael Ballack would have been on the list but for a yellow card that ruled him out of the World Cup final).

  Looking ahead, if you take the 10 favourites to win the Champions League (according to Sportingbet's prices) and examine the 16 players that have started most league games for them this season, you'll find that the world´s primary football nations provide the bulk of the players. Twenty-one Spaniards, including Xavi, Andres Iniesta and Iker Casillas (although no Fernando Torres, of course), are on the list. Eleven Italians are present, thanks to AC Milan and Inter's progress to the knock-out stages. Ten English players make it, despite the Premier League's habit of relying on imported stars.

  Which country has most players of all? Brazil, perhaps, still the world´s most prolific exporter? Or Holland, whose stars remain effortlessly able to settle anywhere?

  It's France, supplying no fewer than 27 of the 160 players in the sample. Nine of the 10 clubs have at least one Frenchman in their 'top 16' players, and the exception, Bayern Munich, would have included Franck Ribery but for the knee injury that has ravaged his season..

  Which got me thinking: if French players are good enough to play for the world's best clubs, are we right to write off their World Cup chances?

  Doubts about manager Raymond Domenech persist, yet he led them to the 2006 World Cup. And, while that side may have included the inspirational Zidane and imperiously reborn Lilian Thuram, it also contained the mundane skills of Willy Sagnol, Eric Abidal and Florent Malouda.

  Hardly anyone is mentioning France as potential world champions - but then, few did four years ago, and they got within a couple of penalty kicks of lifting the trophy. See how many Frenchman make it through to the quarter-finals of the Champions League. By that stage, France's price of 14/1 to lift the World Cup might start to garner interest.

• James Eastham keeps us up to date with the news back home European Football this week.
  Email James with your view on football james.eastham@sportingbet.com

  Focus on Europe
  Last week, former Republic of Ireland striker Tony Cascarino, now a respected columnist for The Times newspaper in London, said Wayne Rooney deserved to be recognised among the five top strikers in the world.

  Anybody who has witnessed Rooney's recent performances for Manchester United would struggle to disagree with Cascarino's view. The 24-year-old striker struck all four goals in United's recent 4-0 win over Hull City in the Premier League, adding another goal in United's potentially vital 3-1 victory over Arsenal at the Emirates Stadium eight days later. His finish against the Gunners – a marvellous, first-time shot on the run following a superbly-timed Nani pass – took Rooney's tally of league goals to 20, bettering his previous highest total for a season by four goals with 14 games to go.

  After a couple of years living in the shadow of Cristiano Ronaldo, Rooney is indisputably United's star turn. His workrate, attitude and commitment remain utterly impeachable, but the higher number of goals has now made him almost the complete striker.

  And Rooney's improved strikerate is not unconnected to the Portuguese's departure: as former Holland star Ruud Gullit remarked after the Arsenal game last Sunday, Rooney no longer has to track up and down the left flank as he did when Ronaldo was in the side, leaving him fresher to finish chances when they come along. In the past couple of seasons, Rooney often tired as he approached the goal. Now he has more energy in crucial areas of the pitch.

  Seven years ago next week, Rooney made his England debut, coming on as a second-half substitute in a friendly against Australia at Upton Park less than six months after making his professional debut. I was lucky enough to be there, and made a point of tracking Rooney's every move once he took to the field to ensure I noticed his first touch. It was awesome: tucked away on the left touchline, Rooney nervelessly killed the ball first time, nudged it out of his feet and delivered a perfect 60-yard crossfield pass to a team-mate. In that instant, the 17-year-old showed he was utterly at ease in international football.

  Fifty-four caps and 25 goals later, Rooney has emerged as an excellent long-term bet to break Bobby Charlton's all-time England scoring record (49 goals) and the centrepiece of Fabio Capello's plans to become the first manager to lead England to victory at the World Cup since Sir Alf Ramsey in 1966. Thanks to Rooney, England are 5/1 third favourites to lift the trophy in Johannesburg on July 11. Rooney is priced at 14/1 to be top scorer, ranking him behind David Villa (10/1), Luis Fabiano (10/1) and Fernando Torres (11/1) and alongside Ronaldo and Lionel Messi (14/1).

  Getting back to Cascarino's point, is Rooney one of the top five strikers in the world? Yes, along with Torres, Villa, Didier Drogba and Samuel Eto'o. His performances at the moment suggest he'll be in that top five for a very long time.

• Michael Church brings you an up date from Japan.
  Email Michael with your view on football michael.church@sportingbet.com

  Far East Football
  Whether they make it through to the quarterfinals of the Asian Champions League or not, Beijing Guoan’s presence in the knockout phase of the continental club competition represents another step forward for battered and beleaguered Chinese football.

  The Chinese Super League champions were set to meet two-time Asian champions Suwon Bluewings from South Korea in the second round of the competition, knowing a place in the last eight was within their grasp.

  But, win or lose, after the tough times that have been endured by the Chinese over the last three or four years, just making it out of the group stages has been a major success both for Beijing and for the Chinese game in general.

  Not since Shanghai Shenhua in 2006 has a club from the world’s most populous nation managed to qualify for the knockout rounds of the region’s leading club competition.

  And even then Shanghai struggled, falling in the quarterfinals to South Korea’s Ulsan Hyundai.

  Indeed, the record of Chinese clubs in Asia’s top club competition is poor – only Dalian Shide have, since the advent of professionalism in China in 1994, come close to being crowned Asia’s number one team.

  That was back in 1998, when the club from the northern port city lost in the final in Hong Kong in a penalty shootout against another Korean side, Pohang Steelers.

  Pohang, of course, are the current champions and if there is one example the Chinese would love to be able to follow it is the one set by their near neighbours.

  South Korean sides have, in contrast to the Chinese, played in eight of the continental championship finals since football in China turned professional 16 years ago. It’s an enviable record that has yielded seven titles.

  The Japanese, too, have put the Chinese in the shade, despite an initial reluctance by many J.League clubs to take Asian competition seriously. Clubs from Japan have won two of the last three ACL titles while Jubilo Iwata reached three finals in a row from 1999 through to 2001.

  Coming from a league where corruption and match fixing are rife, it’s little wonder the Chinese have been incapable of competing at the top level for so long.

  But following on last year’s purge of high-ranking officials and the success of the national team in February’s East Asian Championship, Beijing’s progression to the knockout phase was another piece of much-needed good news for the game in China.

  “We accomplished our goal and secured a foothold for China in the continental tournament,” said Hong Yuanshuo, Beijing’s coach after they booked their place in the second round with victory over Japan’s Kawasaki Frontale.

  “I feel really proud of my players. I want to express my heartfelt thanks to my players and the club.”

  A win against Japanese opposition is rare for a Chinese club, but this was Beijing’s second of the tournament against a club that has reached the quarterfinals of the ACL in two of the last three seasons.

  Beijing’s progress represents another of the small green shoots of recovery Chinese football so desperately needs to nurture if it going to blossom again in the future.

• Michael Church brings you an up date from Japan.
  Email Michael with your view on football michael.church@sportingbet.com

  Far East Football
  Seol Ki-hyeon must be wondering why he bothered moving back to South Korea at the start of the year.

  For the former Fulham and Anderlecht striker, it was a move into the unknown; despite being more than a decade into his career, the 31-year-old had never played professionally in his homeland.

  The purpose had been plain – to secure a place in Huh Jung-moo’s squad to represent South Korea at the World Cup finals in South Africa.

  Seol’s place in the squad was all but guaranteed with the forward having been a regular in Huh’s team despite inconsistent club form both at Fulham and while on loan with Saudi Arabian side Al Hilal.

  With six months to go, Seol negotiated his way out of his contract with the London club and signed for Pohang Steelers, the reigning Asian champions.

  But since putting pen to paper, Seol has yet to kick a ball in anger for his current employers. An injury sustained in preseason training sidelined him before a further injury saw him undergo surgery to repair cartilage in his knee.

  As a result, not only has Seol yet to make his debut for his new team but he has failed to be included in Huh’s squad for the World Cup finals.

  Seol’s name was the one glaring omission from the 30-man provisional list released by the national team coach last week, with the striker injury problems prompting Huh to play safe and deny Seol an appearance at a third World Cup.

  Instead, Huh has included another veteran of the country’s improbable run to the semifinals of the 2002, with 34-year-old striker Ahn Jung-hwan included in the list.

  Never mind that, until March, Ahn had not featured in the colours of the national team since the middle of 2008. Where he once looked set to slide into anonymity, Ahn’s aim to book a place in the final 23-man World Cup squad has become a national obsession.

  A solid run of form in the Chinese Super League with Dalian Shide over the last year has propelled the pretty boy striker back into the spotlight and, with Seol out, Huh is clearly looking for some experienced heads in his squad to shepherd the kids through the finals.

  Ahn’s goal that famously eliminated the Italians from the second round of the 2002 tournament is one of the most historic moments in the South Korean game and he remains an icon of the sport in his homeland.

  But apart from Seol’s absence and Ahn’s inclusion, there have been few surprises in the Korean squad.

  Manchester United midfielder Park Ji-sung will lead the way while much will rest on the shoulders of other Europe-based players such as Ki Sung-young and Lee Chung-young.

  The Koreans, though, do realise that a place in the second round of the tournament is a possibility.

  Huh certainly has the squad to match, and indeed surpass, Greece and Nigeria but whether the coach himself has the tactical ability and big game experience to make the difference is, perhaps, the biggest question left unanswered as the World Cup draws closer.

• Michael Church brings you an up date from Japan.
  Email Michael with your view on football michael.church@sportingbet.com

  Far East Football
  In a fairer world, Bob Houghton would be lauded as a legend, hailed as a hero in any one of the numerous nations that has been privileged enough to act as a temporary home to the nomadic Englishman.

  From Saudi Arabia to China and numerous points both between and beyond, the former Fulham midfielder has throughout his lengthy coaching career used an engaging, gentlemanly charm to coax fine performances from players all over Asia.

  As the current coach of India, Houghton has the unenviable task of not only attempting to raise the level of his team but also of educating many within the cricket-loving nation about the finer aspects of the beautiful game.

  So far he’s been successful, qualifying the country for their first appearance at the Asian Cup finals since 1984 thanks to a victory in the Asian Challenge Cup two years ago.

  His success in India, however, comes as little surprise to those who have followed the career of a man who most famously steered Swedish side Malmo to the final of the European Cup in 1979.

  For all his success, there can be no denying he has his regrets: not taking the opportunity to coach the stupendously talented Iran side in the mid 1990s when he was presented with the opportunity is one that still leaves him shaking his head.

  But it is his time in China that has him reminiscing with relish, and also pondering what could – and should – have been.

  It’s more than 10 years since Houghton was relieved of his duties as head coach of the Chinese national team after he was convinced – against his better judgement – to take charge of the country’s Olympic team as they tried to qualify for the Sydney Games.

  Shifting him from national team duty to looking after the under 23 team could be seen as a form of flattery, an appreciation by the Chinese authorities of the fine job being done with the senior side.

  Qualifying for the Olympics was a priority for the Chinese Football Association and Houghton was a man they trusted implicitly.

  In the end, it proved to be a mistake – as much for Houghton as it was for China.

  Drawn against Bahrain and South Korea, the Chinese narrowly lost their opening game in Seoul while a draw in Shanghai against the same opponents ended any realistic hope of progress.

  As a result, the Olympic team missed out on a place in Sydney and Houghton, ultimately, paid the price.

  Gone was the man who had brought stability to the Chinese game, whose calm professional approach instilled a confidence in his players that had often been lacking in the past. A squad featuring the talents of players such as Hao Haidong, Fan Zhiyi and Ma Mingyu did not lack ability; in the self-belief stakes, however, it was a different matter altogether.

  In the aftermath came Bora Milutinovic and the wily Serb reaped the benefits of a talented squad and the groundwork done by Houghton to take the country to their first – and so far only – World Cup finals

  But since that appearance in South Korea in 2002, which ended with three insipid defeats, Chinese football has never been the same.

  The game in the world’s most populous country now is derelict and, where once it promised a great deal, it currently lurches from one crisis to the next, temporarily picking itself off the floor, only to have its legs cut from beneath it by yet another scandal.

  The Chinese could do worse than take a step back to enhance their future; but with a federation full of band suits who know next to nothing about the game, the chances of that are slim at best.

• Michael Church brings you an up date from Japan.
  Email Michael with your view on football michael.church@sportingbet.com

  Far East Football
  Back in February, with the East Asian Championship trophy locked away in the display case of the Chinese Football Association’s Beijing headquarters, everything was starting to look rosy for football in the world’s most populous nation.

  The worst storm in the history of the sport in China had started to abate as the match fixing scandal that threatened to kill the game began to subside, with the alleged perpetrators out of the way, never to darken football’s doorstep again.

  With a new leadership at the federation, much of the cancer rooted out – from corrupt officials to coaches, players, clubs and referees of questionable moral fortitude – and a national side that had usurped Japan and South Korea as the regional champions, there was much to like about the first months of 2010.

  Even the opening weeks of the Asian Champions League suggested that old clichéd corner had been turned as Beijing Guoan, Changchun Yatai and Shandong Luneng all started brightly. Only tournament debutants Henan Jianye looked to be out of their depth.

  February, though, feels like a long time ago and, with just one round of matches remaining in the group stages of the 2010 edition of the continental club championship, only Beijing retain any hope of making it through to the knockout phase of the competition.

  No Chinese club has progressed beyond the group stage of the tournament since Shanghai Shenhua did so in 2006 and what’s certain is neither Shandong nor Changchun will be breaking that record this year.

  Shandong – once the most dominant force in Chinese football – started their campaign with a win over Sanfrecce Hiroshima but, from there, Branko Ivankovic’s side struggled and, four games later, have yet to add to that solitary victory.

  Changchun have not faired any better with their only win so far a 9-0 win over Group F whipping boys Persipura Jayapura of Indonesia.

  Henan, meanwhile, have only picked up a point and on Matchday 5 they lost to Singapore Armed Forces as Richard Bok’s side recorded their first-ever ACL win.

  Beijing, the reigning Chinese Super League champions, have at least put up a fight.

  With one match remaining, they sit in second place in Group E, one point ahead of Kawasaki Frontale, against whom they play in their final group game.

  A draw will take Beijing into the last 16 as runners-up behind South Korea’s Seongnam Ilhwa, who have already earned their place in the next round. Beijing won the first fixture between the clubs 3-1 in a snow-swept Todoroki Stadium and they will be hoping for a repeat of the result – if not the conditions – on home soil.

  But even if Beijing fail, there will still be Chinese representation in the knockout phase of the competition.

  That will come in the shape of former national team captain Li Weifeng, who currently plies his trade for South Korean side Suwon Bluewings.

  The volatile central defender – as well known for his short fuse and his propensity for being sent off as he is for his leadership and defensive qualities – has been a regular for Cha Bum-kun’s side in the ACL this year as Suwon, like all four Korean sides, breezed into the second round.

  And while the Chinese celebrated their national team’s win over the Koreans in February – their first-ever – Li was quick to stress the gap that remains between the professional leagues in both countries.

  "The CSL teams and players still lack concentration and mental strength,” said Li recently. “Korean teams are all very dedicated, determined and fully focused.

  "I am not prejudiced in the K-League’s favour because I am playing for Suwon but I am Chinese and my views are solely based on my experience of playing in both K-League and CSL.”

  Beijing will be hoping that they can go some way towards correcting the imbalance that exists. That quest continues against Kawasaki on April 28.

• Michael Church brings you an up date from Japan.
  Email Michael with your view on football michael.church@sportingbet.com

  Far East Football
   

  Dragan Stojkovic knows his football; when you've seen and done what he has throughout his career, you rarely make a bad call.

  As a player he was imperious, a dazzlingly creative force in midfield for Red Star Belgrade during the late 1980s while leading Yugoslavia to the quarterfinals of the World Cup in Italy in 1990.

  For much of the last 16 years, he has been a regular on the Japanese football scene; lording it as Nagoya Grampus' resident genius for eight seasons before leaving to attend to footballing matters in Serbia only to return in 2008 to take over as Grampus manager.

  Tasked with turning around a club that has so often fallen short of the standards expected by owners Toyota, Stojkovic has produced a team capable of challenging for Japanese football's major honours.

  So when he declares Japan's recent 3-0 loss against a Serbia side he called the country's ‘C Team' as a ‘slap in the face', then the country's struggling World Cup-bound team should be sitting up and taking note.

  The loss against a Serbian team missing famous names such as Nemanja Vidic and Nikola Zigic - harbouring instead those who earn their living in the country's domestic league - was a dire warning of what is to come for Japan in South Africa in June.

  The team has been poor in recent months and Stojkovic – like the vast majority of Japanese football watchers – is concerned about the attitude of the players as the World Cup approaches.

  "Big red warning signs are flashing and hopefully this slap in the face will wake them up," he said. "If it doesn't, then they need another slap in the face.

  "With this kind of attitude, they have no chance (at the World Cup). It will be very, very difficult. I cannot understand the attitude of the players."

  While Stojkovic chose to point the finger at the players rather than at national team boss Takeshi Okada, it has become apparent the manager has lost the ability to motivate his players.

  In the eyes of many of Japan's disillusioned football fans, the World Cup is already a right off.

  Sights are already being set on the post-South Africa landscape and, with Okada making clear his intention to stand down after the finals, the thought of who should succeed the former Yokohama F Marinos manager has started to crop up.

  So who better, then, than Stojkovic, an articulate, intelligent man who knows Japanese football better than any other foreigner currently working in the J.League?

  He's young and dynamic, is well connected within the world game while he also possesses a maverick streak reminiscent of Philippe Troussier, the man who managed to squeeze the most out of the Japanese on the football field.

  For the conservative suits at the JFA, Stojkovic's outspoken nature might work against him.

  Stojkovic was a regular in the referee's black book in his J.League playing days and even last season he was sent to the stands for sending a spectacular volley from in front of his own dugout and into the opposing team's goal.

  But while killjoy officials failed to appreciate the jaw dropping skill involved in such an astonishing feat, millions of Youtube users have drooled over the clip of his outrageous strike.

  Stojkovic could be just the man to reignite Japan's football fire after what is promising to be a dismal, demoralizing World Cup. The question remains over whether the JFA would be brave enough to take him on.

• Michael Church brings you an up date from Japan.
  Email Michael with your view on football michael.church@sportingbet.com

  Far East Football
   

  The 2010 J.League season has all been about the aging heroes of World Cups past returning home in the hope of regaining the form required to have one last stab at playing on the game's biggest stage in June.

  Shunsuke Nakamura has already made his mark with Yokohama F Marinos, scoring with a fine long-range strike against Kawasaki Frontale and has been helping an otherwise average side start the season well.

  Matters have been less spectacular for Junichi Inamoto, whose new club Frontale have had a lacklustre beginning to the campaign.

  Perennial runners-up to Kashima Antlers in the league and a two-time quarterfinalist in the Asian Champions League, Frontale have yet to impress this season in the league after four rounds of matches.

  It's not been a whole lot better in the Asian Champions League, where it took Kawasaki three rounds before they picked up their first three points of the campaign with a win over a tired and depleted Melbourne Victory.

  But what matters most for a player like Inamoto is game time and the former Arsenal and Fulham midfielder has been a regular at the heart of the Frontale midfield, playing for 305 minutes in the four league games so far.

  On Saturday, however, he came face-to-face with a former national team mate who is hoping his form in the J.League over the coming weeks can somehow force him into the late reckoning for a place on the plane to Johannesburg.

  Shinji Ono is, in the eyes of many, the most naturally talented footballer Japan has ever produced.

  Injuries, principally, have stopped him from realizing his vast potential and, in the winter, he returned to J.League for a third stint, this time with his hometown club Shimizu S-Pulse.

  Whether Japan coach Takeshi Okada is paying attention is a question only he can answer, but the national team boss knows Ono only too well. Back in April 1998, it was Okada who gave an 18-year-old Ono his debut for Japan before taking him to the World Cup finals in France.

  There, Ono made only a fleeting appearance, coming on as a late substitute in the 2-1 defeat against Jamaica. It was a game tailor-made for the vibrant, youthful unpredictability that Ono brought at the time, but for some reason Okada refused to gamble on the young upstart.

  Now, 12 years on, Okada has the opportunity to turn to Ono once again and pick him for a team that lacks the ability to open up opposing defences.

  If he does, then Ono will be off to his fourth World Cup and will be the only Japanese player to have been included in all of his country's appearances at the game's greatest event.

  Sentimentality, though, should not be allowed to dictate whether Ono and Okada team up for one final fling.

  Form, and nothing else, will be the deciding factor and, with S-Pulse having made a start to the league season that sees them sitting in second position behind Kashima, perhaps Okada will be taking the Shinkansen down to Shizuoka prefecture to see Ono in action.

  Ono has previously said his hope for inclusion in Japan's World Cup squad was the reason for returning home from Bochum, where he played last season, but for now the former Asian Player of the Year appears to be focused solely on giving his all for S-Pulse.

  "I'm just trying to fit in here," he said after Saturday's meeting with Frontale. "We're playing well as a team. I think we could be even better if the other guys demanded more out of me."

  If they do, then maybe Okada will come knocking and ask the biggest question of all.

• Michael Church brings you an up date from Japan.
  Email Michael with your view on football michael.church@sportingbet.com

  Far East Football
  Four games in and already three of South Korea's four representatives have booked their spots in the second round of the Asian Champions League.

  Seongnam Ilhwa, Suwon Bluewings and Jeonbuk Motors – as well as Japanese champions Kashima Antlers – secured safe passage into the last 16 of the competition with the minimum of fuss, progressing with two rounds of group games remaining.

  With defending champions Pohang Steelers winning for the third time in a row when they defeated China's Shandong Luneng in round four of the group stage last week, the chances of all four Korean participants making it through to the next phase are significant.

  The Koreans have long been considered the masters of the club game in Asia, with the country indulging in a period of domination in the late 1990s and early 2000s that has been reignited in recent seasons.

  Seongnam Ilhwa won the now-defunct Asian Club Championship in December 1995, defeating Saudi Arabia's Al Nassr in extra time in Riyadh to become the first Korean club to claim the continental club title in more than a decade.

  Since then, though, the K-League has provided at least one finalist in the continental championship on nine occasions with two finals – in 1997 and 2002 – played between two Korean clubs.

  Pohang Steelers won back-to-back titles in 1997 and 1998 – the first by defeating Ilhwa in the final in Kuala Lumpur - before Suwon repeated the feat in 2001 and 2002, with compatriots Anyang Cheetahs finishing as runners-up in the second of their victories.

  A mini-dry spell upon the inauguration of the Asian Champions League saw the balance of power in the continental game shift to the west with Al Ain of the United Arab Emirates and Al Ittihad from Saudi Arabia winning the first three titles between them before Jeonbuk returned the Koreans to the top in 2006.

  Jeonbuk's win kick started a period of huge success for clubs from the east as Japanese duo Urawa Reds and Gamba Osaka claimed the crown before Pohang became the first club to be Asian champions on three separate occasions with their win in Tokyo last year over Al Ittihad.

  Now, with all four Korean clubs either through or close in the 2010 edition of the competition, the chances of continued K-League domination are as high as they have ever been.

  One nation that looks unlikely to challenge is China, with the country's clubs squandering decent starts to the competition to slip back into the kind of struggles that have become the norm for the club game in the world's most populous nation.

  First-timers Henan Jianye are as good as eliminated while Shandong Luneng and Changchun Yatai have their work cut out to make it through to the next phase. Only Chinese Super League champions Beijing Guoan have made a decent fist so far of the group stages of the competition.

  And then there are the Japanese. Kashima have breezed through the first phase and are one of only two teams – along with Seongnam – to have won all four of their matches so far.

  Sanfrecce Hiroshima have found the going tough at continental level while Kawasaki Frontale and Gamba Osaka have yet to fire off on all cylinders.

  In the west, only Iranian outsiders Zob Ahan has stood out from the pack so far with their back-to-back wins leaving big spending Uzbeks Bunyodkor – complete with Luiz Felipe Scolari and Rivaldo – struggling to make it into the knockout rounds.

  The final two group games will see the situation shake itself out, but for the Koreans there will be precious little to worry about until the next round begins.

• Michael Church brings you an up date from Japan.
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  Far East Football
  Few leagues can ever have endured the close season from which the Chinese Super League is about to emerge.

  Allegations of match fixing, teams being relegated for irregularities in results and leading officials being arrested and removed from their positions have almost become the norm since the 2009 CSL finished back in October.

  Then, on the final day of the season, Beijing Guoan were crowned champions in what was a thrilling finish to the championship, with any one of three clubs capable of claiming the title with one round of matches to go.

  But with the head of the Chinese Football Association, Nan Yong, arrested as part of a match fixing investigation launched earlier in the year, Beijing's win has all but faded from view.

  There was further strife as Chengdu Blades and Guangzhou Pharmaceutical clubs were relegated from the top flight and rumours abounded that the 2010 league season would be delayed or possibly even cancelled.

  Matters, however, have started to take a turn for the better in the last two months.

  China's victory at the East Asian Championship went some way towards soothing the wounds that had been inflicted over the previous three months as Gao Hongbo's team saw off the challenges of World Cup-bound duo Japan and South Korea.

  While winning the tournament was nothing new for China – the national team had claimed the trophy in 2005 – it was the manner in which they were crowned East Asian champions, playing with a vibrancy and confidence not seen for many years, that gave hope to the sport in world's most populous nation.

  Since then, there have been increased positivity, not least from the country's club sides playing in the Asian Champions League.

  In recent years, Chinese clubs have struggled at continental level and none of the nation's representatives have progressed beyond the group stages of the competition since 2006.

  However, after the first two rounds of matches, Beijing had a perfect record in their group and both Changchun Yatai and Shandong Luneng were in position to mount a serious challenge to progress to the knockout phase.

  Even Henan Jianye, on their debut appearance in the competition, have had a solid enough start in a difficult group.

  All this, too, has been achieved despite the clubs being far from the top of their game due to the late start of the Chinese Super League.

  But from Friday, that will no longer be an excuse as the 16-team top flight of Chinese football begins its 2010 season in earnest.

  Beijing, Changchun and Henan – last season's top three – will again be among the favourites while Shandong and Shanghai Shenhua will also have their sights set on reclaiming the trophy.

  Shanghai have not won the title since 2003 and so, in an attempt to return to their glory days, have hired former Croatia coach Miroslav Blazevic at great expense.

  Shandong, meanwhile, have replaced Serbian coach Ljubisa Tumbakovic – under whom the club won the league title in 2006 and 2008 – with former Iran coach Branko Ivankovic.

  The scandals have threatened to destroy Chinese football but, with the league season now about to begin, it could be that the game in the Middle Kingdom is ready to come back stronger than before.

• Michael Church brings you an up date from Japan.
  Email Michael with your view on football michael.church@sportingbet.com

  Far East Football
  In the past, the J.League's star quality has come from the array of foreign talent on display; for 2010 however, it's more about the big names of Japanese football who have come home.

  Shunsuke Nakamura completed his return to the J.League on Saturday afternoon when he took to the field in Yokohama F Marinos' 3-0 win over newly promoted Shonan Bellmare.

  The former Reggina and Celtic midfielder ended a disappointing spell at Espanyol to return to the club where he started his professional career as he aims to be ready for Japan's trip to the World Cup finals in June.

  While it was far from an auspicious debut – Nakamura clearly lacks match fitness and struggled with the pace of the game – the 31-year-old set up his side's first of the day in front of a crowd of over 32,000 at Yokohama International Stadium.

  "I've played at the stadium here a bunch of times with the national team, so nothing felt new about that," Nakamura told the Japanese press after the game. "And it was nice to hear the fans singing the same song from 7½ years ago.

  "But everyone on the pitch was Japanese and that felt a little weird. Your teammates, the opponents, the referees – that was strange. And the game was quick; against the top teams, we're going to have to do better than we did today."

  Marinos, despite the return of their favourite son, are unlikely to be a serious challenger for this year's title given the lack of investment in the club in recent years by principal backer Nissan, the automobile manufacturer.

  The woes of the car industry have hurt Marinos in the last five years and the club is a long way off its heyday in the middle of the last decade when, under Takeshi Okada, they dominated Japanese football.

  However, another of Japan's returning stars could be among the serious contenders for a J.League winners medal at the end of the season.

  Junichi Inamoto brought his nomadic life in Europe to an end over the close season to sign for Kawasaki Frontale, the club who have put up the sternest fight against triple champions Kashima Antlers.

  Frontale were runners-up in the standings once again last season but the signing of Inamoto – who played professionally in England, Germany, France and Turkey before his return home – is sure to bolster their challenge for the title this season.

  Certainly, their campaign has started well with only Frontale and newly promoted Vegalta Sendai winning both of their opening games of the season.

  Kashima, meanwhile, slipped to a 1-1 draw against Kyoto Sanga after kicking off their campaign with a 2-0 victory over former Asian champions Urawa Reds.

  Nakamura and Inamoto, however, are not the only Japanese stars to return to the J.League for the 2010 campaign.

  But while the aforementioned duo have done so with the World Cup foremost in their minds, Shinji Ono's chances of being included in Okada's squad are remote at best.

  Where he was once seen as the great hope for Japanese football, injuries have restricted the midfielder's development, although he remains the only player from Japan to have won a major European trophy.

  That came in 2002 when he was a major part of the Feyenoord side that won the UEFA Cup, but since then his influence has waned.

  Now back in the J.League for a third stint – he started his career with Urawa, who he rejoined in 2006 when he left the Netherlands – Ono has signed for Shimizu S-Pulse after a year-long spell with Bochum in Germany.

  Shimizu have had a solid enough start to the season, drawing their first game and winning their second as they aim to build on last year's third-place finish.

  But despite the return of the old boys, it is Kashima who remain the favourites for what would be a record fourth consecutive J.League title.
• Michael Church brings you an up date from Japan.
  Email Michael with your view on football michael.church@sportingbet.com

  Far East Football
  Talk to any Malaysian football fan of a certain age, and he'll happily recount tales of when the country was a continental power.

  Names such as Santok Singh and Mokhtar Dari will trail off his tongue and he'll become misty eyed as his mind goes back to the country's appearance at the Munich Olympics in 1972.

  Conversation will turn to the days when the country easily had the beating of the Japanese before his voice becomes tinged with regret and despair at how far the once mighty nation has fallen.

  Being a fan of the Malaysian national team in the 1970s was easy. The same can't be said in 2010, for either Malaysia or any of the nations in South East Asia.

  Last week, the final line-up for the 2011 Asian Cup finals was completed and, for only the third time in the competition's 55-year history, not one country from South East Asia has progressed to the finals.

  Granted, the region has never produced a winner of the competition in the 14 previous editions of the continental championship, but there is a passion for the game that runs deep in South East Asia that deserves better than what is currently on display.

  Malaysia's hopes of qualifying for the finals evaporated long ago, as did those of Indonesia while South East Asian champions Vietnam put up little fight against China and Syria.

  Thailand and Singapore at least went into the final round of qualifiers with the chance of making it to the finals, only for their hopes to die at the hands of Iran and Jordan respectively.

  It's the first time since 1988 that the region has not been represented at the continental championship and only the third time in the tournament's history – the other year of ASEAN absenteeism coming in 1964.

  There are, of course, some mitigating circumstances; qualifying for the middle-ranked nations in Asia has been made more difficult with the way the competition is now structured.

  Ahead of the last edition of the competition, the AFC decided that not only would the winners of the 2007 edition qualify automatically for the next finals, but so too would the teams who finished in second and third.

  As a result, South Korea joined tournament winners Iraq and runners-up Saudi Arabia in booking a berth in the 2011 championship.

  One spot was given automatically to hosts Qatar and another two – bizarrely – awarded to the winners of the AFC Challenge Cup in 2008 and 2010, leaving just 10 places available in qualifying.

  Five groups of four were drawn with the top two from each group progressing to the finals and yet still none of the five South East Asian teams who entered were good enough to finish in the top half of their respective qualifying groups.

  There will no doubt be repercussions with the media and fans calling for coaches to be fired. But after several years – in some cases decades – of mismanagement, perhaps the ire should be turned instead on the administrators.

  A lack of professionalism exists in the region that is beyond laughable. Reports suggested ahead of their clash with Australia in Brisbane that Indonesia's players had to pay for their own visas. It may be a minor point, but it is symptomatic of a system that reeks of amateurism.

  It's the kind of story that is regularly told by those who have worked around the region throughout the last two decades. While countries like Japan and South Korea have embraced professionalism, football in South East Asia is still run as if it was in the 1970s.

  And therein lies the problem. The leading nations in Asia have moved on and South East Asia is left to play catch-up. But while they bask in the glory days of the past, the gap is growing all the time.

• Michael Church brings you an up date from Japan.
  Email Michael with your view on football michael.church@sportingbet.com

  Far East Football
  The deal is done, the ink on the contract is dry and Shunsuke Nakamura – the last of what was a golden generation of Japanese midfielders – is now back to ply his trade in the J.League.

  Other Japanese midfielders remain in Europe, such as Wolfsburg's Makoto Hasebe and Daisuke Matsui at Grenoble, but it is Nakamura's return that marks the end of an era.

  The 31-year-old is the last of those who could – and should – have made a much greater impact on the global game to return home or to hang up their boots.

  Back at the start of the millennium, it all looked so different as Japan reached the quarterfinals of the Olympic Games in Sydney before winning the Asian Cup title with a 1-0 victory over Saudi Arabia in the final.

  A trawl through both those squads now reveals a tale of what could have been and Nakamura's return to Yokohama F Marinos only serves to put a seal on a story that should have had a different outcome.

  Frenchman Philippe Troussier had, at his disposal, midfielders at each tournament who could turn games on their own.

  In Sydney, his squad featured Nakamura and Hidetoshi Nakata, the unquestioned standard bearer for Japanese football for much of the decade, as well as the promising Junichi Inamoto.

  For the Asian Cup – played in Lebanon – Nakata made way, due to commitments at AS Roma, and in his place came Shinji Ono, who had missed the Olympics due to injury.

  This quartet had the talent and the promise to become the most complete midfield unit Asian football had ever seen. But, almost 10 years later, that potential has largely gone unrealized.

  Nakata, of course, has long gone: He quit at the age of just 29 following Japan's final game at the 2006 World Cup in Germany, a 4-1 humiliation by Brazil, but he was, and remains, Japan's finest ever player.

  Talented, hard working and intelligent, he had the courage to move to Italy while still in his early 20s and in his time in Serie A he won the Scudetto with Roma in 2001 as well as the Italian Cup with Parma one year later.

  His retirement, though, sparked the start of a decline for Japan that looks set to continue into the World Cup finals in South Africa in June.

  Over the last few months, the others have called time on their careers in Europe. Ono and Inamoto both signed for J.League clubs – Shimizu S-Pulse and Kawasaki Frontale respectively – before Nakamura's high profile return this week.

  The motive is clear: all three harbour hopes of being included in Takeshi Okada's World Cup squad.

  Nakamura, despite his waning talents, should have few problems being selected. Inamoto, too, is likely to earn a place in the 23-man squad at least.

  Ono, arguably the country's most naturally gifted player ever, will have much work to do in the first weeks of the season – which kicks off on March 6 - to force his way into the frame.

  But what the team could really do with at its heart is Nakata, whose drive, purpose and leadership always gave the Japanese the determination to battle against any opponent.

  That, though, is gone and Japan's hopes of any kind of success in South Africa are slim at best.

• Michael Church brings you an up date from Japan.
  Email Michael with your view on football michael.church@sportingbet.com

  Far East Football
  One of the most attractive aspects of Asian football has always been the diversity on offer in such a vast and fascinating continent in which 46 – many of them very different – national associations come together in a lively, sometimes spicy, cocktail.

  From the ramshackle intimacy of the Beirut Municipal Stadium to the opulence of the King Fahd Stadium on the outskirts of Riyadh through to the clinical efficiency of the cavernous Saitama Stadium in Japan and the countless points in between, there can be few continents within the world game that offer so much colour.

  It is those differences that give the game in the continent its greatest asset – and in some ways causes the region its greatest problems.

  Finding consensus in a confederation that is home to nations like Indonesia, which in itself boasts more languages, cultures and races than some continents combined, is not just difficult; when it happens, it is nigh on miraculous.

  For all intents and purposes, Asia shouldn't work. It's too different from east to west and from north to south; from Lebanon to Guam and from Mongolia to one its newest members, Australia.

  And yet it does, in its own way and those differences are what should be celebrated. But instead, there's a sense that in the rush towards greater professionalism, the continent's club game is in danger of becoming just a little bland.

  There can be no denying that a competition of the stature of the Asian Champions League – the 2010 season of which kicks off this week - needs a strong hand to guide it; last year the tournament received a much-needed overhaul, but in some ways the changes that came were a little too zealous.

  Out from the tournament went clubs from nations where the domestic league was not deemed to meet the criteria set by the confederation's Professional Leagues Committee, a body that chose to model everything on their checklist against the lofty standards of the J.League.

  No one will deny that the Japanese professional set-up is what every nation in Asia should aspire towards, but using a cookie-cutter template does not take into consideration the varieties and vagaries of the huge differences that exist between countries such as Syria, Singapore and Sri Lanka.

  As a result, last year's reformed Asian Champions League was lacking in flavour. The seasoning found in places like India or Thailand was largely missing as the leading nations – Japan, China, South Korea, Iran and Saudi Arabia – were all granted berths for four clubs each.

  In a tournament of 32 teams, 20 came from just five nations. Countries who were deemed not to have met the criteria had their clubs entered in the AFC Cup, a lesser, more chaotic tournament that carries none of the kudos of the Asian Champions League.

  That meant a club of the stature of Al Karamah, from Syria, were not given the chance to repeat their 2006 run to the Asian Champions League final. There was no place for teams from Iraq, the current Asian Cup holders; or Kuwait. Or Malaysia, the country the Asian Football Confederation calls home.

  Of course, many nations within Asia do not have clubs of sufficient strength to be able to compete at the highest level within the continent. But more needs to be done to give them the chance – rather than leaving them utterly hopeless as many are at the moment – of playing against the best in the region.

  By reducing the quota to the top nations from four to three, the AFC could offer more to the lesser lights of the region's game without diluting the quality of the tournament.

  The true champions of Asia would still find their way through the competitive maze; and perhaps the journey would be all the more thrilling and fascinating as a result.

• Michael Church brings you an up date from Japan.
  Email Michael with your view on football michael.church@sportingbet.com

  Far East Football
  Chinese football has little to cheer about in recent times; from match fixing scandals to the failures of the national team, there have been few positives since the country qualified for the World Cup in 2002.

  Against a backdrop that saw leading figures within the Chinese Football Association arrested for their involvement in a major bribery and corruption scandal, China's national team turned up at the East Asian Championship in Tokyo last week with few expectations.

  The public spotlight was focused intensely on the performances of Japan and South Korea as the pair continued their preparations of June's World Cup finals; the Chinese – some thought - were there to make up the numbers. Fortunately, Gao Hongbo and his team saw things differently and, after winning the tournament ahead of the Koreans, Chinese football has been generating the right kind of headlines for the first time in recent memory.

  After garnering faint praise for their opening 0-0 draw with Japan, it was the manner in which Gao's team comprehensively defeated the South Koreans in the second round of matches that set tongues wagging. The 3-0 victory that was epitomized by China's third goal – a rapier-paced breakaway scored by the impressive 21-year-old Deng Zhouxiang – was the first time the Chinese had, in 32 years of trying, defeated the mighty South Koreans.

  Not surprisingly, Huh Jung-moo began trotting out the usual excuses used by coaches who see their teams lose in warm-up tournaments while Gao, to his credit, was refusing to become too wrapped up in the joy being expressed at home. "As the head coach of this team, I was very happy that we won for about 10 minutes but now I'm overwhelmed by pressure," was Gao's response at the post-match press conference.

  Gao, though, should have taken more pleasure out of the win as his team put on a fine display of counterattacking football that would have pleased any coach at any level.

  The Chinese allowed their opponents to dictate possession, controlling the rhythm of the game for large swathes of the 90 minutes. But when the opportunity was presented to hit hard on the break, China took it with a confidence rarely seen from the players of the People's Republic.

  The precision and pace of their moves forward through strikers Qu Bo and Gao Lin as well as midfielder Deng had the Korean defence in tatters, and the more it happened the more nervous and error-prone Korea's backline looked. Indeed, had the game finished with a larger margin of victory in China's favour, there would have been little Huh or his team could have complained about. Of course, it would have been too much to expect China to maintain the impressive form throughout the tournament and, when the onus was put on them to dictate the pace of the game, they laboured before defeating Hong Kong 2-0.

  There is still significant work to be done but the win over Hong Kong earned the Chinese their second East Asian title in the last five years. But more importantly it will have gone some way towards restoring confidence in a team that has long suffered from an inferiority complex. "China gained a lot from this competition," said Gao after the win over Hong Kong. "We were able to play against great national teams such as Japan and Korea and our players learned a lot from this experience. "I'm confident if China puts the effort into playing and learning we can catch up with Japan and Korea so that we can be equal to these teams."

  That is an intriguing prospect. And with North Korea also now among the Asian elite, perhaps the time when eastern Asia is all-powerful within the continental game is not too far away.

• Michael Church brings you an up date from Japan.
  Email Michael with your view on football michael.church@sportingbet.com

  Far East Football
  Few who witnessed Ahn Jung-hwan's goal against Italy at the 2002 World Cup finals will forget his historic header – or the uproar it caused as South Korea reached the quarterfinals of the tournament for the first time.

  Like Pak Doo-ik had done for their northern neighbours in England 26 years earlier, Ahn's goal eliminated the Italians, sending them home to a storm stirred up by the gnashing of teeth and a seething anger.

  Ahn was castigated by his then employers, Serie A side Perugia, whose owner, Luciano Gaucci, felt the goal was football's equivalent of industrial espionage.

  How could Ahn, asked Gaucci, have the temerity to score the goal that knocked his nation out of the World Cup? A country which, at the time, Ahn called home?

  Ahn, if truth be told, had scarcely impressed for Perugia and, while some accused Gaucci of using the incident as an excuse to cut the former Daewoo Royals forward loose, the reality was the club had little need for a forward who had scored intermittently in the league at best.

  But then, that's how it often was with Ahn. While he gave his heart and his soul for South Korea, at club level he could be frustratingly inconsistent.

  It was much the same during his spell at Shimizu S-Pulse in the J.League, although his switch to Yokohama F Marinos turned – in the end – into a successful tenure as he played a pivotal role in the club winning back-to-back league titles.

  Failed stints at MSV Duisberg and Metz suggest that performing week-in, week-out within the regular grind of the club game was something Ahn either was incapable of focusing on, or believed was beneath him.

  In recent years, Ahn has slid off the radar of international football as a new generation of South Korean stars have gone on to do something he barely achieved as they have carved out successful careers in Europe.

  That is until now. With Ahn about to embark on his second season with Chinese Super League side Dalian Shide, national team coach Huh Jung-moo is ready to give the hero of the 2002 World Cup a chance to break into his squad for South Africa.

  Ahn's performances at a Dalian side that is far removed from the one that dominated the Chinese league throughout the 1990s and into the early 21st century – winning eight league titles in 12 years – have caught Huh's eye and the chances are he will be called up for the friendly against Ivory Coast in early March.

  Much is being made of it in Korea with Ahn's potential return akin to the resurrection of David Beckham's England career under Faboi Capello.

  Ahn, for much of the first half of the last decade, was the poster boy of Korean football but in the intervening years he has slipped out of regular public view.

  But can he stage a Lazarus-style return and claim a place in the Korean squad for South Africa this June?

  Like Beckham, he has been playing his club football in a league in which the standards are far below those experienced by many of his compatriots, the majority of whom play at home, in Japan or in a handful of European countries.

  The Chinese Super League, by contrast, is riddled with corruption with the clubs failing to impress at continental level in recent years. And, despite a trophy-laden history, Dalian's glory days are now behind them as they sit in mid-table.

  Stranger things have happened in football and perhaps Ahn can rekindle his finest moments one more time. At the age of 34, though, the odds are against him.