‘There is a belief Japan will win a World Cup... maybe even this one’
Former Scotland manager and Asian Football Confederation technical director Andy Roxburgh gives skinny on continent’s best-placed sides
By Stephen McGowan
Former general secretary of the Asian Football Federation, Alex Soosay, hired Andy Roxburgh to deliver some big goals.
Speaking in 2015, the Malaysian administrator acknowledged that Asia’s dream was to win a World Cup. “It’s why we brought Andy in,” he said.
Now 82, Roxburgh’s commitment to excellence burns as strongly now as it did when he managed Scotland at Italia 90, the last time the national team won a game at the World Cup finals.
FIFA President Gianni Infantino bills the tournament in America, Canada and Mexico as the biggest and most inclusive ever and, for the first time, an expanded lineup will accommodate nine teams from Asia. For many, Hajime Moriyasu’s Japan are World Cup dark horses.
Despite beating Germany and Spain in Qatar, the Japanese eventually lost to Croatia on penalties. While the Samurai Blue have never progressed beyond the last 16, football chief Tsuneyasu Miyamoto has set the team the bold target of a run to this year’s final. The ultimate goal is to win the World Cup by 2050 and Roxburgh believes Japan are not the only Asian nation capable of raising eyebrows.
“There are grounds for optimism because of what happened in the last World Cup,” he says. “We had so many big results there when you think of Japan beating Germany and Spain and so on.
“Saudi beat the eventual winners Argentina in the opening game and that was unbelievable. We have nine teams going this time and I have been working with Japan. Since 2001, I have been going at least every two years and so I am very friendly with Hajimi the coach.”
A resident of Switzerland, the former SFA technical director and manager travels to the AFC HQ in Kuala Lumpur five times a year. He also visits nations like Japan, South Korea and Australia to pass on his coaching education know-how.
“The whole coaching setup in Japan is one I have been heavily involved in for nearly 25 years. So I have had the pleasure of watching them develop and they learn and they learn fast.
“Their aim is to win the World Cup by 2050 and a number of people, including Ange Postecoglou, think they will make it before that. I don’t want to put pressure on them here, but they are certainly developing very well.
“They remind me of Spain. I was very close with Spain around the new millennium when I watched all the youth teams develop. You could see it coming in Spain and the Japanese have an element of that about them.
“One of the big things about Japan is that nearly all of their players play in Europe. In some cases, like Saudi, none of their players play in Europe. So there will be good players but a lot of them don’t play regularly in the first team because there are now so many foreign players in the Saudi league.”
The participation of one Asian nation has been complicated by the ravages of war. Relations between the United States and Iran are such that the Islamic Republic was forced to decamp their training base to Tijuana in Mexico. Iran are scheduled to play two games in Los Angeles and another in Seattle, and the team and officials will fly into the cities immediately before the games and return to their Mexican base camp after the final whistle.
“Iran’s situation is another story altogether,” says Roxburgh. “They have good players and they always have done because Carlos Queiroz, Alex Ferguson’s old assistant, was managing them for years and did a great job with them. But, at the moment, we don’t know what’s going to happen there. No one does.”
Of the other Asian teams competing, Roxburgh offers a cautiously optimistic assessment. The usual big hitters such as Australia and South Korea are known packages, others less so.
“Uzbekistan are going to be there along with Jordan and in the Asian context both have done really well. Whether they can handle the World Cup stage, time will tell.
“Qatar have also done well in Asia but the minute they played in the the World Cup the stress of being the home nation seemed to overwhelm them. So whether they can do anything I don’t know because it’s a small country and they don’t have the depth of squad.
“But Uzbekistan are interesting because they have been outstanding at youth level in recent years, even in a world context.”
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