Special ‘quota’ of Vietnam players for Japan football
Tuesday, November 19, 2013, 13:43 GMT+7
As of next year, each football club of the professional J-League in Japan will be allowed to increase the number of hired foreign players from four to five if at least one of the players is Vietnamese, according to J-League chairman Kazumi Ohisaghi.
Currently, a club is permitted to hire four foreign players including one from Asia, but since 2014, each club is allowed to hire one more player from Vietnam -- Vo Quoc Thang, chairman of the Vietnam Professional Football (VPF) under the Vietnam Football Federation, quoted Ohisaghi as saying following their meeting in Tokyo last week.
Japan also requested that the VPF recommend the best football players of Vietnam.
The decision came thanks to Cong Vinh, the first Vietnamese footballer to play for Japan, who plays for Consadole Sapporo FC in Division 2 of the J-League, said Ohisaghi.
“Cong Vinh has created an interesting phenomenon in the Japanese media although he has not been a leading scorer in Japan yet. His image has appeared more and more in programs of the national TV station NHK and sports pages of many popular newspapers in Japan,” he added.
“It is his ambition, hard training, and desire for victory that makes him a hit with the media.”
Jerseys with Cong Vinh’s name and number are popular with fans. Japanese fans even held up Vietnamese flags and banners with Cong Vinh’s name to support him during recent games, Ohisaghi added.
The J-League, a professional football league that has featured a number of international athletes for the past 20 years, has never witnessed such an interesting phenomenon. Because of this, the J-League decided to make Vietnamese players a priority.
In addition, Vietnam is one of the nations that helped the Japanese when the nation was devasted by a tsunami in 2011 that left 20,000 people dead and missing, remembers Ohisaghi.
“We know many Vietnamese people silently donated money to help Japanese people in distress,” said Ohisaghi. “The Japanese will never forget that.”
“Japanese people repay the sentiment by supporting Cong Vinh, the first Vietnamese footballer to compete in Japan,” he confirmed.
Japanese parliamentarian Yoichiro Aoyagi admitted that many lawmakers knew of and discussed Cong Vinh during breaks in meetings.
Consadole Sapporo, the club Cong Vinh is playing for, is now ranked seventh on the 21-team table with 63 points after 41 rounds.
| On meeting Vo Quoc Thang in Tokyo, Japanese football expert Kazuyoshi Tanabe, a counselor to the chairman of VPF, expressed his apology to the VPF and Vietnamese football fans for his failure to continue his post in Vietnam. He is suffering from cancer, and has been undergoing chemotherapy treatments in Tokyo Hospital. “My heart is tormented seeing him and hearing of the disease he is suffering,” said Thang. “Rgardless of his health, he incessantly apologizes for his half-finished job.” “I am deeply moved by hearing Mr. Tanabe say, ‘I pray to God to have my health recovered so that I can continue my job with Vietnamese football’,” said Thang. |
