Saturday 23 June 2007

Must Be An Asian Thing

Don't say BorakBola is unfair. It seems that FAM can pull it's Get Out Of Jail Card for their local fixtures. Its mentioned before that the coach of Japan, Osim-san have also been complaining about JFA's cleverness in arranging their own domestic league fixtures - the J League. Well apparently it is the same with the K-League. Nice. So we are emulating these Asian giants after all!

Let's see what's the news with relations to these two countries:

Coach Verbeek and K-League reach training camp compromise
SEOUL: South Korea’s warring soccer factions have called a truce over an Asian Cup training camp that clashed with domestic fixtures. National coach Pim Verbeek and the K-League jousted after the Dutchman summoned his squad to the southern resort island of Jeju this weekend to prepare for next month’s Asian Cup Finals.

Both sides refused to compromise as the row escalated during the week, but the K-League have backed down and agreed to reschedule today’s fixtures to Oct 14. “Our players will comply ... in consideration of the national team’s need to prepare for the Asian Cup and with the hope it will make a sweeping victory,” the K-League said in a statement yesterday.

Fans would be deprived of high-quality games if the fixtures went ahead without the participation of the national team players, the statement added. With South Korea’s preparations for the tournament in tatters due to injuries to four key players, it was always unlikely Verbeek would bow to the K-League’s demands for the camp to start a day later.

The Dutchman has been highly critical of the K-League for the number of games players have had to cope with in recent months. However, Verbeek went some way to mending fences by cancelling a national team friendly scheduled for Oct 13, the day before the rescheduled K-League fixtures.

South Korea have been grouped with Indonesia, Bahrain and Saudi Arabia for the July 7-29 tournament.
Taken from Reuters

Japan’s Asian Cup preparations a joke, says coach Osim
TOKYO: Japan’s preparations for the defence of their Asian Cup title were labelled a joke by coach Ivica Osim on Thursday.

The Bosnian, upset that most of his players have club commitments before Japan’s opener on July 9, blasted the J-League schedule in an attack dripping with sarcasm. “Most of our Asian Cup rivals have been together for around 20 days already,” Osim told reporters. “We’ll be going to Vietnam with next to no preparation and with a squad of tired players. It’s a novel approach.”

The 66-year-old added: “It’s brilliant! As a bonus we can even save the Japan Football Association some money by keeping our training camps so short.” Japan will hold a three-day training camp before flying to Vietnam on July 4 for their opening Group B game against Qatar in Hanoi. The United Arab Emirates and co-hosts Vietnam are also in the same group as the defending champions.
Taken from Reuters

Don't worry Osim-san. We are having the same problem here - but our players won't be tired because we take Tongkat Ali for breakfast

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