Arab League countries disappoint at "home" Asian Cup (News Feature)

By Peter Auf der Heyde Jan 23, 2011, 9:52 GMT

Doha - Teams from Arab League countries made up half of the 16 teams at the Asian Cup but have none left now that their 'home' event has reached the deciding stages.

Title holders Iraq were the last to go out on Saturday, a 1-0 extra time defeat against Australia in the quarter-finals.

Hosts Qatar and Jordan went out in the same stage the previous day, 3-2 against Japan and 2-1 against Uzbekistan, respectively.

Bahrain, Kuwait, Saudi Arabia, Syria and the United Arab Emirates already fell at the first hurdle as they failed to advance out of the group stage.

Thus for the first time since 1972 the last four in the Asian Cup does not feature a country from the Arab League.

And it goes even further, as substitute Yoon Bit Garam's goal in injury-time of the first half of extra-time in South Korea's quarter-final against Iran on Saturday knocked out the final remaining Middle Eastern side in the competition as well.

The last time that happened was in 1964, when Israel was still part of the Asian set up and won the competition at home and no Middle Eastern country entered.

Qatar coach Bruno Metsu believes that one of the reasons why teams from the region performed poorly is that several of them came straight from the Gulf Cup in December to the Asian Cup.

'It is very difficult to come from one big competition and move straight to the next one. It is not only a physical question, also mentally it is not easy,' said Metsu.

Iran coach Afshin Ghotbi said that it was important that football officials in the region noted which four teams advanced to the semi-finals.

'There are no teams from Western Asia. We have a lot of growing up to do in this region. We need to create a link between youth and professional football, we need to develop coaches.'

The 46-year-old, who will be taking over Shimizu S-Pulse in the J-League, said that countries like Japan and South Korea were examples that should be followed.

'They have created good models. We need to look at these models and others that are across Asia and invest long-term. We have to make long-term plans,' he said.

But Australia coach Holger Osieck said that it was difficult to pin-point why the countries from western Asia had little success in the competition.

'When a team loses, players and coaches look for a reason why they have lost. I don't think one can simply say it is because of this or that,' the German said.

The demise in the standard of the countries in the region already became evident during the qualifying campaign for the 2010 World Cup, when the two Koreas, Japan and Australia represented the continent. Bahrain stumbled at the last hurdle, losing a play-off to New Zealand.

It was the first World Cup since Argentina 1978 that no Arab League team from the Asian confederation was represented on the global stage after Kuwait (1982), Iraq (1986), UAE (1990) and Saudi Arabia (1994-2006) kept the flag flying.

The point is not lost on the Asian Football Confederation (AFC) as the World Cup comes to the region in question in 2022 for which Qatar was surprisingly picked by the ruling body FIFA.

However, Asian Cup competition director Tokuaki Suzuki says that the Asian teams' standard in general is not particularly high.

'The Asian level is not in the top level in the world and we need to improve our technical standard, but we believe we can make it by 2022,' he said.

'Teams like Australia, South Korea and Japan are already moving, but we need all the teams to advance.'

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