23 Apr 2007(Mon)

April 21, 2007: Japan's Olympic hopefuls beat Syria in midweek with two fine goals from Mizuno and Honda.

But I wonder how their club managers at JEF United and Nagoya Grampus Eight felt about it?

Well, I know the feelings of Sef Vergoossen, as I spoke with him about this matter after Nagoya's match against Omiya at Komaba.

Honda, his exciting and important left-sided player, was not there, of course, because he was already in Damascus, preparing for the under-22 match.

I asked Sef how he felt about having to give up Honda for an Olympic qualifier, and, being Dutch, he gave an honest answer.

"Unbelievable!" was his first comment.

"It is not fair and not correct, for all teams," he added.

I have to say that I totally agree with him, and I am sure Amar Osim feels the same, as he was without Mizuno and Mizumoto when JEF lost at Kobe. Those are two massive losses for the Chiba team, as was Honda for Grampus at Komaba.

In this day and age, with international calendars and with the jobs of head coaches on the line in virtually every match, I cannot believe that teams must lose their top young players from championship matches to play for the Olympic team.

I know that Japan puts more emphasis on Olympic football than probably any other country in the world, but these kind of fixture conflicts simply should not happen.

Sef stressed that he was not against giving up players for the Olympic team. What frustrated him was that the J.League insisted clubs field their strongest teams in the Nabisco Cup, but then had to give players to the JFA and miss league games.

"Give me one hour to make a schedule for the season," was the observation of Sef, who said that basically this should not happen in a professional league.

Sef is absolutely spot on.

It is ridiculous for teams to have to lose players for J1 matches, and the same applied for Reysol when they played Reds last Sunday. Without top scorer Suganuma and Lee/Ri, depending on the JFA/J.League spelling, this was not the Reysol team that was setting the pace at the top of the table.

Hopefully the powers that be can get their heads round this issue as quickly as possible, because clubs should not have to lose players from the championship for national team duties.

One quick fix suggested by Sef and another coach I spoke to about this was to give clubs the right to postpone a league game if they had to give up players, as there was plenty of room to reschedule games later in the season.

ends