Star of the East

The proverb is apt. Of 3.7 billion people on the continent, 60 percent are aged below 20. It has been called a sleeping giant. But now the giant is stirring. More young Asians than ever are playing soccer, the game is blossoming and Brendan Menton, the AFC’s director of development for national associations and clubs, is at the vanguard.
Yes, that Brendan Menton. Home Farm player turned FAI honorary treasurer and general secretary. He who ran the gauntlet of the Sky TV deal and Roy Keane’s departure from Saipan. A little more than year after leaving the FAI, he is tanned, smiling and enthusiastic. It’s a muggy day in Malaysia, but Menton is having the time of his life.
“I love it here,” he said. “I got three weeks’ notice. . . . I met the [AFC] president and general secretary in London; I agreed to come without ever having worked or lived abroad before. It kind of came out of the blue.”
Asian soccer appeared to do the same in 2002. Few would have predicted Japan and South Korea could take on their European and South American counterparts in a World Cup, but they did so and won. Audiences captured hearts too, showcasing the ebullience, hospitality and marketing dollars up for grabs in the East. Anything seemed possible.
“I think people woke up,” Menton said. “But this wasn’t just a fluke result based on home advantage. Detailed development of football had been happening in those two countries for a long time.”
In fact, both Japan and South Korea had been systematically investing in soccer since the early 1990s. Planning and development programs had been implemented throughout the structure, from children’s competitions to the professional J and K leagues. 2002 was the result of astute development, player talent and sheer enthusiasm.
“This is why I’m in Kuala Lumpur,” Menton said. “The view is that if what was done in Japan in particular was copied in other Asian countries, well, then given the population, the number of young people and their interest in football, the whole standard of Asian football should rise.”
Vision Asia, the program for which Menton works, is the AFC’s grand plan for the development of soccer and its commercial value on the continent. Currently operating on a pilot basis in Bangladesh, China, Hong Kong, India, Indonesia, Jordan, Vietnam and Yemen, it aims to raise standards in play, administration and sports science by encouraging national associations to fund professional staff, train with proper skills and set in tow a host of marketing, coach-education, media and fans initiatives.
The philosophy is simple: better youth programs make better players. Better players make better clubs, and better clubs make better domestic leagues and international teams. “The idea of going into a country is not that we train a few coaches,” Menton said. “We train the instructor who can train the coaches for the next 10 years.”
Menton is a good fit. He played for Home Farm, a club his father (Dr. Brendan Menton, former president of the FAI) co-founded. He graduated an economist from UCD. He has worked for the Economic and Social Research Institute, AIB and in public relations. Home Farm’s League, junior, intermediate and schoolboy matches granted him a wide knowledge of soccer’s strata, and he served as the club’s League representative before graduating to the FAI, where he produced the association’s first plan for the development of the game.
His father’s influence is indelible. “I always believed that kids should play sport,” Menton said. “It’s good for them physically, it’s good for them socially, it’s good for them psychologically. In Asia, if you go to some countries, they don’t have pitches. We’ve looked at some of the best youth teams training on an area that had no grass left on it. The footballs looked to be about three years old, the leather had worn off and they had probably expanded to a bigger size. Yet the skill level these kids were showing was very good.”
“More than half of the world’s population is here,” FIFA President Sepp Blatter commented at the AFC’s 50th anniversary celebrations in Kuala Lumpur this May. “So, therefore, more than half of the world’s footballers should be here.”
“In Ireland, maybe 4 percent of the population plays football,” Menton said. “Here it’s probably only about half a percent.” Given that the global game is already worth an estimated $300 billion annually, it doesn’t take an economist to work out the revenue potentials.
Vision Asia is hugely ambitious. Fifty years ago, the AFC had 12 members. Today it has 45, ranging from Lebanon to Guam and Mongolia to Indonesia. Development on the continent is as disparate as geography and culture (compare China with Palestine, for example). Attempting to grow the game systematically in such a kaleidoscopic setting hardly bears thinking about.
“Scale is a challenge,” Menton said. It takes six hours to fly from east to west Indonesia. Over 600 Chinese cities boast populations in excess of a quarter of a million. India, closest to the Irish model in terms of the challenging, voluntary nature of its game, has a population 275 times greater.
Nevertheless, movement is afoot. Asian leagues are no longer the graveyards of greats (Gazza in China, say) or capable of the odd flash result (North Korea beating Italy in 1966). Japan and South Korea rank in the world’s top 25. Countries like Iran, Thailand, Jordan and Qatar snap at their heels.
“I will not hesitate to say that in the coming 50 years, one or more of the AFC’s national associations will win the World Cup,” said the AFC president, Mohamed bin Hammam. “The future is Asia.”
The best way to eat an elephant, it seems, is one piece at a time. Hence the selection of pilot markets with the intention of “going in there, building a model. People will be learning, watching, write it down.” Sustainability and the transfer of knowledge are key (one of Vision Asia’s catchphrases is “train the trainers”). As a strategy, Menton claims, it is “unique in football development”.
“Contrast that with the professional and European leagues, the tours of Manchester United and Real Madrid in Asia, that are just focusing on the very apex of the game. The only reason they come here is that they need to develop their commercial revenues to survive financially. They’re just coming in here and sucking finance out of Asia.”
It is certainly true that one will find kids wearing Premiership shirts in all corners, that most will recognise Roy Keane before they do Bono or Bertie Ahern. The business of football is unstoppable, and one of the challenges the AFC faces, Menton says, is fostering Asian alternatives to the ubiquitous galacticos and “wall-to-wall” coverage of Spanish and English leagues.
“I think what you need is a pool of local heroes,” he said. “The Beckhams and Zindanes can work a little bit as role models, but you need your domestic role models. You need your Inamotas or your Nakatas in Japan to really get the kids, enthuse them and keep them coming.”
Interestingly, for a man who has now visited 49 countries, the 2002 World Cup was Menton’s first experience of Asia. He loved it. “The people would do anything for you,” he said. “The food and the countryside were just fantastic. Then I decided to come back, to get out of the FAI, which was a great decision for me because I wouldn’t have survived.”
Having previously served as honorary treasurer and as general secretary in a caretaking role, Menton succeeded Bernard O’Byrne as FAI chief executive in 2001. Then 49, the new man was expected to use his background in economics and PR to bring together various strands of soccer in Ireland — a next to impossible task.
As anyone who has read “Beyond the Green Door,” Menton’s account of his years at Merrion Street, will know, reality bit with a vengeance. Battling buffoonery, bunfights and back-stabbing, he “stepped aside” from the