Latest Asian Clubs Ranking

[Bi-honar]

Don't know if you guys are familiar with this site (I sure wasn't), but the rankings actually look pretty decent for Asia (haven't checked the ranking for other continents): http://footballdatabase.com/ranking/asia

As related to Iranian teams (latest ranking as of March 1st) in the top 50:

8 - Sepehan
11 - Esteghlal
19 - Foolad
25 - Naft
34 - Tractor
36 - Perspolis

Ranking of countries by number of Top 20 teams by country

1 - Saudi Arabia: 4
2 - South Korea: 4
3 - Iran: 3
4 - Thailand: 3
5 - China: 2
6 - Uzbekistan: 2
7 - Qatar: 1
8 - UAE: 1
Japan: 0

[Kiarash]

Surprised that there is no single Japanese team in the top 20.

[Bi-honar]

Surprised that there is no single Japanese team in the top 20.

They've been doing terrible in the ACL for years. If I remember right, they've barely managed to have just one team in the last 8 (I think twice in the last 5-6 years) and one of those times their team made it to the semis but crashed and burnt REALLY badly.

The J-league isn't really what some people think. The only reason Japan has a decent international team is because of their legionnaires, not domestic players.

[PersianLegion]

They've been doing terrible in the ACL for years. If I remember right, they've barely managed to have just one team in the last 8 (I think twice in the last 5-6 years) and one of those times their team made it to the semis but crashed and burnt REALLY badly.
The J-league isn't really what some people think. The only reason Japan has a decent international team is because of their legionnaires, not domestic players.

From my observation, I think you are right. J-League was great because Japanese had their good talents plus good European/S.American players in their clubs. 5-6 years ago, top Japanese footballers started to seek for European leagues and transferred one by one. Just take a look at their NT and see how many legionnaire they have. Many more joined Europeans clubs perhaps to get a chance in NT. Naturally, this will brings down the quality of J-League. Just imagine all our Qatari/European legionnaire were playing in IPL. You can guess the quality of the league would have been much higher. If Gucci, Sardar, Jahanbakhsh, Jalal, Jabari, Ashkan or others were playing for Persepolis, Tractor, Naft, or Foolad... how far do you think these teams could go in ACL?

Filling the gap with foreigners instead of producing local talents will effect the NT gradually. Plus football fever has been cooling down in Japan and Korea for a while. They have been struggling for quiet some years. The audience are reducing constantly and Baseball and other sports are picking up there.

Considering all factors, J-league still is good with our standards. Mu ch better than Qatar, or UAE.

[Z Joon]

From my observation, I think you are right. J-League was great because Japanese had their good talents plus good European/S.American players in their clubs. 5-6 years ago, top Japanese footballers started to seek for European leagues and transferred one by one. Just take a look at their NT and see how many legionnaire they have. Many more joined Europeans clubs perhaps to get a chance in NT. Naturally, this will brings down the quality of J-League. Just imagine all our Qatari/European legionnaire were playing in IPL. You can guess the quality of the league would have been much higher. If Gucci, Sardar, Jahanbakhsh, Jalal, Jabari, Ashkan or others were playing for Persepolis, Tractor, Naft, or Foolad... how far do you think these teams could go in ACL?

Filling the gap with foreigner instead of producing local talents will effect the NT gradually. Plus football fever has been cool down in Japan and Korea for a while. They have been struggling for quiet some years. The audience are reducing constantly and Baseball and other sports are picking up there.

Exactly. But my opinion is that the difference between the clubs from top national teams in Asia and the weaker ones is that they focus on the development of local/domestic players.

Qatari, Emirati, Saudi, Chinese, Thai leagues are all focusing on building their teams around very expensive million $ foreign superstars to get immediate results, which sometimes gives them results in the ACL, but doesn't contribute to the development of their national teams at all. Whereas Iranian, Japanese, Korean, Uzbek teams put more focus into building their teams around domestic players with 3-4 2nd/3rd rate foreigners, and this is the difference when you look at the national teams, our domestic players are much more solid and don't rely on other foreigners to do their job. For instance you could see by yourself that an IPL based team almost held WC finalists full of top players in Brazil.

The same people that say that our league quality is bad because of their results in the ACL obviously don't mention that Japanese teams are even worse; But that doesn't mean anything, when you analyse the situation more in depth you can understand that all the focus is on our domestic players, which is maybe not bringing us results on short term but certainly is effective on long term.

[PersianLegion]

Exactly. But my opinion is that the difference between the clubs from top national teams in Asia and the weaker ones is that they focus on the development of local/domestic players.
Qatari, Emirati, Saudi, Chinese, Thai leagues are all focusing on building their teams around very expensive million $ foreign superstars to get immediate results, which sometimes gives them results in the ACL, but doesn't contribute to the development of their national teams at all. Whereas Iranian, Japanese, Korean, Uzbek teams put more focus into building their teams around domestic players with 3-4 2nd/3rd rate foreigners, and this is the difference when you look at the national teams, our domestic players are much more solid and don't rely on other foreigners to do their job. For instance you could see by yourself that an IPL based team almost held WC finalists full of top players in Brazil.
The same people that say that our league quality is bad because of their results in the ACL obviously don't mention that Japanese teams are even worse; But that doesn't mean anything, when you analyse the situation more in depth you can understand that all the focus is on our domestic players, which is maybe not bringing us results on short term but certainly is effective on long term.

I get your points and agree with them, but what is the point of developing top players and then as soon as they blossom shuffling them to foreign leagues? (ex. PAG). We need to keep them in IPL at least for 1 or 2 seasons other than that we become farmers that others rip our results. Developing good young talents is hard, time consuming, and nerve breaking; Many times may end up in failure. I am really happy with the new Fifa rule of the right of youth football academy.
We need to help raise the quality of IPL with investing in youth program and at least keep some of our talents in league to have better quality matches, bring more audience to the stadiums, sell more club related products, motivate the younger generations, and get on the air rights (money), otherwise we are going in a wrong cycle. (doore batel mizanim).

[Z Joon]

I get your points and agree with them, but what is the point of developing top players and then as soon as they blossom shuffling them to foreign leagues? (ex. PAG). We need to keep them in IPL at least for 1 or 2 seasons other than that we become farmers that others rip our results. Developing good young talents is hard, time consuming, and nerve breaking; Many times may end up in failure. I have really happy with the new Fifa rule of the right of youth football academy.

Agreed, it's true and that's actually the main reason why I am very disappointed in Pouraliganji's decision (Doesn't seem to be the case of majority of people here which is shocking) to go to an Asian league. Our talents shouldn't be reinforcing or helping any other league in Asia, I only support transfers to Europe as they contribute to our national team.

[PersianLegion]

agreed.