Cesc is gone and Nasri is going. Very soon, Arsenal will find themselves around £60m richer but two world class talents poorer. Arsene Wenger will start wheeling out the mantra about players returning from injury and loan as the equivalent of new signings. Arsenal fans will grumble, and rightly so. They’ll pray for any of Juan Mata, Marvin Martin, Andre Ayew or even Joey Barton but end up with Alex Oxlade-Chamberlain, Gervinho and a series of behind-the-scenes failed bids for over-priced England squad central defenders. They are not Liverpool; when Wenger says ‘Moneyball’ – he means it.
Arsene Wenger’s quest for the perfect victory, passing while penny-pinching, seems further away from fruition than it ever has been. His eye for spotting talent undoubtedly remains. For the first time in his tenure the misses in the first team squad now considerably outweigh the hits. But each new season does bring a new name and new hope to the Gunners faithful – this year, his name is Ryo.
Just as the Bundesliga is seeing an influx of Far East Asian footballing talent, we could be on the threshold of a similar incoming to the Premier League. The flagbearer should be the 18 year old Japanese ‘sensation’ Ryo Miyaichi. By ‘sensation’ I of course mean it in the Zlatan Ibrahimovic sense of the word – Youtube sensation. Ryo has played a mere 12 professional games but the level of excitement generated from his bursting runs, step-overs and pre-season performances is as close to fever pitch as the Arsenal fan forums can take in these all too depressing Fabregas-less times.
After a successful trial last summer Ryo signed his first professional contract with the team in January of this year. Arsenal beat off reported competition from AC Milan and Ajax, at whom Ryo had also spent time on trial before a broken leg ended his spell at the Amsterdam club, for the signature of the Japanese winger. Complications in securing a UK work permit meant Ryo was sent to Feyenoord on loan for the remainder of the season. This would not happen immediately though, as it was agreed he could represent his school Chykodai Chukyo at the All Japan High School Soccer Tournament. With a name like that you half expect him to come up against a team called Cobra Kai and have an irrational opposing coach demanding one of their defenders ‘sweep the leg’.
It’s not a huge leap to think that the jump from high school Japanese football to the Dutch Eredivisie is a sizeable one, but it”s one that Ryo managed to make with ease. Having never played professional football before; twelve games later the Dutch fans had already christened him ‘Ryonaldo’ (or ‘Ryoldinho’ depending on which fan you spoke to). The more dedicated Arsenal fans were by now racking up the hours on Youtube or other video sharing sites drooling over his phenomenal pace, praying he would mature quickly and then prove himself able to withstand the physical demands of the Premier League.
The work permit issue is now a thing of the past thanks to personal pleas from Wenger and the Japanese Football Federation. It was granted last week on the grounds of ‘exceptional talent’. The talent is not in question. The fit is a good one. Ryo could not ask for a better mentor – the question is whether or not the opportunities will be there. They say if you’re good enough, you’re old enough but the question is whether he is good enough to get extended playing time on the wings ahead of Theo Walcott and new signings Gervinho and Oxlade-Chamberlain. His pace is supposedly equal to Walcott and his bag of tricks and crossing ability are apparently superior. Napoli showed interest in signing him and Feyenoord tried to get him back on loan before Wenger continued Ryo’s meteoric rise with promotion to the first team squad. Unavailable for the opening league match, expect him to play his part in the post-Nasri September revival once the transfer window shuts and precious little in the way of re-enforcements has arrived.
Having scored at every level from under 15 to 19 for Japan it’s not as if Ryo has come from nowhere, but he is a high school signing who has cost nothing but a wage. Without looking to take the silver lining off cloud Arsenal, it’s probably not too soon to wonder if he too will be sold at a massive profit someday to a more free-spending club. He may leave just as Fabregas has before him, frustrated by management prepared to sacrifice ambition in pursuit of tactical and economic perfection.
It’s admittedly not just Wenger who treats players as statistical pieces of an economics jigsaw – he is merely the shrewdest, or should that be stingiest, proponent of the game. When it comes to Far Eastern ‘commodities’ and the Premier League; it has been a case of limited trial and error dropping the value and increasing the risk associated with Japanese imports. South Koreans fared only slightly better until the breakthrough of Park Ji-Sung at Manchester United in 2005.
His industrious performances earned him the nickname ‘Three Lung’ among some fans and his knack for vital goals didn’t hurt when it came to contract extensions. The new he re-signed until 2013 was followed by an outpouring of praise from fans, teammates and a hard-to-please old Scotsman with a penchant for hairdryers and red wine. Park, with a little help, has banished memories of disappointing spells in the league from Kim Do-Heon (WBA), Lee Dong Gook (Middlesboro) and Cho Won-Hee (Wigan).
The little help was provided by the moderately successful journeyman careers of Seol Ki-Hyeon (Wolves, Reading, Fulham) and the ‘best full back in Holland’ (© Martin Jol) Lee Young-Pyo (Spurs, Dortmund and PSV). Carrying the torch for a new generation are Sunderland striker Ji Dong-Won and 2010 Bolton Wanderers Player’s Player of the Year Lee Chung-Yong. The South Koreans can consider themselves in transfer market credit for the foreseeable future.
The Japanese however seem to be a different story. Their value has taken some time to bounce back from the legacy of Junichi Inamoto and Yoshikatsu Kawaguchi. Most of you will have heard of Inamoto, but Kawaguchi – not so much?
Having coached Nagoya Grampus Eight in Japan it’s something of a surprise that Arsene Wenger has been slow to bring Japanese talent to the club since Inamoto’s 2001 arrival. Wenger retains strong ties to Japan, often being rumoured with the Samurai Blue manager’s job over the years and is often cited as talking up former Grampus Eight player and current manager Dragan Stojkovic as his heir apparent at the Emirates. But until Ryo’s emergence Inamoto remains Wenger’s sole Japanese experiment, perhaps because it would turn out to be a thoroughly unsuccessful one – two league cup starts, no goals.
Two goals at his home World Cup in 2002 secured Inamoto further spells in the Premier League with Fulham and West Brom but one broken leg and surprisingly unsuccessful loan spell at Cardiff later and he was on his way again, carrying a largely damaged reputation for both him and his countrymen. Inamoto would have a damage accomplice in £1.8 million goalkeeper Yoshikatsu Kawaguchi, then record signing for Portsmouth who could manage only 12 appearances in two seasons before being shipped out.
It would be another 3 years before damage limitation began with the arrival of Japanese legend Hidetoshi Nakata for a loan period at Bolton that ended with his retirement from the game. At the same time, north of the border, Shunsuke Nakamura began plying his trade for Celtic but not even unanimous praise and an Scottish Premier League Player of the Year award could tempt Premier League clubs to open their wallets. As someone who has local knowledge of the lack of quality on show in the SPL I can understand that the standard of ‘Saturday’ opposition was not ideal but considering Nakamura was arguably the star of a repeat league championship winning side who also made it to the knock-out stages of the Champions League, it remains a mystery how one of the lower Premier League teams wouldn’t top the fee of £2.75m Celtic paid Reggina to tempt him down south. Something tells me the tide has now turned, perhaps on the back of another strong World Cup showing from Japan and Korea. Tottenham’s supposed summer courtship of the current Celtic and South Korea midfielder Ki Sung-Yueng perhaps illustrates the point best.
So will Ryo lead the Japanese invasion alone? That’s unlikely. Wenger and Sir Alex Ferguson have already been credited with interest in Borussia Dortmund’s highly rated attacking midfielder Shinji Kagawa, but with the season under way it seems unlikely BVB would sell now. The other notable name mentioned over the past year is CSKA Moscow’s deep lying playmaker and Asian Cup 2011 player of the tournament Keisuke Honda. Wenger has long been a reported admirer, not surprising since Honda started out at Grampus Eight, with Liverpool and Spurs also credited as interested parties. His £12 million price tag may be enough to put the frugal Frenchman off but with Oxlade-Chamberlain signed for a reported £15m and Honda already the finished article, as his goalscoring World Cup exploits showed so emphatically, it could be the transfer coup the Gunners’ fans need after the summer from hell. And it could well be the making of his countryman Ryo Miyaichi at the same time.
Something tells me Ryo can make it on his own anyway – head over to Youtube or keep your eyes on MOTD in the next month if you don’t believe me.
