Soccer in Asia

My first post on this blog started by saying that the first form of football was played in Asia. I looked into more current Asian soccer and I thought it would be worthwhile writing a post about it. 

I'll start off with some background information. Asian soccer is governed by a body called the Asian Football Confederation or AFC for short. The AFC has 47 countries within it, which are split into five regions.

• 12 from west Asia
• 6 from central Asia
• 7 from south Asia
• 10 from east Asia
• 12 from south east Asia

At the moment Australia is the top ranked team, having won the AFC Asian Cup in 2015 while Japan is the most successful team in the history of the cup, having won it 4 times since it's creation in 1956.

Unfortunately, research that I've done indicates that Asian soccer is on the decline. The main reasons given are match fixing, poor domestic leagues and too few players playing abroad. I find that the 2nd and 3rd reason tie into each other. If all the talented asian players are playing in these poor domestic leagues then they don't have a chance to develop their talent like they could in a european league.

Maybe the reason Asian soccer is on the decline is because things like this happen:

haha, just kidding. Things like this can happen in any game of soccer.

thats all for now.

(Pictures and information taken from: en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Asian_Football_Confederation and worldsoccertalk.com/2014/07/01/5-reasons-why-asian-soccer-is-on-the-decline/ )

(Youtube video taken from: www.youtube.com/watch?v=b1uBlqM_1R8 )