Four years after the Brazil Fifa World Cup, we get another opportunity to see how Asian football continues to develop against the rest of the world. For the first time, we will see five Asia Pacific countries on football’s biggest stage in Russia.

The first thing to note is the composition of these five representatives: two of them are geographically Asian nations – South Korea and Japan – while two are Middle Eastern (Saudi Arabia and Iran). The fifth country is Australia, which has taken one of the Asia-Pacific qualifications places for the third time in a row.

ASIA’S WORLD CUP REGULARS

This pattern of teams has become a regular occurrence. Since 1990, the only other Asia Pacific teams to qualify have been North Korea (2010) and China (2002). However, thanks to Australia claiming the inter-confederation play-off spot with a victory over Honduras, Asia was able to convert their provisional 4.5 qualifying spots into the full five.

Between 2002 and 2014, Asia had four representatives at each World Cup. With the exception of South Korea unexpectedly reaching the semi-finals at their home tournament in 2002, performances have rarely reached great heights, with none of the other 15 finalists reaching the quarter-finals. Last time out in Brazil, Asian interest ended at the Group Stage.

SAUDI ARABIA SPLUTTERED

So, how will the teams fare in Russia? Unfortunately, the outlook seems bleak, and the bookmakers and recent form suggest that none of the five will even reach the Round of 16.

Saudi Arabia, 67th on the Fifa rankings, appeared to have the best chance of getting out of the group stage ahead of their opening match against Russia. They were drawn into a relatively weak Group A against the hosts, Egypt and Uruguay.

Their hopes were raised by the injury to Egypt’s Mohamed Salah, and while he was on the bench for his team’s opening match against Uruguay, the Liverpool maestro may be fit to play by the time the two teams meet.

The Saudi team were hoping to take advantage of Russia’s poor form to spoil the host nation’s party in the opening match, for the good start that they had hoped for fizzled out as they were routed 5-0 on Thursday (June 14).

With that result, Saudi Arabia surely will be home before the end of June with Uruguay also looking too strong for them in the Group.

HOW ABOUT THE REST?

Iran is a team that is stuck in a very tough group. In spite of Spain’s capitulation in Brazil, it seems impossible to look past them and Portugal to qualify out of Group B. Iran has only ever won one World Cup match – the famous victory over the United States in 1998 – but there are reasons for hope. After their 1-0 victory over Morocco in their opener, the pressure is on the big teams, and with Portuguese Carlos Queiroz, formerly manager of Real Madrid, in charge, they definitely know their major opponents well.

Very few analysts are looking past France and Denmark in Group C – although Peru should not be overlooked after coming through a tough South America qualifying, and beating New Zealand in a play-off. Australia’s form in qualifying did little to suggest they would cause an upset, and the video assistant referee (VAR)-assisted penalty from Antoine Griezmann – a first in World Cup history – gave Les Bleus a 2-1 win over the Socceroos.

There’s always one “Group of Death”, and this year, most analysts have that marked as Group F which contains world champions Germany, together with Mexico, Sweden and the unfortunate South Korea. Despite the presence of the mercurial Son Heung-Min, the team does not look much stronger than the squad that finished bottom of their group in Brazil.

Japan sailed through qualifying ahead of Saudi Arabia and Australia, but landed a deceptively tough group. On paper, they do not face traditional big names like France, Germany, Spain or Portugal. However, Poland, Senegal and Colombia are not weak nations. Colombia, which boasts the likes of James Rodriguez, Radamel Falcao, David Ospina, Juan Guillermo Cuadrado, Cristian Zapata, Carlos Bacca, Yerry Mina and Davinson Sanchez, is generally considered a dark horse that may reach the quarter-finals and beyond. Senegal breezed through qualification and includes many European stars such as Liverpool’s Sadio Mane and Monaco’s Keita Balde, while Poland will be hard to beat if Robert Lewandowski is on-form. Japan’s hopes rely on Shinji Kagawa and Hiroshi Kiyotake, but these are surely distant.

In those groups, on current form and after the failures in Brazil, success for Asia would widely be considered as getting even one team into the second round. If two teams could get through or one could even go further and cause an upset to reach the quarter-finals, it would be a major boost and provide inspiration for future tournaments.

EXPANDED WORLD CUP BETTER FOR ASIA?

The recent decision to expand the World Cup in the future should bring hope to the Asian Federation as a whole, but perhaps the outlook for Asian nations, and particularly South-east Asia, is still not great, even as the number of Asian teams increases in the years to come.

For the World Cup in 2022, the qualification quota will be the same as 2018. However, with Qatar as the host, this means that the 4.5 quota spots are augmented and we could potentially see six Asian nations if the Asian qualifier can win the inter-continental play-off again. That said, it is hard on current form to look beyond the same pool of qualifying nations from the region in the short-term.

The big expansion of the World Cup in 2026 does offer hope for more Asian nations. With 48 teams qualifying, Asia will receive eight places going forward for the tournaments. But will this offer hope for Asian teams, or will it mean more Middle East nations taking up the spots? 

The 2026 World Cup a long way off and we would expect to see big developments in the football capabilities of some countries – particularly China – by then, but if we were to look at the 2018 qualification process, the best-placed teams after the qualifiers would be Syria, Uzbekistan and the United Arab Emirates. Indeed, besides South Korea and Japan, only China (5th in Group A) and Thailand (last in Group B) even reached the final 12 teams.

For nations like Singapore, Malaysia, Indonesia and Thailand, the expansion gives hope for the long term, but realistically, to qualify in 2026 is already a tough challenge as those players would need to be in the current under-20 or under-18 squads, and 2030 seems to be the earliest chance for the youth development strategies in these nations to start to bear fruit.

Unfortunately, for now, Asian fans will largely be watching Russia 2018 and Qatar 2022 to see the cream of world football and support their adopted teams, rather than their home or regional sides.  

ABOUT THE AUTHOR:

Mr James Walton is the Sports Business Group Leader of Deloitte Southeast Asia.