A dampener on Eastern promise

The Confederations Cup, which has just ended with a 1-0 victory for France over Japan in the final in Yokohama, was intended to showcase stunning new stadiums and to drum up football fervour for Asia's first World Cup finals.

FIFA accentuated the positive, boasting that the eight-country "dry run" attracted 290,000 spectators in South Korea and 283,000 in Japan at an average of 35,000 a match.

However, a year before the real tournament begins, storm clouds are already gathering on the horizon. The World Cup preparations have descended into rivalry between the two hosts, a row is brewing over Japan's war record in South Korea, and there are worries that the visiting fans' enthusiasm may be washed away by the monsoon season.

Japan's semi-final against Australia in Yokohama, which will stage the World Cup final on June 30th 2002, raised fears about next year's event. The match was played under the blackest of clouds, with sheets of rain obscuring the players' vision.

"The rain was so hard and the skies so dark that at one point I couldn't see the opposition because they were wearing green, the same colour as the pitch," said Yasuhiro Hato, one of many players who slipped and mispassed his way through the game.

To add to the air of trepidation, almost a third of the stadium's 70,000 seats were empty. Even Brazil failed to fill much more than a quarter of the 40,000-capacity Kashima stadium in their game against Cameroon.

Some of the public's ardour may have been tempered by a transport system failure that occurred on the second day of the tournament when Japan played Canada in Niigata. The shuttle-bus system ground to a halt under the strain of trying to ferry some 20,000 fans to the ground from the main station in pouring rain and during the evening rush hour.

Many fans had an utterly miserable night, waiting for buses and missing most of the first half. After the match, thousands waited for up to two hours for the buses to take them back to the station.

The FIFA vice-president and vice-chairman of the Korean World Cup organising committee, Chung Mong-joon, said some transport problems still needed to be solved. "We estimate to have about 400,000 visitors each to Korea and Japan during the World Cup and many of these visitors will move around among the venue cities in both countries.

"Currently there are 41 flights a week between Japan and Korea and this is not enough. Although this number is expected to double by next year, it will still not be enough to handle the World Cup traffic."

In addition the two host nations are locked in a bitter dispute over a Japanese history textbook which South Korea claims is a whitewash of Japan's brutal colonial rule over the peninsula from 1910 to 1945.

After the textbook was approved in March, South Korea recalled its ambassador from Tokyo and anti-Japanese protesters in Seoul burnt the book and called for the cancellation of the World Cup. The imperial palace in Tokyo has indicated that it may turn down a historic invitation for the Japanese emperor to attend the opening ceremony in Seoul next year because of the hostile political climate.

Belief in the ability of the World Cup to heal old wounds is being replaced by cynicism. According to a poll this year, only 48percent of Koreans felt that co-hosting the tournament would improve relations between the two countries, down from 67percent in 1997.

One result of the rivalry has been that Japan and South Korea have insisted on doing all their preparations separately and, in many cases, competitively. The establishment of two organising committees, two media centres, two security headquarters and 20 stadiums has created a logistical and financial headache.

"We are having to organise two World Cups," the FIFA president Sepp Blatter complained in Tokyo last week.

"It will not be easy for the organising committees, for FIFA officials, for the teams, the media and the fans to cover so many locations. For all its positive outcomes, co-hosting the World Cup means twice the expenses with no extra income."

Between them, Japan and South Korea have spent £4billion on constructing space-age facilities, most of which will stage only three games. The 19 new stadiums and one modified stadium may be filled for the World Cup but afterwards the fear is that they will end up as expensive white elephants because attendances are falling in both countries' domestic leagues.

"We had 10 new stadiums so they had to build 10 new stadiums. It was a mistake and it has created a financial and logistical headache," said a Japanese politician involved in the World Cup preparations.

"If we had the chance to do it again we would never have built so many." Last month the Japanese organising committee had to go cap in hand to local governments asking for more funds.

Despite those niggles, Jim Trecker, an executive manager of the USA '94 World Cup and a special adviser to the Japanese organising committee, sounded a note of optimism.

"Many of the problems that exist behind the scenes are what you would expect a year before a competition as big as the World Cup and I am sure they will all be solved well in advance," he said.

"The plus side is that the management teams in both Japan and Korea have reached a very, very mature level in terms of both their operating systems and methods. Over the next year these will be fine-tuned and I think the Confederations Cup has focused people's minds wonderfully. I have not seen anything in this tournament that has shown up any serious flaws in planning."

Finally, any European hooligans planning to spend their summer in east Asia should note that there are differences too in security preparations. Japan, one of the world's most law-abiding countries, has adopted a softly-softly approach to football crowds.

By contrast South Korea - a nation at war with the North and used to violent industrial action - has set up a 1,000-strong squad of riot police trained in martial arts and backed up by water cannon and helicopters.

Should England qualify, it is expected they will play their opening games on Cheju Island in South Korea, where police can easily contain any troublemakers.

In any case, hooligans may be too soggy to think about violence. Organisers are discussing whether to ban umbrellas as potential weapons.