{"id":1311886,"date":"2019-06-27T14:12:00","date_gmt":"2019-06-27T20:12:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.postindependent.com\/mls-looks-toward-asia-as-next-major-market-for-talent\/"},"modified":"2019-06-27T14:12:00","modified_gmt":"2019-06-27T20:12:00","slug":"mls-looks-toward-asia-as-next-major-market-for-talent","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/alwaysmountaintime.com\/kske\/local-news\/mls-looks-toward-asia-as-next-major-market-for-talent\/","title":{"rendered":"MLS looks toward Asia as next major market for talent"},"content":{"rendered":"
\n
Vancouver Whitecaps’ Inbeom Hwang controls the ball in the first half of the team’s MLS soccer match against FC Dallas in Frisco, Texas, Wednesday, June 26, 2019. (AP Photo\/Tony Gutierrez)<\/strong>
AP | AP<\/em><\/figcaption><\/div>\n<\/figure>\n

VANCOUVER, British Columbia \u2014 Greg Anderson was supposed to be bound for Orlando, Florida, and the MLS player combine in his role as vice president of soccer operations for the Vancouver Whitecaps. He was hours from going to the airport when a phone call changed his itinerary.<\/p>\n

Instead of east, Anderson headed west. First, he landed in South Korea to meet with the parents of promising 22-year-old midfielder Inbeom Hwang. Then it was even further west to Dubai to meet with Hwang himself and help finalize a deal to bring him to MLS.<\/p>\n

By the time Anderson caught a flight from Dubai to Toronto and then back to Vancouver, he\u2019d gone around the world to land the Whitecaps a designated player.<\/p>\n

It was a worthwhile effort. But it\u2019s also a rare story.<\/p>\n

Despite the efforts of Anderson and counterparts around the league, MLS has yet to make extensive inroads into the Asian market to convince top talent that playing in North America can be the next move in their careers.<\/p>\n

\u201cThere are certainly players there, national team level players, who could come in and start and play in our league,\u201d said Chris Henderson, Seattle\u2019s vice president of soccer. \u201cI think the aspirations, at least in Japan, for those players is to go to Europe. Korea, they want to go to Europe. Because that is what\u2019s on TV and they\u2019re seeing all the games at the highest level.\u201d<\/p>\n

Currently only three internationals from Japan or South Korea are playing in MLS. Hwang and Seattle\u2019s Kim Kee-hee are the South Koreans, while Toronto\u2019s Tsubasa Endoh was born and raised in Japan before moving to the U.S. following the Fukushima earthquake. Zachary Herivaux of New England and Ken Krolic of Montreal were both born in Japan but mostly grew up elsewhere.<\/p>\n

MLS has been highly successful recruiting players out of South America and it\u2019s starting to shed the reputation of being a retirement league for Europeans.<\/p>\n

But Asia, and specifically Japan and South Korea, are markets producing solid international players, yet MLS has mostly been an afterthought there.<\/p>\n

That could be changing.<\/p>\n

Hwang believes there are a growing number of players considering MLS as a potential springboard to opportunities in Europe.<\/p>\n

\u201cObviously my ultimate goal is to go to a higher level and go to one of the European league and I knew that to achieve that I have to have many eyes watching me playing and I thought that MLS is where there are many people watching,\u201d Hwang said through an interpreter. \u201cThere are many eyes, scouters are watching the games. I thought it would be right fit, right league to achieve my goal.\u201d<\/p>\n

There are also the cultural adjustments. A long-held belief is that Asian players would be most comfortable playing either in the west \u2014 Vancouver, Seattle, Portland, Los Angeles \u2014 or in markets with large Asian communities like New York and Toronto.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt wasn\u2019t the most important aspect but it was definitely very, very positive aspect there is a strong Korean community in the city because I heard from other players who are playing overseas, some of the players are having a really tough time,\u201d Hwang said. \u201cThere is not many Korean people around. Here there is a very helpful Korean community.\u201d<\/p>\n

Henderson and Anderson said the primary challenge for MLS is exposure overseas. Most Asian players are going to be more familiar with the Premier League or Bundesliga.<\/p>\n

But Henderson said that on a scouting trip to Japan and South Korea earlier this year, the mere fact that Kee-hee is in Seattle landed him conversations he might not have been able to get in previous trips. Seattle nearly signed Japanese star Keisuke Honda a couple of years ago, and Henderson is bullish on the league\u2019s chances of getting more top Asian players in the future.<\/p>\n

\u201cThey\u2019re starting to think that MLS could be an option,\u201d Henderson said. \u201cIt\u2019s a little bit like Europe five, six years ago that, \u2018I\u2019m not going to go to MLS until I\u2019m 35.\u2019 And now that is all changing, and I think they\u2019re becoming aware in Asia.\u201d<\/p>\n

GAMES OF THE WEEK: A pair of traditional West Coast rivalries takes center stage this weekend with the California Classico between San Jose and the LA Galaxy, and a Cascadia Cup showdown between Vancouver and Seattle.<\/p>\n

The San Jose-LA clash is being played at Stanford Stadium, while Vancouver and Seattle will wrap up the end of the annual Cascadia Cup series, which also includes Portland.<\/p>\n

via:: Post Independent<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Vancouver Whitecaps’ Inbeom Hwang controls the ball in the first half of the team’s MLS soccer match against FC Dallas in Frisco, Texas, Wednesday, June 26, 2019. (AP Photo\/Tony Gutierrez)AP | AP VANCOUVER, British Columbia \u2014 Greg Anderson was supposed to be bound for Orlando, Florida, and the MLS player combine in his role as […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[160],"tags":[],"class_list":{"0":"post-1311886","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","6":"category-local-news"},"acf":[],"publishpress_future_action":{"enabled":false,"date":"2026-06-19 17:46:40","action":"change-status","newStatus":"draft","terms":[],"taxonomy":"category","extraData":[]},"publishpress_future_workflow_manual_trigger":{"enabledWorkflows":[]},"distributor_meta":false,"distributor_terms":false,"distributor_media":false,"distributor_original_site_name":"KSKE Ski Country","distributor_original_site_url":"https:\/\/alwaysmountaintime.com\/kske","push-errors":false,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/alwaysmountaintime.com\/kske\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1311886","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/alwaysmountaintime.com\/kske\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/alwaysmountaintime.com\/kske\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/alwaysmountaintime.com\/kske\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/alwaysmountaintime.com\/kske\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1311886"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/alwaysmountaintime.com\/kske\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1311886\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/alwaysmountaintime.com\/kske\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1311886"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/alwaysmountaintime.com\/kske\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1311886"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/alwaysmountaintime.com\/kske\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1311886"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}