The man known to all in Japan as Tom-san was born in 1960, originally from New York, and came to Japan, via England, to join Hitachi FC – the forerunner of Kashiwa Reysol – in 1986 after playing for Tampa Bay Rowdies in the soon-to-fold NASL. After retiring from playing he began coaching and became the Director of Coerver Coaching Asia in January 1993, traveling all over Asia assisting youth development throughout the region. During his early years with Coerver Coaching, he set up more than 60 schools in Japan before he started his own school called T3 (Tom-san, get it?!) Academy in January 2008.

Tom has been seen on Japanese TV countless times, including a daily coaching short on in the Tokyo area for years. His DVDs fly off the shelves, too! Numerous J.League players and Japanese internationals have watched Tom’s shows and Manchester United’s new Japanese star took part in Tom-san’s clinics in his formative years! JSoccer Magazine hopes to gain an audience with Tom – a VERY busy man (just setting up operations in China as we speak!) – in the near future but, for now here’s his basic story, and a recent interview. You’ll get the idea why JSoccer Magazine thinks that Tom-san is one of THE major foreign (or not) influences on the Japanese game! To emphasise the appreciation of his achievements Adidas even honored Tom with the Golden Boot award in 1998 for his contribution to youth soccer in Asia. A rare thing indeed!

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Introduction by Scott McIntyre for SBS’s The World Game website.

It was a match that made the footballing world sit up and take notice.

Spain, heavy favourite for the Olympic gold medal and with three members of the senior squad that had won the European Championship (two of whom scored in the final) just a month earlier, was humbled by a Japan side that hadn’t rated a mention as a medal contender.

An aggressive defensive display that gave the Spanish little time and space to play, a disciplined tactical approach and an ability to carve out chances seemingly at will surprised many. If the finishing had been better it could easily have been a three or four-goal margin rather than the one that separated the two sides.

This was one of the most emphatic announcements made in recent memory and the celebrations post-match (although somewhat over the top) showed just what it meant to Japan – vindication that two decades of work was finally bearing fruit; that now it can stand shoulder-to-shoulder with any nation.

Continuing on from the senior side’s impressive displays in South Africa and Qatar and the U-17’s fantastic showing at last year’s World Cup (where it defeated Argentina and drew with France in the Group stage only to lose 3-2 to Brazil in the quarter-finals), Japan has arguably been the most impressive nation at the 2012 Olympic Games thus far. It breezed through a difficult section without losing a match and was one of only two nations to progress to the knockout stage without conceding a goal. Many are now suggesting Japan has progressed from being merely a dominant Asian nation to becoming one of the planet’s genuine heavyweights.

A country with a fantastic league that is proving itself as the region’s leading producer of talent – the recent moves of Shinji Kagawa, Hiroshi Kiyotake and Hiroki Sakai bear testament to that – and one that is producing players of a technical standard that are on a par with any of their peers.

Yet barely 20 years ago there was no professional league in the country, only a handful of players had ventured outside Japan, and the nation had never qualified for a World Cup nor won an Asian Cup. Japan now is outplaying nations with more than a 100 years head start. So how did it happen?

To help fill in some of the gaps I spoke with Tom Byer …..

(Interview by Scott McIntyre that first appeared on SBS’s ‘The World Game’ website)

Q: The progression of Japanese football over the past couple of decades has been remarkable. What do you see as the reasons behind this development?

A: I think the reason is simple; what we’ve been able to do in Japan is close the gap between the very, very best players and the very, very worst. There’s not a huge gap but if you look in America or Australia, and surely China, the gap is quite big and my whole mantra is that any country that can make that paradigm shift and close that gap is doing well. The player pool is also quite large now in Japan; I mean you’ve got players sitting on the bench and people are arguing about why they’re not on the pitch. The gap at both ends of the spectrum is just getting smaller and smaller. Last year the team that won the J.League had been promoted the year before from J2; the two teams that played in the final of the Emperor’s Cup were both from J2 and that tells me that the core is very strong in Japan. I mean that’s unheard of in any other country in the world; how could you have two lower division clubs in the FA Cup final and some promoted team winning the EPL the next year – it’ll simply never happen. I also believe that there was a key turning point – and that was what happened in 1993, what I call the ‘perfect storm’. That was the year that the J.League began, the year that Japan threw its hat in the ring to host the FIFA World Cup and it was the year we started our business here in Japan with technical coaching.

The J.League was very smart in the way it organised professional football because it required that every single club has to carry not just a first team but a satellite or reserve team, an Under-18 team, an Under-15 team and most of them have schools for 12’s and under as well. So the emphasis was on development right from the beginning. I think also you need to understand a little bit about the culture and values of Japanese people; putting the group first – grassroots football is totally managed and operated by volunteers that don’t get paid anything. It’s a massive effort and the number of coaches working throughout the country is unbelievable. At the top of the pyramid you have the JFA but below that is where things happen – at the prefectural level and then the city level and so on.

One of the great things is that everyone who is part of any tier of that organisation gets a business card with the JFA logo on it and they will proudly carry these. Sometimes though it does get a bit strange; I mean occasionally when I travel to a place in a rural area someone will give you a business card that has the JFA role plus
their regular occupation, you know, like they also sell used tyres or something so you get this whole mixed identity thing.

Q: So, it’s fair to say that the developmental pathway is well organised?

A: Oh, it’s the most organised federation anywhere in the world. Such is the strata it has in place that it’s almost impossible for a good player not to get seen. It has a bit to do with the demographics in that it’s an island country, there’s 47 prefectures and all these players whether it’s Nagai or Miyaichi or whoever it is these kids are almost guaranteed to have been playing in the Under-12 National Training Centres for years. That’s another thing that the success is down to in that it’s easy to identify players from any age.

Q: Looking at virtually every young Japanese player today, male and female, and their technical ability is something that stands out; the ability to play with either foot at the same standard, positional flexibility, movement and passing and so on. It’s something that Japan seems to be doing so well yet in other countries there’s a struggle to produce these kind of players.

A: That’s something that I’ve seen up close. I was on national television every day for 13 years on the number one children’s TV program in Japan. We had between three to five million households watching and we made learning skills and technique a ‘cool’ thing in Japan through the TV shows and through manga and so on. Animation and manga has had a big impact – firstly Captain Tsubasa and now ‘Inazuma 11′, which are massive in Japan. It’s about being clever and understanding how kids communicate now and making it ‘cool’ for them. Nobody likes to go out and do drills and practice so you have to kind of disguise it and make it fun for kids.

It’s also important to remember though that technique is basically just copying; it’s looking at someone and seeing that okay, they do a turn here or there and then imitating that. Technique doesn’t have style – there’s no Brazilian or Italian or French way of technique so it’s really universal. We like to think that maybe the Dutch or the South Americans are better technically, and maybe they are, but technique has no style. The way you play, tactics and formations and so on then there’s certain styles there; a Brazilian style or Italian or Dutch or whatever it is but not with technique and that’s why it can transcend any cultural boundary.

Q: At what point do the talented kids start to get identified and put into the elite streams?

A: Usually at about the age of 11. The JFA has eight National Training Centres (NTCs) and I’ve worked at all of them. They’re not physical places, they’re programs and it depends on the prefecture as to how often they train. Below that you have another regional level of scouting and elite training and then most regions will have another level below that so that’s why I say that it’s very difficult to go unnoticed in Japan. I mean there are exceptions – such as the case with Nagatomo but they’re rare. Then once or twice a year all the best of those levels will come together for the NTC training camps and there’s specialized training. But at the lower level there’s training year-round for the elite kids.

Q: Just looking at the results in the Olympic Games over the past few weeks, focusing on the men as that’s an underage team, were you surprised at the results and specifically the performance against the Spanish?

A: Yes and no, I mean Spain and Japan are very similar in the way they play the game, their physiques are also very similar and the technical level and passing is also of a similar level. In fact I think now Japan has players, technically, that are on a par with the best in the world.
The problem generally tends to be that there is a lack of genuine goalscorers; I mean Nagai has been playing well but against Spain it could have been four or five-nil and usually that’s the difference between the good teams and the great ones. I think it might have been a different story if we’re talking about the full senior side but at Olympic and youth levels Japan these days can compete against anyone in the world. Remember last year Japan had a very good Under-17 World Cup and they only just missed out on going to the semi-finals against Brazil, and those young guys are the guys that beat Australia 5-0 recently at Under-22 level. That team is dynamite so the good news is that there’s probably a better crop coming up than we already have and the same goes for the girls teams too.

Q: JFA is a very forward-thinking organisation with a 100-year plan, whereby it aims to both host and win a FIFA World Cup by 2050. Are they achievable aims?

A: Being an optimist I’d like to say sure but that’s still a long way off. I would say that unless Asia can lift its overall level, particularly countries such as China and those in South-East Asia, then it’s going to be hard for Japan to go to that next level. Every time Japan plays teams in Asia those teams just load up in defence and it’s like a barrage but then when Japan goes to international tournaments it often finds itself in the opposite situation.
Just as is the case with the players, until the gap between the top and the bottom is narrowed it will be hard.

Q: Through to the knockout stage of London 2012 and with Spain, one of the two favourites no longer there, is it possible that Japan could win gold?

A: I think since it knocked off Spain you could say anything is possible. Spain was one of the favourites to win the tournament. Brazil is obviously still there and it’s a major roadblock but there’s no reason that I see why Japan can’t reach the final.

Q: Internationally, and here in Japan to a lesser extent, the win over Spain was painted as a really big shock. Did you see it like that, given how closely you’ve seen the changes in Japanese football?

A: It’s funny you say that because I thought the same thing until Honduras beat Spain – and that was with 11 players! OK, it was an upset but let’s not forget that Japan beat Brazil in the Olympics back when they had a really good team in Atlanta, so these tournaments you need to look more for consistency, which Japan now has. It is now qualifying regularly – since 1998 it has qualified for every World Cup, it is always qualifying at youth level for international tournaments as well and that’s the really big thing. I always laugh at these other countries in Asia like India, Thailand and Indonesia who all want to play in the World Cup but they don’t realise that unless you qualify for these youth tournaments regularly you’ll never get there. I might be wrong but there are very few countries that have played at the top end that didn’t play at the bottom end.