The reporter reported coldly The surprise batch naturalization of the Indonesian team has aroused widespread attention in Asia and even in the world. Although the large naturalized corps of the Indonesian team can be considered a "weakened version" of Algeria, it is clear that Indonesia is completely incomparable to Algeria in terms of results. The Indonesian team should perhaps find a better balance between the quantity and quality of naturalization, as well as better improving the strength of the team.

Comparatively speaking, most of the national teams that rely on naturalization to succeed basically follow the principle of "less but better": forming a core in key tactical positions, and paying more attention to the integration of naturalized players with the whole team. When this model becomes mainstream, there must be an inherent rational logic.

"Less but fine" has its own reason

The first time in Asian football to achieve great success with naturalized players was the Japanese team in the early 1990s. With Brazilian midfielder Sergio Ramos as the core, he raised the rhythm of attack and defense and the organization of attack to a new height, and took advantage of the 1992 Asian Cup victory on his home side as an opportunity to smoothly promote the smooth launch of Japan's J-League the following year. After that, although the Japanese team successively had three naturalized players of Brazilian descent, they all occupied individual positions on the offensive end of the team and played their respective prominent roles.

The Australian team, which was originally dominated by the immigration + naturalization corps, although there are many naturalized players with good strength, they usually only reserve 2-3 positions for such naturalized players as the key tactical core.

This is the case with strong Asian teams, and most of the original second-rate teams are also naturalized players who occupy a small number of positions and integrate with the whole team to play their role. Qatar, which won the Asian Cup for a second time, only defenders Pedro Miguel (Portugal) and Lucas Mendes (Brazil) are the defenders in the real sense of the team, and the two-time Asian Cup champions' ace partners Akram Afif (Somali/Yemeni mixed-race) and Almoz Ali (Sudan) were all born in the Hope Football School and grew up in the "internal training" naturalization of the Qatar League.

The UAE has as many as 12 naturalised players in the round of 18, which is more widely distributed than Qatar. But they have always been based on Ivory Coast central defender Ottone, Tanzanian winger Ghassani and Brazilian "old gun" Canedo as the core, supplemented by individual naturalized stars in the line of fire, forming a situation in which naturalized players lead the old with the new, and the familiar with the new.

The battle for quantity and quality

In recent years, the Iraqi Football Federation, like Indonesia, has packaged and naturalized players from Europe in batches. There were 12 naturalized players in Iraq's 25-man squad for the round of 18 in November, but in the round of 18, the Iraqi team still used Suraka, a defensive stalwart who was naturalized from Sweden nine years ago, and former Swedish youth midfielder Ammari, who was naturalized three years ago, as the core, and more starting positions were reserved for local players.

In terms of balancing the number of naturalized players and the overall structure of the team, West Asian teams generally attach more importance to the core role of naturalized players. Iraq's Spanish coach Casas is more focused on the team's overall performance. Iraq's most valuable centre-forward Hamad (Ipswich, Premier League), right winger Majid (Hammarby, Sweden) and midfielder Iqbal (Utrecht, Eredivisie) were not part of the team, while left winger Danilo Said (Heerenveen, Eredivisie) was not even included in the squad.

Including Malaysia, the Philippines, Syria and Lebanon, which failed to reach the round of 18, Asian football has vigorously promoted naturalized players, and there are not a few national teams with more than 10 naturalized players in the squad for a single international break. It's just that the big difference is that more national teams pay more attention to the quality of naturalized players in the context of quantitative accumulation, which is the balanced concept of exploring the potential of naturalized players to the extreme.

The opposite of radicalism is prudence

Of course, there are some football developing countries in the round of 18 that are still relatively calm about naturalization, except for Oman and Kuwait, which are already in the third echelon of Asia, and Uzbekistan, Jordan, Saudi Arabia and even Iran, which are stronger, are in a more cautious state.

Not every developing country in Asia sees naturalized players as a goal that the Football Association is trying to promote. At least in the round of 18, except for Jordan, Kuwait, and Oman, there are almost no naturalized players, and Bahrain only has Nigerian naturalized Emmanuel and Ated. Essentially, these Asian national teams still value the complementary role of naturalized players rather than the leading role. Before being sacked by the Saudi Football Federation, Mancini had called on the Saudi league to give more opportunities to homegrown players. He has considered stepping up efforts to bring in naturalized players, but the Saudi national team is currently targeting not enough players. Saudi Arabia's introduction of young foreign aid this summer is widely seen as a way to hoard naturalized talent in the future, as the UAE has done.

All in all, the development of naturalized players in Asia is also very uneven, and the national football associations are more likely to cross the river by feeling the stones on this issue. The number of naturalized players does not always correspond positively to the strength of Asian teams. Regardless of the number of naturalized players, in the final analysis, the problem of how to make good use of naturalized players is to be solved. A large number of people does not necessarily give the upper hand to strength, and a small number of people does not necessarily mean that you are at a disadvantage.