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SCMP Reporter

AS he leads you round the luxurious headquarters of the Yomiuri Nippon Football Club, Frans van Balkom's face is beaming with pride and enthusiasm.

 Situated in tranquil countryside on the outskirts of Tokyo and surrounded by rolling hills and picture postcard villages, the club is the multi-million dollar home of J.League side Verdy Kawasaki.

 Opened only a year ago, it is run by a 50-strong staff and provides five-star support for the men who matter - players such as Kazu Miura, Ruy Ramos, Tetsuji Hashiratani, Nobuhiro Takeda and Tsuyoshi Kitazawa.

 ''Look at this gymnasium,'' says van Balkom, ''it's unbelievable.

 ''There is no money saved here.''  Not in the gym, not in the boardroom, the physio room, the changing rooms, the restaurant, the offices, even the boot room, where high-pressure air boot cleaners simply blow away the mud.

 We walk past the sackfuls of fan mail - the star players have been on World Cup duty in Qatar for a couple of weeks so the corridors are over-flowing with letters - and out into the bright autumn sunshine.

 It is the morning after a night match and the three training pitches are deserted because the players will not be reporting for duty until 3.30 pm.

 Although six were representing Japan in Qatar, that still leaves 24 in the senior squad, plus another 25 in the fully professional farm team. Then there are the six age-group teams, ranging from under-18s to under-eights, plus three girls' teams - all of them wearing the famous green shirts of Yomiuri.

 ''This is the Ajax of Holland, the Barcelona of Spain, the Manchester United of England,'' says van Balkom, a 54-year-old Dutchman who has worked in eight countries and been national coach of three - Hong Kong in the mid-1970s, Iran and Indonesia.

 A home stadium, in Yomiuri's case at Kawasaki City; big-money backing, from The Yomiuri Shimbun newspaper, the Nippon TV Network Company and Yomiuri Land; and a well organised age group structure - these were all necessary to gain admission to the 10-teamJ.League, which began in May.

 Now, halfway through the inaugural championship of the new professional league, van Balkom reckons there are 50 towns and cities trying to join the football boom.

 ''I have no worries about the future, for the next 10 years at least,'' he says. ''In fact I see the interest growing and growing and the way they are building it up they will get the World Cup in 2002.''  Van Balkom began his second spell in Japan nine months ago, three months before the start of the J.League season. He was brought back to fine-tune the team and is confident they can win the second half of the championship and play the winners of the firsthalf, Kashima Antlers, in the final.

 Yomiuri, whose latest victims were Hong Kong champions Eastern in the Asian Club Championship, were founded in 1969 and changed the face of football in Japan.

  Of his first spell with them, Balkom recalls: ''Even then it was set up as a professional club and the players were paid as professionals rather than employees of teams financed by the big companies.

 ''The company teams were very rigid and played in such an organised environment, whereas in ours there was a bit more freedom and creativity and people with long hair.

 ''Yomiuri started bringing in foreign players and started to dictate soccer in Japan. Yomiuri was the club that made it all happen.''  It was on a visit to the territory that van Balkom learned of a vacancy within the Hong Kong FA for a national coach. He applied, was successful and took over in 1976, steering Hong Kong to first place in the first Asian qualifying round for the 1978 World Cup.

 After three years in Hong Kong, he went to Iran and then Indonesia before short spells coaching Hong Kong clubs Tung Sing and Ryoden.

 He has also coached in Saudi Arabia and St Louis, in the United States, before returning to Japan this year on a three-year contract.

   Nicely settled at Yomiuri, with his Hong Kong Chinese wife, Marie Cheung, whom he met when he was staying at the Lee Gardens Hotel and she was working in the hotel jewellery shop, van Balkom's coach journey seems to be over for a while.



Dutchman's Yomiuri think totally football