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The story
It has emerged that more than 36,000 tickets have already been issued for the Aichi Asian Games men’s soccer final — a clash between Japan’s U-21 squad and South Korea’s U-23 squad — set for October 3 at Toyota Stadium in Aichi. With the match falling on a Saturday and carrying the extra weight of a Japan-Korea showdown, organizers expect attendance to approach 40,000 including day-of sales, making it the single biggest draw of the entire Games. The two sides go in dead even, having split their last two meetings — one win apiece in February’s U-23 Asian Cup and a March friendly. Online discussion ranged widely, touching on confusion over the mismatched age brackets, the attendance gap with other sports, and worries about pitch conditions.
It was revealed on the 2nd that more than 36,000 tickets have already been issued for the Aichi/Nagoya Asian Games final pitting Japan’s U-21 team against South Korea’s U-23 team.
The match takes place on the 3rd at Toyota Stadium in Aichi. With it falling on a Saturday and being a high-profile Japan-Korea matchup, large numbers of fans and supporters are expected to turn out. Including walk-up sales on the day, attendance is projected to reach close to 40,000 — the largest crowd of this year’s Games.
Japan’s U-21 team and South Korea’s U-23 team met in February’s U-23 Asian Cup and a March friendly, splitting the two games one win apiece.
Source: news.yahoo.co.jp / Original article here
What people said
The winning team in women's soccer gets to enter the national junior-high boys' tournament unseeded (a dig at the gap in skill level).
⚽ Japan National Team Soccer Schedule 📺
Aichi Asian Games Men's Soccer Final
10/3 (Sat) 19:30~
Japan vs South Korea
Toyota Stadium
📺 TBS network
Kirin Cup Final
10/5 (Mon) 19:30~
Japan vs New Zealand 🇳🇿
National Stadium
📺 TV Asahi network
Mizuho Bank Challenge
11/14 (Sat) 19:15~
Japan vs Brazil 🇧🇷
📺 TV Asahi network
Mizuho Bank Challenge
11/17 (Tue) 22:10~
Japan vs Paraguay 🇵🇾
📺 Nippon TV network
So you're saying this is outselling that ultra-minor-league 'World' event?
Capacity's only a bit over 40,000, so…
Why even set up a matchup like this? Is it supposed to be a handicap match?
Apparently Korea's got solid over-age (OA) players stacked in their squad too.
For Japan, this is the ideal opponent to help develop the LA Olympics generation. For Korea, it's the ideal opponent because winning means every player gets exempted from military service.
Talk about a win-win.
Korea's level of desperation is just different, isn't it. Just hope Japan doesn't come away injured from some reckless studs-up tackle born out of misplaced intensity.
Track meets normally pull under 10,000 anyway, so that's just par for the course.
Guess softball really is part of the 'tax-leeching ball' family too then, lol (a dig implying the sport drains public funding for little payoff).
It's streaming live on U-NEXT, that's how I'm watching it.
Aichi Asian Games
TBS: "Thank you — thanks to the under-21 national soccer team, our ratings went up 😭"
lolololol
I'd guess Toyota Stadium's pitch is in even worse condition — this'll be the 10th match in 17 days, and the Tokai region's had near-constant rain as well.
Background and Talking Points
Attendance at the Aichi Asian Games varies hugely by sport — track and field events, for instance, routinely draw fewer than 10,000 spectators. Against that backdrop, soccer’s drawing power stands out as exceptional. The age-bracket mismatch that drew questions in the thread — Japan fielding a U-21 squad against South Korea’s U-23 squad — stems from differences in each country’s development policy and each tournament’s eligibility rules, rather than any deliberate handicap. For South Korea, there’s an added incentive: players on a winning squad are exempted from mandatory military service, which is often cited as a reason for their greater intensity on the pitch. The two teams enter the final on even terms, having split their two meetings this year — one win apiece in February’s U-23 Asian Cup and a March friendly. Separately, though left out of the main article, some posts in the thread included derogatory remarks about nationality; readers should keep in mind that a Japan-Korea matchup is a topic prone to running hot.
*This article is excerpted and summarized from the 5ch (Geisoku Sokuhou+) thread “[Soccer] Asian Games Men’s Soccer Japan-Korea Final: 36,000 Tickets Issued — Could Exceed 40,000 on Game Day, Toyota Stadium.”
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