ABSTRACT
Football in the Far East is dominated by two countries in particular, Japan and South Korea, who, of course, joined forces to host the 2002 World Cup finals (the first to be held in Asia and the first to be co-hosted). Football was introduced to the region by British merchants, traders and sailors in the 1870s and 1880s but, for different reasons, the subsequent history of the game at national level is somewhat chequered in both cases (see Horne and Manzenreiter 2002).
