With all the personal arrogance and Euro-centricity he could muster, which is quite a lot, all told, Alex Ferguson dismissed the leading international football tournament of the world's most populous continent in those four words. But the tournament which started in Qatar on Friday is rather more important than that.

Scout Report – Asian Cup 2011 is a post from: Just Football

Just Football's resident scout Tom Shaw has been busy. Here's his scout report from the 2011 Asian Cup in Qatar:

International tournaments provide a great opportunity for scouts to watch the top players from a variety of countries in a high-class, competitive environment.

With a race row brewing in France we thought we would look back at a podcast from October 2008 when we featured a campaign by the organisation Kick It Out which set up an anti-racism campaign in England. There is a transcript below, while explanations of key vocabulary (in bold) can be found at the foot of the post, while other key phrases (in blue) also have meanings explained.

Qatar lost to Uzbekistan 0-2 and Kuwait to China with the same result. The two games summarize what's going on in Asian football today.
- The decline of football in Western Asia: in 1978, Iran was the team from Western Asian to qualify to the world cup. Western Asia added 9 more teams till the 2006 World Cup: Kuwait, Iraq, UAE, Saudi Arabia and Iran.

Liverpool's main sponsor, Standard Chartered has called for the club to sign Asian players in a bid to increase their commercial awareness abroad. Forgive me, but surely this isn't any of their business?

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Monaco midfielder Park Chu-Young has issued a come and get me plea to Liverpool - and insists he doesn't want to go anywhere else.
The South Korean captain will snub possible moves to AC Milan, Spurs and Paris St Germaine to fulfill his boyhood dream and play for his hero Kenny Dalglish.
The 25-year-old is available for around £6million and, with Liverpool touring south-east Asia this summer, Young's arrival could not be timed any better from a commercial sense.

Liverpool will welcome two young Asian players to Merseyside as part of the Chinese Football Association's 'Future Star' program in January.
Long Cheng [16], and Chen Xiaomao [14], will link up with the Reds Youth Academy following a successful week-long trial at Melwood last month.
Frank McParland, director of the Liverpool academy revealed how the club had been extremely impressed with the youngsters during their first visit, praising their commitment and professionalism.