Ahn would open up a far east boundary

DUNDEE REALISED they were sitting on a goldmine within hours of signing Fan Zhiyi - when the club's official website almost crashed because of the number of hits from the Far East.

The then-China captain arrived in Scotland in 2001 as a relative unknown to most Scottish football fans but less than 24 hours after announcing he would be signing for the Tayside club, there had been more than 2000 hits on the Dundee website from Asia alone.

The defender spent just six months with Dundee, but in that time traffic on the website increased by hundreds of thousands and the club reaped the benefits of huge advertising and sponsorship deals with Chinese businesses.

Footballers are hero-worshipped in sports-mad Asian countries and the Dark Blues cashed in on having one of the most popular players in China within their ranks, shirt sales rocketing and a signing ceremony for Fan Zhiyi was even beamed out live on television in his home country. Hearts could follow in Dundee's footsteps if they dip into the Far East gold-mine market to bring South Korean superstar Ahn Jung-hwan to Tynecastle in the summer, a move which would open the door to a country with a population of around 50 million.

The Tynecastle club's supporters will be able to catch their first glimpse of Ahn this weekend when he makes his first appearance on Scottish soil when South Korea take on Ghana - ironically at Easter Road - in their final World Cup warm-up match.

He is something of a pin-up in his homeland and has already established a huge fan base.

As a young player he was rated as the most adaptable and most likely to make it outside of Asia and he has been tagged the country's own David Beckham.

Vladimir Romanov will be hoping he can have a similar impact on Hearts' revenue if he puts pen to paper on a deal to take him to Tynecastle - Beckham's presence at the Bernabeu has this year seen Real Madrid overtake Manchester United as the world's highest-earning club.

Hearts may have some way to go to match the turnover of either of those clubs but there is no doubting that Ahn would significantly boost the Tynecastle coffers and Dundee spokesman Niall Scott admitted that club officials were amazed at the response to Fan's signing and the impact it had on the Tayside club's finances.

He said: "There was a huge increase in people logging on to the club website, it went up by hundreds of thousands and most of the hits from Asia.

"At that time we had a facility on the website where you could log in and vote for your man of the match and because of his popularity he won it every week, even when he wasn't playing!

"There was a definite upturn in business in general, from shirt sales to advertising although the full commercial potential was never realised because he didn't stay at the club long for any real length of time.

"There was a huge surge of interest in him and, to be honest, I don't think anyone at the club realised quite how big a star he was in China. Sales of replica shirts increased markedly during his time at the club and there were proposals in place to develop the potential to increase revenue further in the long term. We looked at advertising, sponsorship, shirt deals and even the possibility of bringing in more players from the Far East market."

Having travelled to China shortly after Fan's signing, Scott was amazed by the level of publicity surrounding the player, huge banners and posters adorning walls around the city and interviewers clamouring to get just a word with a national hero.

He added: "The volume of interest in him was just amazing and I don't think we appreciated how popular he was until we went over to Shanghai and there were huge billboards of him hanging all over the place, the attention he was getting was on a par with what David Beckham experiences in this country.

"Our only regret is that he didn't stay at the club for very long, but signing Fan certainly didn't do us any harm. China and other countries in the Far East are footballing nations and he really was a superstar over there."

Ahn was catapulted into the limelight when, while playing for Serie A side Perugia, he scored the golden goal that knocked Italy out of the World Cup held in South Korea in 2002.

The goal made him an instant hero in his homeland but after his heroics, he was told in no uncertain terms by Perugia president Luciano Guacci that he would never play for the club again after "ruining Italian soccer".

Following his instant rise to infamy in that tournament it was widely expected that he would be flooded with offers, but they were slow to materialise and he switched to Japan with J-League outfit S-Pulse before moving on to French side Metz last summer and then on to German Bundesliga outfit MSV Duisburg. Imports from the Far East have been few and far between for British clubs, and, while their value off the park cannot be argued with, they have enjoyed mixed fortunes on it.

Dundee were the first Scottish club to look to the Far East when they signed Fan, although his time was with Ivano Bonetti's side.

Celtic's Japan internationalist Shunsuke Nakamura, pictured, has been tipped by his national coach, Zico, to be the star of the World Cup.

He has impressed with Celtic this season, his trickery and skill from set-piece situations making him an instant hit and his every move is followed by Japanese camera crews and journalists, who cover every game at Celtic Park.

However, the midfielder's stay in Scotland could also be cut short as he has indicated that he may quit the club this summer, just ten months into his three-year contract, as he is keen to secure a move to Spain.

While Nakamura has proved a hit with Parkhead supporters, his compatriot Du Wei did not enjoy the same success. The China skipper signed a four-year deal with Gordon Strachan's side but his competitive debut - made when Bobo Balde was on African Cup of Nations duty - ended in disaster when he was hauled off after just 45 minutes of Celtic's 2-1 Scottish Cup defeat to First Division side Clyde.

That signalled the beginning of the end for the defender and Celtic invoked a clause in his contract which allowed them to send him back to his old side, Shanghai Shenhua, in January if he failed to impress. Park Ji-Sung has had no such problems and has established himself in the Manchester United midfield, playing 23 Premiership games in his first season with the club, while Hidetoshi Nakata, who arrived at Bolton on a 12-month loan deal from Fiorentina in August 2005, has also become an important part of manager Sam Allardyce's plans.

Arsenal manager Arsene Wenger was hoping Junichi Inamoto would fulfil his potential when they took him on loan from Gamba Osaka in 2002 but the little midfielder failed to hold down a regular spot in the first-team at Highbury and was subsequently farmed out to Fulham.

Having also failed to impress at Craven Cottage, Inamoto was snapped up for £200,000 by West Brom but again he disappointed and within four months found himself loaned out again, this time to Cardiff.

Taken from the Scotsman