East Asian Cup

The league has barely expanded, with some clubs folding along the way and others — not to mention the league itself — said to be on the brink of financial collapseas recently as last year. Girls’ football academies are few and far between, and even long-established programmes face closure. Attendance at WK League matches is low — most people don’t seem to know it exists, and even those who do are put off by the weekday-only match calendar. Even the national team barely draws a crowd, with just 597 people showing up to see Korea lift the trophy last week. The smallest crowd in the men’s side of the tournament was 687, for a match between Japan and Hong Kong. In fact, attendances of women’s matches across the board at this year’s East Asian Cup were lower than those of the 2005 edition.