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The Chinese, whose 5,000-year history abounds with invention, have claimed another ancient discovery as their own: football, Chinese historians announced recently, originated in the fertile fields of China's eastern Shandong province 2,500 years ago during the Eastern Zhou dynasty's Spring and Autumn Period. The British assertion that they invented the beautiful game? An exaggerated claim by an arriviste power responsible merely for updating China's idea. Whatever the origins of zuqiu, as the Chinese now call soccer, there's little debate that Asia has, in the intervening millennia, hardly dominated the pitch. But in 2002, when the continent hosted its first ever World Cup, in South Korea and Japan, Asia seemed to be waking up from its long soccer slumber. The South Koreans, propelled by their rowdy Red Devil fan base, reached the semifinals, while the Japanese advanced to the round of 16. Even the Chinese showed up, making a historic debut in the 32-nation pantheon. Storied European clubs like Everton and Manchester United snatched up Asian stars such as China's Li Tie and Korea's Park Ji Sung. Asian Football Confederation (AFC) general secretary Peter Velappan declared that when it came to soccer, "the future is Asia."

By future, perhaps he didn't mean the 2006 World Cup. To be sure, Asia's expectations were unreasonably high for Germany. For one thing, the continent had a home-field advantage in 2002, and this year's draw was particularly tough. Nevertheless, few expected Asia to lose the ball so resoundingly: by the end of the first round, South Korea and Japan had been left on the sidelines after racking up only one win between them. "We were given a dose of reality this time," lamented Japan's goalkeeper Yoshikatsu Kawaguchi. Middle Eastern nations Saudi Arabia and Iran, which also belong to the vast AFC, were eliminated too. Only Australia, which joined the AFC this year, made it through the group stage before losing to Italy. And the purported inventor of the game? China didn't even qualify for this year's Cup. "Everyone was expecting our teams to do much better than they did," admits AFC president Mohamed bin Hammam. Our results in Germany ... have brought great disappointment."

Beyond this blow to national pride, Asia's poor showing is a discouraging barometer of how the world's most popular sport is faring on its most populous continent. After Asia hosted the World Cup in 2002, football fever was supposed to ignite the region's soccer leagues, which in turn would spawn a new breed of world-class players. Instead, the game hasn't grown much at all. Four years ago, Japan fielded a squad of young, well-coiffed dynamos dubbed the "golden generation." In Germany, essentially the same side showed up, older and a little tarnished, in desperate need of new blood and better coaching. Korea's languishing domestic league didn't have much to offer up either in the way of fresh talent. Far from receiving a boost from 2002, the K-League has sunk further into irrelevance.

The sorry state of Asian soccer doesn't bode well for 2018, when hosting rights for the World Cup may return to the region under a FIFA initiative to more equitably distribute the glory of the game across the map. Beijing, which hopes a successful Olympics in 2008 will inspire confidence, is an early favorite. Yet even some Asian supporters aren't sure the country deserves the honor. "If in 2018 the World Cup were to be held in China, my first reaction would be that it's a joke," says Song Ziliang, a Shanghai stock analyst and ardent football fan. "China is a big country, but Chinese soccer sucks."

When Franklin Foer wrote his 2004 book How Soccer Explains the World, he traveled all around the globe, from Belgrade and Glasgow to Tehran and Rio de Janeiro. Foer didn't visit Asia. The continent, it appeared, wasn't part of the soccer world. Certainly, football doesn't permeate Asian culture as it does in Europe, Latin America or Africa. Asian heroes don't spring from the sport in quite the way that a boy from the favelas named Edson Arantes do Nascimento grew up to become Pelé. But, clearly, to judge from the passion of Asians watching this World Cup—from the Red Devil fans who turned every Korean match into a sea of crimson to the Chinese who en masse donned yellow and green for their chosen surrogate, Brazil—love for the sport does transcend continental boundaries. A wonderful thing about soccer, too, is that is does not discriminate. Apologists sometimes resort to a perverse form of eugenics to explain Asia's substandard football: last week Japan's World Cup coach Zico claimed his team's smaller physiques were limiting when they "play a team which has a height advantage." But Pelé is only 1.72-m tall. And the Laurel and Hardy combo of Peter Crouch and Wayne Rooney on the English offense may be further proof that there's no such thing as the ideal soccer body.

In fact, it may be those off the pitch who aren't measuring up: Asian government officials, league owners, and, on occasion, bribe-taking coaches and referees. "[Asia's World Cup] defeat is because of poor competition structures, particularly club competitions," says AFC president bin Hammam. "We will not see any improvement at the international standard unless we restructure and improve the professionalism in our clubs and leagues." The K-League exemplifies the problem. Its teams are owned by Korean conglomerates, like Hyundai and Samsung, and their packed schedules and dull, defense-driven play reflect corporate culture more than sporting flair. "The players work for the owners of the clubs and don't care about the fans," says Shin Dong Min, an adviser to the Korean national team's fan club. And with so many clubs in the red because of poor attendance, the K-League is reluctant to loan out star players to prepare for the World Cup. Korea's national team trained together for five months before the 2002 World Cup. "This time, we didn't get cooperation from the K-League," says their coach Pim Verbeek. "Instead of five months, we got four weeks."

China's domestic league is even more in tatters. Plagued by illegal gambling rings, the league is so rife with corruption that international sponsors have fled and several clubs are verging on bankruptcy. Qualification for the last World Cup only papered over the league's disarray. "The success in 2002 actually delayed Chinese soccer from reflecting on its problems and fixing them," says Li Chengpeng, a Chinese sports commentator. In 2003, a referee was jailed for 10 years for extensive match-fixing. Earlier, five second-division clubs were penalized for playing faked games in hopes of being promoted. So disillusioned are fans that two years ago, CCTV, the state network, stopped airing domestic-league matches because of poor ratings. "The government must eliminate the [corruption] scourge in Chinese soccer," warned the AFC's Velappan last year. "If they don't, then it will kill football in China."

East Asia's healthiest league is in Japan. Last year, attendance hit 5.7 million, up from 2.6 million in 2000, in part because clubs have developed deep fan bases in many of Japan's smaller cities. Yet as much as the J-League is flourishing, the middling level of Japanese football underlines a more fundamental problem. "In Japan, it's often said that we teach too much," says Yahiro Kazama, one of the few Japanese to have played professionally in Europe. Japanese kids—like others in East Asia—participate in organized after-school soccer, but tend to abandon the sport outside regulation time. "They are good at learning," says Japanese soccer commentator Michel Miyazawa. "But if I ask my son to play with a ball, he seems surprised and says 'Really? Here? Now?'" Children in Brazil or Italy or Cameroon, by contrast, grow up with footballs magnetically attached to their feet; put five boys together and chances are a pick-up game will ensue. Rough-and-tumble scrimmages like these breed the individual panache and lightning improvisation that distinguish a truly gifted player. Look around Asia, and the goalposts just aren't there. After all, it takes many years for a foreign game to become embedded in a nation's DNA. Pelé once predicted that an African team would win the World Cup by 2000, yet only Ghana made the second round of this World Cup. Ball-kicking back in the Spring and Autumn Period aside, Asia hasn't been playing soccer nearly as long as Africa has, not to mention Latin America and Europe. Maybe what's most needed in Asian football is just a little extra time.

• Hannah Beech
• After dazzling in 2002, Asia suffers a cruel reminder that it takes time to forge a soccer superpower