Articles by Paul Williams

About Paul Williams

Paul Williams is an Adelaide-based football writer who has reported on the comings and goings of Asian football for the past decade. Having covered the past two Asian Cups, he writes regularly about the J.League for Optus Sport in Australia, while he also regularly contributes to Arab News. Further, he has previously been published by outlets such as FOX Sports Asia, Al Jazeera English, FourFourTwo, and appeared on numerous TV and radio shows to discuss Asian football.

The ‘Lion King’ continues to roar

May 20, 2020 Paul Williams

“I was in Korea but I did not watch a single World Cup game. Instead, I drank a lot of alcohol in an attempt to numb the pain.” Lee Dong-gook’s career, and life, could have […]

Australia still waking to its Asian future

May 15, 2020 Paul Williams

“Asia is expecting us to be a contributing member to the Asian Football Confederation and we will be.” Those were the words of then Football Federation Australia chairman Frank Lowy the day after that historic […]

K League goes global

May 6, 2020 Paul Williams

With the K League set the resume this weekend, not since 2002, when South Korea co-hosted Asia’s first FIFA World Cup (of the men’s variety) with Japan, has Korean football garnered such international attention. The […]

OPINION: Back to the future for the AFC Champions League

April 28, 2020 Paul Williams

No one really knows what a post COVID-19 world will look like, especially when it comes to sport. The pandemic has wrought havoc on the sporting landscape in every corner of the globe, and Asia […]

Motta: ‘I fear for Italy’

April 23, 2020 Paul Williams

When former Juventus and Italian international defender signed on the dotted line for Persija Jakarta at the start of the year, no one could’ve foreseen that just a few months later he would be holed […]

OPINION: Ki unrealistic? Think again Mr. Fowler.

February 13, 2020 Paul Williams

Robbie Fowler wants us to be realistic. Signing former Korea Ki Sung-yueng, for any A-League club, the former Liverpool legend contends, is unrealistic. It’s hard to criticise a player that has had the career Fowler […]

Merger marks the death of Mohun Bagan

January 17, 2020 Paul Williams

The thing with history is once it’s gone, you can’t get it back. When an animal species is declared extinct, there’s no getting it back. When an historic building is knocked down for shiny new […]

Minamino ready to take centre stage

January 16, 2020 Paul Williams

Eighteen months ago, despite three and a half impressive seasons with Red Bull Salzburg in which he scored 31 goals in 95 games for the perennial Austrian champions, Takumi Minamino wasn’t included in the extended […]

OPINION: Time to review the ACL’s 3+1 rule

January 13, 2020 Paul Williams

Park Il-gyu has had a pretty unremarkable career. The Japanese-born South Korean shot-stopper has spent most of his career in the lower tiers of Japanese football, mostly in J3 with Fujieda MYFC and FC Ryukyu. […]

Hola! Asia’s future shines in Spain

January 3, 2020 Paul Williams

It doesn’t take much for a young player to get hyped up in the social media age. A few fancy step overs, a few nice goals and the twittersphere is abuzz about the ‘next big […]