but when you factor in finances and the average quality of players that move to europe then Japan falls behind South Korea.
I - uh - what? Apologies in advance if I misunderstood the post but:
These are the players abroad:
https://int.soccerway.com/players/players_abroad/korea-republic/
https://int.soccerway.com/players/players_abroad/japan/
SK literally has one star player and one good player in EPL.
In Spain there's absolutely nobody.
In Bundesliga there's a star player, a good player and an average player.
In France there's one star player
In Italy there are 0 players.
That's... literally all the strong korean players existing. 6 players if we count them all. The other ones are average and play in smaller leagues. Japan has double that amount and if we start to compare smaller leagues, like Belgium, Eredivisie, to compare the average level, there's an abyss.
So, data suggests that Japan produces stronger players on average...