About a week back several Japanese sports dailies speculated that troubled J-League club FC Tokyo were set to launch an audacious bid to sign Juventus midfielder Pavel Nedved at the end of the current Serie A season.

It appears that the only thing audacious about the story was the fact that anyone ran it all, since FC Tokyo themselves admitted that the first they heard of the bid was when they picked up the newspapers.

Of course no mention of FC Tokyo would be complete with employing the phrase "once bitten, twice shy" after Costa Rican World Cup star Paulo Wanchope turned out to be one of the most disastrous signings of the last J-League season. He was shipped off about halfway through last season, palpably unfit and having scored just once for the capital club.

With former Stades Rennais striker Lucas Severino having departed for Gamba Osaka and the anonymous Evaldo having rejoined Santos FC in Brazil, FC Tokyo have replaced them with a couple of uninspired looking signings in former Consadole Sapporo defender Bruno Quadros and ex-Iraklis midfielder Emerson. There's room in the squad for one more foreign signing, but with the Gasmen heavily linked with a move for Gyeongnam FC striker Capore, it seems unlikely that the final foreigner in the Tokyo squad will be Pavel Nedved.

When the foreign press mention big-name signings in the J-League, they invariably throw about names like former Kashima playmaker Zico, ex-Nagoya striker Gary Lineker and his infinitely more successful team-mate Dragan Stojkovic. Yet those players signed for J-League clubs almost two decades ago! The reality since then is that most of the successful foreign players in the J-League are unknown outside of Japan.

Korean striker Cho Jae-Jin scored a hat-full of goals for an otherwise struggling Shimizu S-Pulse before departing for pastures anew, while Nagoya's key man is former Rosenborg striker Frode Johnsen. Over the past few seasons Urawa have relied on goals from the likes of newly-naturalised Qatari Emerson and ex-Fenerbahce striker Washington - relatively unknown players even in their home countries.

It's not that J-League clubs can no longer afford genuinely big-name players - no one batted an eyelid when Urawa Reds were linked with a move for Alessandro Del Piero, it's just that more often than not these types of players are ineffective. One might argue that Del Piero would help bring fans through the turnstiles, but given that Urawa already average gates of around 45,000 for most league games, it's not like they need him.

More importantly, as Matsu of The Rising Sun News has pointed out repeatedly, it's cheaper for J-League clubs to stack their teams with cheap Brazilian talent. Why? Because of an abundance of Japanese-Brazilian migrants in Japan who can act as translators for the clubs. When Cho Jae-Jin left Shimizu S-Pulse his chief translator departed with him, and an S-Pulse official admitted to me that they had no compulsion to hire another translator for their teenage Korean striker Kim Dong-Sub. To avoid that situation plenty of clubs simply opt to sign players from the one country, with J2 outfit Avispa Fukuoka currently raiding the A-League under the auspices of former Sydney FC coach Pierre Littbarski.

So I doubt that Pavel Nedved will be lobbing up at FC Tokyo any time soon. Not only would he only feature for half a season in Japan, but judging by his recent performances at Juventus, he's still got plenty to offer in European football. He is even rumoured to be willing to come out of international retirement and feature for his country at EURO 2008. Looks like this is just another one of those stories destined to be consigned to the "slow news day" bin.