SportsLine wire reports

LONDON -- Asian soccer faces a return to the dark days of the 1960s if its officials carry out their threat to boycott the qualifying competition of the 2002 World Cup finals.

In the mid-1960s, every Asian nation apart from North Korea boycotted the qualifiers in a row over the allocation of places for the 1966 finals in England.

More than three decades later, the same principle is at the heart of the current crisis -- the number of places allocated to one of the world's most populous regions but one of the weakest in terms of achievement on the field.

Although the finals are being staged in Asia for the first time in 2002 by joint-hosts South Korea and Japan, the 45-nation strong Asian Football Confederation have long been unhappy about their allocation.

They are insisting to world governing body FIFA that they will be under-represented with only four Asian nations competing in the finals -- South Korea and Japan plus two qualifiers.

Asia's argument is that it had four qualifiers -- Saudi Arabia, South Korea, Iran amd Japan -- at last year's World Cup finals in France and is effectively being penalised for hosting the finals by being reduced to just two qualifiers for 2002.

They maintain that South Korea and Japan qualifying automatically as hosts is an irrelevance.

They want parity at least with 1998 -- when they had three automatic qualifiers with Iran coming through as the fourth after winning a play-off against Australia.

On Tuesday it appeared a compromise had been reached in meetings ahead of Friday's FIFA Congress in Los Angeles when UEFA said it would give up one of its automatic qualifying berths and instead volunteered a play-off between a European country and an Asian nation.

In soccer's political parlance, that is known as a half-place, and earlier this week it seemed Asian officials might settle for that. But Thursday's emergency meeting of Asian delegates in Los Angeles proved just the opposite.

Asia's argument is that because the finals are in Asia and because they have improved sufficiently they should have more places.

But the record of Asian teams in World Cup finals from 1978 onwards makes depressing reading.

Of 37 matches played Asian teams have won just three matches, drawn seven times and lost 27. Their only wins came when Saudi Arabia beat Belgium and Morocco in 1994 and Iran beat the United States in 1998.

Asian representation at the finals has increased since 1982 when only one nation took part. The allocation increased to two in 1986 and jumped to four last year when the finals were enlarged from 24 to 32 teams.

Today's argument is a throw-back to one of the stormier episodes in World Cup history when FIFA allocated just one place in the 1966 finals in England to cover both the Asian and African continents.

As a result all the African countries withdrew from the qualifying competition and all but North Korea withdrew from the Asian qualifying competition.

North Korea eventually beat Australia twice to qualify for the finals where they later created a sensation by beating Italy and reaching the quarter-finals.

That proved a false dawn for both North Korean and Asian soccer and it took the continent many years to make any mark at all on the finals again.

North Korea have never appeared in the finals since, while South Korea have qualified for each of the last four tournaments but have yet to win a match.

More than 30 years after their moment in the sun, North Korea remain the only nation to have reached the last eight in the World Cup.

Hosting the World Cup in Asia has posed many new problems for FIFA -- not all of them yet resolved. Even the proposed dates of the finals are problematic as the finals must avoid the region's rainy season -- but not clash with the end of the European playing season.

There is no suggestion as yet that if the boycott goes ahead the finals would be moved. But FIFA might only be pushed so far. The Asians are playing a high-stakes game.