This article on the allegedly recent rise of Japanese soccer seemed germane to Go. It's not clear to me that anything the author says about the trajectory of soccer in Japan is true, but I was struck by one line in it - something to the effect of, "Kids are lazy, and only want to get better if their opponents put pressure on them. Once a wide gap opens up between the best players and the rest, they get complacent."
http://www.slate.com/articles/sports/sp ... tball.html