Foreign players should not dominate the A-League

 
Slippery Jim Roar Rookie

By Slippery Jim, 29 Jul 2008 Slippery Jim is a Roar Rookie

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I often watch the SBS program The World Game on quiet Sunday afternoons. It provides some small relief from the mind-numbing boredom a bachelor like myself has to endure whilst getting domestic chores such as ironing and the like quickly out of the way.

Only very occasionally does The World Game unleash a controversial statement that causes me to drop my hot iron to the floor in sheer astonishment.

Yesterday, however, the discussion between the SBS football analysts of the various merits of foreign players in the A-League did provide one of those carpet-burning moments.

When SBS chief football analyst Craig Foster was asked whether the nationality of two players of similar technical ability should matter when it comes to selection for A-League squads, his deadpan reply was to declare that the foreign player is more desirable.

After putting away my kitchen fire extinguisher, foamy contents having been expelled generously on my synthetic carpet, I couldn’t help wondering what the basis could be for this outstanding example of “Fozzie logic.”

In essence, if my possibly inept understanding was reliable, our beloved grey-headed football pundit, who would like us to believe he has “a pro-Australian football stance,” was here stating earnestly that if there were two players available to an A-League club for purchase, one a talented Aussie player and the other a talented foreign player, A-League clubs should leave our Aussie talent to languish and buy the foreign import for the good of football, based solely on nationality and cultural value.

Yes, if I was hearing correctly, foreign players are preferable for the A-League – unless they happen to British that is.

It seems that Foster’s football belief system gets more extreme and more narrow-minded every day.

Aside from the fact that this view is now somewhat outdated, this reasoning also flies in the face of the common view that in, for example, the Premier League in England, the large proportion of foreign players – there are only approximately 182 Englishmen of the total 532 players – is actually harmful to the national team and national development of the game, rather than helpful.

“England can only blame itself,” Dutch football legend Johan Cruyff stated not long ago, “The clubs have brought in far too many foreigners and the club academies, where English talent should be coached and trained, have been neglected.”

To try and redress this perceived imbalance, there have been laws proposed to controversially force English clubs to field a certain minimum number of English players.

Of course, not everyone subscribes to that viewpoint, or to the restricting of foreign players.

“That would kill the Premier League,” said Arsenal coach Arsene Wenger in 2007. “It would certainly no longer be the best league in the world. I would not be happy if somebody told me that I have to say to a player, ‘Sorry, you have the ability to play but you weren’t born in the right place.’”

It must be said, whenever the debate over the good or bad influence of foreign players arises, whether regarding the A-League or other leagues in the world, the inevitable thought that starts murmuring nervously in the back of one’s mind is whether racism plays a part in the various points of view on offer.

A fair enough question in any modern PC society, after all, racism in football sadly still raises its ugly head from time to time, hence the need for FIFA’s slogan “say no to racism.”

While I would suggest that most of the debate about foreign players is never intended to be nasty or racist in any way, I couldn’t help but marvel at the kind of corner Fozzie was painting himself into.

You see, while right-minded folks like you and me like to see all groups as deserving of equal rights, racism has two extremes – at one end, it is discrimination against minority groups, at the other end of the spectrum it is discrimination against majority groups – this peculiar brand of racism is called “reverse racism”.

Indeed, in football, if we were to discriminate against buying certain players based, not on merit, but on the basis of race or culture, essentially eschewing local talent due to foreign bias, we would truly be guilty of nothing less than reverse racism.

The reason to buy foreign over Australian, Foster urged, is so that our local players can watch and learn the beauty and class of foreign football (except of course for nasty British football).

My question is, will our home-grown football talent really gain such vast abilities and football nous by simply gazing in slack-jawed awe at the antics of imported ball jugglers and step-over merchants bought at their expense?

If so, would it be enough to outweigh that which they would gain by actually participating themselves in our top national league instead, and the flow-on effect for our national team?

I do not doubt the reasoning of proponents of visualisation in sport.

Yet I have watched vast quantities of the very best players in the world, but will never gain the ability of, say, Gianfranco Zola to dribble around half a dozen players and slot the ball home, or Eidur Gudjohnsen to thump in an overhead scissor-kick from a curling cross from the wing simply by watching them on TV, as if their skills could be somehow leached from the screen by osmosis.

Surely of more benefit to the growth of Australian football, including our local league, and national team, is the healthy fostering of our local Australian talent within the local A-League.

For the first two seasons of the league, with no restriction on the number players garnered from overseas, the success and quality foreign signings have brought to the A-League has been largely hit-and-miss.

For every fantastic player like Melbourne’s Fred or Sydney’s Juninho, there has been a couple of Allesandro’s or Claudinho’s lurking, making the foreign football flops the rule rather than the exception to it.

Last season, Football Federation Australia tightened the regulations to limit each club to four visa players, a ceiling which will again apply next season.

That makes 32 visa spots across the league.

Last season only 25 were taken up – almost half of them Brazilian – and results were still mixed.

Cold hard statistics viewed across the history of the A-League also belie the fact that talent must inexorably come from outside of Australia.

Of the more than 80 foreign players to play in the A-League, very few have had a clear-cut impact on the quality of our game here.

Of the twelve A-League awards for outstanding individual talent for a footballer in the A-League to date, all have been awarded to Australians, with the sole footnote that in 2006, four players were tied for the Golden Boot award on eight goals apiece – three Aussies and one Scottish player.

That’s right, a Brit, not even a South American! What would Fozzie say.

Not one Johnny Warren medal has yet gone to an imported player – Bobby Despotovski, Nick Carle and Joel Griffiths are the sole winners, and all Australians.

Part way through the last season of the A-League there was a growing feeling that, after the smoke and mirrors of foreign expectation and glitz had dwindled in the relentless week-to-week slog of the league, the real standout players were by-and-large Australians.

This has prompted something of a change in approach for many thinking footballers towards the value for money of A-League recruitment.

Players should never be bought solely because of exotic foreign nationality, rather they should be purchased by clubs because of their football merit, and that alone.

Foreign players deserve a chance, but our local talent deserves an equal fair go.

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