I go to as many Sydney FC games as I can and have done so since their first ever game. At first I thought, “give it time, it’s only the first season, I’m sure it will get better.” Boy, was I wrong. I’m purely there for the atmosphere now.
As we go into season five, I feel expansion isn’t going to fix anything. We have to fix what we have before we can expand.
You have players well past their use by dates as aarques who can’t even buy a goal with their overpriced $1.4 million pay-cheques.
Then the players that do show some promise are sold and shipped off to Asia or Europe.
The A-League needs fresh pairs of legs to help speed up the game. But you talk to the next generation of footballers and they all have dreams of playing in Europe.
The A-League is just a feeder competition for everyone else.
When you think about it, you pay up to $30 a ticket to watch strikers that can’t score, mids that can’t control the ball, defenders that can’t tackle or clear a ball, and keepers that can’t kick.
At the end of the day, we are paying to watch what we could go and watch at the park for free.
Recommend this story.
April 28th 2009 @ 9:16am
Pippinu said | April 28th 2009 @ 9:16am | Report comment
Club football is about following your club – theatre goers can go to the opera.
April 28th 2009 @ 9:24am
Art Sapphire said | April 28th 2009 @ 9:24am | Report comment
Alan – Why don’t you join Matty in the playpen and share the same dummy.
It looks like both of you don’t have an understanding of the game in Australia.
Hopefully, in a few years time and because of the commitment shown by A-League club supporters, there will be more money from TV rights, attendance and sponsorship to see an increase in the standard of football.
And when that day comes, don’t bother coming to the games because the A-League got there despite you, Matthew and all the other petulant football sooks.
April 28th 2009 @ 9:27am
metalboxhead said | April 28th 2009 @ 9:27am | Report comment
Mathew, you forget that many clubs in the top 3 leagues in the world have existed for over 100 years. Our clubs & league needs time to develop, and if you’d actually bother watching different matches (I regulary watched 3 matches each round), you’d find that the league was quite entertaining with some spectacular goals (just type “Best A-League goals 2008″ into youtube). Just because Sydney FC has been a bit of a dud since season 1 don’t go hanging on the rest of the league. Not all our great players leave, just look at Jason Culina heading the other way in his prime, and Victory is about to pay a 500k transfer fee to keep Hernandez, they’ve come a long way after losing Fred. Maybe you should spend more time enjoying players like Gan and Cole while they are still here in the comfort that the transfer fees of such players will help pave the way for increase revenue in the league, a higher salary cap and eventually an increase in talent.
April 28th 2009 @ 9:29am
sheek said | April 28th 2009 @ 9:29am | Report comment
Matthew,
This is harsh. Perhaps one should not only never say ‘never’, they should also never say ‘always’.
As a neutral also, I think the comp needs to grow. Personally, I think the A-League has a great future, whatever its current teething problems.
April 28th 2009 @ 9:33am
Kurt said | April 28th 2009 @ 9:33am | Report comment
Don’t want to get involved in the debate over how good the A-league is, but it occurs to me that critics who say it is not of good enough ‘quality’ should consider that this word actually has a number of different definitions. For example, which car is of better ‘quality’, a Toyota or Ferrari? A car enthusiast will say the Ferrari, whereas someone schooled in operations management will probably point out that the Toyota is of superior quality because of its lower defect rates, conformance to specification and greater reliability. In short, the Toyota could be said to be ‘fit for purpose’.
Seems to me that the a-league could be compared with the Toyota – even though most of us would probably prefer the Ferrari, we can’t actually afford it and so we accept that the Toyota meets our needs just fine. Sure follow Ferrari in the F1 and admire one when it drives down the street, but let’s not kid ourselves that we’ll ever own one.
April 28th 2009 @ 9:33am
Luke W said | April 28th 2009 @ 9:33am | Report comment
The A-League is doing perfectly fine thankyou Matthew. Yes, it is a feeder competition. Yes, the standards haven’t dramatically improved since Version 1. However crowds are decent, ratings are good and expansion can only help. The likes of Jason Culina, Jess Vanstrattan and Robbie Fowler can only help their teams, as they bring experience, but more importantly professionalism. Culina has already stated that he won’t be training any easier at Gold Coast United than he is right now at PSV Eindhoven, even if that means he has to raise the rest of the team to his level. Periods of growth and decline are natural for any sport. The A-League has survived its decline of last season, and will now look to the future with another boom on the back of the Socceroos at the 2010 World Cup and what I assume will be a rather large bidding war between FTA channels for the rights to the next FFA deal, football is in a nice position.
April 28th 2009 @ 9:38am
McGrime said | April 28th 2009 @ 9:38am | Report comment
So Mathew exactly how long is “Always” ?
I’m guessing about same amount of time we have to put up with your mindless dribble?
Please spare us this type of garbage.
We know what you are trying to achieve and this time I’m not buying in.
Have a nice life………………………………..
April 28th 2009 @ 9:42am
Redb said | April 28th 2009 @ 9:42am | Report comment
A League is miles ahead of the NSL.
Redb
April 28th 2009 @ 9:47am
Millster said | April 28th 2009 @ 9:47am | Report comment
I’ve long thought that one of the many hurdles facing football in Australia would be the maturity of the public vis-a-vis where our league sits in the world. And this article is a great example of why those fears are well founded.
In our dominant codes over the last 100 years we have gone and seen the local suburban side and not had to question it… we were seeing the worlds best, simply because what we were seeing was played pretty much nowhere else in the world.
Whereas now with football we are in a position of learning to love a domestic code knowing that it sits withing a global structure and context, and realistically not right up the top of the tree either.
For me thats not such a huge problem. I get to see decent professional football that relates to my home city down the road, and I also get to see the best players from my local club get picked up to better Asian and European clubs and can enjoy their progress.
I can also see the steps that the league overall takes, and should take, to slowly move up the world “pecking order” of leagues and to improve its overall standing as a comp, and also the attractiveness of players that are then sold to bigger clubs and leagues. In this respect, for me the notion of a “feeder league” isn’t a problem either because you still need to prove things about quality and value in order to be a good feeder.
And finally, on a more emotional level, I’m able simply to see “my” side these days and follow their adventures, however grand or humble. Even the best quality in the world is no substitute for that feeling of local representation and relevence.
But of course all these aspects require a bit of a leap in maturity. In adopting football at an enhanced level as one of our major sports, Australia is finally saying that it is no longer content having clubs and codes where the rule is to be a big fish in an awfully tiny pond. We’ve now grown up a bit, opened the gate of the kindergarden, and started really swimming in the ocean. For some fans like me that’s very exciting. Others may take a while to adapt to the bigger questions that are asked in such an environment.
April 28th 2009 @ 9:58am
Matthew Wilson said | April 28th 2009 @ 9:58am | Report comment
Everyone that thinks the A-League is fine at the moment has got to be kidding them selves… Ok so im not expecting it to become an EPL even though I dont see why it cant, Im talking about how professional footballers can’t even play a professional game.
You look at the young Aussie Players coming through the ranks in the A-League and how many are ever going to play top Football? NONE!
It’s a very poor standard of the game, you look at the Dutch League and the young players that come through there and have playerd for top European Teams, even the K League has a couple.
Wake up and go watch a real game of football!