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The A-League last season was blessed to have the introduction of marquee trio Alessandro Del Piero, Emile Heskey and Shinji Ono. All three made an impact.
This season, however, it is an Australian player that is making people sit up and take notice.
James Troisi has made a very positive start to his A-League career with Melbourne Victory. As an attacking midfielder, he has scored five goals in five matches, and is currently the leading goal scorer in the A- League.
The 25-year-old is on a one loan from Serie A club Atalanta.
Last year with Atalanta, Troisi only made eight appearances in all competitions for the club. Before moving to Italy, Troisi had four good years in Turkey.
Playing in Turkey’s Super Lig, he appeared for Gençlerbirliği and Kayserispor. Between those two clubs, Troisi, in all Turkish competitions, made 97 appearances, scored 17 goals, along with 16 assists.
There pretty good numbers for a midfielder. To play in a tough, technical and somewhat volatile hostile environment, you would have to give Troisi some kudos.
Other A-League players in recent times have tried to crack the Turkish Super Lig, but with very little success.
Players like Bruce Djite, Nicki Carle and Shane Smeltz come to mind. If you combine all three of their careers in Turkey, they played in 63 games, for eight goals, and five assists in all competitions over four seasons.
There not great numbers especially when you consider that Djite and Smeltz are strikers, while Carle is an attacking midfielder. Djite was the best performed out of that trio with six goals, three assists from 42 games.
It does give you some indication of how well Troisi did in Turkey. According to IFFHS rankings, the Turkish Super Lig last year was ranked 15th in the world.
So with Troisi performing well in a good rated league, it then begs the obvious question.
Why hasn’t Troisi been picked for the national team more often? He has only played eight games for the Socceroos.
In the 2014 world cup qualifiers, Australia played 14 matches.
Troisi only played twice!
He played in the first match of Australia’s campaign against Thailand in 2011, coming on in the 90th minute, while his second match was a dead rubber against Saudi Arabia (Australia already qualified to the next round) where he was replaced after 63 minutes.
To say that Troisi was criminally under used by Holger Osieck is an understatement! No wonder Osieck is the former coach now.
Sure, Troisi wasn’t getting regular game time in the second phase of qualifying when he was at Atalanta, but it didn’t stop Osieck in the past picking players who weren’t playing week in, week out.
Lucas Neill springs to mind.
Throughout the stuttering campaign, Osieck picked the likes of Alex Brosque and Brett Holman ahead of Troisi.
Both players had their moments where they did score goals, an example of that was Holman’s long range effort against Oman in Sydney. But all too often, they were both inconsistent.
Having seen all three players, I will observe that Troisi is technically far superior then either Brosque and Holman. And that comes from spending time developing his game in Turkey and Italy.
Troisi is back in Australia to get game time so that he puts himself in the frame to the make the world cup squad.
While Holman and Brosque are currently plying their trade in the middle east. Something tells me that Holman and Brosque’s chances of making it to Brazil are long odds.
In my mind, if Troisi continues his rich vein of form, he should go to Brazil. I also think he is the best Australian player in the A-League, far exceeding his Melbourne Victory team mate, Mark Milligan.
If Troisi does make it, I’d pick him as an attacking midfielder, or a second striker, in a false 9 system.
Troisi can play on the left, but I would assume that Tommy Oar and Oliver Bozanic will fill those two left midfield spots.
Beyond the world cup, I expect Troisi to make the move back to Europe.
Personally, Id’ much prefer he went to a league like Switzerland or Belgium, then going back to Serie A with Atalanta.
At least with those leagues, he would be getting regular game time, as has been proven with the likes of Mat Ryan, Dario Vidosic and Bozanic making a good fist of it over there.
At the end of the day, for such a quality footballer like Troisi, he should be a regular member of the national team. He shouldn’t be forgotten or discarded like he has been in the past., It is just as well that Osieck is no longer in charge.
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