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What does the K-League, J. League and the Chinese Super League have that the A-League doesn’t?
They have a decent amount of history, a much larger fan-base and they aren’t restricted by a salary cap.
There are a few reasons why this is an advantage.
For one, they can get better international players and larger sponsors and TV deals than the A-League.
But one thing stands out more than the others. Do the names Alex Brosque, Alex Wilkinson, Brett Holman and Josh Kennedy sound familiar?
These are all mid-level Australian footballers who couldn’t crack it in the top divisions of Europe, so they went and played for Asian football teams instead.
They decided to turn their back on the A-League.
Normally, similarly talented Korean, Japanese and Chinese players decide to move back to their domestic leagues and become the main players of their clubs.
Players like Lee Keun Ho, Lee Dong-Gook, Kengo Nakamura, Yasuhito Endo and practically the whole Chinese national team couldn’t make it in Europe.
So instead, they came back home to play more than 200 games, including in the Asian Champions League, and became national team heroes.
Imagine if Josh Kennedy and Sasa Ognenovski never went to Asia and instead played for Sydney FC or the Newcastle Jets.
They could have dominated, but instead they followed the common trend and went where the money was, something the A-League couldn’t offer them.
I understand players like Mathew Leckie, Robbie Kruse and Trent Sainsbury wanting to try their luck in Europe, but if they fail we would love them to come back to Australia.
They shouldn’t play in Asia, especially the Middle East, until they are 36 and then come to the A-League for one final year.
Thank you Archie Thompson and Shane Smeltz for giving us years of entertainment. Hopefully players can follow your trend and stay and play.
I don’t know if these players don’t like the standard of the A-League, don’t like being a big fish in a small pond or don’t want to earn a modest pay-check.
But for the A-League to progress they need to stay, we need them more than ever.
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