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Should the A-League drop one foreign spot?

Roar Guru
31st July, 2015
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A special fund for special players, can FFA make it happen? And should they? (AP Photo/Rob Griffith)
Roar Guru
31st July, 2015
24
1880 Reads

It seems over the past few years, the foreign players in the A-League have dazzled in the world’s greatest sport and made it famous in Australia.

Players like Alessandro Del Piero and Marc Janko have brought the A-League to the attention of the rest of the world, but is five foreign players too much?

Australia recently hosted the Asian Cup in January, in which the Socceroos stole the show in an emphatic and exciting tournament.

But what was also on display was other players from other nations in our confederation, in which most of them play in Asia or the Asian Champions league.

The A-League should embrace the same rule given to the Asian Champions League, the ‘3+1 rule’.

Teams are allowed three foreign players plus one foreign player from an Asian country. This means taking away one foreign player’s spot.

By implementing this rule, it would give other Asian players the chance to play for more Asian clubs and help the A-League teams to familiarise themselves with the competition.

And also to not crop an important foreign player which detracts from their performance.

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Take Sydney FC for example. They have now filled their five foreign spots with Miloš Ninkovic, Miloš Dimitrijevic, Filip Holosko, Jacques Faty and Mickaël Tavares.

Three of these players are eligible to play, but the other two aren’t, because none of them are from an Asian country.

This means that two experienced players will not be able to play in the Champions League. This could hurt their performance in the competition.

It would give the A-League an opportunity to embrace the confederation it is in and bring in other Asia-based players. We saw it from Western Sydney with Yusuke Tanaka and Yojiro Takahagi and the Newcastle Jets with Li Ki-je.

As the Whole of Football plan released earlier this year states, “we want football to be the largest and most popular sports in Australia”

Asia is the future of football, and is quickly becoming one of the game’s most prominent areas. With a large majority of the world’s population and participation rates, it’s no wonder.

This brings into question, should we drop one foreign spot and fill one with a player from an Asian country?

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I’d like to hear your thoughts on this topic, one of the most frequently debated of the past few months.

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