Mark Bosnich says this A-League season will test whether the competition is mature enough to handle a subdued build-up marred by off-field distractions and a lack of big-name marquees.
The 2015-16 instalment was launched this week with far less flourish than in recent years, when even peripheral football fans were enchanted by the presence of big international stars including Alessandro Del Piero, Shinji Ono, Emile Heskey and David Villa.
There will be no players quite like that this season and anticipation has only been further hampered by messy financial situations at the Newcastle Jets and Brisbane Roar, not to mention the FFA’s drawn-out negotiations with the players’ union and still no new Collective Bargaining Agreement on the eve of the first match.
“There has been a lot of negativity in the last couple of months about the CBA stuff,” Bosnich told AAP.
“And there hasn’t been the same vibe we had a couple of seasons ago when Del Piero arrived with Heskey and Ono.
“I actually think all of that is a good thing because it’s a massive test to see whether or not the league is mature enough to deal with all of that.”
“We have our core supporters and without them there wouldn’t be no game.
“But the one thing that we did with the Del Piero time is entice people to get interested in the game who in the past were not.
“That’s very difficult to do without marquees.”
At Tuesday’s launch in Sydney FFA boss David Gallop rejected any notion the A-League build-up has been low-key, declaring: “This time next week, I think you’ll be saying, ‘wow, season 11 started with a bang’.”
Bosnich didn’t put it quite in those terms, but he did expect to be pleasantly surprised once play kicked off.
“Let me equate it to those nights where you don’t really feel like going out but your friends are going `come out, come out’, then you go out and have the best time ever.
“As opposed to when you’ve got all your best gear on and you’re ready to go, then it’s a s*** night.
“That’s what’s going to happen this year with the A-League.”
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