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The A-League may be ticking along nicely, however it would be even better with some genuine star names.
It may be the longest of long shots, but Aussie clubs could do worse than give Zlatan Ibrahimovic a call.
The 34-year-old Swede is in the final season of a three-year stint with French giants Paris Saint-Germain, with the Sweden skipper having netted an incredible 123 goals and counting during his prolific spell in the French capital.
He’s recently been linked with a diverse range of clubs ranging from Arsenal to Orlando City to a yet to be determined team in Qatar, but there’s no real reason an A-League club shouldn’t be in the mix.
He wouldn’t even be hard to get a hold of – I can think of at least one influential Aussie who works with him on a regular basis – yet there’s no chance Ibrahimovic will grace Australian shores if we don’t even try.
The club perhaps best placed to launch an audacious bid for a player like Ibrahimovic is arguably Melbourne City, although the fact the Swede currently plays for a club owned by Qatar Sports Investments, while the City Football Group is an Abu Dhabi-based enterprise, makes it unlikely.
What makes it even more unlikely is the fact A-League clubs can’t even get it together to sign one of our own. That no one has signed Socceroos star Tim Cahill is an indictment on the competition and an admission that most A-League coaches would rather go without marquee players.
All of that leaves us with plenty of entertaining football being played out against the backdrop of sparsely-populated stands.
Socceroos coach Ange Postecoglou was right when he said in an interview with Fox Sports last week that we don’t spend enough time talking about the actual football on display in Australia.
When I lived in Germany many years ago, I used to devour the venerable Kicker magazine from cover to cover twice a week.
However in doing so, I read a publication in which the first 80 or so pages were dedicated to football, with only a cursory number of pages at the back dedicated to other sports popular in Germany like tennis, ice hockey and basketball.
It would be fantastic if the mainstream media spent more time discussing the intricacies of A-League tactics, but to do so football would first have to knock several other sports off the back pages.
That’s never going to happen without some genuine marquee names, which means we’re back to square one when it comes to drawing more attention to the A-League.
Leading player agent Lou Sticca told me at the start of the season he preferred a system that would see the game’s broadcasters chip in to help fund bringing down some genuine marquee stars.
Without them, we’re left to dissect the likes of Sydney FC’s entertaining 4-1 win over the hapless Central Coast Mariners, where the Sky Blues took full advantage of some amateurish defending from the youthful Mariners outfit.
No doubt the biggest talking point of the round was the decision to award Besart Berisha a penalty in Melbourne Victory’s 1-1 draw at home to Perth Glory, which led Glory goalkeeper Ante Covic to label Berisha an ‘Albanian salesman‘.
I’m all for Covic speaking his mind – he was asked a question by Michael Zappone and he answered it with uncensored frankness – and Berisha himself probably couldn’t have cared less as he slotted home the spot-kick.
The Kosovo-born ex-Albania international remains one of the A-League’s biggest stars, even if the prolific striker was plucked from the obscurity of the German third division.
There are countless footballers with Balkan heritage doing the rounds, including one from the Swedish city of Malmo.
His name, of course, is Zlatan Ibrahimovic. If A-League clubs are serious about marquees, they should pick up the phone and dare to Zlatan.