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Football Federation Australia may be in danger of losing the dressing room, but the fact is the game itself is still more important than the problems off the pitch.
It’s been a sobering week for football in Australia.
The tension had been brewing long before Brisbane Roar and Western Sydney Wanderers were humiliated in the AFC Champions League on Tuesday night.
Their 6-0 and 5-1 defeats to Ulsan Hyundai and Shanghai SIPG respectively saw Fox Sports analysts Mark Rudan and Mark Bosnich categorically unleash on the A-League’s shortcomings, prompting a groundswell of opinion from just about everyone connected to the game.
As depressing as the midweek results were – and credit should go to Adelaide United for their battling display away at Jiangsu Suning – they have been, in a roundabout way, good for the Australian game.
Dom Bossi has already revealed in the Sydney Morning Herald that FFA will prioritise clubs playing in the ACL next season by making the A-League fixture list more flexible.
That’s something that should have been happening from day one – but better late than never.
The embarrassing defeats also focused the spotlight on youth development. Or more to the point, the fact that for all intents and purposes, ours no longer seems to work.
Our youngsters are going backwards at a time when Asian nations from China to Qatar are pumping millions of dollars into youth development, and one day soon they’ll reap the rewards.
To borrow a concept from Paul Keating, perhaps Tuesday night’s twin thrashings were the hammerings Australian football had to have, and both the FFA and the clubs themselves should revisit the curriculum and assess whether it measures up to our Asian counterparts.
Yet for all the soul-searching after what has been an undeniably difficult week, there’s one place where the game can make up for its many missteps – on the pitch.
It may have escaped the attention of many critics, but tonight’s showdown between Sydney FC and Melbourne Victory is one of the biggest games of the season.
Not only should it prove the eventual destination of the Premiers’ Plate, but it will also be broadcast live on free-to-air TV, albeit on SBS Viceland.
That means thousands of football fans who might otherwise have missed out on watching the likes of Milos Ninkovic and Marco Rojas do battle will get to tune in to witness a Friday night clash that actually has some meaning.
It’s a pity that Sydney’s weather looks like it’s going to pose its own problems – it wouldn’t be a vital Sydney FC game without a torrential downpour – but at least it will allow the players to showcase their skills in more comfortable temperatures than we’re used to seeing in the A-League.
And it’s the fact that the players can showcase their skills at all that suggests that for all the A-League’s faults, there’s still plenty to be grateful for.
It was no surprise to see plenty of pundits pile on FFA during the week, and the reality is that much of the criticism is deserved.
But we shouldn’t lose sight of the fact we have a fully professional football league to call our own, in what is undoubtedly one of the most hostile media markets anywhere in the world.
What success the competition has enjoyed is largely in spite of the game’s administrators rather than because of them, but it’s worth remembering there was once no A-League to speak of at all.
And on a weekend in which our teams once again have plenty to prove, perhaps the most sensible option is to simply pipe down and enjoy the action.
It’s natural enough to want the best for football in Australia, but as Stuart Randall wrote for The World Game yesterday, it’s also “nice to dream”.
My dream is that tonight gives us one of the best games of the season, and reminds us why we fell in love with the beautiful game in the first place.