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Australian football needs a League Cup

Roar Guru
2nd January, 2018
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Paul Okon. (Photo by Tony Feder/Getty Images)
Roar Guru
2nd January, 2018
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1246 Reads

If the next 12 months in Australian football evolves the way that positive-minded fans predict it will, then by 2019 we will have 28 teams in the top two tiers of Australian football.

There would be a 12-team A-League competition, and a 16-team ‘Championship’ division, which will be Australia’s national second-tier competition

This discussion is not about whether the above events will, or should, occur. Rather this discussion is purely a vision for a League Cup competition for Australia, based on the above events coming to fruition.

The League Cup in England is an annual knockout competition for the 92 clubs who comprise the four divisions that are known as the English Football League: Premier League (20 teams), Championship (24), League One (24) and League Two (24).

The English League Cup is played over seven rounds, with single-leg match-ups for all stages except the semi-finals, which are played as home-and-away legs.

My proposal is for an Australian League Cup (ALC) involving 28 teams from an expanded A-League (12) and Championship (16).

These 28 teams will randomly be placed into two pots, with no geographical separations or seedings.

Just like the English League Cup, the ALC would also be played over seven rounds, however the first four matches would not be knockout format, but played under normal league competition rules. Therefore, a team would get three points for a win, one point for a draw and zero for a loss.

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The 14 teams in Pot A would play at home on Matchday 1 and Matchday 3, and play away on Matchday 2 and Matchday 4. The fixtures for each of the four matchdays would be randomly assigned by picking one team from Pot A and one team from Pot B.

Teams would only be able to play each other once during the four matchdays.

After the four matches, teams would be ranked 1-28 according to the following criteria:

(a) Highest number of points accumulated
(b) Lowest number of red cards accumulated
(c) Lowest number of yellow cards accumulated
(d) Highest goal difference
(e) Highest number of goals scored
(f) Toss of a coin

The top eight teams on the table would then qualify for the quarter-finals.

Quarter-final and semi-final fixtures would be randomly drawn, with once again no geographical separations and no seedings. The first team drawn would play at home.

The host of the final would simply be determined by tossing a coin.

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The Australian League Cup would help build a portfolio of competitions for elite football in Australia.

It would also provide second division teams with further competitive matches against A-League teams, and it would allow the A-League to abandon playing opponents thrice each season, which produces a compromised home-and-away fixture.

The Asian Football Confederation (AFC) sets a minimum requirement that teams entering the Asian Champions League must play a minimum of 27 matches each season (including league and cup tournaments).

Since each A-League club would now play a minimum of four competitive ALC matches, a 12-team A-League could move to a 22-match home-and-away format and fulfil the 27-match minimum requirement demanded by the AFC (22 A-League home-and-away matches, four ALC matches, one FFA Cup match).

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