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Stuttgart's Serdar Tasci, left, and Berlin player Andrey Voronin, right, challenge for the ball during the German first soccer Bundesliga match between VfB Stuttgart and Hertha BSC Berlin in the stadium in Stuttgart, Germany, on Saturday, March 21, 2009. AP Photo/Christof Stache
Brendon Santalab pissing off to China is hardly going to sink the SS A-League but you really have to wonder about what having a contract actually means in this day and age.
Santalab signed for two years with the North Queensland Fury and didn’t even play one regular-season match before being pilfered this week by the Chengdu Blades, a Chinese Super League club. Almost half a dozen Aussies now get around in the Chinese comp and more will follow.
Is our own national comp really so weak that we can’t hold on to a player who a couple of seasons ago was getting around in the NSW Premier League?
Clearly, the answer is yes.
Football Federation Australia has to take some of the heat. They’ve been tardy in countering the new Asian Football Confederation dispensation that allows Asian club to acquire an “Asian berth” player (one from the AFC zone) and so bypass normal visa restrictions and continue to moan about the lack of money in the comp.
But there is money in the league.
Look at Melbourne Victory – they are the biggest club in the A-League but can’t spend above and beyond the salary cap. So they’re aggressively pushing into basketball and rugby union and hoping to turn Victory into a southern-hemisphere version of Barcelona, an SC as opposed to an FC.
By rights, Melbourne should be allowed to spend their money as they see fit. They’ve been a standout performer among a clutch clubs that haven’t been able to keep themselves above water without the FFA’s beneficence.
So why can’t the A-League replicate a competition model like the one in Germany that allows clubs to spend money on player salaries as a proportion of their turnover while being forbidden to go into debt?
Yes, it might nudge Melbourne to even greater dominance of the league but who’s to say they don’t deserve it? Would the administrators of the EPL do the same to Manchester United? La Liga to Barcelona or Réal Madrid? Serie A to AC Milan or Juventus?
It’s part of the reason why the Bundesliga, while not the most successful in European competition, is one of the most profitable if not the most.
And it would go some way in servicing the great and enduring problem of player retention in the A-League.
Yes, the Fury is a different kettle of fish to Victory and is only just finding its way as a football club and a commercial entity, but the basic concept is sound.
The more revenue any A-League club can turn over through the turnstiles or off the park in commercial deals, the more they can spend on players and on thwarting the predations of cashed-up Asian clubs.
And so the revolving door of players to Asia can at least be partly jammed and we don’t lose average players such as Santalab the moment some obscure Chinese club knocks on the door.
The salary cap was well intentioned but it’s out of kilter with what’s required to survive and prosper as a national competition in a confederation filled with predatory rivals.
It’s time for a serious rethink.
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