It is all well and good that the FFA wants to spend $6 million on a coach for our national team, but how about some youth development?
In five years of the A-League, the only players to come out of the league to Socceroos level are Mile Jedinak, Dario Vidosic and Nikita Rukavytsya, and all three have been unspectacular. Vidosic has shown a lot promise, yet no recent product has been anywhere as good as Harry Kewell, Mark Viduka, etc were at that age.
The creation of the A-League has given us a chance to grow football in Australia like never before. However, we have neglected our player development, Australia’s inability to replace Craig Moore, 34, and Scott Chipperfield, 36, shows we just are not producing any quality players not to mention that we don’t have a single world-class striker and the average age of our national team is almost 32.
It is apparent that our Socceroos need new quality players and we simply have no one coming through the ranks.
Old great clubs like Melbourne Knight, South Melbourne, Sydney Olympic, etc all had a sound youth development system by just having local guys playing at junior level, who would eventually grow into some of Australia’s best footballers. The old clubs knew how to produce players in a semi-professional league, while the A-League clubs are yet do anything along these lines and it is worrying.
We need to stop expecting that nations like Holland, England, Scotland, etc are going to produce players for us. I’m not saying it is wrong for our players to go overseas – matter of fact it seems to be the best thing for them. I’m saying we shouldn’t limit our player development to the best players in the A-League getting shipped off at the end of every season to a mid-tier league hoping they will make an impact.
Clubs should be sending players directly to the starting lines-ups in good leagues in Europe not to the bench in poor leagues.
We also need to focus our youth development so every team should be aiming to produce a playmaker, a free-kick taker and a corner and penalty taker. When was the last time Australia scored a goal from a free-kick? And every player should be able to hold and dribble the ball. This should be from the most basic level right the way through to our Socceroos.
We don’t even have a player at a top club at the moment, such as Arsenal, Inter, Madrid, etc
If we don’t produce quality players we can have the best coach in the world without players of adequate technical ability, we will have no chance of winning anything ever.
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Morocco is not the only nation to find success with a large contingent of foreign-developed players - and the Socceroos can join that list.
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