- Video
-
Club Roar
Captured a great grassroots sporting moment? We want to see it!Content Collections
The Roar Community
- Join
- Login
Socceroos Harry Kewell and Brett Emerton - both now in the A-League (AAP Image/Julian Smith)
Wilson let fly on Saturday in a Daily Telegraph column originally entitled “Rebecca Wilson says A-League to (sic) concerned with quick-fix solutions” until a more attentive sub-editor got hold of it.
The shonky headline might not have been hers but the rant was pure Wilson, complete with the usual schlock about the A-League being an inferior competition.
Starting off by labelling Australia’s soccer community “sycophantic” – one assumes she’s never read Mike Cockerill or Jesse Fink – Wilson claimed the twin signings of Harry Kewell and Brett Emerton are “hardly going to provide a long-term injection of health into a haemorrhaging code.”
Maybe they won’t, but the truth is the signings have at least given the A-League a much-needed boost – something any objective sports journalist will admit.
Yet Wilson’s bias is as obvious as her lack of attention to detail.
“(E)very single major initiative from the FFA in the last decade has been top heavy” says Wilson, ignoring the fact the FFA only came into being in 2005 and immediately set about trying to restructure the game from youth level up.
“Parents of extremely promising young soccer players are constantly frustrated by selection policies that allow a powerful few clubs to virtually control all aspects of junior development.”
Who are these clubs she speaks of? And are the parents she has spoken to willing to go on record? She goes on.
“While the FFA is happy to see-off our most promising young players… they are falling over themselves to throw money at two players who have well and truly seen better days.”
Is she referring to the same Brett Emerton who still had a year to run on his contract at Blackburn Rovers, a player who was made captain and played the full ninety minutes of their English Premier League clash against Everton on Saturday night?
Or a Harry Kewell who played 26 competitive games for Galatasaray last season, scoring eight goals in the process and firing the Socceroos to an Asian Cup final in between?
I only ask because it’s difficult to take her opinions at face value when they’re clearly not supported by facts.
But it’s her statement that it’s “shameful only a handful of Australians played most of their elite soccer in Australia” which really left me scratching my head.
Since the A-League kicked off, the list of FIFA World Players of the Year reads thus: Ronaldinho, Fabio Cannavaro, Kaka, Cristiano Ronaldo and Lionel Messi.
Not one of them won the award playing in their own national league.
Is Wilson seriously suggesting someone like Mark Viduka should have passed up the opportunity to play in the UEFA Champions League with Leeds United and stayed in the National Soccer League to play for Melbourne Knights instead?
Because if she is, she clearly doesn’t understand how the football world works.
And that really is my problem when sports journalists like Rebecca Wilson write about the A-League.
She offers no solutions, no suggestions of how the A-League can improve – let alone an understanding of the the culture of the sport, the socioeconomics which drive it or the fans who support it.
She simply offers us 750-odd words of vitriol from a journalist who would clearly rather watch something else.
That’s all well and good, but surely we must take her opinion with a grain of salt.
After all, when Rebecca Wilson is ranting about the A-League, it’s a sign that football is starting to get under mainstream media skin.