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Harry Kewell can't believe it either (AAP Image/Joe Castro)
When it was anticipated that former Leeds, Liverpool and Galatasaray star Harry Kewell might be returning to Australia, the media went into mania.
Most of us didn’t believe it, couldn’t comprehend that a European star would step down to an inferior league.
Being objective, the A-League is incredibly sub-standard compared to the Premier League, La Liga, Serie A, Bundesliga, Ligue 1 and the Campeonato Brasileiro Série A. No A-League team could compete with a Ukrainian, Russian or Portuguese team either.
But Harry chose us?
That’s not disrespectful to the newly formed league; it’s just stating the facts.
It’s the reason Matt McKay bailed the second he got a chance, and why so many others are gunning for those same opportunities.
It’s the exact same reason we should be cheering on Central Coast’s Mustafa Amini, and every other Aussie who seems to be making inroads in Germany.
This is the future of Australian football, and this is where the stars of tomorrow’s Socceroos will be trained, bred and bled.
While conspiracies abound as to the true motives behind Harry’s move, the A-League-goers are still waiting for that domineering performance we all thought was coming. It hasn’t arrived, amid all the hype, but that is not Kewell’s fault – the Australian media perhaps overhyped exactly what one man could do in the A-League, even though the league is a fairly poor standard overall.
Firstly, Kewell has done some incredible stuff on the pitch, but his teammates just aren’t quite there yet – that is not their fault either.
Harry is simply better, much better, and unless he can occupy every position on the pitch, it will be difficult to see the same quality he has exhibited overseas.
Football is a team sport, that requires reciprocation, and the rest of Victory is barely up to scratch in that regard. They can’t complement his talents.
But more frustrating is the realisation that every team that isn’t Victory, will be forming their tactics to shut Kewell down, in effect causing negative football.
This is the most basic and obvious of requirements for the opposition, but when you take this zonal defence and compound it with the fact that his teammates aren’t half as talented, there is a fairly lob-sided and anti-climatic outcome.
Unless Kewell was cloned, or we eradicated the disheartening salary cap and imported some decent players to truly bolster the league, we won’t be seeing anything too grand.
Sure, we can sit here with our fingers crossed hoping that somehow, some way, the universe will align and all of a sudden, every new recruit will lift the standards of Australian football, but it’s delusional.
The clubs need investors, they need the fans to do everything they can to ingrain football into mainstream Australian culture.
We need money, we need that ludicrous and idiotic Foxtel deal to expire, so that the game can reach everyday people, and we need to dump cash into an extensive range of marketing strategies.
We need Kewell to be the standard, not the apex of Australian football. We need to become a league that players choose to come to, not settle for.
We need to be a top-10 league, not a ‘one last tango’ for the soon-to-be-retired. There is a long way to go, and with the Harry-hype cooling down, we need to be proactive, not reactive.
Right now, Kewell is in a league of his own with nobody to play with.
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