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Since the A-League kicked off in 2005 opinions have varied from person to person about the quality of footballers coming through the ranks and the quality of international footballers coming from overseas to ply their trade in the A-League.
Many have labelled the league boring, unsustainable and lacking any true professionalism.
Once news reached that Tim Cahill, our most formidable attacker had signed for the New York Red Bulls many fans of the A-League questioned why he opted from coming home.
His response was clear, saying “moving to the A-League would have been a step backwards and that’s no disrespect”.
Instead of attacking an icon of our national team, alarm bells should of have started ringing in the FFA head offices.
Why is our league a step back when compared to the MLS? Questions such as those should have been asked and answered.
The hierarchy at the FFA, to develop the A-League must be looking over at the MLS on ways to improve the A-League instead of focusing on the good aspects of NRL, AFL and Super Rugby and shaping the A-League on those foundations.
Many fans will ask why look overseas. The answer is brief yet simple, football is different to any other code in Australia and the reach of football is worldwide.
Here I am, a person who had never watched a game of the MLS who was sitting on his laptop at 4am and watching highlights of the MLS.
Yes the quality of the MLS is nowhere near that of the English Premier League, the Bundesliga or the Serie A but the quality of ‘American soccer’ as Americans call it, has without question, drastically improved.
Over the decade many football specific stadiums in America have been built, many high profile players have been signed and the number of teams has sky-rocketed without impeding the quality offered by the MLS.
How has all this been done in a decade or so? The answer is, investment. Investments into the MLS have been much bigger than that of the A-League and I will briefly outline some of the key points that the hierarchy at the FFA must look into for the current professional competition to improve.
Facility investment
Investments into stadium and training infrastructure must be made for the A-League to improve and for A-League teams to have actual opportunities into making strides into Asia.
Most teams in the A-League do, however have adequate stadium infrastructure, however teams such as Brisbane Roar and Sydney FC (going on from last season’s figures) are playing in stadiums that are overly rather too large for their perspective fan-bases.
Sometime in the near future, football-specific stadiums must be on the agenda, and I do realise that securing the funding for stadiums will be the hardest part.
However within the next few seasons, teams competing in the A-League should at least be looking at owning their own professional training facilities.
Central Coast Mariners are the only current A-League teams to possess their own training facility which in terms of professionalism is close to laughable.
I think going on from reports, they might be the only team is Australia across all codes to own their own training ground which further reiterates the fact that the foundations of League, AFL and Union should not be implemented into the A-League.
At the end of the day it’s the training that any young player does throughout his child hood, teenage years and professional football life which determines how good of a footballer one becomes.
If we don’t start investing in training facilities, the quality of footballers within this country will continue to remain subtle.
Salary cap
The salary cap is a double edged sword which can work both ways and if your an avid football fan you’ll know that most clubs in the EPL are in debt.
The current salary cap in place is another part of the A-League that was copied from the NRL and AFL which needs to be rectified.
The Bundesliga have a very effective ‘spending cap’ in place which allows clubs to only spend as much as they have earned to avoid teams from going broke and the A-League should implement a similar system.
The salary cap was initially introduced to keep the playing field and to keep clubs sustainable but has proved to be very ironic of that.
Clubs within the A-League at the moment are allowed two marquee players and an under-21 marquee player, with all three wages totally excluded from the salary cap.
If I’m not mistaken a system which was initially introduced to keep the A-League sustainable and on an even playing field has done a 360 degree u-turn and allowed clubs to spend as much as possible on up to three players.
If this doesn’t ring music to your ears, this will. The only club to fill all the available marquee positions in season 2012/13 was Sydney FC who finished sixth.
If the A-League does expand to 16 teams one day, for the A-League not to limit its quality a system will need to be introduced to accommodate smaller and bigger clubs.
How could a club for example based in Wollongong in the future compete with a club such as Melbourne Victory to remain sustainable when the demographics are totally different in both areas.
Wollongong currently has a population of around 250,000 compared to Melbourne’s population of over four million.
Having mentioned the populations let’s presume for this argument that Melbourne Victory are averaging 25,000 fans a season while Wollongong FC are attracting 12,000 fans but the club in Wollongong is required to spend as much as Melbourne Victory on their roster.
To add a bit of mathematics to support the argument we’ll say that the Victory have managed to turnover a profit of around $3 million at season’s end (having two marquee’s signed) while Wollongong have managed to just ‘break even’ by offloading a few players to overseas teams and not having a single marquee.
The current salary cap, if anything has hindered the clubs located in the bigger cities in Australia while allowed the smaller clubs such as Central Coast, Newcastle and Adelaide to compete at the discretion of the likes of Sydney FC and Melbourne Victory.
No matter how much effort and whatever system is introduced an even playing field across all A-League clubs will never exist as there are way too many variables.
Expansion
The A-League is currently at ten clubs and expansion is vital for the future of football in this country.
There are a number of key ‘hot spots’ throughout Australia based on their populations that should possess a professional football club.
Two cities stick out. Wollongong and Canberra and these two cities should be the next two cities to secure an A-League club if the right people are found to secure them financially.
Wollongong is the preferred option and would be a goldmine as there are no professional sports teams (besides St George Dragons who play six games a season at Wollongong).
With the right people behind it, a club located on the south coast could become a powerhouse within the A-League.
However I do believe that the FFA should implement (if they haven’t already) a very strict requirement for cities that securing an A-League club in terms of stadia.
The current stadium at Wollongong is not very appealing and there should be strict stadium requirements for all clubs within the A-League to maintain a certain ‘professionalism’ across the league.
A club playing out of Wollongong would be a massive boost but a stadium must be built to accommodate any bid from Wollongong.
What the FFA have done with Wanderers has been outstanding but I do believe that a football fan-base and culture has always existed in the west and the FFA did get very lucky with the way the club was performing on the field to attract that many supporters in their first season.
The FFA should look at the MLS and how they handle expansion.
Manchester City have recently been linked with securing the 20th club in the MLS and there are already talks of building a football specific stadium for a club who yet don’t exist.
Surely the next expansion that occurs in the A-League will involve people who are truly interested and eager to see the growth of Australian football and who are willing to throw $100 million around to start a club and build them a stadium.
The sooner the FFA realise that a true market exists in Asia and the growth of the A-League heavily depends on A-League clubs been successful in Asia the sooner the A-League will improve as an entire competition.
The current A-League module has failed to attract investments (mostly due to the salary cap), failed to make most clubs sustainable and has most importantly failed to reward clubs that have been doing everything right on and off the field.
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