Australia needs more European football friendlies

I'd love to see Juve back in Australia again, but I suspect it won't happen. Juve are committed to playing in the "Guiness International Cup" in the USA, against Everton, LA Galaxy, & Real Madrid (with an East coast conference featuring Inter, Chelsea, AC Milan & Valencia). A further intercontinental trip in the same off season seems unlikely to me, based upon their usual pre-season friendlies, however, potentially, the Italian Super-Cup will be played in China again this season, meaning Juve could come to Australia before they play Lazio in China. I'd travel to Sydney to see Juve play, but I think I may have to settle for watching them in Torino in their own stadium when I visit the mother country in a few months time.

That's the first I've heard of a tour, I've heard we're trying to get Juve down here next year before the season kicks off. It doesn't have to be Europe either, we could tour Asia, and North America putting the young players in the shop window, we could tour South America and Africa hoping to put the A-League in the minds of players over there as a destination for young footballers. I did notice that Sydney FC's facebook page was inundated with African footballers hoping to get a trial with Sydney FC once Del Piero signed, if we followed Japans lead and took in youngsters with a view to naturalise them for the national team we'd be making up lost ground in the battle for Asian supremacy.

It could work. Incidentally, weren't Sydney FC saying part of their pre-season would consist of an Italian tour? That's the type of lateral thinking the A-League clubs need to show, even though the FFA may not be too crash-hot about such ideas.

I think as a league we should be sending an all stars youngsters side to tour Europe, youth teams get little in the way of holidays, at least nothing like the senior sides do so there are sill a good contingent of youth players still at the clubs in the off-season. Often you'll find a lot of big clubs are very humble about their youth teams and who they face.

The TV rights for broadcasts back to England are held by the visiting team. The FFA won't get a cent from the ManU or Liverpool TV rights into England.

Why wouldn't a match between WBA and Melbourne Victory attract any interest from TV channels? West Brom are a well supported club, and their fans back in the West Midlands would probably be quite interested to see them play a friendly overseas. With the rights to the Premier League, Champions League, Europa League, internationals and the rest all sewn up by Sky, the BBC, and ITV the smaller networks in the UK quite often broadcast pre-season friendlies and tournaments (I recall that Channel 5 were particularly keen on them). These games are often the only available football they're able to bid on. I'm not saying that a match like that would generate the big $$$ for a mid-table club, but they'd probably earn enough from a variety of sources to make it worth their while. Incidentally, there must have been some TV cameras at the Heart-Everton match, as Sky were able to broadcast some highlights: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Yd_jWk87Gdg

Also, the All-Stars concept is a llittle dodgy because players aren't always available (e.g. East Asia Cup, Japanese pre-season)

"I don’t think the attendance would be the single money generator though, there’d be sponsorship deals, TV rights, internet coverage rights etc" Come on you're kidding if you think MVFC v WBA will attract any cash from TV rights. I was at the MVFC v Boca Juniors & Heart v Everton.. I don't recall either match being televised. I'm sure Celtic v MVFC wasn't televised; neither was MVFC v Olympiakos. I know the promoters lost money on Boca, Everton & Olympiaks. Not sure about Celtic.

I don't think the attendance would be the single money generator though, there'd be sponsorship deals, TV rights, internet coverage rights etc. Most clubs even market holiday packages for overseas tours to their local fans too. I would imagine that some overseas clubs would also be glad of the exposure to a growing Australian market, if a club like Everton or Celtic can generate a few hundred shirt sales and convert a couple of hundred new fans then they'd probably see the trip as a success. I don't think it's a coincidence that clubs tend to go to burgeoning markets like Asia and North America for their end of season and pre-season tours.

But, are 20k crowds good enough for promoters to get interested? Let us assume, a Tier 2 or Tier 3 touring Euro club pockets $2 million in cash & expenses (travel, accommodation, etc.). The home club usually gets around $1 million (pretty sure this was MVFC's return/match for Celtic & Olympiakos). If the average ticket price is $50, we need a crowd of 60k before the promoters see 1 cent of profit. Apart from LA Galaxy's visit, I'd be surprised if promoters have made a profit on any of the recent tours: Fulham, Boca Juniors, Everton, Celtic, Olympiakos, AEK, etc. etc.

Fuss, I wouldn't say that there was minimal interest in Everton's tour to these shores. They got a bigger crowd in Sydney than they can hold in Goodison (just over 40,000), and even pulled in nearly 20,000 against a Melbourne Heart team that hadn't yet kicked a ball in anger. Personally I'd rather see any club other than the Euro league's big boys visit Australia. As a neutral I'd have far more interest in a match if an A-League team were to play against, say, Swansea or West Brom as these clubs would probably send a near full-strength squad, and interest from the media and supporters would be restricted to those that care about the sport. They'd probably offer a more competitive match too, hopefully treating any game as a proper training run and not a money-spinning, brand awareness exercise. You just know that the visits from Man United and Liverpool are going to attract a media circus (witness Channel 7's new-found interest in the sport), and a huge percentage of the crowd will be more interested in seeing the household names than the match itself. I fully suspect that there will also be a number of players in each squad come match day who are going to elicit a "who?" from the crowd when they're announced.

I think we've been doing great to attract the clubs we have. Even better when they play our clubs...keep the allstar concept for every couple of years perhaps, when a Man U type club comes along who might not want to play a club level side. Every year could rob HAL clubs of potential opponents, year to year. Take away the govt subsidies though i do wonder if these tours will be feasible without them...as a sport we should never be as reliant as we are on public funding for too much. The way of the nation at this point unfortunately. Best to plan ahead for alternative scenarios imo.

I've been to 90% of MVFC matches in Melbourne in the past 8 years & ManUtd was the only football team I supported until MVFC was born. However, if I want to watch ManUtd in the stadium, I'll do it when I visit England. I have ZERO interest in watching them play a meaningless match, when they're on holiday. From my observation, these exhibition matches, in general, appeal to 2 groups of people: a) football fans, who follow those particular clubs in Europe; and b) event-watchers (aka day-trippers), who like to go to any event (concert, movie, sports) so they can talk about it at work on Monday morning. Let's ignore (a) since most European teams won't have massive following in AUS. So, we must concentrate on (b). Potential teams that could titillate the day-trippers are few and include: ENG: ManU, Liverpool, Arsenal ... perhaps, now we can include ManC, Chelsea (we've had tours in the past from Everton, Spurs and there was minimal interest) GER: Bayern Munich ITA: Milan, Juventus (MVFC v Juventus in 2008 attracted 44k ... doubt the promoters made much profit) ESP: Barcelona, Real Madrid Visiting clubs are greedy & demand big money - ManU & Liverpool will walk away with $5m each for 90 minutes of football in AUS. I can't see more than 10 Euro clubs providing adequate returns to justify the investment.

I just want to see more European clubs so we can see where we are technique wise. I enjoy hosting the superstar teams like Manchester or Juventus but i'd much like too see many more teams of a range of quality to come down. Every team in Australia should at least be getting one foreign team to visit for a friendly. Mid to Lower PL, Championship, SPL, Eredivise, Bundesliga, La Liga....... the options are endless Atletico Madrid Atletic Bilbao Valencia Wigan Aston Villa Swansea Leeds Ajax Feyenoord Utrecht Celtic Red Star Belgrade A football fan would pay to see any of them take on their team and yet we only hear of the huge teams being chased to tour.

Your desire for this to be an annual event is a little bit far fetched. Next year is a World Cup year, getting teams to come out while nations involved in the WC are preparing would be near impossible. It might still work but you would need to aim for those second tier clubs who might not have many International players involved in the WC. That might be a financial disaster bringing them out. How this would affect our WC preparations if we qualify also remains to be seen. We also need to be wary in that some of the teams that come out are truly world class teams. Take the winners of the Champions League Bayern Munich who totally demolished Barcelona over two legs. If Bayern is on point and they can thrash a world class side in Barcelona then what chance do our A-leaguers have. I think we can give a good account against Man Utd, no disrespect to Man Utd but right now they are not in the same class as Bayern. Having said that they are still a very good side and I hope that the A league all stars can give them a good competitive hit out. The last thing I want is our boys getting thrashed or the other scenario where Man Utd is "taking it easy" on us.