The Wanderers have pulled off one of Australian football’s greatest coups.
A football club less than three years old, and with a budget 20 times smaller than most of their opponents, has beaten the best and richest football clubs that Korea, China, Japan and West Asia has to offer.
Their final opponent, Al Hilal, is backed by the Saudi royal family, comprising some of the richest and most powerful people on earth.
But in addition to being a remarkable mental, technical, and coaching achievement, the Wanderers have also handed the FFA a big win in its somewhat strained relationship with the Asian Football Confederation (AFC).
The significance of the Wanderers’ ACL win for Australian football’s place in the AFC cannot be understated. The FFA had to lobby both the FIFA Executive and the AFC for a long time before joining the world’s largest confederation in 2005.
Frank Lowy and the FFA recognised the potential value of a 3 billion-strong audience, as well as not being stuck in Oceania for World Cup qualification. The problem for the AFC was that when Australia came on board, the conference didn’t receive any more World Cup spots. Lowy and the FFA had to convince the AFC that Australia’s presence would add sufficient value to their sponsorship and TV rights, to make it worth the AFC surrendering one of their World Cup qualifying spots to the Socceroos.
It hasn’t always been smooth sailing in this football marriage of convenience, and there have been some enduring rub points between the FFA and AFC.
The AFC has been unhappy with aspects of how the A-League is run such as no promotion/relegation (only the United States also gets away with this), no independent clubs, and their discomfort with having Oceania’s Phoenix playing in the A-League. If the Phoenix did qualify for the ACL, no one is quite sure what would happen.
However, perhaps the biggest sore point for the AFC was the A-League teams’ lacklustre performances in the ACL. Adelaide’s 2008 performance aside, from 2007 to 2013, A-League teams have been routinely bundled out of the competition.
After the AFC was convinced that Australian participation would bring more competition, interest and revenue, this expected windfall largely failed to materialise. Instead, A-League clubs baulked at paying hundreds of thousands of dollars to fly their teams around Asia to be pummelled by squads with far larger budgets.
Crowds at home were uninterested, and the mounting financial losses resulted in some A-League clubs openly stating they didn’t want to participate in the ACL. The A-League clubs clearly prioritised domestic competitions over the ACL.
The lack of bonafide participation really grinded the AFC, who had only agreed to the FFA joining on the basis that it would make their conference more exciting. After increasing Australia’s ACL spots from 2 to 2.5 in 2012, the AFC reduced the Australian places to just 1.5 in 2013. The official line was that Australia “did not meet the criteria for full participation” as we didn’t have a promotion/relegation system.
This was rightly interpreted as a warning shot over Australia’s place in Asian football by the FFA, who immediately appealed to FIFA. FIFA upheld the appeal, and Australia’s number of ACL places was reinstated to 2.5.
Despite this, what the FFA needed more than anything was to prove Australian club football’s place in Asia with on-field success. And with their unexpected win the Wanderers have handed it to them on a platter.
Even as the Wanderers were pulling off their remarkable campaign, the rhetoric out of most of their more fancied opposition was that the Wanderers were a tiny club who did not deserve to be there. These comments mirror the disdain with which Australian club football was held by the Asian powers.
The scenes after the matches with Guangzhou and Al Hilal betrayed their shock at being beaten. They simply did not expect it, and were even angry that what they saw as their right to win had been stolen away.
Marcello Lippi charged onto the field and manhandled a WSW player. Al Hilal have called for an investigation. The Korean and Japanese teams were more polite, but equally as dismissive of the Wanderers’ chances of success.
This is why the FFA bent over backwards to help the Wanderers in their ACL finals legs, which was the right thing to do. They hurriedly changed the scheduling of the domestic competition so that the Wanderers didn’t have the pressure of two games a week. The FFA also turned down a potential big stadium cash bonanza by not fighting the Wanderers’ wish to play their final leg at Pirtek.
Like the champions they are, the Wanderers brought home the bacon. But for the FFA, this win undeniably cements A-League clubs’ right to play alongside AFC’s elite for years to come.
Post hoc
Guest
The other 'lesson' might be how Wanderers navigated the salary cap issue (which in fact only exists for the A League) buy buying players that were going to be only for the ACL. I think two were folded in as injury replacements, and now all are in the A League team, but it was a good way of doing things, getting them earlier enough to integrate with the team at training etc
Josh
Guest
The news were reporting cheers coming from the Melbourne crowd when the result was announced. Not cheering for WSW obviously, but cheering for the A League. I hope MVFC go well again in the ACL, it'd be great seeing a player like Berisha against a team like Guangzhou, pretty sure the grass would catch fire it'd get that heated.
Josh
Guest
As a WSW tragic i'm sure they won't be doing a lot of homework considering they're worth something like 1.4 billion euros - but the fact that the A League is now appearing on their radar is absolutely incredible.
Canman
Guest
Apologies for being pedantic but is that A$ or US$?. Do you happen to know how the $s work out for the World Club Championship? If you were a savvy Australian businessman with aspirations to break into Asian markets A League ACL qualifying clubs are an excellent starting point. The FFA should be providing advice and possibly assistance to maximise this opportunity.
Albert
Guest
Yes owned by the FFA with relaxed o/s player quotas - hmm then sold at a profit -- hmmm
Parra fan
Guest
Ye how about to give a leg up for the Asian championships to be held in Oz.
Harry
Guest
The Wallabies in England, ireland, France and Wales after just having been in South Africa and New Zealand. Good result for WSW but sophisticated supporters will discuss the Japanese referee..Was it Nishimuras last game??,
Ben of Phnom Penh
Roar Guru
Agreed, Laurence, however it has resonated in NSW which is a big section of the market. Hence the need for a Victorian club to have a measure of success to raise the interest South of the Murray. I know in SA that one of the big aims remains "getting back into Asia". The magic, once there, is hard to rub off.
Justin Mahon
Guest
No one does 'provincial' like us :-)
Arvind
Guest
Took some liberties with how you will interpret this victory LOL. I don't think people realise how big a deal this is! Became a Foundation Member on Could not imagine in my wildest dreams that we will not only win but Wanderers will unit our Western Suburb Communitie.
Canman
Guest
The thought that Real Madrid would be spending resources to do their homework on WSW is developing serious street credibility
AZ_RBB
Guest
What? Since when was that line attributed to me? haha
ciudadmarron
Guest
2 games in hand. Juric, Ruka, Castalen, Saba up front. Spira back with NTS. Let's see how you do then.
Towser
Guest
True Laurence,but entering a competition is ultimately about winning it,the fact that an Australian team has now done that is more than enough incentive for the others to emulate that feat.
AZ_RBB
Guest
Let's aim to be top of that list in the next 5-6 years. It can be done.
Stephen Martin
Guest
Just had a look myself. Leeds - Sheffield Wednesday had an audience of 450,000 on Sky PPV. Even 4th tier football between Cambridge and Oxford drew 150,000 viewers. Any A-League game would have broken into BT Sport's top 10 that week with just 15,000 viewers. None did, none of their broadcasts ever have. I imagine the A-League gives away the overseas rights to anyone prepared to show them as a favour to sponsors.
Arvind
Guest
We nearly had two A-League Teams playing in the knock out round of 16 in this ACL Season. All it needed was for Central Coast to win the last pool match. They went very close and lost due to an own gaol in the last 10 minutes. Wanderers have motivated the rest of the A-League with their positive attitude towards the ACL but it is no easy task for a salary capped league. Remember it takes 14 games if you go all the way to the final. Pool games are during the A-League final series and the knock out phases are in the A-League off season. So our teams get the bad end of the deal at both ends. So understand that it has been an immense victory by the Wanderers and it will not be easily repeatable. The great think is that now Wanderers have achieved it other teams can see that it is possible to win the ACL and therefore we should expect better results from A-League going forward. Gotta thank Popa also because from day 1 he has always been positive about this competition unlike other A-League coaches. As AZ_RBB would say even if it is repeated Wanderers will forever be the first ones to have achieved this.
Adrian none
Roar Rookie
when you have 4 teams like Japan does every year, then you get teams into final 16 ...better way is to look at pts in group games, then divide by number of teams as we can see A-league has being going up, J-league going down , and C-Super about the same (except 2013) 2014 Pts GD K-League 9.50 2 J-league 9.00 0.25 A-league 8.67 0.75 C-Super 6.25 -1.75 2013 C-Super 8.25 1.25 J-league 8.25 1.25 K-League 8.00 1.00 A-league 7.00 -4.00 2012 K-League 10.50 2.25 J-league 8.5 2 A-league 7.33 -1.33 C-Super 5.33 -3.66 2011 K-League 11.25 5.5 J-league 11 5.5 C-Super 6 -2.5 A-league 5.5 -4.5 2010 K-League 12.50 6.50 J-league 11.00 4.25 A-league 7.00 -1.25 C-Super 5.50 -0.75 2009 J-league 12.50 8.00 K-League 10.00 1.25 C-Super 7.00 0.50 A-league 6.00 -3.50
Stephen Martin
Guest
Are you suggesting that as many people watch the A League on TV in England as watch the Championship? At 6.30 in the morning? I'd be surprised if the live viewers were in five figures. The Championship has clubs like Derby, Leeds, Wolves, Norwich, Forest etc whose attendances are well over 20,000.
Marcel
Guest
As a Spurs fan I like the fact that we get to beat Budapest Lunchbreak or whoever...not much else to cheer about lately.