Does Australia’s top division football league want to continue on the collectivist path, or can it embrace a future where each can live to its individual means?
The A-League so far has been built as a compromise between the market economy of world football and the domestic model of having a level playing field.
Salary caps and floors, collective bargaining agreements, labour regulation, the lack of a competitive path for entry, prohibition on local transfer fees – this has been the strategy for the early years of the league.
But these measures are all holding football in Australia back from embracing its necessary path.
Individualism.
For the first decade of the league, you can understand the decision to genetically engineer a relatively even competition. As a way of protecting that early seed and of appealing to locals more accustomed to competitions such as the NRL and AFL. And to adopt a similar, semi-collectivist model.
For the next nine decades of the league’s first century, should that still be the case?
Or should the league now set the foundation that will carry the league forward for the next century? And what would be the ideal structure for Australian football?
For me it would be one that enables any team at any level of the Australian club football pyramid to work their way up to the top tier. That’s as close as you can get to a ‘human right’ for clubs in football competitions around the world.
Every league in the world would be worse off without it. Australia is as well.
The trade off for this open playing field is to lose the level playing field.
Equalisation is the mark of the semi-collectivist model of this league, which brings us back to individualism.
An individualist A-League would allow teams like the Melbourne Victory and Western Sydney Wanderers to grow to whatever level they can sustain. And hopefully challenge the world powers in club football over the longer term.
It would enable year on year growth for potentially quite large clubs. A cumulative approach builds year on year, rather than taking turns at winning and losing under the level playing field model.
The whole of the football family would also benefit from an individualist A-League. Any team wishing to play their way into the top flight would have the path to do so.
Who knows what stories and new local football powers will emerge with a more entrepreneurial, grassroots approach?
The big fish, small fish and all in between.
The FFA Cup is just the teaser to what could be ahead for not just the A-League but the whole football pyramid.
It’s hard to think of a more positive football story in the past few years than the FFA Cup. Maybe the universe is trying to tell us something?
Doug Graves
Guest
Look it's fair enough to ask these questions, I have no problem with that, but why does it have to be an either-or proposition? Why can't we still have a salary cap (to prevent the A-League degenerating in an EPL style "competition") but also bring in relegation? We could also bring in luxury taxes like they have in the NBA. There is a lot of things we can do to improve the league and I don't think sticking with one type of philosophy will produce the best results.
Paul Nicholls
Roar Guru
Nice spot Anthony! I was going to type Forest won the Euro Cup but changed at the last minute to Malmo - my memory's a little crumbly these days. I hope Bournemouth win the league this year just to prove that romance is still alive...
Anthony Ferguson
Guest
God made Adam and Eve, not Adam and Steve.... Oh sorry, wrong thread. Malmö never won the European Cup, they lost the 1979 final to Nottm Forest. There's the rub though, Nottm Forest were the "giants" in that final. Can you imagine that happening today? Never again.
nordster
Guest
Its central because the state sets up the structures that make cronyism possible. Dont blame capitalism for the erosion of capitalism. 'Capitalist behaviour' makes our living standards possible, as well as the electronic device u are using to denounce 'capitalist behaviour'....
Justin Mahon
Guest
I don't make that mistake. 'Cronyism' is central to economic theory as applied by many capitalists in their accumulation drive. For you however is is a rhetorical device you use to put an intellectual loin cloth over your embarrassment at the harsh impact of capitalist behaviour on people all over the world.
Justin Mahon
Guest
Happy to have a crack at those nut bags als - completely disconnected from the powerful reality of market economics. They take a view of the world that offends me as well, but ultimately it is no suprise to me that last comment flushed you out.
Squizz
Guest
The Melbourne crowd was in the middle of one of the worst East Coast lows experienced on the Central Coast since the Pasha Bulker weekend in 2007.
nordster
Guest
"The reference to ‘Darwinism’ is a common one made to suggest the proponents of unbridled free market economics equate economic participation with biological survival." Which is a good thing. As someone who comes from a background where the "family business" is welfare dependency, i would agree that biological survival is very much tied to economic participation! :) As is the ability for free individuals to voluntarily give to charity to care for folks unable to participate economically. A far more superior and accountable model to the welfare state. If we can get to Darwinist influences in football, i would hope that this would lead to a higher football standard as the strong survive. Young players in this league are coddled...
nordster
Guest
"Capitalism is concerned only with the accumulation of capital. Real capitalists don’t care how it is done so will adopt whatever business model does it most effectively in any market." Incorrect, they aren't real free capitalists but real crony capitalists. Capitalism can be practiced morally and immorally. Like anything else. "All of the greatest capitalists in western history made their money by abusing political processes to either create or protect uncompetitive monopolies." Again u dont understand what free capitalism even is. What you're describing is a crony capitalist, benefiting from a system merged between the state and private sector ( aka fascism). This is not free capitalism. I agree with your point though in spirit. "Don’t for a minute conflate capitalism and competition – they are sometimes related, but often not." And therein lies the problem....if there is not competition there is no free capitalism. I used to make the same mistake of conflating "capitalism" with cronyism. Ever read Ron Paul's 'End the Fed'? Changed me from YOU into ME...seriously, the rhetorical resemblence is uncanny. ;)
nordster
Guest
Economics is deeply ideological and philosophical by nature. "Free market capitalism" as u call it...which doesnt exist at present...is on its knees due to the "works in practice" mantra that has eaten away at it like swiss cheese. :)
nordster
Guest
Blaming the "owners" ignores the parameters within which they have to negotiate. Which are external in the sense they cannot modify them...., i think most of these frachisees are realising how unsustainable the whole thing is. How many have they gone through in total across the league in ten years?
nordster
Guest
how am i hiding it if i just said i wrote it? And i disclosed it to the editors when i submitted it.
Horto Magiko
Roar Rookie
It isn't a f&@!wit party unless Ian shows up. You're not very perceptive so I'm not surprised that the fact that our mate justin is a Jesus freak has escaped you.. And Why wouldn't he confirm or deny it? Is he ashamed of it? I find it highly paradoxical and contradictory that one views themselves as intelligent or some kind of intellectual giant when they hold such ludicrous and laughable beliefs... I'm educated, yet can't discern historical fact from homophobic, misogynistic and hateful mumbo jumbo? Ok. We should know the background of a poster who claims to be credible.. Just like we know you're a hick with a bogan wife who can't objectively analyse football without flying to the defence of his broke football club. Go back to the sticks.
Ian
Guest
Why does Justin Mahon need to confirm or deny that he is a Jesus freak to you? Most of your posts are a collection of immature and irrelevant insults. (please see as an example your response to this post) Then all you have left is to quote someone else's lines back at them as if you've somehow successfully debated them out of the argument. I'd prefer to use the term conversation but you are generally one who attacks others on this blog as you have no original thought or idea.
Ian
Guest
Blaming the owners Waz does not suit the gospel of Nordster's rhetoric - therefore ignore the facts.
Ian
Guest
you wrote this? so why not put Nordster as the author and not use (hide behind) another name?
Horto Magiko
Roar Rookie
@justin Mahon So you're not a Jesus freak? Pls deny or confirm. I'm fully aware of your metaphor but saw it as poetically and semantically ironic. I seek to insult? Re-read your original post to nordster. Dishin it but not takin it so well. Did you address my points? One could argue that "You therefore are ineffective at either insulting or convincing" And we all know fussball believes in ridiculous fairytales about arks and talking snakes. You two definitely need to go bowling together.
MelbCro
Guest
Nice job ignoring the other side with the far left latching onto football as well. Hypocrisy at its finest
Fussball ist unser leben
Roar Guru
I wouldn't worry about that bloke, Justin. Based on his unhinged rants, he projects as a 20-something, socially immature, intellectual lightweight.
Justin Mahon
Guest
Final thought, anyone with any sense of football history and its interactions with politics (particularly in Europe) should not be remotely surprised that aroung her fringe dwellers lie individuals and groups with deep seeded, right wing ideology. This is how it starts.