It’s been a great off-season for football in Australia with the visits of Villareal and Liverpool, followed up by the ICC tournament at the MCG with Roma, Man City and Real Madrid taking centre stage.
Shortly after, the FFA Cup round of 32 gets underway, yet another reminder that football never stops.
Around 400,000 people will have gone through the turnstiles to watch some of the best in the world play on our shores – and some against local A-League sides.
While watching all of these games, both on TV and in person, I’ve come to realise a few important points for the sport and for the growth of the A-League.
Underrated
Our league is heavily underrated, by our own sports journalists here in Australia, particularly the ones in the football industry. Now I’m not saying that our clubs are at same level of a Liverpool, Man City or Real Madrid, but considering our salary cap restrictions ($2.55m), squad sizes (max 23), and other limits (10 clubs, no junior teams or academies), we should be routinely losing by 6 or 7 to these sides.
Back in 2013, I saw a young Postcoglou-led Victory side give a good account of themselves against a Liverpool side including Steve Gerrard and Louis Suarez, the score was 2-0.
On Friday night, Brisbane did well for 50-60 mins, and ended up losing 2-1 to the Reds. On the Gold Coast, Man City struggled to do much against Melbourne City until a Sami Nasri cracker five mins from time.
But there was no mention of this in the local media, on the contrary, it was all about the quality of the Man City youngsters.
All the local articles that I’ve seen in print and online haven’t paid the local clubs enough respect, or given them enough column inches.
Other small footballing nations would be lauding such displays and score lines!
The local media outlets need to get over the cultural cringe of the A-League and start reporting more on our quality domestic competition.
If our media can’t pump up our local product, even when it performs well versus the best in the world, rather than jaw-drop at these stars when they come to town – then we’ve got a long way to go!
It’s time for Australian journalism to grow as the game has grown in the last decade.
Eurosnobs
I hate using this term, but was at the MCG on Saturday to watch Real Madrid v Roma, and the anticipation seemed OK before kickoff, but as soon as it started it felt like being at a funeral.
The atmosphere was so non-existent you could hear a pindrop, despite the 80,000 in attendance. Following that game, the amount of negative commentary that I’ve seen and heard about the sport on social media and in person at the ground has been astonishing.
People paid good money, but they were always going to watch a pre-season practise match, nothing more nothing less.
If people wanna see the players giving it their all in their home city in a meaningful contest, and not have to wake up at 5am every week, than they should come and try an A-League match. This is also something the media has to lead and help with.
A-League progress
Our domestic competition has had its hiccups, and it still has a long way to go, some clubs are in much better positions than others, and the sport still doesn’t generate enough revenue. However, what we’ve seen in the last 10 years is a constant improvement of our local kids, better and smarter scouting of foreign players, and the overall playing standard has been on an upward curve.
If we can get the A-League on commercial free-to-air TV, have all the top tier clubs establish teams down to under 6s, and expand the league to increase in duration and the number of clubs when the timing is right, then I think we’re in for a great next decade.
James
Guest
The New York red bulls youth team beat Chelsea 4-2....
Mister Football
Roar Guru
Interestingly, I understand that the FFA recently canvassed the possibility of mimicking the Latin American Apertura/Clausura system. What that means is that you could effectively have two trophies in the first half of the season; two trophies in the second half of the season, another trophy for overall champion (winner of the finals) plus the FFA cup - effectively allowing 60% of the clubs to win a trophy in any one season (actually, could even be 70% of the clubs when you throw in the ACL). All we need now is to re-introduce the pre-season cup, and throw in another league cup of so some sort, and 90% of the clubs could win a trophy in any one season.
Mister Football
Roar Guru
Ha, ha, I will excuse you as another johnny-come-lately. Enough people on here are aware of my bona fides, and until you can show me evidence of being able to join in soccer discussions around the world in half a dozen different languages, well.....
AZ_RBB
Guest
14,100 WSW fans have renewed their memberships for the new season. Next we'll see people upgrading their memberships and I think some on the waiting list might be able to get seated memberships. Hopefully they're more loyal than many of last season's lot.
cinque
Roar Rookie
The big problem with the A-League is the format. At the moment, 10 teams play a triple round robin. That's - hmmm, let me see .... 27 * 10 / 2 = 135 matches to cull 4 teams Then 5 more matches to get 1 winner from the 6 left. Not sensible.
James
Guest
The negative is mls teams usually have league matches 2-3 days after so theirs no real incentive to play as hard as say Adelaide United the other night.
cm
Guest
I guess we just have different ideas about what insularity is. I see it whenever I open up the herald sun. Or read bigfooty :lol: Holding a range of sports events doesn't make it less insular, especially when the aim appears to be to just feed the parochialism that exists.
Fussball ist unser leben
Roar Guru
@James If you think such practice matches are like a Grand Final for ALeague teams, I can only assume you've never watched the practice matches &/or you've never watched a Grand Final. The ALeague teams treat it as a practice match and (in general) they will play a significant number of fringe players, or Youth players, for half a match. In the match against Liverpool in July 2013, MVFC starting XI had 6 of the 10 outfield players were from our NYL team, who occasionally played senior football: Geria, Galloway, Jeggo, Makarounas, Pain & Nabbout. That would NEVER happen in an ALeague Grand Final.
Brick Tamland of the pants party
Guest
I think the MLS may have taken the odd bigger scalp due to the fact their season is well under way when Euro clubs visit and add to that conditions can quite difficult with the heat, even more reason to not compare.
Eurosnobs OUT!
Guest
You get what you pay for. $20 to $25 to A-LEague v. $100 and up to see a decent Euro league. Put your money where your mouths are Euro-Wannabees!
James
Guest
I'm talking about the cream of Europe, man utd, juve, Chelsea etc have all fallen to mls teams, Gold Coast beat Fulham, as I said a 3rd tier american team beat Swansea or west briom can't remember which one a few days ago. West ham got smashed by mls all stars 4-0 or something a few years back, Celtic also copped 4, toronto drew with Liverpool, It's meaningless but it seems like the mls teams go one step further and get results on a regular basis against these teams. But again it doesn't mean anything, for mls teams it's like a grand final, same as how they a league teams treat it.
conchie
Roar Rookie
We all know RL is RU's blue collar little brother and it's offshoot.
conchie
Roar Rookie
Totally disagree about Melbourne's insularity, it has been voted sports city of the world a number of times and quite recently to from memory. And to quote forest gump insular is as insular does. In fact all sports and sports arguing/code warring is insular, shouldn't we all be contemplating the ever expanding universe and spending what little time we have answering important questions like the meaning of life. Anything else is trivial and insular, even paper plane throwing.
Fussball ist unser leben
Roar Guru
"No A league club has ever beaten one of those teams" Rubbish. Gold Coast United beat an EPL team even before GCU had played 1 ALeague match. A few weeks ago Brisbane smashed a LaLiga team. In July 2014, Wellington Phoenix who had finished 2nd last in Aleague in 2013/14, beat West Ham United from the EPL. There are probably more examples.
James
Guest
No A league club has ever beaten one of those teams, yet la galaxy has beaten juventus, New York red bulls drew with arsenal at the emirates and beat psg, a few days ago a 3rd tier american team beat Swansea I think, the mls all stars have also beaten man utd...in the grand scheme of things does it mean anything? They're Mickey Mouse games.
James
Guest
The thing that is setting mls apart is not gerrard, kaka, lampard, pirlo, giovinco etc, it's the infrastructure that's gone into the sport, almost every mls team has it's own stadium now, massive increases in memberships every year, crowd averages increase every year despite the fact the league expands yearly with more games. Let's also not forget that the mls goes head to head with all the major American sports, it's national coverage is non existant, how many times have you flipped it on espn and watched those American shows like sportscenter show mls highlights? It never happends, what they have done is created a strong regional product, meaning a team like Seattle sounders might mean nothing to the average American, but in Seattle itself via local tv/radio etc the team is hugely popular, most teams have been built like that. The standard of the league is also decent, it reminds me of mid 90s epl, attacking games, erratic defending but mostly played in front of packed crowds and good atmosphere , they need to unleash a one hour highlights package worldwide imo.
The artist formerly known as Punter
Guest
That is different from MF's comment 'a real soccer fan'?
The artist formerly known as Punter
Guest
But who is Mr Hyde??????
j binnie
Guest
Waz -Your regular comparisons to the HAL with the MSL never ceases to amaze me, so much so that I did a little digging into both countries to see what the potential was for any organisation starting up, be it football or any other endeavour. Here are some facts. The USA has a population of 319 millions spread over an area much the same size as Australia.This has to be held up in comparison with our 24 million. The USA has 295 cities with populations greater than 100,000. In Australia we have 16 The USA has 33 cities with populations greater than 500,000. In Australia we have 6 The USA has 10 cities with populations greater than 1,000,000. In Australia we have 5. It should be said that at this stage of our development those 5 cities with the 1,000,000 populations already have a team in the HAL. Now how anyone can look at these 2 sets of figures and then try to compare both our football leagues without considering these figures is beyond my "ken". Ther may be a few things we could learn but it will not be in the basic improvements we apparently need. Cheers jb
BigAl
Guest
Wouldn't surprise me Bon ! - one of those financial issues that add up to Spain and Portugal being broke.