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Like many A-League fans, I viewed the latest news surrounding Andres Iniesta’s potential move to the A-League with cautious optimism.
It is not every day that someone of his level is linked with a move to the A-League and there is absolutely no doubt that he would be able to capture the attention of viewers and advertisers alike.
However while there is no doubting Iniesta’s immense quality, we need to take a step back and remind ourselves of the last big imports that we had in the A-League. We all remember the hype around Alessandro Del Piero’s move to Sydney FC in the 2012-13 season, but remember Sydney FC finished the season in seventh, missing out on finals football on goal difference.
While Del Piero did make the team of the season, he was behind in the race for the golden boot, drawing with Besart Berisha of Brisbane Roar on 14, but still behind of the 17 by Daniel McBreen of the Central Coast Mariners.
His second season was not as impressive. Sydney finished in fifth and made the finals, but again Del Piero did not challenge the race for the golden boot, finishing with 10 behind the 16 scored by Adam Taggart of Newcastle.
(Image: Peter McAlpine)
In the same season, we also had Emile Heskey play for Newcastle. The former Liverpool forward can also be considered a disappointment, only scoring 10 in 42 appearances for Newcastle, hardly living up to his hype.
Let’s also move across to the Western Sydney Wanders and Shinji Ono. Ono was not as big a star as Del Pierro, but at least he can claim to have had some success with Western Sydney, wining a premiers plate and making two A-League grand finals.
Ono was certainly a good player, also highlighted by his appearance in the team of the season, but you would not say that he has been the best player ever seen in the A-League
I know that there are other ways of judging a player’s quality, but this does dispel the stigma that seems to surround the A-League and foreign players, they are automatically better than our own ‘no name’ marquees. Del Piero was not the goal scoring behemoth that the media seemed to suggest. While he did score and was a good player, he was not the best player seen in the A-League, as is the case with Ono and Heskey.
So who would I say have been the best players in the A-League over its inception? A good start to answer that question would be to see the PFA A-League team of the decade. While it’s a little old, some of the players that have made the starting line up could make a solid case for being the A-League’s best player.
It is no surprise to see some of Ange Postecoglou’s title-winning players feature in the team, as his Brisbane Roar side was arguably the best at the time. But when I look at this team, I look at some of the foreign marquee players.
Of course Besart Berisha and Thomas Broich feature, they had brilliant seasons in the A-League, with Berisha recently winning his fourth A-League championship. If we were to look more to the future there is no reason why some of the players from the past two seasons at Sydney should not feature.
Bobo, Adrian Mijerswki, Milos Ninkonvic, all brilliant players, with silverware to back up their claims. Even Melbourne City (despite their consistent underachievement) have been able to boast brilliant players, from their foreign marquee Bruno Fornaroli and the fantastic Socceroo Aaron Mooy.
Today, we boast some of the best marquee players that the A-League has ever seen. It is a shame that no one knows of their brilliance.
I recently had this discussion with some of my friends. I explained to him how in the A-League, and even in Major League Soccer to some extent, superstar marquees in their mid 30s rarely set it alight.
Of course, they bring a much-needed spark to the game, and can gain the interest of the casual fan, but they will never live up to the high expectations placed on them by the media to score 25 plus goals a season. Our “no name” marquees can, and have been performing well too.
His reply was obvious, “no one knows about those players”. My reply is also similarly obvious, we need to make them know about them.
These players that I have listed above should not be able to walk the streets of their respective cities without being noticed. There needs to be billboards of them on the highways. An actual marketing campaign by the FFA that displays that while our marquees do not have the big reputations of their more famous counterparts, they certainly do not lack the quality.
I do not want to make comparisons to the AFL in this article because I do not want to start a code war, but they do have a marketing strategy that is effective. Everyone in Adelaide knows who Eddie Betts is, everyone in Melbourne knows who Dustin Martin is and everyone in Sydney knows who Buddy Franklin is. The reason is not because they watch a lot of AFL, it is because their faces are everywhere. In the newspapers, on the billboards on the highway and on television.
It baffles me why the FFA does not consider doing the same and instead choses to focus on a $3 million ‘marquee fund’ that may be able to recruit one superstar on Iniesta’s level but in the long term is not a very successful strategy.
(AAP Image/Dan Peled)
The FFA and the A-League clubs need to focus on finding the next Bruno Fornaroli, the next Bobo, the next Isias, the next Besart Berisha and the next Thomas Broich. They should be looking for players that will spend more than two seasons in the A-League and will improve in the future.
While an Iniesta will generate a spike in viewers and attendances for a season, we will never be able to stop our over-reliance on ageing superstars to generate interest in the A-League.
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