Is it just me, or is anyone else finding the Central Coast Mariners recent performances nothing less than embarrassing?
Their loss to Wellington last week made it over 320 days without a win in the A-League, and the defeat came after leading 2-0 at half-time!
It seems there is a major problem within the club, including but not limited to poor management from owner Mike Charlesworth, poor tactics from Paul Okon and atrocious performances from players.
But after looking at their previous fixtures and seeing more terrible results I started to realise that there is a clear distinction between the top clubs in the A-League and the bottom clubs – the haves against the have-nots if you will.
It should be clear who the FFA considers to be the bigger clubs in the league – Sydney FC, Western Sydney Wanderers, Melbourne Victory and Melbourne City – due to the amount of money that they contribute to the league. Likewise the bottom clubs can be considered to include Central Coast Mariners due to their continued lack of performance and Wellington Phoneix who despite their recent resurgence still have doubts about their future in the competition.
So where does it leave the rest of the clubs? Well, they exist in a certain mid-tier. Adelaide, Brisbane, Perth and Newcastle, certainly don’t have the level of funds of some of the larger clubs, but they’re not dwelling in mediocrity like the clubs in the lower tier.
I know grouping these clubs like this is a bit of a generalisation, and it is not to say that clubs in lower tiers can’t challenge for the title – this season in particular shows that to be true – but though money cannot buy the league alone, it is certainly a prerequisite for success.
After thinking about this for a while I reached a question: Why do we continue with a salary cap, the purpose of which is to balance the competition, when it is already clear that the A-League is not balanced to begin with?
While we’ve had different winners of the A-League over the past few years, we would be kidding ourselves to deny that there is not a hierarchy that already exists. It’s likely that this competitiveness would stay on a similar level if the salary cap were abolished, as I shall explain.
Assuming that the removal of the salary cap would also mean clubs in the A-League are allowed to pay each other transfer fees, it would establish a system whereby lower clubs will focus on unearthing younger players and selling them to bigger clubs.
If a club has a promising player but lacks the financial strength to win trophies, it would make sense for that player to be sold and for those funds to be reinvested into future transfers. The current system we have in place does not allow this to happen.
(Tony Feder/Getty Images)
Even if a club like Central Coast Mariners got lucky again and sold the next Mile Jedinak for $10 million, for example, they would not be able to reinvest all of it into new transfers to find another player of that quality. Sure, they would be able to spend that money over the course of a few years, but would they be able to spend even $7 million on a new player in one year? Not under the current salary cap system.
The counterargument is that the chance of Central Coast ever finding a player like that is rare, and some people may suggest that smaller clubs within the A-League with smaller budgets would not be able to compete. I cannot deny the possibility that some clubs may struggle to compete, but there are already clubs that are struggling to compete, as shown by the poor performances of Central Coast.
Further, it can also be said that removing the salary cap would force the smaller clubs to start putting greater effort towards scouting and giving Australian youth players a chance. It would encourage smaller clubs that cannot purchase the more expensive elite players to look towards the National Premier Leagues and other academies. It would force them to become development clubs, and everyone would benefit when their players are sold.
If there are clubs that are willing and capable to spend, we should not restrict their growth for the sake of others, as doing so allows the bigger clubs to become stagnant. They become uninterested in pushing new boundaries, remaining happy to settle for finals places and the odd A-League title when we should be focused on developing the A-League to become the best league in Asia.
And no, for as much as I am worried that Melbourne City will simply splash the cash from the City Football Group to make the league uncompetitive, I do not think this will happen to the extent that we are worried it will.
As long as we keep the restrictions on foreign players to a maximum of five, we will still have the majority of the starting line-up Australian. Even if Melbourne City end up purchasing the very best Australian players from overseas, their priority is still Manchester City. So the moment our players outgrow the A-League and City, they will be shipped off to Europe. Again, this only stands to benefit us.
(Quinn Rooney/Getty Images)
By removing the salary cap on the A-League, we would also remove the salary cap on the other clubs, such as Sydney FC and Melbourne Victory. They will be open to spending more money to buy the best Australian players from other clubs, many of which will be in the A-League already. Again, this would allow the league to improve as a whole.
Do I think this will restrict the number of clubs that can win the A-League? It is a possibility. But let’s look at the broader picture. If we keep a finals series, we still have the unpredictability of a knockout competition to go alongside the league. These big clubs can still lose games – it doesn’t matter if they spend $1 million or $10 million.
And if the money from these big clubs goes down to the rest of the league, then who’s to say that some clubs from the lower and middle tiers cannot also become bigger through smart investing? So no, the league will not become less competitive – if anything, it will become more open and competitive considering there will be more money flowing through the rest of the league.
If it is still not entertaining enough to have the best Australian players playing in Australia, to have more cash going through the league and improving the standard of play or to be regularly challenging for Asian Champions League titles, then we should also take care to remember that plans have commenced for a second division.
By having promotion and relegation we ensure there is entertainment at all levels of the game. Becoming minor premiers, qualifying for finals places and avoiding relegation – all of these levels will have cash flowing through them if we allow them to do so.
The main concern about removing the salary cap is the lack of competitiveness that could arise because of it. But it’s obvious that there already exists a division between the big clubs and the small clubs of the A-League. By removing the salary cap and allowing clubs to pay each other transfer fees, we would start to close the gap between the haves and the have-nots of the A-League and create a more entertaining competition.
JamesH
Roar Guru
Nice, just ignore the fact that I'm the only one in this particular conversation who has even attempted to put forward anything resembling a cogent argument (you know, facts and stuff) rather than simply shutting down debate. Thriving league?!? If the same rich club winning almost every year - then becoming richer via Europa and CL - is your idea of a 'thriving league' then let's hope the A League never thrives. Honestly, I have to wonder about your reading comprehension if that's your takeaway from what I wrote.
Lionheart
Roar Rookie
that's a rant, and all you've said really is that Austria has a thriving league but hey, nice rant
Peter
Guest
Good article up to the point. Football in Australia is at the crossroad, it has to become more competitive, salary cap & no relegation do not help. Fear or 2nd division may help but then the salary cap may hinder progress of bottom teams. I find hard to flow a team one year & next year half the players are in another team. It feels like a soup, all the same mix, no difference in taste. I do I like to follow a team because of where I am with whoever is in it!
chris
Guest
SydneyS you make it sound like the salary cap is the silver bullet to stop clubs from folding. Numerous clubs have folded under a salary cap system so why the belief that we need it to protect them?
Nemesis
Guest
"Abolishing the salary cap would “free up” clubs to spend more, but it would also lead some clubs to spend themselves to death." I laughed & I laughed. I wonder if people who say such stuff are adults? Do they know anything about the business world? Every commercial enterprise on the planet doesn't have a Salary Cap. Oh dear they're all "spending themselves to death". This is the utter nonsense you get on this Forum from ignorant people,
Nemesis
Guest
Besides not being a happy person, you really aren't a very bight person.
Nemesis
Guest
"Every competition on the planet (apart from AUS & USA) isn’t a distant 3rd or 4th in its country’s sporting landscape." A totally irrelevant & nonsensical input that is regularly trotted out on this topic. It doesn't matter if the competition is 100th most popular in the country. Promotion & Relegation is the only way to achieve sporting excellence. The Salary Cap is a ridiculous tool that does not work. It doesn't work in AFL. It doesn't work in NRL. It doesn't work because it's impossible to audit. Any half-decent accountant, or tax lawyer, would be able to create structures to circumvent a Salary Cap. When clubs get caught - and clubs have been caught in NRL, AFL, HAL - is because the people in charge at the time are not very bright. And, if anyone thinks clubs are not violating the Salary Cap Rules right now, those people are not very bright.
Sydneysideliner
Roar Rookie
Every competition on the planet (apart from AUS & USA) isn't a distant 3rd or 4th in its country's sporting landscape. We have to accept that Australia's unique and not somewhere a European model can be implemented at the drop of a hat. It may be one day but it needs multi-generational stability. MLS has had a salary cap for nearly 30 years, struggled for years with the fickle American market but now has teams from Cincinnati, Columbus, Kansas City all pulling in 15-20,000 a game. Because they focused on building a stable product and not just bowing to the aspirations of the bigger clubs.
Sydneysideliner
Roar Rookie
And the EPL has more spectators because football is a religion in the UK and there is no chance of the product collapsing. Football support has also been passed down generation to generation, so for the A-league to emulate that, it has to be kept constant in the minds of the Australian public for generations, without a fear of complete failure. MLS in America is a better model to emulate. It's kept a constant product with a salary cap since the early 90s and now has several generations of fans
Sydneysideliner
Roar Rookie
How does removing a salary cap help make a competition more competitive? The clubs are arguing that the league is already uneven as shown by the recent consistency of Victory and Sydney FC and the recent incompetence of the Mariners and Phoenix, but I don't think any of them are arguing scrapping the cap would make it more even. The league is nowhere near mature enough to remove that insurance and you can see from dwindling crowds at Wanderers and Roar that the public at large will need the possibility of winning on any given day to actually turn up on a regular basis. Take that away and half the teams would fold, leaving nobody for Victory and Sydney to lord it over...
JamesH
Roar Guru
Sigh. And here I was thinking we could have a conversation without resorting to 'I'm a real fan and you're not'. Silly me. Assuming you were even considering say, the Austrian Bundesliga, it's still apples and oranges. Austria is a small country geographically with a much, much higher population density. You can travel from one end to the other by car in under 7 hours. Most competing clubs are within a relatively short distance of one another, even between divisions. Austria is also right next door to football superpowers like Germany, Italy and (practically) France. Hell, there are 7+ non-stop 2hr flights each day between Vienna and London. That's a quicker trip than Melbourne to Brisbane. The easy, frequent player movement within Austria and between European countries, coupled with the extraordinary amounts of cash on offer for the best in neighbouring leagues, makes the Austrian Bundesliga incredibly difficult to compare to a sokkah (sorry, I'm just an AFL fanboy, remember?) comp in a sparse, isolated country like Australia. Throw in the fact that Football is competing with three other popular winter codes, whereas in Europe it's a religion, and the comparison becomes harder still to make. And even if you're too stubborn to budge from your view that a prom/rel model (with or without a salary cap, I'm not even sure which version you're championing at this point) would be the best option for the A League, consider this: FC Red Bull Salzburg (can't wait for the Monster Energy Adelaide Strikers) has won nine of the last 12 Austrian Bundesliga titles - including the last five in a row - while Dinamo Zagreb has won a ridiculous 12 of the last 13 Croatian First League titles. Sounds like a nightmare to me but hey, what do I know? Don't worry, I'll see my ingnorant, AFL-loving self out.
Punter
Roar Rookie
geez another one of Mister Football agenda spinners shot down in flames, that football fans only enjoy 1 sport, how many times can 1 guys get it wrong. Difference is I don't go to the tabs of the sports I like & continuously snipe at it like you do on the football tab.
Kangas
Roar Rookie
Mister football A good idea would be for the roar to have a tab for those who hate football, so they can’t disrupt conversations What do you think ?
Adam
Guest
When will the persistent myths peddled out by the naysayers that the same teams dominate the A-League and the A-League has bad crowds go away? 6 different teams have finished top of the table in the past 7 seasons. Compare that to European leagues like Italy and Bulgaria (1 winner in each of last 7 seasons). Compared to most European leagues, A-League crowds are also actually very good, especially considering the other popular codes we compete with in Australia. While most people compare A- League crowds to EPL and Bundesliga, our crowds are higher than in nations such as Croatia, Greece, Austria, Sweden, Poland and Serbia. People who want to gt rid of the salary cap are aiming for the A-League do become an EPL, but instead they'll get a poorly attended league in which 1 or 2 teams win each year against a bunch of low quality, financially dying teams.
Jordan Klingsporn
Roar Guru
I follow 5 AFL, Cricket (all 3 forms), Rugby League, Soccer, Tennis It's not illegal to follow more than 1 sport on this football page but if football isn't tour favourite sport.... go to jail.
Nemesis
Guest
See that's where you're wrong because you don't understand the football fan. Only the casual sports fan makes ridiculous comparisons between the Big 6 Leagues of Europe & ALeague. Football fans - people who understand football beyond EPL highlights & playing FIFA Video Games - know that ALeague needs to use the experiences from successful football nations that produce top quality footballers & top quality national teams; despite the best players being lured to the Big Leagues of Europe. So, ALeague needs to look at: Belgium, Switzerland, Sweden, Denmark, Croatia, Poland, Austria, etc. Leagues that consistently churn out players of high quality & locals enjoy watching the local competition; with Pro/Rel. Big clubs and small clubs. Big crowds over 40,000 and small clubs under 4,000. This is football culture. But, I'm not surprised if Casual Aussie Sports Fans don't get it ... oi oi oi.
chris
Guest
Yes but the AFL fanboys have spoken and we should listen as to how to run a league they have zero interest in. Still awaiting James to answer about leagues that are smaller than the A-League but have pro/rel.
chris
Guest
"As for ‘football works differently and that’s the way it will work for the A-League as well’ – I’d say the size and value of the football market in Australia compared to that in say, the UK, means that not all football is going to work the same way." Ok so what about the Austrian league or the Croatian league? Small enough for you?
JamesH
Roar Guru
Fine. “The main Euro models that you’re no doubt thinking of involve massive audiences and truckloads of cash (UK, Spain, France, Germany, Italy…)”. Better? You can’t tell me chris was thinking of the comps in Denmark or Greece when he made his case.
Lionheart
Roar Rookie
I think Roar are paying too much, if it’s true that they are paying the max cap. Easy to think they’re underspending, but no, they’re not apparently.