The success of the Socceroos ‘golden generation’ was an outlier, with the talent pool of today a matter of Australia reverting to the mean, according to a study completed by Australia’s players union.
In the study, 17 ‘golden generation’ footballers – born between 1972 and 1984 – were interviewed including John Aloisi, Josip Skoko and Alex Wilkinson.
It aimed to identify what those ‘golden generation’ players had in common and found recurring crucial factors included playing backyard soccer at a young age, an early exposure to senior football, and connection to a particular club.
“The reality is that based on Australia’s innate attributes, our performance today is probably ‘normal’, whereas for one golden moment in time, the stars aligned to create special conditions and special players,” the report said.
“We have not failed since then. We have regressed to the mean.”
The report, completed by the PFA and Victoria University, followed the 2017 Player Pathway study, which identified a decline in Australian footballers playing in Europe’s top five leagues and highlighted a dearth of young players earning professional minutes.
Between 1997 and 2017, the number of boys under 15 registered to play football rose from 208,600 to 531,909, but in that time the minutes Australian players earned across the Premier League, Bundesliga, Serie A, La Liga and Ligue 1 dropped from 28,860 to 5,995.
With some of those ‘golden generation’ players suggesting modern young players were over-coached, the new report suggested a focus on more unstructured football and prioritising investment in and access to outdoor football courts to help maximise young players’ enjoyment and exposure to free play.
Aloisi also noted players who didn’t settle into development pathways or academies early often fell through the cracks – while others were often written off early on based on what they couldn’t do – rather than their strengths.
He cited the emergence of Jamie Maclaren and Adam Taggart after Australia had struggled to deliver goal scoring strikers in recent years.
“I think once you’re not in the pathway at the moment you sort of get lost, and we’re quick to judge and say ‘he’s got the ability to be a player’ – everyone develops at different stages,” he said at the report’s presentation.
“Everyone’s got different make-up. Hopefully with Jamie Mclaren and Adam Taggart we’ve finally got strikers again, but we lost that ability to have goal scoring strikers.
“They were goalscorers (but) we first of all wanted to make them all-round players.”
David V
Guest
Only Maty Ryan and Aaron Mooy seem to feature regularly in the big leagues anymore, an indictment of how our playing stocks have eroded. The fault lies squarely with A-League clubs and the FFA, whose strategy for the league has been clearly based on short term sugar hits than long-term thinking and planning.
Brainstrust
Roar Rookie
The biggest problem is it has become all about registration fees and raising money to keep the NPL clubs afloat. No one is interested in talent anymore in this country versus the rest of the world. The only player the Nike search for talent uncovered worldwide was Rogic. So why is it the only talented player ignored worldwide was Rogic, well Australia is special worldwide in football in a very bad way. Its pretty obvious its no longer how good you are, but your parents wealth and influence. The reason is Australia has a lot of extremely rich parents and you have a lot of people making a living off the game with kids. Even my local cafe has an advertisement 50 dollars to get your tot play for 1 hour at the park. Having a billion kids playing once a week and training once a week on the weekend is not going to produce a single player. What made players is day in day out backyard and local park, being registered irrelevant, having old Socceroos to make money off kids is irrelevant, having ex A-league players doing the same thing is irrelevant. A genuine academy or football school which integrates school and play with talent identification and free scholarships for the talented would work.as an alternative.The PFA is actually part of the problem they are about the current and older generation blood sucking the next generation dry.