We just don’t have be e the quality any more regardless of who we play. Name one player who is playing regularly in one of the world’s top leagues.
In 2006 the exception was a Socceroo not playing in top flight in England, Italy, Germany and Spain.
Things have seriously gone wrong in our development.
Without disagreeing with your conclusion, there's a bit more to it than players not playing in top leagues. Players playing in top leagues is good for those players (i.e. they earn plenty of cash) but in itself isn't proof of much. There are a couple of other things going on that complicate matters:
- the massive improvement in both football development and scouting networks in places like Asia, Africa and countries in South America not called Argentina and Brazil means the level in Europe has risen, so not making it doesn't necessarily mean you're worse than the likes of Tony Popovic or Luke Wilkshire
- our entry into Asia has increased the number of times our players will be called up to fly around the world to play, making them less attractive for managers to sign - the likes of Viduka and Kewell only came home for the big games, and didn't play up to 18 games per WC campaign
- The improvement in Asian leagues has meant that there are alternatives to Europe that are attractive to players - they're professionals who need to make sure they earn a living, and if someone's gonna back up a truck full of bullion to your house to play in China or Saudi Arabia, you may well take that on rather than slog it out in Europe
None of those in themselves are proof that our players have got worse, but do make it less likely our players will sign in Europe.
Nevertheless, there are development issues.
The other day I wrote that we've had a generation of players caught between the NYL condensing to the ridiculous conference format in 2015 and the AL academies in the various NPL competitions properly maturing - the younger ones coming through are looking good (hence our improved showing in youth tournaments of late, and look no further than our own squad, chock full of academy kids).
We've had too many AL clubs also picking too many old blokes rather than kids too - Arnie himself in his time at Sydney was a shocker for this. People can be as critical of Corica as they like, but one thing he has done is play kids from his academy to pretty good effect.
Across the league, the pre-Omicron COVID period was a blessing in disguise because it forced clubs to look at their kids rather than try to open the chequebook.
Going forward, the NPL is going to be a 30 week season from 2023 (would have been from this year, but COVID blew up the 2021 season). State-level youth leagues are going to be 30wks this year. More games is unquestionably a good thing.
This is actually where the national second division (NSD) is important too. We really need another place to expose 17-22yo players to high-level football against men. That's the age group that would be keenest to actually play in a NSD - your 25+ players aren't going to live out of a suitcase for $30k-$40k - they're not chasing dreams any more.
The domestic transfer market will play a role too. We'll have more incentive to sign kids to longer deals, knowing that if a bigger Australian club comes knocking they can earn us a fee, and also knowing that we could potentially loan them out to a NSD club and blood them rather than have them riding pine all year. NSD clubs do the same, and can loan players to NPL clubs too. It's supporting the concept of a pyramid much more effectively.
And if players don't quite make it with us at a point in time, the NSD bridges the gap to the State comps, and keeps them on the boil and we might see them again in a year or two.
Maximising opportunities for kids to play at a good level is vital. Maximising incentives for clubs to pick up kids and commit to offering them an opportunity is vital.
FA put out a report called the
Performance Gap report a year or so back and it covers a lot of this ground.
In short, there are problems
and there's work going on to fix them, and you'll (hopefully) see the results in improved playing standards in the A-League and improved youth national teams' performances in the near future - some of the positive changes around the AL academies etc. are already generating a stock of great players coming through and this will only accelerate.
With luck this campaign is our nadir, and we're on the up from here.
