It’s All Gone Downhill Down Under
Australia haven’t failed to qualify for the World Cup since 2002, by some coincidence in each of the following tournaments Australia were led by the iconic Tim Cahill, after his subsequent retirement after the Russian World Cup in 2018 Australia’s footballing decline has never been more apparent.
In reality, Cahill didn’t carry Australia alone, in their 2006 squad they had seven Premier League players including Mark Schwarzer, Mark Viduka, Harry Kewell and the aforementioned Tim Cahill, with another 4 players from other top 5 European league teams. It was by all measures a golden generation, with several of those players developed in Australia’s youth leagues in the early 1990s. It was the only time Australia have made it past the group stages, knocked out in the round of 16 by a 95th minute Francesco Totti penalty for eventual champions Italy.
From that peak Australia have slowly declined, as each talismanic talent retired one by one, they weren’t replaced. Despite winning the Asian Cup in 2015, it’s undeniable that the quality in the squad has dropped off a cliff.
Whilst that 2006 contained eleven players from Europe’s top 5 leagues that number had dropped to six players in 2018, amongst their most recent matches against Japan and Saudi Arabia it has dwindled to just two players. Australia went on to lose both of those matches, finishing in the Asian play-off spot where they will face the UAE and potentially Peru in June. It’s not the first time Australia have had to go through the play-offs in order to qualify for the World Cup, so there’s not too much cause for panic just yet, nevertheless the slow degradation of playing quality will continue to haunt them for the foreseeable future.
There was a little noise made when the City Group purchased Melbourne City and transferred their hottest prospect, Daniel Arzani, to parent club Manchester City in 2018. For some time, he became a decent option for any aspiring Football Manager player, and in real life he was tipped to become the next great Australian talent. Five years on from his transfer and several unsuccessful loans across European leagues, he’s yet to live up to his potential. Arzani is one of a few that have crossed the pond to European football in recent years, with fewer Australian’s making the leap in sharp contrast to that 2006 World Cup squad.
Many players from their golden generations including Craig Moore, Aloisi, Mark Viduka, Lucas Neill, Brett Emerton, Mark Bresciano and Luke Wilkshire all came through one youth team, the Australian Institute of Sport Football Program. It was a club funded by the Australian football federation and designed to nurture young talent. The centre closed in 2017, reportedly the yearly running costs were around $1.6 million and despite producing some notable international players including Robbie Kruse (75 caps) after that iconic generation it had consistently failed to live up to the magical 90s alumni.
Australia’s youth and league structure has little in common with the familiar European leagues. Whilst football in England is taught in schools and therefore inexpensive to access from a young age, the sport is not nearly as popular in Australia. Football, or rather, Soccer, trails behind Aussie rules football, Rugby and cricket, so it’s not taught in schools and isn’t easily accessible for children to initially get into the sport. Much like the American youth system, Australian parents are forced to cough upwards of $2500 per year should their children want to play football from the age of 11 up to 20 years old. There aren’t many parents willing to shell out $22,500 over the course of a child’s development, moreover this financial gate keeping ensures the sport becomes the preserve of the middle classes, whilst children from poorer backgrounds will pour into cheaper to access sports like Rugby or Aussie Rule Football.
Australia’s football structure consists of the A-League where franchise clubs are guaranteed permanent league status and a secondary league system (Nation Premier League) where promotion and relegation exist. Whilst the A-league monopolises what little attention football garners in Australia, it also rakes in all the crowds. NPL clubs in step two and below, don’t amass a great number of supporters, and in turn don’t generate significant revenue through match-days. Meanwhile those semi-professional players still earn a significant amount of money, around $1500 per match for players in the top division. In order to subsidise the comparatively large wage, NPL clubs charge excessive youth registration fees due to their inability to collect revenue from more traditional means like match-day revenue.
By restricting access to football from such a young age, Australia’s league system immediately limits the talent pool to those who can afford it, at odds with the face the majority of the greatest footballers have come from impoverished backgrounds. By ensuring that financial means is the primary access into football, potentially talented players from less well-off backgrounds will be more likely to drop out, unable to afford these extortionate fees, whilst less talented players from wealthier families will prop up the youth system. You can’t achieve anything in football if your most talented players continuously drop out in favour of short-term financial gain.
The NPL also instigates Visa restrictions upon member clubs. Clubs can only have a maximum of 2 Visa players, perhaps in a move to encourage Australian talent to prosper. Unfortunately, these types of restrictions often encourage clubs to use their two slots towards their best attacking players. It’s unlikely any club will want to waste a Visa slot on a centre-back who’s not going to influence matches as much as an attacking player would. As such Australian youth players fall into defensive slots whilst more creative players are foreign, unintentionally coaching local players into less creative positions from the outset.
There is a significant lack of political interest in improving the situation, in fact there’s an active dislike of European style football culture and excessive banning of fans for crimes as serious as swearing at matches. Football in Australia needs a significant restructure, whilst the A-league remains fenced off from promotion and relegation in the interest of protecting the owners’ investments, the clubs in lower divisions will never be able to build significant fan bases to subsidise their wages.
The future looks particularly bleak for Australian football, whilst they may scrape through the play-off matches against the UAE and Peru, there is a significant lack of talent on the horizon.
Many other countries have been through similar periods and have been forced to invest in their youth structure. England refocused their coaching identity, shifting away from the physical type of players seen in the early 2000s, to producing a plethora of exceptionally technical players in every position, such as: Foden, Kane, Rice and Trent Alexander Arnold.
Germany’s well documented collapse saw them rebuild from the ashes and put them on a path for World Cup glory by focusing on nurturing not only young players but young coaches too. Encouraging so many young Germans to take up coaching enhanced the whole nation’s quality of coaching, several years later Klopp, Tuchel, and Flick are managing at the very top level and gegenpressing is dominating European football. That’s no accident and something Australia will have to emulate, to some degree at least. Encouraging those dropping out of youth football to take up coaching courses, keeping those interested in the game and inspiring young minds to take hold of the development of the sport.
Australia’s current course will see them ejected into the footballing wilderness, without a significant restructuring akin to Germany’s “Das Reboot” that golden generation will never be surpassed, their memory scattered into the outback whilst other sports capture the imaginations of tomorrow’s children.
For more information about Australian football please find these sources as helpful as I did whilst writing this piece:
1: Football Oasis: Junior Soccer Fees in Australia
2: OlanTekkers: The Problems and Solutions to the NPL Youth System
