Is Expansion and Restructure the Way Forward?

Fifteen years ago football fans in Australian dreamt of a new dawn for the game. The game was disjointed, it was corrupt and it was in disarray.

Soccer Australia which was the game’s governing body was under immense pressure and also under investigation. The Crawford Report recommended wholesale changes as to how the game was run and also recommended an interim board headed by businessman Frank Lowy to run the game. Soccer Australia was placed into liquidation and the Australian Soccer Association was created and the Government of the day gave them $15million to get the game back on the right track. In 2005 the Australian Soccer Association became the Football Federation of Australia.

As everyone knows the game had never been in a better position, Australia qualified for its first FIFA World Cup Finals in 32 years, and the A-League was launched and supported by a marketing campaign. Not only that, the League had attracted a bona fide superstar in Dwight Yorke. A player who would set the bar for all Marquee players.

Sadly all that glitters is not gold, and at the end of just one season cracks started to appear. Sydney FC, of which the Chairman of the Football Federation of Australia was a part owner, won the A-League Grand Final after defeating the Central Coast Mariners.

Soon after their coach World Cup winner Pierre Littbarski left the club after being asked to accept a lower salary in his second season in charge. Dwight Yorke also left, and returned to the English Premier League to play for Sunderland; not many top players have left to play in such a high quality competition. Then during season two it was revealed that the club had breached the salary cap in the very first season. Their punishment was nothing more than a slap on the wrist; they were penalised three points.

Having only launched in 2005/06 by the 2007/08 season one of the founding clubs had already found the financial pressures too great and the New Zealand Knights folded. They were replaced by the Wellington Phoenix.

Further expansion resulted in more clubs coming into the league and disappearing. The FFA then set up and ran their own club after receiving more funding from the Government, before selling the club to private owners and sharing the profits between the other A-League owners.

There were also other salary cap breaches. Some, such as Perth Glory’s resulted in severe penalties, a fine, a points reduction and the opportunity of contesting the finals snatched away. Other breaches were overlooked.

Then there was the ill-fated World Cup bid as the Football Federation of Australia looked to cram a lifetime of Football experiences into a very short space of time; some would argue to fulfil Frank Lowy’s personal dream, rather than what was best for the game as a whole.

Sadly the focus was unashamedly on the top end of the game, the Socceroos and the A-League. A youth League was created but when the A-League owners who had to fund it complained, it was watered down and in truth now means absolutely nothing. Yet many of the players from the early days of the Youth league are now playing regularly in the A-League.

The W-League was created but expenditure on the Matildas, Australia’s one team with a realistic chance of claiming an Olympic medal or contesting a World Cup final were left on the outer, despite winning the Asian Cup in 2010. Only now are we seeing the side finally being given the financial support they deserve, but has it come too late? Only time will tell.

The marketing of the A-League has all but dried up, the competition has become stale and the crowds are staying away. Now there is the much publicised impasse in the Boardroom that has led to FIFA and the AFC arriving in Australia to try and act as a mediator, and get the game back on track.

Below the elite level of the game there are many issues that have failed to be addressed, but more importantly appear not to have been part of the FFA’s long term planning. The most important being making the game available to all children. In other words reducing dramatically the fees for young players to play the game. Funding the game at grassroots is crucial to not only the future of the game, but maintaining a supply chain to the elite competitions.

With hindsight was it too much to expect to have so many facets of the game being brought together under one umbrella? All the various components of the game which for years had been fractured and run seperately were pulled together under the umbrella of the FFA in order to make funding from the Government easier. Rather than giving small funding payments to many facets of the game, to juniors, senior men, the NSL, women, futsal, etcetera now one payment could be made to the game as a whole.

Football’s administrators have an unenviable task pulling everything together in a game that is so big and has some many parts to it. No other sport has so many representative teams at state level or international level. Football is a sport where there is equality in terms of the competitions, there are junior represnetative sides playing international tournaments as well as the flagship teams the Socceroos and Matildas. In a country as vast as Australia this was always going to be an expensive task. In a country located where it is geographically this was always going to be expensive when playing internationally.

So was the structure of the A-League realistic? Or was it always doomed to struggle?

When it comes to land mass Australia is the sixth biggest country in the world. India is a place below them in seventh. Brazil is the fifth largest, China is fourth, USA is third, Canada second and Russia is the largest.

If we look at all of these nations in terms of population, India has the second largest population base, Brazil is fifth, China is first, USA is third, Russia is ninth and Canada is the 38th most populous country. Australia comes in at 53rd.

Having a large population in a vast country makes a huge difference when it comes to running a national sporting competition, in terms of the support teams will attract at games and on television, which in turn translates into revenue from merchandise and also from sponsors. Australia with such a large land mass and relatively low population faces unique challenges.

It would appear based on the figures that Canada would be the closest country by comparison.

So does Canada have a professional domestic football competition? Not at the moment. In 2019 The Canadian Premier League a fully professional, FIFA-sanctioned soccer league is expected to begin. It will be made up of “eight to ten teams owned and operated, at least in part, by a mix of NHL and CFL ownership groups.”

Canada is fortunate to be located so close to the USA, and their top three teams play in the Major League Soccer competition, and in 2017 Toronto FC won the MLS for the first time. They also have two teams playing in the United Soccer League which is Division two of the MLS.

Below the MLS is the Canadaian Championship. It is only contested by six teams. Four sides that play in the American leagues and the champions of League 1 Ontario and the Première Ligue de soccer du Québec will join the competition in 2018. The winners will be Canada’s representative in the CONCACAF Champions League.

Canada also currently has the Canadian Soccer League. The Canadian National Soccer League, which was known as the National Soccer League until 1993, was a professional soccer league in Canada that existed from 1926 to 1997. When that came to an end the Canadian Soccer League was born. This is a semi-professional league for exclusively Canadian association soccer clubs primarily located in the province of Ontario. It is also a Non-FIFA league previously sanctioned by the Canadian Soccer Association (CSA), but now affiliated with the Soccer Federation of Canada (SFC).

The Canadian Soccer League is owned by its member clubs and managed by a board of directors made up of directors from each member club. The board of directors are the ones to set out the policy and who oversee league operations and select a chairman. In 2011, the ownership structure of the league was reformed into a incorporated body as the CSL Association Inc. This was done in order to bring about a slow process of equalization to the status of teams, while compensating the equity owners who had heavily invested in league throughout the years.

Now many in Australia would hate to see the A-League revert to being a semi-professional League, which is what the NSL became, but clearly something has to change. Is an expanded A-League sustainable with such a small population base being spread over such a vast country? Making the prospect even harder is the fact that no A-League side owns its own ground and is forced play in large stadia that they are now struggling to fill across the country.

In order to safeguard its future should the A-League as well as being expanded be restructured? Should Australia consider enlarging the competition nationally and restructuring it, to make it more viable? Should we adopt a conference system in which teams in each conference could play each other twice and the top two teams in each play off in the finals series? The bottom two play off to avoid relegation.

Money would need to be invested into the National Premier Leagues which could then become a genuine second tier competition to the A-League, with the winner taking the place of the relegated side. They in turn would receive a financial windfall for gaining promotion.

This is a simple suggestion, which of course would need to be explored in more detail. In all seriousness it is fine to hear the FFA talking up expansion next year, but do they have the money to market the competition? If they don’t, then despite two new teams in the League nothing will in essence change. Our population and the distances involved in having a truly national competition along with teams with no history will continue to hold the game back.

Ask the fans what they want to see and many want to see the Finals series reduced from six teams to four. The reason being some sides do not have the ambition to be crowned Premiers, but simply to make the top six. They also want a second division so that we can witness promotion and relegation. There has to be more at stake in each game each week. This will translate in developing better players, and players suited to playing cut-throat international tournaments.

The FFA on the eve of the visit from FIFA and AFC officials talked up expansion of the A-League but there was still no mention of a second division. Something only the USA and Australia do not have.

There is a very real fear that if a second tier is not delivered, which would appease most of the relevant parties vying for a voice and a vote, the game will once again fracture. We will see various parts seperate from the FFA and run their own section of the game. Should the visitors to Australia from FIFA and the AFC in fact be sitting down with the FFA and assisting them in finding a way to manage all facets of the game more efficiently? Should they be making sure that all of these various parts of the whole game, as the Crawford Report stated was vital, have a voice and are heard? Regrettably they are here purely as observers.

Hopefully in their observations they will come to realise that it is not a healthy situation whereby the state associations simply know-tow and vote according to the wishes of the FFA. They need to represent the members in their state, those who play at every level. Yet regrettably the members in these states are not even advised as to how their representatives are going to vote, and neither is relevant information from their meetings with the FFA shared with the members. Hence the stirrings of dissatisfaction amongst members and clubs.

There has to be more transparency and communication moving forward. We also need to make the Board of the FFA more accountable. With the members of FIFA and the AFC being merely observers over the next three days are we likely to see any changes? It is unlikely. No doubt we will be told of plans to “explore opportunities moving forward” or the “engaging of consultants to evaluate the best options.” More stalling tactics by some to ensure that they still receive their free tickets to the FIFA World Cup, as “a token of appreciation for their efforts.”

There are some pretty serious questions that need to be answered, and they need to be addressed sooner rather than later. The current leadership issues need to be sorted out and fast, so that the Board can turn their attention to serving the game as a whole and ensuring a healthy future not just for the A-League and our national teams, but also our future players and all sections of the game.

We hear talk of player pathways but what about club pathways? If a club is being run professionally and has a strong supporter base why should it be prevented from progressing the the A-league? Why should it be that a new franchise has to be created at great cost before being admitted into the League?

The model for the A-League at its inception we were told would carry the game forward. Franchises were the way to go. Yet the format is currently floundering in terms of viewers and fan support. Which in turn is resulting in the franchises haemorrhaging. Is expansion the answer? Or should we look at expansion and at the same time restructuring? It would appear that something has to be done before we start to see history repeat and the A-League become a semi-professional league just as its predecessor the NSL did.

Frank Lowy was there at the start of the NSL and he was there at the start of the A-League. He certainly pulled in both Government and Corporate money, but one has to question whether his vision as to how the League should be run was the right one. With his son the Chairman of the FFA for the time being, does he have the strength of character to admit that his father was maybe wrong and take the game in a new direction? Such leadership could in fact see him step out from his father’s shadow.