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Transfer window open, but A-League a better option for many Australian players

Michael Cockerill

The football world is once again open for business, but nearly 40 years after Australians first started to leave our shores in decent numbers, it seems the world is less interested in our players than ever before. Thank heaven, then, for the A-League. As things progress, Australian players chasing fame and fortune are going to find it harder and harder to find the right reason to leave home.

The January transfer window arguably tells us more about global transfer trends than the off-season. Why? Because major European clubs – who traditionally drive the business – are in mid-season, in the market for reinforcements, and focused on ready-made players. They're much less inclined – in their view – to take risks.

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Thus January is largely about the movement of players already inside the "system". So it's those deals made outside the system – bringing in non-European players from leagues outside Europe – which reveal much about the prevailing mood. We can expect South Americans, the occasional east European, Mexican, Japanese, South Korean and African player to get through the door. Australians? It's hard to think of a single one.

At last count, there were 281 Australians "playing" abroad in 46 different countries. Just one – Matthew Leckie – plays regularly in a top-tier league. The vast majority of those players are young, ambitious and starry-eyed. The bulk of them will be back home by their early 20s, having exhausted their energy, and their resources. But they will keep going, and so they should, not least because a 10-team A-League suffocates opportunity. And yet the quantity tells us little about what really matters. It's the quality which counts, which is where the message becomes confronting.

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In the late 1970s, early 1980s, Rene Colusso, Eddie Krncevic, Alan Davidson, John Kosmina and David Mitchell started the ball rolling. Within a decade the exodus had gathered steam. For the 1989 World Cup campaign, the majority of national team players were still based at home. Four years later, the tables had turned dramatically. It was supposed to be a sign of things to come.

It wasn't just that the best Socceroos were playing abroad, it was that they were some of the very best Socceroos. Of all time. During the 1990s and early 2000s, Australian players were in vogue, playing at good clubs in big leagues. We all assumed we'd made the breakthrough, that our players were going to be respected and recognised for their talent and not punished for their passport. Turns out we were wrong.

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Talent, of course, is a factor. And it's fair to say genuine talent has been in relatively short supply since the demise of the so-called "golden generation". But if you think talent makes the transfer market go around, you're dreaming. The business of transfers is just that. Business. Truth is, after all these years of experience, Australian players and their agents are still mostly on the outside looking in when it comes to the crunch. In the wheeling-and-dealing, we lose out. Worse still, in a reputational sense, the transfer market just doesn't get excited enough about Australian players to go the extra yard. That's what hurts. We still don't sell.

It's only going to get worse, not better. European football is progressively tightening up on non-EU players. China hasn't quite closed the door on Australians, but after the recent removal of the +1 rule it's suddenly much harder to prise it open. Ditto leagues in Qatar and UAE. Japan has never really embraced Australian players. Which leaves South Korea as one of the few major leagues seemingly willing to take Australian players in reasonable numbers, but in a footballing and financial sense, the K-League doesn't offer a huge advantage. Which leaves the second-tier competitions in Thailand, Malaysia and perhaps India as destinations. Hardly inspiring, that.

So are we going to start seeing more and more players settle for lifelong careers in the A-League? Is the world starting to close in on the next generation? I'd imagine so. As the A-League evolves, as wages gradually increase, and hopefully as the competition expands, staying at home becomes a more viable option. Funnily enough, as the two rugby codes start grappling with the talent exodus which changed the dynamics of football a generation ago, football's fate seems to be heading in the opposite direction.

The next six weeks, before windows start to close shut across the globe, will tell us more. But increasingly it seems the last 40 years haven't made much difference to the way the world perceives Australian players. Sad? Put it this way. You wonder if things will ever change.

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