Jason Culina has agreed to return to Australia to play for Gold Coast United in the A-League. Culina is the first national team first XI regular to return to the A-League since the league began. So, to put it simply, this is a big deal.
Apart from being a Socceroo, Culina, as a 28 year old, is at his peak with a number of years of high level performance ahead of him. He has spent the last 4 seasons at PSV Eindhoven, who won the eredivisie (Holland’s top division) in each of Culina’s first three seasons, and has regularly progressed from the group stage in the UEFA Champions League in recent years.
Whilst they are not one of the very best clubs in world football, PSV is in an elite percentile. In this context, Culina’s decision to reject the contract extension that PSV offered, in favour of an A-League club, is quite amazing.
Culina’s signing gives some insight into how the A-League is viewed by Australian players. We have already seen a number of former Socceroos come and play in the A-League to finish off their careers. We have also seen a number of Australian players at smaller European clubs decide that they’re better off playing in Australia.
It is still disappointing to see a lot of players leave this country to play for relatively small clubs overseas, but, as they say, these things take time. All football playing generations up to the current one have grown up unable to see a long term career in the sport in Australia.
To desire a career in football has been to desire a move to Europe. Generational change will bring with it talented players that are more accustomed to the idea of making a career in the local competition.
Australian players will always seek opportunities overseas, as is the case in a lot of industries, but the trend is obviously changing, and that is great news for supporters of the game in this country.
3 Comments
GCU signing Jason Culina is great for the A-League. As Scott has mentioned, Culina has achieved a lot in Europe and has also been a valuable player for the Socceroos, being a fixture in our full strength XI. He is not coming back for a final retirement cheque, at 28 he still has a lot to offer to the club and league. As happy as I am with the signing, it was only achieved due to the marquee signing rule which allows clubs to sign players outside the salary cap.
While clubs have freedom to sign one quality player outside the cap they a massive battle in trying to keep everyone else. If the increased status of playing in many overseas leagues isn’t enough, the league constrains the clubs by placing a relatively low salary cap. For every Jason Culina, the league is losing many more Socceroos to play in Korea and lower standard European leagues. This season the A-League has or will lose quality local players such as Jade North and Sasha Ogenovski to the K-League (Korea) and Mile Jedinak to Turkey. Losing players to top quality leagues is one thing but when players are going to leagues where clubs can afford to pay them say $100-300k more a season, it’s a problem. Clubs have indicated they would like to be able to keep players in these situations but are hampered by the cap.
I see the purpose behind the salary cap, it’s great for the AFL. Along with the draft, it makes the league very even and gives fans hope their side can win a flag in the next decade or so. But the reality is that Aussie Rules is a domestic game and the A-League faces strong global competition. If a player leaves an AFL club, he is not lost to the league.
The cap is obviously there to make it a more level playing field but lets have a look at the A-League. The two sides that have most struggled on and off the pitch are Perth Glory and NZ Knights/Wellington Phoenix (Wellington took over NZ’s licence). Unless Wellington pull off a miracle, between them they will have played 8 seasons for 0 finals appearances (half the comp make the finals). Wellington’s attempt this season is the closest but they have already lost their star player to Gold Coast. If you’re going to watch your team regularly lose, you might as well watch them lose to quality opposition.
I would either scrap the cap or free it up and use it more as a prompt for the league the FFA want. I see little point in attracting hasbeen overseas players like Robbie Fowler. I would have something like an additional marquee spot but only a Socceroo is illegible. They already have a youth marquee player rule where the first $250k doesn’t count and I would definitely extend that. The league needs to do everything it can to help sides keep quality, young Socceroos.
Outside of hurting clubs in their pursuit key players the A-League salary cap endorses bad list management at teams. Blow heaps of cash on one player and try to cram everyone else in little space. Dud teams with one great player are not great to watch.
I hope the league can one day sign a Jason Culina without legitimate questions being asked about whether he is wasting his career.
Great analysis of the salary cap Mr Blah, you have highlighted it’s problems quite well.
Currently the Central Coast Mariners are using neither the marquee player or young marquee player salary cap exceptions. Even so, they go into tonight’s game against Melbourne, their second last of the season, with some chance of gaining a top two finish in the league.
In contrast, Sydney FC, who are consistently the most active club in recruiting big name players, including a lot of the best young players from other A-League clubs, are almost certain to miss out on the finals.
Football is a sport where you can spend significantly less money and still compete. It seems obvious to me that how much money to spend on fielding a team should be left to the clubs.
Perhaps the worst aspect of the salary cap in its current form is that it promotes an uneven spread of a club’s resources. The amount of money that any given club spends on it’s players would be unlikely to change significantly if the salary cap was scrapped.
The spread of the money might change though, without so much going to an individual player, and that would help with retaining guys like Ognenovski and Jedinak. Some clubs would still go out and sign really big names, and some clubs would probably struggle to keep up, but as MR Blah said, that is already the case.
The FFA would probably argue that the cap is more aimed at maintaining financial security than keeping the league even. I think the FFA had little confidence in the ability of clubs to manage themselves, and so put in place a very paternal structure, with itself at the top.
In a sense they were quickly proved right, when Sydney FC got themselevs into serious trouble financially in the first season. However, that also showed that the salary cap, in it’s current form at least, could only provide limited protection, if any, against poor management.
As Scott touched on, the salary cap serves more as a vehicle for ensuring financial security. But leaving that aside, the paternalistic structure imposed by the FFA has totally changed the perception of football in this country. It’s no longer a second-class citizen with the likes of other professional sporting codes and that is why it has been doing a much better job of retaining local talent.
As the league becomes more established, I’m confident that the rules will be relaxed in order to allow clubs more discretion as to how they remunerate their players.