Dating Advice: Australians can’t score.

It’s been a great season for Australia’s top-tier football competition. The A-League has seen the unprecedentedly successful integration of a new expansion club, a massive rise in average attendances, star marquee players such as Alessandro Del Piero gracing our shores and some generally exciting football. But the A-League’s success has concealed a rather concerning feature of Australian football – a distinct lack of goal-scorers.

The A-League came to life in August 2005, a successor to the defunct National Soccer League. It was designed to be a platform and breeding ground for the wealth of available Australian talent. It has since done its job on multiple occasions, producing a large variety of Socceroos stars, and in this recent season has seen the rise of multiple young stars such as Tom Rogic, Bernie Ibini, Aaron Mooy and the development of some more experienced players such as Topor-Stanley, Vidosic and Milligan.

 

However, upon glancing at the league’s top five goal scorers, one worrying statistic becomes evident.

15 goals – Jeremy Brockie – New Zealand

15 goals – Daniel McBreen – England/Australia

13 goals – Marco Rojas – New Zealand

12 goals – Besart Berisha – Albania

12 goals – Alessandro Del Piero – Italy

Not a single one of these players was born and bred in Australia. While Daniel McBreen is eligible to play for the Socceroos, he was born in Bristol, England and spent the majority of his career playing in Europe; while it is true that he spent formative teenage years playing and living in Australia he at best remains a lone Australian representative in the league’s top scorers, and the only to have netted in double figures. Not to mention his age of 35, in the twilight of his career.

Scattered across the top fifteen are a number of Australians, the likes of Mark Bridge, Ryan Griffiths and Dario Vidosic (9), as well as the ever present Archie Thompson (7) – though in a league with such a large proportion of players that are in fact Australian, this should be expected. The concerning fact is that we seem to be struggling to produce true goal scorers.

Last season, none of the top three scorers were Australian. In fact, the last time an Australian finished the season as top goal-scorer was the 2008/9 season, thanks to Danny Allsopp. Four seasons ago.

This is a worrying trend that has been reflected in our national side, who have struggled to find a replacement for the golden era strikers of Mark Viduka and Harry Kewell. Overseas, very few Australian attackers have established themselves as regular performers in top leagues – the few exceptions being Robbie Kruse and Matthew Leckie in Germany and, in patches of form, Scott McDonald.

Compare this to the small nation to our country’s east, who have only one team in our league, and just over a fifth of our population – New Zealand. Two of the top five strikers in the A-League are Kiwis with other players such as Michael McGlinchey and Shane Smeltz regularly impressing. Overseas, Chris Wood in England has scored five goals in six appearances for Leicester City at the tender age of 21, and looks set to move onto much bigger things in the near future.

Australia certainly has the capability to produce world-class finishers, but a worrying trend in the last five years has indicated a lack of goal-scoring ability in our nation’s top-tier league – something that has resonated in our international team for a similar period of time.

This will be something to address in the short-term preparation for next year’s World Cup – though this will likely involve working around our lack of a target man instead of finding one. In consideration of the long-term future of the Socceroos and Australian football in general, this weakness must be confronted – something that can start with the A-League and the way club’s develop their young attacking talent.

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