What about the Clubs?
Just last week eight domestically based players were selected in Ange Postecoglu’s thirty man squad. This is one massive step forward for our domestic league and one that everyone involved in the A-League should be proud of. Although this number may dramatically decrease when Ange selects his final 23 man squad, all this points towards some great signs for the future of the league.
Plenty of players have missed out on Ange’s squad due to poor club choices and missing out on valuable game time, our younger generation need to pay attention especially when Ange appears to be in charge for our next World Cup campaign and possibly beyond.
Adam Taggart is one of the players named in the preliminary squad, and the golden boot in the 2013/14 season. As soon as he made the squad talk started about his big move to Europe. Personally I would love to see Taggart stay in the league for one more season, this season he will be guaranteed more game time and will play an important part in the Jets campaign. If Taggart and his management team make a poor choice it could set his new found international career back a few years.
This got me thinking about rewarding our A-League clubs for international appearances at World Cups. Whilst I know we are still regarded as a development league and we cannot stop players from self development overseas we should be able to reward our clubs at home for their development of our talent. Are we rewarding our clubs for their input to Australian football? I know the main focus of our clubs is to win titles and play in the Asian Champions League but the development is of paramount importance.
There should be a financial reward for the clubs, but not a straight up cash reward that clubs will only add to their bottom line. What I propose is an increase to the clubs salary cap for the number of Australian international players. Consider this a reward for pursuing and developing our future generation of footballers. I have chosen three age increments and this will only be rewarded at four major international tournaments throughout a four year cycle. Two under 20 World Cups, The Olympic Games (Under 23) and the World Cup are the selected tournaments. Clubs would receive the financial reward for the following season only and would receive the following increments per player.
| Competition | Financial Reward (per player) |
| Under 20’s | $20,000 |
| Olympic Games (Under 23’s) | $40,000 |
| World Cup | $75,000 |
These rewards could potentially help our clubs keep certain players, or at least reward the clubs for our continual development of international players. Especially under the tutelage of Ange we need to focus on our next generation of players, and create our next golden generation. There may be some rough seas ahead but Australian football is once again on the right path to be on the World stage.
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