The A-League has it all over the English Premier League

dankovic says:

08:17am | 19/10/09

Quite funny that under this article is a link saying Why is this man so unpopular?

How can you be so bad at tipping? Aren’t you journos supposed to know what you’re writing about? Your biggest error was not tipping Gold Coast - when Shene Smeltz is playing, you know they’re going to win. The bloke’s a bona fide genius and shoudl be one of the biggest stars in our national sporting landscape right now.

northern monkey says:

08:50am | 19/10/09

How did you think Fury v Phoenix was going to be anything other than the dreadful, boring draw it was?

They’re thetwo worst teams in the comp - and in a league this bad, that’s sayig sometihing. There general standard of the A-League is awful. Yes it’s competitive, but does that make it any better when only half the players can actually kick a ball straight?

Simmo says:

09:35am | 19/10/09

As a Reds fan I love it how they have been playing poorly while Viddie was sticking ot his “4-3-2-1” line-up while the whole world was telling him to play “4-4-2” and the minute he gives in to all the people telling him to switch we win….

Aaron says:

10:36am | 19/10/09

I had to re-read the headline of this story… I am completely and utterly perplexed that a scholar of the game could make such a statement.

Surely the quality of clubs and individual players has to be considered in this equation. The A-League is little more than a pasture for twilight stars to graze, and up-and-coming butchers to hone their stud-bearing tackles.

The proof is in the pudding, the top of the table club struggled to house five thousand lacklustre fans. It’s time to swallow the bitter pill of reality David.

northern monkey says:

10:53am | 19/10/09

Spot on Aaron. No one could be botherd going to the Gold Coast game, and it’s not really surprising, given the quality on show.

steve the header says:

11:14am | 19/10/09

With all due respect, the A-League produces dreary, boring encounters, more often a case of waiting for a mistake to be made which results in a score.  The EPL on the other hand, a score generally results from a team’s skill coupled with an individual’s brilliance results—it has excitement in boatloads by comparison.

boden says:

11:14am | 19/10/09

Those 30,000 people that went to see Melbourne and Sydney last week obviously didn’t mind the quality, northern monkey.

By all means continue to snob our domestic competition but at least I get to see my team live every two weeks or so, and when they’re playing away I don’t need to stay up until 4:00am just to pretend ‘my’ team is from a city on the other side of the world.

Jugger says:

11:26am | 19/10/09

I have to agree with David.  There are a number of teams capable of winning the A-League.

The Premier League is a joke.  The English used to laugh at the Scottish PL because there are only ever 2 teams capable of winning that league.

These days there are only 3 teams capaple of winning (opps, sorry, that should be buying) an English Premier League title:  Moan U, Chelski, and The Arse.  The other hapless clubs just battle it out to either scape a Euro place or avoid relegation - Yawn.  Even the once mighty Liverpool don’t have a chance is this day and age of greedy mega-franchise-clubs.

The English PL is now a bigger joke than the Scottish PL - HaHa!

Grant says:

01:08pm | 19/10/09

The premier league has other rivalrys as well. Obviously there is the top 5 who will win then the places for Champions League, the places for the Europa League and then the ever popular relegation battle. Not includeing FA Cup But it does produce some funny results.
But as far as the title is concerned well its pretty much about 5 teams. The A- League has heaps of growing a sport and a product. The crowds are down but as a regualar competition I think it will be more common place in the media and in the mind of Australias . We really need an FA cup comp with the 10 A-league teams already secured a place with State leagues to play out the other 10. 2 places for VIC , 2 NSW, 1 QLD, 1 SA, 1 WA , 1 TAS and 1 NT or Canberra.

northern monkey says:

01:32pm | 19/10/09

That’s the problem with the A-League, boden. It’s so inconsistent. Teams can have players of brilliance/mediocre/awful quality in the same starting XI.

The Melbourne Sydney game was a great one, but I think a lot of that comes from the intensity of the actual rivalry, as much as the football.

When you get teams like gold coast, who can’t even muster over 5000 fans for a top of the table clash, you wonder where the league is going wrong - not the fans.

MJ says:

05:00pm | 19/10/09

Serie B is harder to predict, but the difference is that all teams are playing extremely good, with the younger teams based on youth talent (wage budgets of around 3 million euros) fighting it out with the experienced promotion candidate teams with budgets over double. If anyone wants to watch some games, stream it - really good quality football, and unpredictable.

@ boden, people are not snobs, because they support an overseas team. My father supported my italian club (a very small club, infact he was supporting them when they were playing in the regional division, Serie D, and Serie C ). I have inherited this, and my blood runs the colours of my team, based on the history of my origin, my family association, and the history of the club. I feel connected to this club, and I’m not going to pretend that the local club here, can bring out the same emotions out of me. I’m a 1 team man, but not a snob. Just enjoy the football you love, and don’t worry about others. I’m sure supporters of NSL clubs shared the same ’ snob’ thoughts as you, when the general public, did not want to associate with clubs, because of their ethnic background and ehnic backing. But instead of worrying about it, just enjoy it, and be proud of it.

Steve says:

06:18pm | 19/10/09

Boden you sound like a bandwagoner. Thanks for the $ in making the game in Australia strong, but in essence, you don’t contribute much to the fabric of Australian soccer. I advise to let the grown ups talk.
MJ, Serie B is a great league. Add physical to the the list of its attributes. Very combative. Next year however, Serie B will struggle for $ because the Serie A is going to for an English Premier League style of set up, and it is breaking away from the Lega Calcio, so it can demand more television revenue. Out of interest, who do you support?

Mj says:

10:03pm | 19/10/09

Yeah it is a disgrace, the big clubs with the pay-tv media (hmm….which club presidents owns the media, and the country???) have suffocated the small italian clubs for years. The whole fact that Serie B games were moved from Sunday nights to Saturday nights, to saturday with a friday and monday night game, to now Saturday afternoon was to give maximimum exposure to the small clubs, at the expense of crowd numbers. Yeah but every year they have drastically cut money to the individual clubs, through Serie B TV rights, and I think it was 2 years ago, when no-one bought the Serie B rights, leaving no money for half a year, relying on the collective bargaining rights money. Now with no collective bargaining, the small clubs will be run on peanuts, and club will continue to go broke, just look at clubs like Pisa, Treviso, Avellino last season, and Messina with Spezia the year before.

The big clubs need to realise that italian football needs small clubs, which is uniquely italian, mainly because of the neo-provincial mentality italy has, where you are not italian, but from your province/village. Really after Juve, and Milan, everyone supports their local team. This has led to Serie A having clubs within cities of only 50 000 people like mine - Ascoli, which has played 16 seasons in Serie A, and finished as high as 5th and 6th during the italian glory years of football.  Now if modern football continues under the guideship of the selfish big clubs, italian football will die completely. With the small supporter bases of many clubs, there is no real opportunity to make money through merchandising or ticket sales (especially in italy’s current economic state, where unlike in the past many more people could afford to attend games), this means clubs are dependant on TV rights, and player sales. Thankfully Ascoli has one of the best youth systems in Italy, which has sustained us for now, but even then the big clubs have too much bargaining power, so we cannot even get a decent return on our player investments. It is a true disgrace when small clubs actually create the best players in Italy, but big clubs just buy them cheaply and send them out to their primavera, or out on loan.

boden says:

10:12pm | 19/10/09

Steve: care to explain the ‘bandwagoner’ comment? Surely supporting a team in a league of lower quality with a small fanbase doesn’t meet that definition.

Loved the ‘let the grown ups to the talking’ thing too.

S.L says:

05:14am | 20/10/09

For all the arguments on how the A league is great or rubbish here is a story. My partners son is in the old Dart right now and attended the Arsenal/Birmingham game last weekend. For a laugh he wore his Mariners shirt. (another story for another day he paid $500 aus for 2 tickets!) and when asked what the shirt was he was surprised to hear some people knew who the Mariners were and that there is an A league comp over here. (Be interesting to see if anyone recognises his Manly shirt which he has there too). In contrast the 4 nations league tournament is about to start with little to no coverage in the free to air media in Britain. You can argue about poor crowds for A league games but other more heavily promoted sports fair no better. When was the last time you saw a crowd at a Sheffield Shield match? League crowds too are very optimistic when the attendance figures are published! I think you just have to just pass the ground to be counted sometimes? An FA cup style comp here I think would be a great shot in the arm for football in this country. Who knows what up and comer might be exposed?

kax says:

09:53am | 20/10/09

finally something positive about the standard of the a-league. give it a break, its only a few seasons in and we need to promote the game as much as possible - what are you getting out of bad mouthing it. maybe in 10 years we’ll be attracting internationals like no tomorrow . similar to when the premier league started, it was all english players and look at it now, where are the poms in any of the teams??