Fans of old football have had their expectations teased after Lyall Gorman announced a B-League is high on the agenda as the A-League prepares to manage soccer’s biggest upheaval in two decades.
The A-League chief is keen to expand the game professionally by introducing promotion and relegation in line with Asia’s demands with the AFC in 2008, alluding to take Champions League spots away if nations don’t meet the new second-tier demands by 2012.
The committee is forcing the introduction of second-tier competitions across Asia’s better men’s leagues. The 14-point plan includes promotion and relegation, a Cup competition and the league to run as a separate entity rather than being controlled by Football Federation Australia.
Gorman said the FFA Cup – involving all of Australia’s FIFA-sanctioned men’s teams – was planning to kick off next year but was not set in stone, nor was there a deadline in place for the B-League.
“We’ve undertaken the national competitions review,” Gorman said.
“It will be complete within six months and there’s a time factor and infrastructure needed to make sure we can move to that.” He said the game’s second-tier competition was tipped to be aligned to a unified states’ competitions calendar but the finer details were still in their infancy.
Leo Athanasakis, president of four-time national league champions South Melbourne FC, welcomed the incentive, “but everything would have to be carefully analysed as we are responsible for protecting the future of a great club,” he said.
Is this a way back into national competition for the ‘traditional’ football powerhouses of the NSL era such as South Melbourne, Marconi and Sydney Olympic? Before we all get too excited we must understand the commercial realities.
A national competition requires significant resources and it requires carefully planned integration of clubs taking in mind key criteria such as: stadium, finances, geographic location and salary cap to name a few.
A promotion from the B-League into the A-League would require a significant increase in capital to match the salary cap increase required to compete in the higher league.
Current clubs are struggling in the A League and one must ask if, for instance, Melbourne Heart was relegated to the B-League: could the club survive the down sizing? There are current contracts in place for administration, coaches and players and these contracts simply could not be honoured in a B-League structure.
How would John van’t Schip’s sizeable salary be honoured in a relegated B-League? Practically impossible!
There would be a need for relegation clauses to be included in all contracts as insurance against the big drop.
If Heart was to be relegated, CEO Scott Munn, Football Director John Didulica and all staff would have to halve their salaries. This is unlikely to be able to implemented.
Who would sign contracts with such a relegation clause? Would the FFA have a slush fund for such clubs in order to make parachute payments such as the system used in England?
How much money would be required and who is going to fit the bill? In reality the A-League and its franchises were not structured for such an eventuality.
What would the current owners of the ten clubs who have invested millions in capital to buy A League franchises have to say about this proposal, considering they purchased these franchises without this proposal in mind? Ask Tony Sage of Perth Glory — who has lost an estimated nine million dollars since he purchased the club — what he thinks of relegation?
There are many issues to work through and whilst we can see the benefits of promotion and relegation the implementation is complicated.
11,000 people watched the NSW Premier league final between Sydney Olympic and Sydney United recently and there is a fair bet that most of those people do not go to support Sydney FC.
These are passionate long time supporters that have been lost to the sexy new game. Like all businesses one wants to retain former customers.
This is the challenge that lies ahead for the brains trust of the FFA. After the disasters of North Queensland Fury and West Sydney the football family is hoping the FFA can get it right.