Professional Footballers Australia released their annual A-League Men’s report last week, which indicates the wheel has turned against two persistent criticisms of the league: a lack of opportunities for young players, and the recycling of similar faces between clubs commonly described as ‘player churn.’
The report highlights that the competition led all leagues within the Asian Football Confederation last season in providing opportunities for players aged under 21, with steady growth across the past three seasons decreasing the average age of the league from 27 years to 25.
The signing of a five-year collective bargaining agreement ahead of the 2020/21 campaign between the PFA and its players also provided clubs and players a degree of stability not previously afforded. This has seen contract lengths increase across the board, allowing clubs to move away from the need to sign players at short-notice, and therefore reliance on ‘known quantities.’
TALENT FACTORY
A key point to emerge from the report is that perceptions that the league leans heavily on the tried and true, and is reluctant to roll the dice on young talent, is no longer accurate. Within the AFC, the league topped all for the percentage of match minutes played by those under 21, at 11.1% of minutes across its 257 matches.
This places it comfortably ahead of its nearest competitors in Asia: the Arabian Gulf League – sitting second with 9.3% of minutes allocated to players in the bracket. The J2 League (Japan’s second division) was third with 5.5%. Japan’s J1 League, widely considered Asia’s strongest league, sat fifth with 5.4%.
Globally, Australia’s figure placed it eighth on a list of 60 comparable leagues, considerably behind the world leading Danish Superliga and Venezuela’s Primera Division, tied on 16.5%. Notably, A-League Men’s sits above the Dutch Eredivisie (10.9%), commonly considered one of world football’s strongest development leagues. However, it should also be considered that the figure is drawn from 306 matches, as opposed to Australia’s 257.
France’s Ligue 1 leads all comers across Europe’s ‘Big Five’ on 9.1%, ahead of the German Bundesliga (7.1%) and England’s Premier League (4.4%).
Brisbane Roar’s Kai Trewin (2,416 minutes) and Central Coast Mariners’ Jacob Farrell (2,338) topped A-League Men minutes for players in the age bracket in 2021/22; Farrell and Sydney FC’s Patrick Yazbek were both within the world’s Top 100 players to play the most senior football in the first half of 2022, from the under 20 bracket (CIES Football Observatory).
How has this happened? The reduction of the A-League’s salary cap from $3.2million to $2.1million during the nadir of Covid-19 in October 2020 played a significant role. Paired with global travel restrictions, inhibiting foreign recruitment during the period, clubs were forced to look inwards and become resourceful, rather than spending bloated figures on overseas recruits.
The updated CBA brokered by the PFA in September 2021 will see the cap gradually rise back to $2.6million by 2024 and features greater flexibility for clubs to spend outside of it. But some clubs, having been forced to live lean during crisis time, are in no hurry to return to their old ways.
The Central Coast Mariners developed a well-earned reputation for the promotion of their own in the club’s formative years, largely through financial necessity. Mile Jedinak, Trent Sainsbury and Mat Ryan all made their professional debuts in Gosford, and would each go on to captain the Socceroos.
Post-Covid, the Mariners are back at it under Nick Montgomery. In 2022 they ranked 17th among 40 leagues globally for percentage of minutes played by academy players: 47.1% of all minutes of 22 matches, , shared among eleven homegrown products (CIES Football Observatory).
For context, the famed Ajax academy provided 39.7% of their senior sides’ total minutes from 12 players across 29 matches (ranked 34th). The global leader was Slovakia’s MSK Zilina, sharing 85.5% of minutes across 23 academy players (28 matches).
THE NEXT STEP
The report also proves that clubs and players have used these heightened match minutes for youngsters productively, with players developing onto the next stage of their careers at an increasing rate.
A-League Men clubs have stitched themselves back into the global player market this year, taking a combined $3.4million in international transfer receipts across the January & May-September transfer window. Socceroos Connor Metcalfe, Kye Rowles and Nathaniel Atkinson headline the list of those to move abroad.
This figure demonstrates a bounce back from the seven-year low of 2021, when clubs pocketed a collective $1.6million. 2022 is still someway off the league’s highpoint of $5.4million (2018), which included moves for Daniel Arzani to Manchester City and Andrew Nabbout to Urawa Reds.
CHURN OUT
The report also shows steps have been taken towards the reduction of ‘player churn’, whereby a small, familiar pool of players are recycled amongst clubs, leaving fans bemoaning unimaginative recruiting and being unable to form a loyal connection with those on the pitch.
The percentage of players coming off contract at the start of 2021/22 was the lowest it had been in the eight years of recorded PFA contract data, at 48%. The previous low was 52% in 2015/16, while at its highest the figure blew out to 68% at the start of 2020/21, which came in accordance with the league’s Covid-inflicted salary cap reduction.
PFA research conducted in partnership with Twenty First Group also reveals the A-League Men’s leads all Asian leagues for contract length; at 1.51 years on average, longer than local competitors in the J1 League (1.01 years) and South Korea’s K League 1 (0.86).
Club’s attitudes towards long-term contracts have shifted markedly under the five-year CBA. The number of players on one-year deals has been reduced from 51% in the pre-pandemic season of 2019/20, to 39% last season. Conversely the percentage of players offered the stability of a two-year deal grew from 38% to 48%.
“The objective of agreeing to a five-year CBA was to provide both a genuine partnership between the players and the clubs and crucially to provide the professional game with a stable platform to rebuild the industry,” PFA co-chief executive Beau Busch said as part of their report.
“Encouragingly, we continue to see a range of positive trends in relation to increased investment in players, the emergence of a host of talented players and improved contractual stability.”
