No Champions League For Australia ?

There is nothing more predictable that our media focussing on the negative.

Yesterday the Asian Football Confederation released their restructure of the AFC Champions League. The restructure itself is overdue, the format of the current competition is poor. Allowing only the top team of each group passage to the knockout rounds results in the situation we saw last night where the group winner has been decided before the final round and no one has anything to play for except pride.

The media of course has seized upon the fact that Australia has been awarded only two spots while Japan, China and Korea Republic have received four each. Combining this with the AFC ranking us as the seventh best domestic competition within the confederation and you have a very negative picture.

However when you dive into the detail there are valid reasons for our rating and allocations of two spots. More of a concern though is the point that the AFC have an expectation that all the areas that we have been given a less than A rating on will be resolved by 31/10/2008.

Currently the A-league has been rated a B on the following :

1. The league has a system for promotion/ relegation.
2. The league governing body is a legal entity governed by its football association.
3. The league governing body has a management structure which controls competition, marketing, media and finance.
4. Club representatives, representatives of the football association and representatives from the league’s top management are the members of the highest decision making body (executive committee) of the league.
5. The position of the CEO must be full-time.
6. The league has an audited Profit and Loss Statement and Balance Sheet.
7. The league has an auditor


Now the first point is not going to happen for at least 10-15 years (if ever) let alone by October of this year. The rest of the points are more to do with the desire to have the league stand outside the national association and I doubt that the FFA will be in a position to implement such a reform by October.

So what is going to happen? If you read text of the FFA announcement we will be thrown out on our ear. Now I seriously doubt that is going to happen, more likely is that Australia along with about 5 other nations will be granted exemption from this criteria.

In terms of the two teams for us vs four teams Japan, China and Korea this has more to do with the size of our league than our ranking. Quite rightly the AFC has capped the number of teams to 1/3 of your league size, thus Australia comes in at 2.67 and they have rounded down. I suspect we will see us on par with the others as soon as we can get our league up to 12 Teams. This will of course cause an additional issue of how to fit them in to the 16 teams, though I suspect that the AFC will introduce a qualifying round once the number of nations is sufficient to justify it. (ie Japan, Australia, China and Korea get three team each with the final four spots decided by a qualifying round)

To be ranked seventh in Asia after only three years is a big tick for the FFA, we should see a steady climb in those rankings as the technical quality of our league improves and more money flows into the sport.

This of course does mean that each Australia team next year will only have to finish second to progress to the knockout round. On the other hand the groups also just got harder with each group having a Japanese, Korean and Chinese team in them.

Newcastle and Central Coast have a big challenge ahead of them but it is certainly a more obtainable target than the previous years.

PS
Good luck to Adelaide tonight as they attempt to be the first Australian team to make it through to the knockout rounds.

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