Robbie Slater’s warning to FFA: ‘There is a revolt on its way’

A REVOLT against Football Federation Australia is on its way because they have lost their way and are not listening to the people they need to, according to Fox Sports football expert Robbie Slater.

Slater believes the FFA are mostly concerned with protecting themselves, and that’s contributed to “horrendous” Asian Champions League results.

Slater cited the scheduling of fixtures as one example that’s made Australia “the embarrassment of Asian football at the moment”.

Brisbane Roar played their ninth match in 28 days against Ulsan, which resulted in a 6-0 Asian Champions League loss, while Western Sydney Wanderers played their eighth match since January 22 and were thumped 5-1 by Shanghai SIPG.

“What is going on is not acceptable. It’s been going on for quite a long time,” Slater told Bill & Bozz.

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Western Sydney Wanderers' midfielder Mitch Nichols.
Western Sydney Wanderers' midfielder Mitch Nichols.Source: AFP
“Two weeks before they [the Wanderers] play an ACL game, they go to Perth, get beat in Perth, and then they have to travel to China.

“Brisbane travelled back [from China] a couple weeks ago. They caught a plane on a Thursday night — an overnight flight in economy — landed on Friday and had to play on a Saturday.

“That is not acceptable. It’s not safe for the players to play in those conditions.

“Then you get to the point where Brisbane’s squad is stretched so thin that they’re playing young players who have potential but shouldn’t be playing at this level at the moment.

“We’re embarrassing. There’s no doubt about this.

“There is a revolt on its way. There is a revolution coming in this game.”

Slater also noted that “shameful” harm had been done to Australia’s youth system, and it’s impacting the Socceroos.

“We don’t qualify for youth cups anymore, we don’t qualify for the Olympics anymore,” he said.

“They were feeder teams to the national team.

“The curriculum, the way we’ve coached our young players; we’ve taught them it’s OK not to win. That is completely wrong.

“Individual players are no good, we produce robots.”

He added: “There’s one thing that can help our players and that’s expansion.”

It follows on from Ange Postecoglou’s comments that individual Socceroos are lacking ambition, which he said will impact his selection for the upcoming World Cup qualifiers against Iraq and UAE.

While Slater believes Australia will qualify for the World Cup, he noted that Postecolgou speaking about these topics sets off “alarm bells.”

He also said that Australia over-achieved with the players they had at the 2015 Asian Cup, but now the Socceroos simply don’t have players good enough to play at the levels of those from the ‘Golden Generation’.

The Fox Football Podcast gang are back as Adam Peacock, Simon Hill and Daniel Garb run the rule over the game’s big issues.

http://www.foxsports.com.au/football/a-league/robbie-slaters-warning-to-ffa-there-is-a-revolt-on-its-way/news-story/09c58a9281919bc74342997bf5d172d5

Spot on the revolt is coming.

“The curriculum, the way we’ve coached our young players; we’ve taught them it’s OK not to win. That is completely wrong.

“Individual players are no good, we produce robots.”

That is also correct, things must change.

Our peformance in the Asian champions league was a disgrace. There's no denying it.
Why do the FFA have such cruel and harsh scheduling for clubs competing in the ACL?
Why do they not listen to is?
Why do they choose not to expant the A-league when they would only benifit?
What are these real answers. Cause ffa just gives us answers as if they are politicians

@citysam
Oath. Les Murray talked about how kids these days saw it as a weekend job and how immagrints loves it so much and what mattered was what u did after training weather u decided to do more training etc,

Agree with Slater 100% regarding the youth.

The pipeline of talent has broken because of only 10 teams in the league and almost every coach playing average players and mostly poor imports.

If teams like Ajax, PSV, Bruges etc can play and develop talent year after year, well we can and should be doing that as well.

Fuck off. Bunch of pansies the lot of you. As a Glory fan we've never had the opportunity to participate in a World Club Championship, ACL or anything that might be on the table. Anytime the club has won anything or been runners up there was nothing there or the rug was pulled from under us.  Take the opportunities given to you and stop crying like a bunch of pussies. Honestly...

Thanks for the insightful, topical and helpful post!

here here

Popavic & or Amor must have some pretty thick wool over their eyes to honestly believe their squads are not shit. 

What I'd serious chringe seeing , is FFA start to give away money for marqueez !! yay one for each shit club. then soon as they leave their shit heaps again lol

Finish first or win the finals and stop crying like a baby then, fact is you have not been good enough and would likely embarrass us as well.

Decent article, but whenever I hear/read this comment it worries me.

He added: “There’s one thing that can help our players and that’s expansion.”

It's not as simple as that.  Expansion by itself is not the answer.  It'll give us a boost for a couple of years, but then we'll be having these same conversations again.  

Yep, band aid solution.

lol the revolt has been massing for 12 years, its just that now Fox isn't happy and their using their mouthpieces to pile on the pressure.

-PB

The problem with our with our youth set up,  is we don't encourage individualism, we don't want players who take on players, when I was young, I was shown footage of George Best , Jimmy Johnstone, Pele etc creative individuals who did things on a pitch,  that are now frowned upon.

Not only here , but almost everywhere, it's pass and move & individualism has been coached out of players. It is sad, that players such as Ninkovic or Troisi are lauded, as these guys have some creativity and individual thought in their play, but the reality is they stand out because the other 20 guys on the pitch are all pass and move players, we think oh my god, did you see that flick or turn , when 20-30 years ago, these guys would of just been average pros.

Some my advice to anyone who has a son or daughter playing football,  stop with the control, pass & move and get your head up and take on as many players as you can. 

you dont have the opportunity because you dont win shit. stop being pansies and playing shit football and get yourselves into the ACL.

there are creative players. it's just safer to bring in a foreigner who played in 3rd division spain or from uruguay than to develop our own creative players. 

Just to play devils advocate here, it's important we develop smart intelligent players and it doesn't mean producing players that look to go past players all the time, you can either have that or players that pass and get into good positions.

Producing players that only want to run the football but ignore certain football scenarios around the pitch is not good enough. It's about a balance which is what the NC is all about.

Technique but with intelligence, thats the key for us.

Although I can't speak as this season is my first exposure to current junior football with my son playing, but speaking from experience kicking a ball with him in the backyard.

The bolded part comes natural. Kids are competitive in everything they do. My son is 5 and gets bored just kicking the ball back and forth, his interest wanes after 5 mins but the second we turn it into a game of keepings off or kicking goals, he could go for hours.

Kids thrive off creativity, and although practicing technique is crucial, it should be done in small short doses to keep kids interested. The longer sessions should be putting this technique to practice in match simulation like 3 vs 1 etc.  

Its like learning anything, at school a kid is much better off doing 4 days of 1/2hour each day Maths as opposed to 2 days of 1hour each day. 

Fox pissed off that they've obviously over-paid

Noice meme

-PB

From personal opinion, I'm fast been ho hum about the league. Only been to a handful of matches all season, and get much more excited about watching my NPL side. 

It's just too stale, and Slater is right - they are not listening, 

I have seen, first hand, a talented, fast, skillful 16 yr old, being told by his coach (A-League youth team) not to take defenders on one-on-one if there is a pass available - then turning around to tell the rest of the team that there should always be a pass available.  It's demoralising to see it happen.

Agree. Galloway when real young look amazing, then after all these olyroos camps he looked like he played on tram tracks

fuck me, they need to be flexible to get it right anyway.

they too scared of tweaking anything. Try something that will surprise us all rofl

I'd be concerned at dismantling the curriculum now. Just from a subjective point of view based on the shitty little kids games that they've got going on at half time at HAL games, the standard of the wee kids has improved a lot. It used to be a rabble but now you can actually see kids constructing moves, and taking on opportunities to run with the ball/hit it from (comparative) distance.


There certainly may be a case for tweaking what happens in the teen years, but the kids seem to be going alright despite 'being taught it's OK not to win'. I think it's a bit absurd to abandon a long term project before seeing the end result. In five years or so we'll see the kids that have been the full way through the system, then it'll be worth assessing more carefully.

Agree with this - the standard of players coming through into the A-League is consistently getting better (Pasquali at the Victory was one such example). Tweaks can be made along the way, but certainly you need a generation or two to see the full effects. This is not even including kids who will naturally learn different systems because they will head overseas to Europe at 12 and learn there, so our representative teams should naturally have a diverse range of skills and attitudes in them.

Pasquali came through the sports program at Maribyrnong High School (which specialises in sports education).  I'd say they had far more influence on the development of Pasquali than the Victory.

One possibility for the alarming drop over the last 12 months is this:

The last time we sucked this bad in the acl was when the NYL wasn't running yet

We recently significantly weakened the NYL

Could this be a major catalyst for the dogs breakfast we saw the other night?

I'm glad Robbie's the first of the journo's to really speak out and be so critical of the FFA.

Speak for the people m8