I personally think its a great idea, expanding the talent pool makes sense given how much talent has slipped through the cracks for overseas and even here in Australia.

Also dividing into tiers is also a smart idea as long as the criteria is good and the costs for the players and coaches are reasonable. I think this model is influenced by the Abrams whom have said this is how its done in Belgium, France and Holland.

Linking with school and club means the players can train a lot more to a similar level to our European counterparts.

Overdue in my opinion.

In an article in our local tabloid, by David Davutovic, Ange P has stated that FFA intends to expand the elite player pool from the current 24 at the AIS, to 3000.:-k

Ostensibly, there is going to be the introduction of;

HAL Academies,

football schools,

accrediting select clubs.

Ange says that there are a lot of players out there who are not identified and miss out on opportunities. He claims that many players don't receive encouragement to realise their goals.

He cites Massimo Luongo as being a Socceroo who has not gone through conventional pathways. Ange says FFA wants to see more focus on players beyond the AIS by decentralision.

There have been many stakeholders in football on this forum, particularly NSW, who claim worthy players miss out on elite pathways.

In this state, many who want to be selected, are. However, I'm concerned a lot of work is put into developing only too few players, some of who then give up playing altogether at an early age. The coaching involved has gone to waste in those cases.





It appears that Ange is now taking on some of the roles of former Technical Director, Han Berger. One of his duties is to coach the Socceroos. A degree of the criteria to evaluate his success, is be based on results.:-k


Erik Abrams is FFA TD responsible for the 16 years and under age bracket.






Edited by Decentric: 7/5/2015 03:24:19 PM