England has had the talent to win stuff the past 20 years but bottled it on the big stage. Losing on pens numerous times, Beckham's red, Rooney's injury etc, stopped them capitalising on their very good teams. But that's what happens in tournament football, one mistake and its over.

Yep.  Can't help bad luck.

52 years of it.

Beckham played for Real Madrid when they weren't good enough to beat Barcelona

I thought Chelsea had the first completely foreign starting 11 near the end of the century. I remember the fuss at the time.

Interesting comments.

I've missed a lot of recent HAL football. Having said this I'll look at these players, player by player on an individual basis haven observed them play quite a few games. I'm also going to include young Aussie players under 24ish.

* Beautac - Don't know him well enough yet. Saw some good things from him last night on the ball.

*Papa - Is he unequivocally better than all of North, DeVere, Bowles and that young CB with the  long neck who made an auspicious HAL debut last year? Positionally, Papa is good, but he will not improve as an individual much more than he currently is at this stage of his career.

*Kristenson -  He has been missing for a while this season. Like Papa he does a lot graft work and is one of the best imports at Roar, but there are many Australians who currently play this position well across the world and could be as good as Kristenson. Caletti, who has filled in, is worse off the ball and not as good a 1v1 ball winner, but is technically better than Kristensen with quicker handling speed and is a better passer and mover.

* Maccarone - I'm not sure how many field goals he has scored this year? He does little in team pressing and squeezing plans in BPO. He relies on team-mates to get the ball for him from what I've seen and does little graft to win the ball back from other teams. There was an energetic young Roar striker who played in the same ACL game last season  and has a lot of promise and is far better when the other team has the ball than Maccarone, but who is a worse a  finisher at this stage of his career.



Apart from Beautac, whose game I'm unfamiliar with, none of Papa, Kristenen or Maccarone ( apart from his finishing?) are better than younger Aussies.

For me as a former Pom, this is why I've lost interest in English football.

They have struggled but have done very well in some very recent underage tournaments.

The senior English team has been atrocious in big tournaments for 50 years considering they have such a good domestic league.

How many of these guys are going to playing regualary in the EPL in the few years time is my question? :) 

I disagree with that, the likes of Brazil, France, Argentina, Spain and Holland had more talented teams than England.

These countries also had a clear way of playing 'an identity' which help there cause too, the likes of Gerarrd and Lampard recently complained about that. 

@barca

That is my same thinking for the Mickey Mouse u23 tournament now. How many will play for Socceroos?
They hype it up like this us our future team.... it's not. Some will play most won't

Agree, not many will be Socceroos from this list, better off sending the team that will form the main squad for Tokyo 2020. 

Exactly. I would have liked to see something like this:
GKs: Margush, Maynard-Brewer, Delianov.
RBs: Pierias, Cleur.
CBs: Deng, Ouzounidis, Ryan, Warland.
LBs: Gersbach, Bandiera.
CMs: Genreau, Tokich, Grozos, Francois.
CAMs: Najjarine, Brook.
RWs: Arzani, Hammond.
LWs: Italiano, Theoharous.
ST: Iredale, Folami.

Minimal disruption for the A-League and other clubs (Deng is the only player in the list that was getting regular senior game time before the squad was announced), and most of these players are playing abroad or at youth level. Most of these are new faces and some have great potential. All are eligible for Tokyo 2020. It would have been a great opportunity to bring a squad like this and put these players on the radar instead of taking A-League players that we already know about.
And since this particular tournament is ultimately meaningless (no youth world cup or direct Olympics qualification from this) it is a good opportunity for experimentation and rotation. And if it ended as a disaster then it is a learning experience for these young players, and there is less fallout because it was an experimental team anyway.

With the actual squad that has been selected, most of them are overrage AND it has disrupted the season of several clubs. If we crash out with the current squad then that is far worse than anything that would have happened with an experimental squad like the one I listed. I cannot see the motive behind some of the selections in the current squad, particularly since (in my opinion) it is not even the best possible squad we could have sent.

Thoughts on having a 3 + 1 rule, but then all of them outside the cap? Would that increase the quality of foreigners across all teams? Or are we just going to see Victory, Sydney FC and City as the only teams getting class marquees? 

Do we add a minimum wage like the Dutch league have/had? To try ands ensure quality of imports. I am not sure that it still stands but the Dutch used to have a lower limit which worked out at about 700 000 ASD on any foreign signing.

@angus

I think it is good and bad

Good if you get it right and the players perform. Also promotes a quality of player

Bad if you get it wrong and over pay someone to reach the minimum. It also takes away the chance of buying/paying players cheap then selling them on.

Two changes to improve options for young Aussie players (other than the obvious increase in number of franchises), and by extension help develop players for the national team(s).

1 - Don't change the number of visa spots, but enforce a match-day selection that only includes 3+1.  As you'll be picking your best visa players standards shouldn't drop too much, and the extra spots mean you have a better chance of getting a good player.

2 - Change the definition of visa player to 'any player ineligible to play for Australia'.  Thus, when a foreign national comes over and sticks around for 5 years, he doesn't suddenly take a place from an Aussie player; also when an 'Aussie' player opts to represent a foreign nation he no longer has the option to use his citizenship to get a run in the A-League at the expense of an Aussie player.

I agree with number 2.

Smeltz when he was playing and Georgjetski and the Greek Bris and Turk AU and so on.

Also, if Berisha becomes Australian he can never play for Australia.

Many people here have disagreed with it and claimed discrimination. I can't see FFA doing it but it would be good if AFC made such a rule which every country had to follow.

sounds like the usual excuses. why is it then that a handful of teams always win it. why isnt england in the mix?  because their league is an international league rather than an english league.

you really think the standard of the a league is beyond what can be done by youth?  that's funny.

how many foreign (ineligible for an aus cap) imports where there in the average NSL team? 

Number 2 is a restraint of trade and the FFA would get taken to court and very quickly that rule would be shot down. If you have citizenship, no matter if you are dual national or not, you can work in any industry.

i can assure you that England was shit long before they allowed foreigners to be signed.

We have the youth league and the standard is appalling. Young players need direction and leadership. They also need mature players to work off and competition for places

The NSL didn't need foreign players. By having the best players in the top 4-5 clubs it created a higher competition than had players been equally allocated to the teams. This meant that even as a semi professional league with no resources the teams were able to draw the best out of players. If the A League did the same then the standard would be much much higher as it also has professionalism, facilities and resources. Players can do a lot more when they aren't working full time jobs

But the A League doesn't do this. If the model was reworked then you might find that the over 20s that you currently think are inept will actually step up to a higher grade, which the young players cannot step up to. The under 20s only look good because the A League is competitively shit

The A League needs foreign players to get that balancing act between making it appealing as we need a TV deal and sponsorship to survive, and also bringing in new styles of play. Plus there is a level of expertise these players can pass on that will be missing from our game if we just worked with Aussie players. But we don't need any more than 4 (3+1) per team because then it cheapens the competition and as we see in other countries, the big clubs will do what Mr Burns did when he wanted to win a baseball comp - at the expense of developing local talent

Young players will work through the system and climb the ranks like everybody else

If that means by your claims we'll end up with teams of under 21s because they are the best then so be it. I cant see it happening though

I recon bring the foreign player quota in line with AFC, expand the current squad numbers to 28 - 30 and get rid of that stupid injury waver replacement rule so you have to take from your own youth pool. This will force better coaching development as you want your young players to be able to step up to the first team and over time we should see better young players coming thru.

You want to bey able to replace Bruno F with McCormack not some kid.

In this instance why should MC lose a top player most of the season because some hack did a dirty tackle in the FFA Cup?

If it's the international nature of the league that's holding England back, why didn't they win anything major in the 70s or 80s when foreign spots were still severely limited?  

In 1998, 2002, and to a slightly lesser extent 2006, England had strong squads full of lads who were playing regularly at top clubs in the Premier League - one could argue that because they were playing against the best in the world, week after week.

Rio Ferdinand made an interesting comment a while back, that because of the competitive nature of English football, and the attitude of English players, the teams of the late 90s and early 00's that he played in tended to put club above country to the point that when they went away to tournaments they would mix with club-mates rather than as a single squad.  In affect, he felt closer to Vidic at Man Utd than he did to Terry at England.

A bit of an out there idea but could we not make every spot on the bench have to be an u23?  Would mean minutes for development and the need to recruit and develop kids.

Perhaps we could get more Vietnamese youth playing in the A-League?

Perhaps if MC didn't have access to another foreign player they could invest in a top class Aussie player - perhaps the nations leading international goalscorer might be an option..?  Not sure he'd ever sign for City though.  ;)

I somewhat agree. Look at most EPL sides and then Wikipedia Spanish sides, even the big ones and you see a lot more Spanish products. 

The league has a problem with recycling average players rather than imports. We need imports to make the league more attractive as they all usually give us something. Look at Bobo, Adrian, George, Castro, FBK. How Zadkovich has a contract for as long as he did is baffling.