Yep and thats why we need to change the conversation. 21 should be seen as not young, which would encourage us to give younger players ago.

Agree we do need to lengthen the season. A 16 team league would mean 30 games per season, add in finals and FFA cup on average you could bump it to on average to say 35 which would mean in 2.5 - 3 seasons our players will be at the 100 game mark give or take. If a player is 17-18 when starting that takes them to 20-21 which is a good age to go to Europe. You also as you say need to be dominating the league. 

Arzani is a great example of a player who was dominating and then left too early. 

on 21 not being young, in australia its young in terms of game experience

we just have less teams and a shorter season so our best get to 100 games a season or 2 later than other countries

yeah agreed, and probably even back then most players who left early probably flopped though i don't have stats. It's not our weaker players who flop after leaving early, its our best, think as recently as pasquali. Contrast that to mooy who was solid for a while but then tore it up two years in a row and did really well in the premier league. 

Also the causality is backwards. Players who played here and made it in both generations, left at whatever age they had established themselves here. If it's a young age you are dominating the domestic league then you have a chance. But if you aren't dominating the domestic league at a young age, you won't do your career favours with a kamikaze move

Also, you don't just ruin your career, you weaken the a league from your absence. If all the people who left too young stayed here until they established themselves the a league is a heck of a lot stronger. A stronger a league also means there is less reason to move, so leaking out best youth to kamikaze moves becomes a vicious cycle

Not necessarily true, if you look at how many of our players who have left before 21 and had to come back vs those who left before 21 and succeeded, we have only had a handful of players leave before 21 and do well in a top league.

Its why the studies have all identified you are better off staying and actually playing to develop. I agree, we should stop considering 21 young (in Europe they dont), and start playing players at 17-18, so by the time they are 20-21 they can head to Europe and actually play to finish their development.

We really need to start looking at Europe as a finishing school as opposed to a main development tool. Which is what most successful countries actually do, Croatia, Brazil, Argentina, Belgium, etc. They develop players in their own leagues and give them game time then they move to a bigger league once their current league cannot develop them any more. There is nothing wrong with the talent we have, their main barrier is lack of game time which hurts their development

we did slightly worse there to be fair getting only 1 point

Which team?

Atkinson is rumored to be going to Belgium after the games 

How many players got decent offers after the 08 Olympics? I wouldn’t be surprised to see hardly any even if we win a medal such is the prejudice.

Any chance a Spanish team could have a look at him after his performance last night?

I would be shocked if Atkinson doesnt get serious attention from Euro clubs after this, he's been outstanding a shame about the brain fade yellow card which has costed him a suspension in the last game.

I would be funny if Celtic made a move for him given they really need a right back of decent quality....

Its not the cap that is limiting the quality of foreigners playing here mate, its the ability/desire of the clubs to pay for premium players....  

If u had 3 all outside the cap the. They would be geniune quality

Some of the foreigners in the league this year were peripheral. Janota and Jankovic for CCM. Muller and Mutch for WSW. Kudo for Brisbane. Baumjohann was mostly on the bench. Kurto for Western United. That's 7 contracts that could've been given to Aussie kids and NPL players, without any real change in the quality. Reduce visa spots to 4 and put the impetus on the clubs to sign the best Visa players possible. 

Im no fan of quotas, we can't ignore the quality that foreign players do to up skill the level too so its important there is a balance for that.

Youth development is a numbers game, the more opportunities there is the more quality we can develop through that.

More teams, longer season, national second division. The problem will sort itself out.

So basically aside from Brett Emerton, the best of that bunch played a couple of seasons max in Aus before leaving and were still no older than 20 when they left. Emerton only having just turned 21 when he went Dutch.

Meanwhile, the two most significant players of that generation left without having played a single minute of senior football in Australia; Harry Kewell and Tim Cahill. Lucas Neill also left without a senior game.

From that, my inference is that talented young footballers should be well gone from Australian shores before the age of 21 if they wish to become a notable player in the big 4-5 leagues. If they wish to become world-class, then they need to leave in their teens.

The technical quality gap (however small) between Australian footballers and European footballers only increases from the early teenage years. By the age of 21, that gap is a gulf. It's necessary to be competing at the highest level possible as young as possible. This is no different in any other sport. World-class youth footballers aren't exactly flocking to Australia to develop their footballing skills.

Well we now have 12 teams at a similar level which helps. We probably want a few more teams and a second division. Since we have more foreigners we probably need 20 teams to give the same number of opportunities to young players as we did back then. 

The other argument is the match minutes needing to accumulate before heading overseas is crucial too, I think PFA have a report on this as well as the FFA Performance Gap report.

For example Pedri who will we see tonight has played over 5000 minutes this season as an 18, for an Australian player to reach similar numbers it would take several seasons playing here.

Point being playing time is so important for young players especially around 17-23, so if they go overseas they better play otherwise as we seen with Arzani their development will stagnate.

The issue isnt itself of selling players quickly and opening up a new spot for the next one its more the opportunities that are needing for our players, the NSLs biggest advantage was the amount of teams available to play in the NSL whilst having a year round season which included the national youth league and state season together for players to develop under the NSL.

In the aleague era we haven't been close to replicating this, firstly because aleague clubs weren't allowed to field reserve teams in the NPL and then the NYL got cut short so decisions haven't been made whats best for player development and we have paid a price for it.

those are the outliers and only aloisi has a comparable number of games to arzani and tillio. The average number of domestic games here for both recent and GG players was around 70-80 games. We've seen most of our best leave too early and amount to nothing. The players who did make it weren't necessarily the best, but seemed to make the right career choices. There was probably a bunch of wasted talent around then as well who left too early

I agree it would be nice to have players get more games at a younger age. Hopefully a 2nd division will help that

The award for dumbest thread goes to

Yes 1000% agree... but thats the issue with the A league since it came into existence - not many young players get played! And there's less playing spots than there was with the NSL. 

In a perfect world each club would be throwing their best young players in at the deep end at a young age like what happened with the golden gen in the late nineties, then they take the first offer to go overseas, and more young players get thrown in to replace. And the cycle continues. 

Like i keep saying there needs to be a youth cap on matchday squads

21 games aloisi.. 32 skoko, 37 bresch. Thats nothing. They literally played 1 season then left at the first opportunity. The most important aspect to developing a quality team is the size of the talent pool. A lot more australian players were playing profeesionally globally in early 2000's which meant we had a larger playing pool to pick from...more players chanced their arm at overseas moves and if the going got tough didnt have the safety of a cushy contract in the a league to come back to . 

The other thing to note is the ages that those golden gen were playing those matches in the NSL... much younger than the generation at the bottom on your post. Most of the golden gen were starters at 17. This is the biggest problem with our current league and why covid was actually a major factor for the blossoming of this current talented generation.  To continue this current momentum we need to introduce a youth cap into our matchday squads eg min 3 under 21

Actually the vast majority of the golden gen established themselves here before moving overeas
Here is the oz domestic games before transferring for those who started here

Emerton: 94
Chipperfield: 134
Viduka: 48
Bresciano: 37
Aloisi: 21
Culina: 53
Vince Grella: 53
Schwarzer: 58
Vidmar: 134
Skoko: 32
popovic: 167
sterjovski: 73
lazaridis: 101

Compare to recent aussie players who made it at a high level and started here  (ucl or big 5) 
Jedinak: 137
Mooyzil: 102
leckie: 35 
kruse: 59
rogic: 32 (including loan spell)
Matt ryan: 80
Mabil: 61


More important than number of games of course is whether you are dominating the domestic league. At least 4 turnovers per game for a defender and at least 1 goal scorer point per 2 games for an attacker. Arzani probably would have made it if he didn't do his knee, now it is very tricky to come back because he doesn't have a wealth of experience to draw on. Many of these olyroos players simply need to get more experience before going over

Agreed

I think they need to have decent offers from overseas first mate....  I'm frothing over Tilios strike too but sending the kid to play second division Iin Lithuania or to warm the bench in one of CFGs many warehouse clubs just so they can make a profit will NOT improve him as a  player nor benefit the national squad in any way.

Here's a picture of a dozen chickens:

This. Why it annoys me when many of you say "oh but they should stay and play 1000 games in a league first" 

Bullocks, the best situation is they leave for overseas asap and more aussie players get put into the system. This is how the Golden gen was formed

This ^^^
Learn from Arzani and only move to club that will play you! That strike from Tilio was Messi-like. He will go overseas (probably Europe) in next 2 years with plays & strikes like that

Love your passion op 

We really need all of the aleague contingent to move on to better leagues, primarily to allow the next generation space to take.