Next week the Asian qualification route kicks off to the u20 world cup kicks off. I want to talk about how our poor selection of coaches has cost us for two decades.
During the A league era our young men have gone through the asian qualification process 22 times at various underage groups, for a return of 3 u20 world cups, 3 u17 world cups and 2 olympic games. Five of those successful qualification campaigns occurred under 2 coaches - Jan Versliejen and Graham Arnold who had a success rate of 5 qualifications out of 6 attempts compared to all other coaches in this period who had a meagre return of 3 out of 14.
At the last Olyroo campaign, Tony Vidmar’s squad infamously finished the campaign without a goal. It wasn’t a lack of talent. Fotmob ratings had our squad exceeding the ratings of the starting squad for central coast mariners. This is unprecedented in the A league era. By contrast, using the same method, Graham Arnold’s team from 4 years earlier would have been wooden spoon contenders. The stark difference between those campaigns, as well as our rivals, was the calibre of coaching. Tony Vidmar was the only coach in our group without any experience outside of the youth national team setup. Qatar had the former Portuguese u23 and u20 coach, Indonesia had their national coach who is the former coach of South Korea and Jordan had a coach with plenty of club experience. To the FA’s credit, Trevor Morgan who will take the reigns of the u20 team next weak is the least unqualified coach we have had outside of Arnie and Jan, and he is responsible for one of the only other three successful qualification campaigns.
This would be all well and good if these youth tournaments were an expensive waste of time. Jan Versleijen apparently cost us around a million a year and not all national team coaches are willing to coach their u23 sides. However, the data does not tell a story of youth tournaments not mattering. It is interesting to compare each four year generation and the number of players that broke through in Europe, managing at least one season at a decent level playing at least 25 games while u24 or younger:
2000-2003: 9 players so far with 4 more starting regularly
1996-1999: 7 players
1992-1995: 7 players
1988-1991: 11 players
1984-1987: 4 players
1980-1983: At least 5 players
1976-1979: At least 10 players
I don’t have a full account of the oldest generations, I can only track down those that made a socceroos debut, so take those last two numbers with a heavy pinch of salt. The four year generation Jans had the most influence over, those born 1988-91, had 11 players break through in at least the 2nd tier of Europe at u24 or younger. This compares to an average of 5.75 for every other four year generation in the a league era, only recently set to be beaten (and well beaten if transfer trends continue) by the generation born 2000-2003. Some of his players also fit into the period born 1992-1995. Specifically, he coached 9 players who had early game time at a decent level: Leckie, Oar, Wright, Dylan and Ryan Mcgowan, Jason Davidson, James holland, Mustafa Amini and Milos Degenek. He also coached one late bloomer in Aaron Mooy.
None of those players coached by Jan were “the next Harry Kewell”, but that should not be the measure by which we evaluate the success of what is ultimately a finishing school for Australian youth. The measure we should use is “did it get a return on investment?”. If we consistently invest in decent youth coaches at international level over an 8 year period, it would probably cost us 8 million. However, how much return could Australian football get from the extra transfer revenue from another dozen players in Europe, the extra interest in the game and tv rights from international youth tournaments, the extra eyeballs on screen and bums on seats from a modest improvement in the socceroos. It is difficult to know the exact rate of return, but any way I try to estimate it, investment in qualified youth coaches seems to pay for itself many times over! Yes it is not a cure all, youth development has many moving parts and this looks like a very important cog in the machine. This leads to the question, why have we spent two decades giving coaching gigs of our underage national teams to inexperienced ex-socceroos?
can post the article here