that's the best path agreed, both for doing best on average for the individual and the national team

Moving to the other side of the world as a mid teen, potentially no family or friends to create a genuine support network and provide anything considered normal outside of football is an issue. You continually make these points assuming people are robots with no emotion or mental health. Some things go way beyond footballing talent, to not consider this invalidates most of your argument.

Of course you want your best players playing/training against the best to help development, we agree on this point. The stronger the aleague becomes closing the gap to these ‘top leagues’ then the easier the transition becomes. South American counties have most of their talent playing locally before tackling Europe. A strong domestic league is essential to creating world class players, not shipping them off to the other side of the world as kids hoping for the best.

All recent history shows the only Australian players making at higher levels have come through the aleague. Where are all these Aussie wonder kids from euro academies? You’re argument falls apart here. We already have kids in these euro academies, a google search will show stacks of them over the last 10/15 years, where are they now?

We should be examining the Japanese model. They have been very successful in placing their footballers throughout Europe and even occasionally into US and they have much greater language and cultural barriers to overcome. I would also add that I think the bar generally has been raised everywhere as smaller nations have closed the gap and, in Europe especially, the influx of Africans and those of African heritage into  leagues has made it tougher for others to get contracts or game time. 

They are definitely in a good place. If they were 1 inch taller they knock belgium out of the last world cup

their current teams' games before departing

Ado Onaiw: 184
Asano: 63
kawabe 177
Ito: 173
Hashimoto: 197
Furuhashi: 172
Kamada: 65
haraguchi: 167
Morita: 81
Muroya: 108
Ueda: 100
Kawashima: 175


Recent world class players:
Kagawa: 125
Honda: 90
Endo: 158
Kubo: 24
Itakura: 33

All have more domestic games before arzani before he left

The A-league community needs to recognise that the league should serve one main purpose and that is to develop Australia’s youth. Develop them and sell them to Euro clubs. Be like Portugal, Belgium, Switzerland, Netherlands, Denmark, Croatia, Serbia….list goes on.

That should be the core idea behind the league. More teams, more games, revenue model based on selling youth to European clubs for a profit. 

Arzani was good for 20 minutes in the 3 games I watched. And still was only good, not great. 

If he's not now dominating it's hard to see him ever doing it. A real shame. 

Dan_The_Red

Beyond all that… we come to the hard part. On the one hand, world-class footballers usually (but not always) have a huge amount of tenacity and resilience. One might describe that as an almost robot-like trait which most people don’t have. On the other hand, world-class footballers are human beings. They experience thoughts and feelings like all human beings. These can be so profound as to affect how function every day. We agree that a person’s mental and emotional health are probably the most important things. That which goes on in a person’s head (and heart) is their reality. So when they have an issue with their mental health or emotional health, it needs well-informed and measured treatment.

So how to make sense of this and how world-class footballers manage such issues? I think that those at the top of their game can usually (but not always) deal with stressors and do what they need to do to compete. That’s a somewhat robot-like trait.

The argument would only fall apart there if those Aussies coming through the A-League are ‘making it at higher levels’. I argue that the Aussies who’ve come through the A-League haven’t really made it at the higher levels.

There’s also the question of why we should differentiate between Aussies and non-Aussies. They’re all human beings. It’s a like-for-like comparison. There are other youngsters from other countries making it at a young age. We can just as easily use them as example of how Europe provides the best development. There aren't any physiological or anatomical differences between youngsters from other countries and youngsters from Australia. As regards mental and emotional differences… Broadly speaking, individuals within Australian society, statistically, tend to deal with the same emotional and psychological issues that individuals within other developed, Western societies, statistically, have to deal with. Obviously, individuals are individuals. The set of emotional and mental health problems that one person faces are unique and not the same as faced by another person (in their society or any society).

The point is that, statistically, there’s no reason why those Aussie youngsters (who are talented enough and mentally in the right place) can’t succeed in Europe at a young age if youngsters from other countries are.

Yessssss!!! Someone gets it!

And this is why a youth cap is needed... our coaches seem to refuse to play young players at least compared to decades past