The A-League has found its purpose. And it’s worth $20 million a year

‘A football development factory’ Sam Krslovic, the chief executive of Macarthur FC – the most active club in the A-League in the most recent transfer window – says the domestic league is gaining a deserved reputation for talent production. Krlsovic is also closely linked to Sydney United 58, the former NSL club which produced the likes of Tony Popovic, Mile Jedinak and Jason Culina. “We have re-established a football development factory that we lost for about a 15, 20-year period,” he told this masthead. “Clubs overseas have seen that.” Australia, he believes, is now producing a much better quality of player than it was during the early seasons of the A-League, and is producing more skilled footballers, and fewer running machines.

There are a couple of reasons for this. Firstly, it is 16 years since the release of the first edition of Football Australia’s oft-criticised national curriculum, which, for the first time, provided a set of technical and tactical principles that would guide grassroots coaches. The players who are now emerging have spent their entire junior careers with these principles in place. Most good judges agree with Krslovic’s assessment that the latest generations are better than what came before; new Western Sydney Wanderers recruit Alex Gersbach, speaking on the Football Friends with Ben & Stef podcast, said there was a “dramatic” difference between the quality of young players compared to when he left the A-League almost a decade ago as one of Australia’s most promising prospects. “There’s some really good young players … technically unbelievable, 10 times better than I am,” Gersbach said.

Secondly, many A-League academies have now been running for roughly a decade, and have refined their processes over that time, maturing into dependable operations which can take talented juniors and turn them into pro-ready players. Sydney FC launched their academy for boys in 2015 under Kelly Cross, one of Australia’s most highly respected development experts. Han Berger, the author of the national curriculum, is also on the club’s board. Their alumni list includes more than 60 players who have gone on to play at the professional level, including three Socceroos World Cup representatives and some of the most exciting players in the Australian game right now, like Adrian Segecic and Tiago Quintal. Thirdly, the A-League has expanded in size, from eight teams in 2005 to 13 this season. That means more opportunities for Australian players. This is further incentivised by squad rules such as scholarship contracts; each club can sign up to 16 players on scholarships, which count outside the salary cap. All of these factors underpinned the Young Socceroos’ stunning Asian Cup campaign, in which they played a proactive, bold style of football rarely exhibited by Australian teams – at least over the past 10 years. Coach Trevor Morgan’s tactics had plenty to do with it, but they were enabled by players with the innate ability to carry them out and a level of confidence gained from regular first-team football. “From a development point of view, obviously any changes that you make take a long time to come through,” Morgan said on Total A-Leagues.

“What we’ve tried to do is embrace the individual qualities of the players so that there is a style of play, there is planned things to do, but there’s not a paint-by-numbers approach. It’s very much about getting into good areas and then providing some options, but also encouraging the boys to take responsibility and take action and make decisions.” While a pivot towards youth was always going to happen once A-League academies had reached maturation, there’s no denying that it has also been triggered by financial imperatives. It’s not entirely altruistic. The graphs in this story say that clearly enough: they show that the moment when things really changed was in the pandemic-disrupted 2019-20 season. The A-League’s broadcast deal with Fox Sports ended after that campaign and the one that replaced it, with Network 10 and Paramount, didn’t bring in as much money, which put financial pressure on the Australian Premier Leagues and, in turn, the clubs. This season, annual distributions from the APL to clubs dropped to just $530,000, down from a historical high of $3 million. Clubs are spending less on high-quality imports or experienced professionals and are giving greater opportunities to academy products. The Young Socceroos’ success at the U-20 Asian Cup followed the explosion in match minutes for young players in the A-League. Credit: Stephen Kiprillis

“COVID’s helped us out a little bit … it’s a bit more like the NSL where there’s some top senior players, and they’re helping to bring young players through,” Morgan said. Mid-range players, too, are finding their earning capacity in Australia has dropped, and are looking elsewhere. Lachlan Brook, 24, is a good, solid player. In the past, someone like him would stay in the A-League through his prime years. Instead, he’s at Real Salt Lake in Major League Soccer and last season he was on almost $440,000 - far more than he could earn at home. With those sorts of players increasingly heading overseas for a better payday, there is more room in the A-League for young players to blossom. They also have much more upside when it comes to the transfer market, a space within which Australian clubs have finally figured out how to operate successfully. ‘So much money has been left on the table’ For many years, the outbound transfer fee record in Australia – for a player moving directly from an Australian club to an overseas club – was $1.7 million. That was when Zeljko Kalac was sold by then-National Soccer League outfit Sydney United to Leicester City, who were playing in England’s second tier, in 1995.

Former Socceroo Zeljko Kalac. Credit: Getty Images In the ensuing years, the global transfer market exploded – in 2017, Neymar moved from Barcelona to Paris Saint-Germain for a world record fee of over $360 million – but in Australia, Kalac’s record stood untouched for almost two decades. Then, in 2023, it was broken three times within eight months – and twice by the same club. First, Melbourne City pocketed $2 million from the sale of Socceroo Jordan Bos to Belgian club KVC Westerlo. Marco Tilio then left City for Celtic for a slightly bigger fee, before Adelaide United’s Joe Gauci joined Aston Villa for a reported fee of $2.5 million. There is no better example of the rising value of Australian players than Ariath Piol, one of three players sold by Macarthur FC in the January transfer window. He moved to Real Salt Lake for about $800,000 and made his debut this past weekend. Former Macarthur FC striker Ariath Piol. Credit: Getty Images

Piol, 20, played his first game of professional football last February. He started only four times in the A-League and has never completed a full 90 minutes. He’s a raw but exciting talent, the kind of player who could turn out to be absolutely anything, or nothing at all. And yet, the Bulls were able to turn him into roughly the same amount of money as Adelaide United received almost five years ago from another MLS team, Charlotte FC, for Socceroo Riley McGree. This amount of money is pocket change for the world’s biggest clubs. But for A-League clubs living on the breadline, it’s crucial revenue that helps keep the lights on. Piol’s sale alone is almost double the annual distribution that Macarthur FC received this season from the APL. In fact, players union Professional Footballers Australia found that in 2023-24, transfer revenue outstripped broadcast income for the first time. It’s difficult for A-League clubs to compete for eyeballs, crowds, government support and corporate dollars against the other bigger, richer sports in this country – but money raised by selling players on the transfer market is an extra income stream which is not subject to the whims of the Australian sporting landscape, and not available to any other code. And the savviest clubs are doing everything possible to maximise their returns. “It’s the right approach,” says James Kitching, an Australian sporting administrator who previously served as FIFA’s director of football regulatory – effectively putting him in charge of the global transfer system.

“They’ve stumbled on it by necessity because revenues have dried up from other sources and there is an issue when it comes to distributions. That’s fine. The clubs have the opportunity now to unlock a revenue stream which no other sport can touch. “This is how the financial model of football was actually set up across the vast majority of the world. Australia has not embraced that model or really properly understood that model, but we’ve been part of that system since 2001, since it was first introduced. There is so much money that has been left on the table [over the years] … it’s quite staggering.” It’s worth noting that Football Australia takes a 10 per cent clip of all A-League transfer revenue, as per the league’s independence agreement with the governing body – and that most deals include various clauses and triggers which lead to more payments beyond the up-front fee. Macarthur also sold inexperienced defender Oliver Jones to Danish club Randers for $260,000 and Jed Drew, one of the A-League’s most dynamic attackers, to Austrian club TSV Hartberg for $300,000, in January.

Drew’s transfer fee is low for a player of his calibre – but because he was coming off contract at the end of the season, the Bulls had a choice. They could either keep him for the rest of the season and try to convince him to re-sign while risking the possibility of losing him for nothing, or they could take whatever they could get now, and potentially something else later, too. This speaks to transfer strategy, where A-League clubs have certainly become smarter over time. In the past, contract offers to players of more than three years in length were uncommon. Most deals were for one or two years, including for prized young players, which was a problem: overseas clubs were able to lowball transfer offers and point to the short time remaining on their contracts as a sign that the selling club didn’t actually value them much at all. Clubs have learned from their mistakes, and now the best kids are getting tied down on longer-term deals – and it’s in everyone’s interest that they’re sold before they expire. It’s not possible in every instance, however. Some players would prefer not to do this, to keep their options open and enable them to move elsewhere on a free transfer. The two best midfielders from last season, Central Coast Mariners pair Max Balard and Josh Nisbet, did exactly that, meaning their club missed out on what would have been decent fees. While it wasn’t ideal that they had to sell Drew now, halfway through the season, Macarthur were able to ensure they can cash in on him again one day, if his career in Austria takes off. Their sale to TSV Hartberg included a 10 per cent sell-on clause, which means they will pocket 10 per cent of his next transfer fee. Let’s say Drew kills it, and a club in a top-five league buys him for $5 million; they’ll get an extra $500,000, which is more than they sold him for.

According to FIFA, almost half of all permanent transfers in 2024 included a sell-on clause, which has more than doubled since 2016; the average sell-on percentage around the world last year was 22.2 per cent. ‘There’s plenty of under-valued players over there’ The other part of this puzzle is the external perception of Australian soccer. No matter what is thought locally, Australia’s reputation is growing overseas, thanks in large part to the Socceroos reaching the past five World Cups. That’s something only 11 other nations have managed, including the likes of Brazil, Germany, Argentina, Spain, England and France. Hayden Matthews, who recently moved from Sydney FC to Portsmouth. Credit: Getty Images

“That tells them that something’s going right in Australian football,” said Paddy Dominguez, one of Australia’s leading player agents. Dominguez spent most of the last off-season touring Europe and talking to clubs over there about Australian players - and their awareness of the local talent pool, thanks to the data revolution, is deeper than what many fans would assume. “I can tell you wholeheartedly that they have a very good respect for Australian footballing talents,” he said. “They were asking me a lot of things about players – particularly younger players they’re pretty keen on. They know there’s talent here. Even in the early age groups, they were talking a lot about 13, 14-year-olds. A lot of the clubs have been here themselves, or they’ve sent scouts down to watch NPL matches.” The transfer market has never been more competitive, and the top end of it never so inflated – and so, increasingly, clubs are searching in places they usually wouldn’t for players with untapped potential they could help realise. Usually, in those places, they come cheap, too. Australia fits the bill. Don’t just take Dominguez’s word for it. John Mousinho, the manager of English Championship outfit Portsmouth, can see it, too.

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