Alen Stajic speech on Australian football

[Sutherlandbear]

I grew here you flew here.... hows that for irony .

Was talking about the poor parents who had to raise you.

 

[Monoethnic Social Club]

Was talking about the poor parents who had to raise you.

The certainly had their work cut out for them thats for sure.

 

[Hellenic_blue&white]

Gotta give the Glory guys a teeny bit of slack there bud... Can't lump them in with the WUs and Macarthurs of the world. Its not their fault we got frozen out ...

Im not a racist i hate everyone equally... except Hellas!

 

[Sutherlandbear]

He's a big soft teddy mate... probably taking a nap at this time of day

Wouldn't actually mind one, right now.

 

[Dinamo]

Stajčić is wrong here. People are not nearly negative enough. Positive vibes aren't fixing the many problems this sport has in Australia.

 

[biggiemic]

Funny part to all this is no one has ever claimed it was better though, you guys keep harping at that...
The reality is you are seeing the smae trejectory, decline and whinging as the end of the NSL... One key difference that comp was open for teams to enter and dared to take risks! Whats your claim to fame exactly?

And careful thats a matter of interpretation.. for instance did the NSL bring in better foreign players hands down and in their prime not at retirees, No??

Paid off those debts to the FA there you super comp or not yet?........ you know what the biggest observation and difference between us is? For us there is one truth, the be all and end all was ALWAYS our teams, that drove everything we supoorted them not cared about the league, You all have proven the opposite, you are all AL supoorters first and club later as you keep showing! I guess thats a real byproduct of Mcfranchises. We will always be HELLAS or Marconi or Syd Utd first and above all, call us what you like for it, but its why you will never have a soul..

thats irrelevent, all they can do is put you down for a nap so no need to stress too much... unless u wake up to no more league! Hahaha

You say one key difference was the comp was open for teams to enter, and take risks, sure, and how did that turn out???.....Carlton, Collingwood Warriors, Northern Spirit, Eastern Pride, Gippsland Falcons, Football Kingz, Adelaide Force and the list goes on all in a 7 year time fram. Clubs in and out like Yo-Yo's, what sort of league is that? Unprofessional, and complete amatueur hour. Were you happy having clubs come in and out each year?

I didn't mind having some sort of barriers to entry initially (such as proving financial capacity etc), but obviously Western United made a mockery of the whole thing.

Thomas Broich and Diego Castro, in my opinion, are the best foreign players we have had play in this country.

In Australia, its slightly different compared to say the majority of footballing nations. We are not the number 1 sport, and we continously are treated like shit, and thats going back 50 years. I support Glory, but I also want football to be the number 1 sport in this country, having a strong top tier will help this. Having an open pyramid from top to bottom will also help this, but we don't have finance so it seems at this stage.

I haven't seen one supporter of an Aleague club say they want the championship to fail.

 

[grazorblade]

Stajčić is wrong here. People are not nearly negative enough. Positive vibes aren't fixing the many problems this sport has in Australia.

I would say the negativity needs to be better focused

More focus on things that would help the game
1) more fraction of the budget on grassroots investment
2) nst home and awat
3) time line for p and r
4) reform congress to have more grassroots votes for both local districts and npl clubs

Less focus on "if only we had a different national team coach everything would be better"

Though even im grumbling about poppa lately.....

 

[grazorblade]

On not enough players for the big 5 beind due to change in demographics:

Problem with that theory is our anglos did better in that generation too. Chipperfield, neill, cahill, scwarz, moore and kewell werent exactly mugs.

The other problem with that theory is it would mean that investment in youth development did nothing. Back then we had nyl, underage teams, ais and reserve teams. We have never had all four in the a league era and usually have had 2 if we are lucky (only counting nyl if it is home and away). Lo and behold the youth development has been worse

 

[Monoethnic Social Club]

I haven't seen one supporter of an Aleague club say they want the championship to fail.

maybe thats because if it does succeed the 99% of clubs in this country already currently play with Aleague clubs in our NPLs .. we NEVER excluded them, it has always been the other way around.

Not even going to mention the lunacy of what you said regarding best foreign players... dude seriously?

 

[Monoethnic Social Club]

On not enough players for the big 5 beind due to change in demographics:

Problem with that theory is our anglos did better in that generation too. Chipperfield, neill, cahill, scwarz, moore and kewell werent exactly mugs.

The other problem with that theory is it would mean that investment in youth development did nothing. Back then we had nyl, underage teams, ais and reserve teams. We have never had all four in the a league era and usually have had 2 if we are lucky (only counting nyl if it is home and away). Lo and behold the youth development has been worse

Yeah Im with you on this one @grazorblade
African and Asian players are NOT inferior to European ones...

 

[grazorblade]

Don't confuse "cathartic" with "depressing"... Everyn ow and then a new "fan" of the sport comes along, gets enthused with the hype of the Aleague message and decides to have a go at defending the kingdom against the evil foreigners... its frequency is becoming less and less, the hate and xenophobia is slowly dying... there is hope.

It does seem to be getting better

Reading 442 before i joined and there were some pretty wild threads. Fronty posted a fairly mild manned post about how many croatian aussie soccer players their were and woo boy the reaction.

Getting close to the era i joined the forum and hoping i didnt say anything cringey! Its actually already quite a bit better by early 2010 mind you

 

[grazorblade]

Finished 11th and half the country is still jerking off over it.... not THAT much progress. .

Half the country jerking off over a football result is progress to be fair haha

 

[Dinamo]

I would say the negativity needs to be better focused

More focus on things that would help the game
1) more fraction of the budget on grassroots investment
2) nst home and awat
3) time line for p and r
4) reform congress to have more grassroots votes for both local districts and npl clubs

Less focus on "if only we had a different national team coach everything would be better"

Though even im grumbling about poppa lately.....

I agree. More funding towards juniors and they also need to be training and playing more games. Same with seniors. People have been talking about this for literally decades but nothing ever happens because the administrators (both federal and state) are bereft of any real vision and are more interested in preserving their own positions of power.

For all the promise of NST all that happened is 6 group stage games and a finals series. Nowhere near what it should be and we are almost in 2026. Ditto for P&R.

Popović is what he is. His job is to achieve results with what he has at his disposal. NT team coaching isn't really about developing players, those issues need to be fixed before they reach A level.

 

[melbcityguy]

The thing is a league would be doing better these days if gallop and Townsend weren't involved

 

[biggiemic]

maybe thats because if it does succeed the 99% of clubs in this country already currently play with Aleague clubs in our NPLs .. we NEVER excluded them, it has always been the other way around.

Not even going to mention the lunacy of what you said regarding best foreign players... dude seriously?

I ain't that old

If the A-league had continued to grow rather than stumble, I am sure the NPL clubs and the whole of Australian football would have benefited.

 

[AUFC_Fan]

I don't think the standard is higher. It was maybe 10-15 years ago, around the time when Brisbane was at its peak and WSW won the ACL, but now not so much. When looking at the current ladder, there is no team that I would consider play decent football on a consistant basis. Even the Sydney derby, whilst extremely exciting, thought the standard was poor. But obviously there are reasons for this.

100% the league standard is better. The visa players that come have better CV’s and more and more Aussies are getting overseas moves

 

[grazorblade]

I ain't that old

If the A-league had continued to grow rather than stumble, I am sure the NPL clubs and the whole of Australian football would have benefited.

the thinking at the apl and fa appears to be to follow the j league model of expanding the top league into several leagues. The apl wanted to do it through expansion of franchises, the fa seem to want championship clubs get promoted. I could live with that, but there are risks in that approach rather than a more pure p&r system that I'll go into in upcoming pods

 

[biggiemic]

100% the league standard is better. The visa players that come have better CV’s and more and more Aussies are getting overseas moves

I guess its just a matter of opinion in this instance. Do VISA players have better CV's, not necessarily, we still get the random odd ball Brazilians etc and of course with the salary cap it is hard to attract quality foreigners.

Getting overseas moves isnt that difficult in this day and age esepcially if you have a decent agent. I had mates back in the day make 2 minute clips, send them to clubs, and they'd look like the second coming of Maradona

The question is once the moves are secured, how many are actually performing and playing week in week out etc.

 

[AUFC_Fan]

I guess its just a matter of opinion in this instance. Do VISA players have better CV's, not necessarily, we still get the random odd ball Brazilians etc and of course with the salary cap it is hard to attract quality foreigners.

Getting overseas moves isnt that difficult in this day and age esepcially if you have a decent agent. I had mates back in the day make 2 minute clips, send them to clubs, and they'd look like the second coming of Maradona

The question is once the moves are secured, how many are actually performing and playing week in week out etc.

Clubs haven’t recruited from highlight reels for a long time. Analytic data is the go nowadays

 

[AUFC_Fan]

It took 18 seasons to better the overseas player transfer record mate... And not having any money has forced franchises to play youth...

If you can both, with a straight face, tell me that we have experienced a 20 year improvement compared to some of our regional rivals I will rest my case.

Minutes for youth was improving before Covid but Covid exacerbated that. Adelaide in particular had a number of young players playing regularly at the time.

Having a professional league that has expanded from 8 to 13 (obvs 12 temporary) is obviously a good thing.

Instead of a national AIS, every AL club has their own academy. Obviously it was going to take a while for clubs to set up these academies and then for them to develop players but we have been see the fruits of this for the last few years. Melbourne City and Sydney in particular have great academy set ups.

The standard of foreign players is definitely better than what we had in the early years of the league

In comparison to our regional rivals, none of those countries give minutes to what we do, only Japan and South Korea have qualified for every World Cup since 2006 and we are currently the third highest ranked Asian side.