Robbie Slater: The A-League talent drain and the one way it can be stopped

The A-League’s best talent keeps fleeing Australia for Asia and Europe each year. It’s a problem that’s getting worse and there’s only one way to stop it, writes Robbie Slater.

Every week we see another player and another player leave the A-League and it makes me wonder — when is anyone in a position of power going to care enough to do something about it?

We are beginning to see the effects of the reduced A-League salary cap, with some of the league’s best players leaving for deals in other countries.

This is nothing new. Australia has always been a development league.

Nicolas Milanovic headed to Scotland.

Jamie Maclaren is playing in India.

I moved overseas to play football and there will always be players moving overseas – we want that aspirational development in our game.

But what we don’t want to see is players leaving Australia for leagues and divisions in Thailand or Indonesia or other parts of Asia that are worse than ours, simply because they can’t make a decent wage here.

Football players have a short career to make a professional wage. And $80,000 a year is not much of a future if you’re a footballer.

Asia is pumping money into their domestic leagues but here in Australia, we’ve got no money because we all run on self interest.

Jason Cummings is another A-League star who headed to Asia.

Kids are paying thousands of bucks each year to play the game at grassroots level, while the Socceroos and Matildas get all the money and the middle level misses out.

Our national teams are among the highest paid nations in the world. There would be some footballers in the Socceroos and Matildas who are earning more playing for their country than they do playing for their club.

I find it disappointing that we are one of the highest paid nations in the world, yet we’ve now got a domestic league where a player is getting squeezed out as the income levels drop year on year.

It is not the players’ fault. But there is something inherently wrong when the game is announcing big sponsorship deals, filling stadiums, charging grassroots kids thousands to play the game and we’re just sitting back to watch the domestic league struggle.

It does not sit right with me and I know it doesn’t sit right with many people, but no one will say it.

Tameka Yallop and Socceroos player Anthony Caceres at a recent sponsorship announcement.

I’m passionate about this because it’s killing me to see this happen over and over and over again.

The solution is so simple, but it won’t happen. This game that I love needs to unify.

The three levels of the game — the State Federations who manage the grassroots, the APL who manage the domestic competition and the National Federation who look after the Matildas and Socceroos.

They are all still separated. They don’t like each other and they don’t help each other but until they all unite in strength then we’re not going to go anywhere.

People outside our sport still look and shake their heads that we drove the Lowy family – one of the most powerful families in Australia – out of our game.

Aziz Behich celebrates his goal against Japan.

Six straight men’s World Cups, a successful home women’s World Cup, but how is our game better now than it was before? Where is the legacy for the game?

Where is the explosion of interest in the women’s A-Leagues? What good is a full house for the Matildas if we don’t have the next generation coming into a domestic league where they can actually earn a living?

The A-League is the life blood of the game because that’s where every young boy and girl should aspire to play on their way to the top.

But if we get to the point we’re nobody sees it as a viable option because the money simply isn’t there, what hope is there for the future of football in Australia.

The heads of our game need to wake up to themselves and realise that disunited and divided we are going nowhere.

In fact, we’re going worse than nowhere, we’re falling off the cliff.

Originally published as Robbie Slater: The A-League talent drain and the one way it can be stopped