Where would A-League teams fit in the English pyramid? This might be our best chance to find out

Trying to draw meaning from pre-season friendlies is a fool’s errand. But this is the A-League’s silly season, after all - so in that spirit, let’s have a crack.

If you’ve thought about club soccer in Australia for longer than a few moments, the following unanswerable question may have crossed your mind: how would our teams fare in Europe? Specifically, England.

James McClean in action against Melbourne Victory.Credit: Getty Images

In an alternate universe in which A-League sides have the opportunity to compete in the English pyramid system … how would they go?

Would our best survive in the Premier League? Almost certainly not. So what’s the level? Could champions Melbourne City hold their own in the Championship? Could the Wanderers climb out of League One? Would the likes of last season’s cellar-dwellers Perth Glory and Brisbane Roar sink to the bottom of the League Two table … or lower?

It’s totally subjective, and yet that hasn’t stopped many fans and players from openly speculating about these questions in pubs, online forums and dressing rooms over the years. Because it’s banter. And banter is fun.

Until Portsmouth fields an XI filled entirely with former A-League players - which might not be too far away, judging by their recent recruitment - the visit of Wrexham AFC to these shores offers perhaps the best chance to test this thought experiment. With the obvious caveats that, yes, this is only pre-season, and Sydney FC, their opponents on Tuesday night at Allianz Stadium, won’t play their next A-League for another four months, so their squad is not only incomplete, but rusty.

Lewis Brunt of Wrexham AFC.Credit: Getty Images

All of that made it hard to read Friday night’s first leg of the tour. Wrexham won 3-0 over a depleted Melbourne Victory after a fairly even first half, and a second in which Victory sent out the kids. The ‘Red Dragons’ start their season in a few weeks, so they should be a little sharper.

This is an inexact science, so we’re going to have to take whatever yardstick is available to us.

This is, to the best of this masthead’s knowledge (and that of Australian soccer stats guru Andrew Howe; if he doesn’t know something, it’s not worth knowing), the first time a team that has just been promoted from League One - England’s third tier - has toured Australia. Wrexham’s suddenly global appeal is the reason why it is happening; commercially and logistically, it just wouldn’t make sense for any other teams to come out here. Usually, it’s just Premier League clubs who turn up, cash in, have a little run around and sell some jerseys.

Twice in recent memory - Leeds United (2019) and Wolverhampton Wanderers (2009) - have promoted teams from the Championship come here ahead of their return campaigns in the Premier League. But no lower.

In that respect, there is some genuine intrigue about Wrexham AFC vs Sydney FC, a showdown that nobody would have dreamed of before the Reynolds-McElhenney revolution. The Sky Blues had a bit of a stinker in the A-League last season, somehow missing the top six despite boasting a star-studded squad. But most seasons, they would be considered one of the country’s top teams.

So how much better are Wrexham, who finished second in League One, than the Sky Blues?

“It’s difficult,” Sydney FC’s Joe Lolley says.

There is probably no player better qualified to make a pre-match assessment than Lolley. His career began with Kidderminster Harriers in the Conference (now called the National League), or the fifth tier of English football. But he has also played in the Premier League with Huddersfield Town, in the Championship with them and Nottingham Forest, and, briefly, in League One when he was on loan at Scunthorpe United.

That means he has taken the field in four of England’s top five divisions; though he has played cup matches against teams from League Two, the only one he hasn’t played in. He has also played against Wrexham - way back in 2013, three years before the first Deadpool movie came out, when Lolley was with Kidderminster, scoring twice in a 3-1 home win.

Few in Australia are better placed to make this assessment than Joe Lolley.Credit: Getty Images

Lolley reckons A-League teams compare favourably to those in the Championship and below when it comes to technique; like most Englishmen who come here to play, he was initially surprised by the extent of the local technical skill when he arrived.

There are two major differences, he believes. First: physicality.

“Everyone’s a bit of a beast in England when it comes physicality, defensively and off the ball and those sort of things,” he said. Not so much in the A-League.

Secondly: squad depth, which is crucial in a gruelling 46-game season. When he was in the Championship, Lolley recalls most teams having about 20-odd players of approximately the same level, competing for starting spots, and the difference between the best and the worst in the division was not huge.

The A-League, in contrast, is a lot more “spread out”, and the impact of losing two or three key players can be enormous. There are individuals in Australia who could arguably hold their own in the Premier League, he said, but then some who would probably be better suited to non-league. That’s not being harsh; that’s just the nature of A-League squads, most of which are backfilled by unproven scholarship players and journeymen, and a time when clubs are strapped for cash.

But, hypothetically, where would the best teams he’s seen or been part of in Australia wash up in England, on the basis of quality in the starting XI?

“Probably the lower end of the Championship,” Lolley says.

“It would just be about keeping everyone fit. If you kept a full XI fit of the best players ... I think you’d fancy yourself to be good enough to stay clear of relegation. There’s certainly a lot of quality in this league. And I think it’s lucky for Wrexham that it’s wintertime. They’re also not used to playing in 30 degrees heat and humidity like we have to.”

Sydney’s squad is missing at least five or six players - two of them foreigners - from what it will be when the A-League kicks off in October, so it remains to be seen if they can put on a better show than Victory. Coach Ufuk Talay is on the hunt for a new central defender, winger and centre forward to round out his recruitment; those holes will likely lead to opportunities on Tuesday for the likes of teenage striker Mathias Macallister, the son of former A-League frontman Dylan Macallister, who is enjoying a fruitful season in the NSW NPL and has just signed his first senior contract.

Talay appreciates what he also sees as a rare opportunity to take on an English team from below the Premier League. But he also warned that comparison was the thief of joy, especially in the Australian game.

“That’s the issue that we have. We’ve got to love our own game at home,” he said. “We just need to compare our game with our game, and love our game, and what it actually produces in Australia.”