General A-League discussion

Sorenson won Keeper of the year, O'Headbutt won goal of the year & Gilllet won Ref. WSW won the new community award.

Gillett? There should be no referee of the year awards until they actually show themselves to be competant and fair to both sides. Ask Roly what he thinks of them.

A few surprises; Sorenson as 'keeper, Castro as player (understand how the voting can favour one standout from a team) and goal of the year - assume it was the chest-volley goal scored recently - think a couple of Powell's finishes against WSW were at least as good and probably many other goals (short memories?)

.@ALeague and J-League sign historic co-op agreement - https://t.co/iUqT7yLUjJ pic.twitter.com/zN7r6w5wP2

— Football Australia (@FFA) May 2, 2016

JAYFC truly is an incredible person.

http://www.a-league.com.au/article/guest-player-sp...

Why do they even bother with a salary cap anymore? 

I bet City are the first to use the full season guest spot

And City can play in 'City Blue' from 17/18 onwards, they will be rather chuffed right now

"Are you Sydney in disguise?"

Looks like the Guest spot is included in the 23 man roster but still exempt from the visa restrictions.

Hearing FFA will continue with 5 visa player rule before moving to 4 plus 1 (1 asian player) Likely to take effect from 18-19 season.

— Ray Gatt (@Gatty54) June 27, 2016

FFA wanted four visa rule to start from season 17-18. Clubs were not happy. This will be a compromise, if it is eventually agreed to.

— Ray Gatt (@Gatty54) June 27, 2016

So 5 visa players and a guest and a marquee outside the cap and a local marquee outside the cap and discounts for players that mature aged rookies and discounts for players with long service.

Why not just bump the cap to 3m and you have to fill 22 players under it and 1 outside of it and ditch all these stupid tweaks that they have which only benefit the teams that have the cash. Otherwise the competition will always be skewed.

Marquee Players – A Club can spend an unlimited amount on two Players (Foreign or Australian) it nominates as Marquee Players; 

Guest Player – A Club can spend an unlimited amount on one Guest Player who must satisfy the prescribed marketability criteria as approved by FFA. A Guest Player is restricted to a maximum of 14 Hyundai A-League matches; one season; (was outside squad limit, not sure if that is the case now with changes)

Homegrown Players – A Club can spend up to a collective $150,000 on 3 Australian Players aged 23 or younger that have come through the Club’s youth system. Any payments to such Players above the $150,000 allowance are included in the Club’s Salary Cap; 

Loyalty Players – A Club can spend up to a collective $200,000 across any number of Players that have given 5 or more consecutive seasons of service to the Club. A portion of a Loyalty Player’s contract value is excluded from the Salary Cap based on a progressive scale from 25% (5th continuous season) to 50% (10th continuous season onwards); 

Mature Age Rookie – A Club can register an Australian Player that is aged 21 or older who last played in an Australian competition (eg. PlayStation4 National Premier Leagues) and has not played in a fully professional league for at least 18 months; (outside cap and squad limit IIRC)

Contracted NYL Players – Each Club can contract up to 3 under 20 Australian Players on the minimum youth salary. Any payments above the minimum salary to these Players are included in the Club’s Salary Cap; 

Salary Cap Banking – A Club can access any underspend from the previous two Seasons to be utilised in the current Season, up to a maximum of 105% of the Salary Cap for that Season; 

Relocation Expenses – Clubs can reimburse Players for bona fide relocation expenses (eg. airfares, temporary accommodation, storage) outside the Salary Cap up to prescribed amounts in order to assist a Player relocating to a new region for football employment. 

http://www.a-league.com.au/about

So if a club had Guest, Marquees and Mature Age Rookie you could have 16 players only under the cap - of which some may have cap concessions due to loyalty and homegrown status. Could have a 20 man squad with average salary under the cap being about $185k

I think the FFA need to sell down their stake in the A-League competition. I believe the Australian NBL has a 50/50 split with the national association and the owners. This would be a greater incentive for committed and financially viable owners.

(Yes, I know Clive Palmer argument, but still think the FFA aren't listening to the club owners sufficiently).

The Australian NBL spilt completely from national association a few years back. Its its own separate body.

Something the A-League can't do, FIFA doesn't like breakaway competitions

wasn't it a recommendation of the afc to have the league run separately from the governing body?

Cool. But wouldn't the mixed ownership model of the A League be better or am I just dreamin here?

isn't the NBL actually owned by the owner of the Melbourne franchise and not the other teams?

If the FFA are so committed to bringing high profile, marketable players to the A League then why don't they have breaks for international windows like every other major domestic league? It seems silly that on the one hand they bring in this new guest spot and bang on about raising the profile of the league but on the other hand clubs are disincentived from signing current internationals because they'll miss a number of games over the season.

Realistically the high profile people we're going to get will have retired from national teams (unless they are Australian).

How about Janko and even Aaron Hughes - both ex HAL and at the Euros.

I doubt Janko is who the A-League has in mind as their ideal marquee or guest player. Obviously good with a high pedigree but not David Villa.

Yeah I was thinking of Aussies, but also I don't think some of the older fading stars the A League might want to target are necessarily going to be retired from international football. Case in point would be Robbie Keane, who has been at LA Galaxy since 2011 and is still playing for Ireland at 35 in the current Euro's 

Amazing how the last two international windows affected the Phoenix more than the other A league teams. Must be some newish metric.

Arrghh WTF is that!?

Giant balls! How are we supposed to play with those?

.@FFA CEO David Gallop to announce new Head of Hyundai @ALeague at 11am (AEST) this morning.

— Hyundai A-League (@ALeague) July 13, 2016

Not sure if it's out there but hearing FNSW chairman Greg O'Rourke is new FFA head of A-League

— Ray Gatt (@Gatty54) July 14, 2016

.@FFA appoints Greg O’Rourke as new Head of Hyundai @ALeague. https://t.co/USpfGgSdPE pic.twitter.com/odyX36puui

— Hyundai A-League (@ALeague) July 14, 2016

More NSW centric appointments by the FFA & a worldwide search ending with someone from across town appointed.

Probably a fan of replacing us with another NSW team then

http://www.footballaustralia.com.au/article/ffa-ap...

Seems a good choice, live long involvement in Football, very impressive business background.

He wants expansion which is also good.

No doubt bitters will try and find ways to find fault with his appointment.

Interesting his Football background is association not NSL similar in this way  to Lyle Gorman. 

Hopefully he respects NZ football and the phoinex unlike David Galop 

Swap the 'i' with the 'e' and you have the team we all love!

I understand via two medical Doctors over here Dr Hackem and Dr Slashem that there is a new Doctor in Auckland who should be able to help you get that chip off your shoulder .... otherwise it can wear you down with worry about things that don't exist.

You should see if your doctor mates can recommend a shrink for you to check out your amnesia. The whole Nix license saga was only 6 months ago

Like his alleged involvement in diverting 5m funding towards starting up WSW? http://www.theaustralian.com.au/sport/football/ffa-douses-flames-over-constitution-and-row-with-football-nsw/news-story/235d7f14e8fbac1ab5bc1b9be93e2752?sv=f6ba6e394fb190aea1649f2f6099a3d0

Like wow how silly of me to even contemplate a NZ administration could not be anything other than perfect and that all faults lie with the evil FFA lead by their malicious, vile, CEO who is known for his wickedness and contempt for lowing beings.

Must be difficult to be perfect in every way and forced to endure the incompetence, ineptitude and hopeless ineffectiveness that is FFA administration.

Adding to this must be their [FFA] inability and incapacity to understand the NZ and Wellington issues. The failure of FFA to be on bended knee and knell before the perfect, flawless, impeccable, NZ administrators is amazing and I too would be angry, incensed, outraged, fuming and infuriated at this lack of recognition by the mischievous and hateful Gallop who we all know is out to damage NZ Football.

I don't think you will find many people defending NZF here, but I really don't see how that's relevant to the fact that the FFA fudged the Nix around with the license extension. It is perfectly possible to think both national bodies are fudgewits