How's this helping NZ football?

 

 

 

 

Thanks el grapadura, some good points. Unfortunately there is a real possibility that the Phoenix are going to be hit with a rule that NZers will be classified as foreigners and restricted to three or four players because that's what the Asian football authorities want. If that happens the Aussie teams are not going to put their Asian playoff opportunities on the line to fight for the Phoenix. What then? This is something I've slowly been leading too but it's very complex and requires thinking outside the box.

 

If things stay the same and the Phoenix can get a reserve team in the NZFC some major problems solved. But I'd say that's maybe 50-50. If the Asians have their way and the Phoenix are restricted to a few NZers, then big problems for local players.

 

How about this as an alternative, and please don't declare war. If the Asians get their way, then the Phoenix pull out of the A league. Auckland City can then become professional, the Phoenix downsize to a largely NZ professional outfit with some good imports, we throw Canterbury United (uplifted to pro level) into the mix and get either South Auckland or North Shore to get their act together and there's the fourth professional outfit. How are we going to finance this - our guaranteed place in the Club World Cup each year, with a realistic goal of $3 million prizemoney for a good NZ outfit that's competitive against either the African, central American or Asian champs who are there. Throw in investors like El Tel and Ivan Vuksich (City) and the Football Association (they could even put the Under 20 national side into the mix) and gate money from crowds of 3,000 to 4,000 at compact venues and we could have a viable self-financing professional championship in NZ, elevating all our best young players to a decent professional level with the bonus of the high profile Club World Cup there for the best team at the end of each season. The prizemoney could be evenly split amongst the four teams (less the expenses of the team that goes). The boost to NZs overall playing standard would be enormous, likewise the media profile of the domestic game and we wouldn't have to fit into the rules of anyone else. El Tel would also save a bucket load of money and we can take great delight in stuffing the Asian champions at the CWC and World Cup qualification.

Just a suggestion lads, but I could see it working, thanks to the CWC.

Just a suggestion lads,�but I could see it working, thanks to the CWC.

 

I won't quote your whole post but I did read it!

 

The main problem with that model is that it's so reliant on the CWC prize winners money - hugely risky because who knows whether that competition even exists in the future and whether Oceania will always have a seperate qualification path.

 

The A-League, by contrast, and although it might not be profitable at the moment, at least has something approaching a decent business model.

 

I do like a lot of what you're saying, however, and I admire your enthusiasm for NZ football.

 

Like you, I think that the Phoenix creeping towards being essentially an "Aussie" team is a bad thing, whether it is forced on us by the AFC or not. At the same time I don't think the Phoenix should be martyrs to that ideal if it risks poor performance. At the end of the day they must retain a solid foothold in the A-League while other issues are resolved.

 

 

I agree Terminator_X and my best preference would be for Auckland City to play in the A-league and have a great rivalry with the Phoenix. I would love that. But I fear that forces beyond our control are not ever going to allow that and NZ football is suffering.

Sure we could lose the CWC, but we put all our eggs in the basket of the A-League and we could be kicked out tomorrow as well.

I also think that the Phoenix are missing out by not being able to give the likes of Haynes and Coombes and even Feneridis a decent go at making the cut as professionals. There are probably half a dozen other names you could put in their too. A season of professional standards and they'd give Brown and Lochead a run for their money. I think Haynes could be lethal given the right investment. Instead Ricki is having to plug holes in the All Whites by offering British players with very tenuous links to NZ a free pass to the World Cup. I don't agree with those who slag our local players as not good enough, the talent is there, it has to be cultivated. We owe the American college system a big debt for Nelsen, Boyans, Lochead and Simon Elliot but it should be happening here.

 

 

I fear you may be right but I think it's still doable - and then we don't have to bow down to any one else's rules! In a way maybe the Asians will do us a favour in the long run if they force our hand, tough medicine and a bitch for you guys but we could emerge better off from the wreckage. If we can concentrate on a professional league in NZ, the media coverage will grow and people will turn out to watch.

We've been obsessed with keeping a team in the Australian league now for over a decade, and while the Phoenix has been the most successful variation on a theme, I'm beginning to wonder if we wouldn't have been better to have put all of those millions into the domestic game. I was a huge supporter of the Kingz over the old National League but now I'm beginning to rethink things. I wish Rufer was back here coaching a pro team in a pro national league. Maybe Australia is our only route, but I'm not so sure anymore. City's performance at the CWC really made me think. Paul and the boys did what they said they'd do and I know even good City supporters thought they were aiming too high. But they weren't.

 

Top 3 go into the play-offs...

 

What you say is still incorrect. The Phoenix is not stopping a professional league in NZ.

 

 

Excuse me, I never said City didn't bring in overseas talent - Lee, Grant Young and  Jordan have been fantastic. Some like Xavia have been dudes (he did play in the Spanish premier division) and that't the same for every team. But the majority of the squad are NZ players. Scratch most NZ players and they've played for some  school, local winter league and all sorts of other hometown teams and I never said otherwise. Get a grip here fellas. But central/City have developed a lot of players through very formative stages of their career just like teams like Hawkes bay United/ Napier City Rovers have.

RicLaRoc says spread the love, but some of you would test a saint.

 

 

 

 

Perhaps you could change it to "our Aussies are better than your Aussies" - cheap shot, I know.]

 

Can I tell you a little story? Well many years ago when I was a callow youth from NZ and went to London (to see Pink Floyd and stayed nine years) A group of us made a drunken commitment one Friday to have a girl pick a lowly English football team and we'd all pile in the van and go support them. Well she chose DARLINGON (liked the name)! So off we piled, two Londoners, a Yank and me way up to near Newcastle. We turned up at this poxy ground on a cold afternoon with about two thousand there and watched a team of cloggers lose. But we didn't care, we sang our hearts out. The local supporters loved it so much they took us to this pub for a great night. Now this old guy, complete with cloth cap, Darlington scarf and nicotene-stained fingers, approached me and carefully counted out some coins. Now remember back then a fiver was a small fortune. He had just enough for a pint of bitter and he bought it for me. I tried to refuse but he wouldn't hear of it. Then he gave me this heartfelt hug. Up close you could see the weariness in his eyes from years of disappointment from following this hopeless local team. As I got progressively more pissed I lost sight of him. At closing (we slept in the van in the carpark) I went to the publican and asked where I could find the old guy to buy him a return drink and the publican just shook his head in amazement. He said it was the first time in years of being there he's ever seen the old bastard buy anyone a drink. Now apparently this old guy usually had enough for a half pint and the bus home. He spent it all on me and walked that night. They say I hardly spoke a word on the long trip back to London. Whenever I'm at a match I still think of that old guy. He could have gone for supporting the local powerhouse Newcastle and enjoying some triumphs, but he didn't - Darlington was his team. So anyone who tells me it's just about winning and they couldn't give a stuff how it's achieved or who's in the team, well I think they're wrong.

 

Were you in Bahrain for the game Forest?

 

Quite true Hard News, and I appreciate that the Phoenix is Terry's toy because he pays for it. But the original remit for setting up the Kingz, which led to the Knights and now the Nix was to provide a pathway for NZ players to play professionally, because they couldn't in the local league. That was the deal. Wynton Rufer, and what a great product of Wellington footy he was, took that to heart and for the first two seasons the Kingz were a model of that with some good, and not so good, imports added. He told me that was what the Kingz were there for, to bring on the best local talent. He was stupidly ditched in favour of trying to buy quick success via a bunch from South Melbourne and that legacy was squandered. When the Phoenix first started I thought it was being revived with the likes of Moss, Paston, Smeltz, Brown, Bertos, Lochead etc, but I can now see it dissipating again, whether by outside pressure or from within I'm not sure. This concerns me.

Thanks el grapadura, some good points. Unfortunately there is a real possibility that the Phoenix are going to be hit with a rule that NZers will be classified as foreigners and restricted to three or four players because that's what the Asian football authorities want. If that happens the Aussie teams are not going to put their Asian playoff opportunities on the line to fight for the Phoenix. What then? This is something I've slowly been leading too but it's very complex and requires thinking outside the box.

 

If things stay the same and the Phoenix can get a reserve team in the NZFC some major problems solved. But I'd say that's maybe 50-50. If the Asians have their way and the Phoenix are restricted to a few NZers, then big problems for local players.

 

How about this as an alternative, and please don't declare war. If the Asians get their way, then the Phoenix pull out of the A league. Auckland City can then become professional, the Phoenix downsize to a largely NZ professional outfit with some good imports, we throw Canterbury United (uplifted to pro level) into the mix and get either South Auckland or North Shore to get their act together and there's the fourth professional outfit. How are we going to finance this - our guaranteed place in the Club World Cup each year, with a realistic goal of $3 million prizemoney for a good NZ outfit that's competitive against either the African, central American or Asian champs who are there. Throw in investors like El Tel and Ivan Vuksich (City) and the Football Association (they could even put the Under 20 national side into the mix) and gate money from crowds of 3,000 to 4,000 at compact venues and we could have a viable self-financing professional championship in NZ, elevating all our best young players to a decent professional level with the bonus of the high profile Club World Cup there for the best team at the end of each season. The prizemoney could be evenly split amongst the four teams (less the expenses of the team that goes). The boost to NZs overall playing standard would be enormous, likewise the media profile of the domestic game and we wouldn't have to fit into the rules of anyone else. El Tel would also save a bucket load of money and we can take great delight in stuffing the Asian champions at the CWC and World Cup qualification.

Just a suggestion lads, but I could see it working, thanks to the CWC.

 

Is this actually a serious suggestion?  That's one of the most ridiculous things I have ever read

 

Seems you're completely absolving the administration of the Kingz and Kinghts of all wrong-doing and blaming all failure on imports.

 

This time around, the imports seem motivated, they like the club's management and aren't just clipping their ticket, and the administration and coaching staff certainly give every appearance of knowing what they're doing.

 

Just don't see history repeating here, and I don't think anyone else does.

 

Also, whether tinted more by res mist than judgement, your earlier comments about our foreign players seem like a perfect case of seeing what you want to see.  You thnk that if the phoenix takes on imports, they'll fail.  Perhaps you sub-consciously want that to happen, or can't fathom the possibility that not all imports will play like arse and are just in it for the money.  Either way, you need to at least to attempt to justify why you think smething is being squandered or why you're concerned in this case.

[QUOTE=Bluemagic I'm here for the local players who are busting their guts, for little or no reward, to keep NZ football alive in the trenches. I enjoy waching the Nix on the tele and I cheer your goals, but my heart's really with the local lads slogging it out in the NZFC.[QUOTE/]

 

What a load of rubbish.  Two points, 1, since when did Auckland City become the little guy?  A club that is sutained by a ridiculous amount of cash from gambling societies which it uses to fund itself for 5 years and then all of a sudden they get another source of income and  talk about turning pro.  Get a grip man!

 

2, you may enjoy and prefer watching football at NZFC level but the simple fact is that you're in a minority and over and over and over again it's been shown that people in New Zealand are not going to turn out in huge numbers to watch a domestic football tournament. 

 

Get out of your little bubble where Auckland City is the victim of some grand conspiracy to keep football in this country down, where if only x, y and z occurred 25 years of history would change and you might get people interested in a genuine discussion.  90% of what you've wirtten on here is completely un thought out, and in most cases untrue, and we've heard it all before.  You're not the first ACFC fan to come on here saying these things and you won't be the last, but it's just the same old story and the same old arguments, and it's tedious

 

"My position is, that if we have anything to learn from the Noble Savage, it is what to avoid. His virtues are a fable; his happiness is a delusion; his nobility, nonsense."

 

Charles Dickens: "The Noble Savage" - 1851

 

 

 

Ah ha ha ha ha!!! Both classic

 

 

Seriously, I wonder if some of you guys even comprehend what has been discussed here. Good grief, my whole question is HOW IS THIS HELPING NZ FOOTBALL?' I repeat, one and a half NZ players (Siggy and Costa - as a sub) have been lifted up from the tier below (NZFC) by the Phoenix in three seasons. They have been given real game time. Others, like Draper and now Rojas, have been through the system but saw/see little or no game time and that's what matters. All the training in the world means bugger all if they don't play - ask Mully. Fine if you want a team chock full of imports that does well and that's all that matters. But the remit for putting a NZ team in the Australian league in the first place all those years ago was to provide a pathway for the best local talent into a professional level allied with good imports (not replaced by). It was not simply just to win the old ANL/A-League and it doesn't matter if there's not even a Kiwi in the team. Ricki started well but I seriously worry that outside pressures (namely Asian) are now dissipating that. Okay, to a lot of you guys the Phoenix are El Tel's rich man's toy (a bless him for putting his hands in his pocket) and he can do what he wants - but please ask yourself the friggin' central question.

I don't want the Phoenix to fail. I suffered through that with the Kingz and the Knights, it was agony. I wouldn't wish that on anyone. I just want the best local talent to be given a fair shake of the stick. I maintain the system is now mitigating against that. The one entity that could step into the breech (City via the CWC) and provide our best players with a pro set-up can't because of the Nix. Please try to look at the big picture and cut the crap. Dear oh dear, I think ADD is becoming a serious issue.