Chhetri signing lights the path for A-League

Not only did Beaver sign with FC Utrecht as expected, but Michael Zullo and Adam Sarota went with him, gutting Brisbane Roar of its Brat Pack in one fell swoop.

Add that to the recent departures of Craig Moore, Danny Tiatto, Liam Reddy and pretty soon the coach is going to have no one to tear a new a***hole. And where was the great Ange when all this frenetic transfer activity was taking place? In Greece, of course, on a “scouting mission”.

Not West Africa. Not Thailand. Not India. Anywhere there is a young inexpensive player bursting with ambition and talent who wants to come to Australia and sees the A-League as a stepping stone to fulfilling his dreams, but Greece!

Gee, Ange – out of the box! It’s about as bad as Remo Nogarotto and his “scout at large” gig in Italy which has delivered to the Newcastle Jets the sum total of Fabio Vignaroli, a talented player but one that should have spent more time on the pitch for all the money spent on him as a “marquee”. Instead he saw out most of last season wincing on a physio’s table.

The A-League doesn’t need any more horse trading in superannuated has-been Europeans.

The league needs young players in their prime who can be flogged to death on the training pitch and still back up on the park: footballers with a rookie work ethic and the sort of physical attributes that can sustain the rigours of an extended season – here and in Asian competition. And not only do those things but score goals for the club commercially and give back much more than they take.

Some forward-thinking Americans are cottoning on to this belatedly after the failure of the David Beckham experiment.

Ten days ago Sunil Chhetri, a very good Indian player for Goa’s Dempo SC who has scored 16 times for his country in 35 internationals, was picked up by the Kansas City Wizards, an underperforming side in the MLS’s Eastern Conference.

Chhetri had previously been linked with Queens Park Rangers, who wanted to sign him but he could not get the necessary work permit to play in the UK, India being outside the FIFA top 100.

According to my colleague Arunava Chaudhuri, the former editor of the excellent but now extinct IndianFootball.com: “The interest back in India was so huge that a special live video press conference was held in Bangalore on Friday morning with over 250 journalists attending.”

MLSSoccer.com reported: “The Kansas City Wizards just became the most supported club in Major League Soccer. Maybe even the world.”

That was before he’d even touched a ball. But Chhetri’s duly impressed in practice matches, scoring four in two games, including a hat-trick against the University of Earnsville, and this weekend is due to gain his first start for the plains-state team, against Colorado Rapids.

He’s no chump. And he thinks all of his India teammates “are capable of playing” abroad. “If given the right opportunity in different leagues, I'm sure they can flourish.”

And, naturally, gift those leagues the commercial opportunities presented by a nation of 1.1 billion people. But how many of them are playing in the A-League, a competition where most clubs can’t make ends meet and one of the newest, North Queensland Fury, has just put out the begging bowl?

In a country, too, where Indians are the fourth-biggest migrant group and one of the biggest suppliers of foreign students?

Um, none.

Chaudhuri recently wrote to me from his home in Germany and said there were scores of excellent players wanting to come to Australia and he “would be more then willing to help A-League clubs find the right Indian player for them”.

So if any A-League chairman who can think outside the box are reading this get in touch with me via The World Game and I’m happy to put you in touch.

Until then, Posetcoglou can go on signing washed-up old ouzo-drinking hacks but, as we’ve seen with Vignaroli and others like him, there’s not much future in it.

As the Asian Football Confederation motto has been telling us all along, it’s somewhere else. And much closer to home.