Let's be fair dinkum about Asia

That is what Australian football, so far as its international station is concerned, must be feeling since joining the Asian Football Confederation.

And it’s so much nicer than how things were when we were part of the Oceania Confederation, where we were neither governed nor loved.

In an exclusive interview aired on SBS this week, AFC president Mohamed Bin Hammam said some stuff about the A-League which is almost tantamount to pulling us into line. And correctly so.

He said, among other things, that the FFA has been given until 2011 to continue its inclusion of a foreign team – the Wellington Phoenix – in its domestic competition, after which, so far as the AFC is concerned, there will be no non-Australian clubs permitted in the A-League.

He also said, or at least implied, that the A-League should be more aggressive in importing quality players, and by that he would have meant Asian players.

And, thirdly, he said that the matter of promotion and relegation should be firmly put on the A-League agenda.

Let’s examine these propositions a bit more deeply.

On the matter of the Wellington Phoenix, what gave birth to the inclusion of a New Zealand team in the A-League was the pledge by Australia that it would continue to give support to the OFC beyond changing horses and moving to the AFC.

This is what is not being understood by the serial critics of a New Zealand team’s inclusion. It was the price we had to pay for the OFC not getting in the way of our decision to jump ship.

The likely impact of what Bin Hammam had to say on Phoenix and on New Zealand football is obvious and, from their point of view, not a pretty thought.

According to Philip Micallef’s report, the Phoenix claims it’s not fussed while the FFA says it wants clarification from the AFC. My sense is that Bin Hammam’s words were clear and unambiguous. The FFA has permission from both the AFC and FIFA to include a New Zealand team in the A-League until 2011 and then it’s over. Aloha Phoenix.

But the more interesting angle is what this means to the A-League.

With the league due to expand to 12 teams in 2010-11, if it then goes on to expand to 14 teams in 2011-12, an additional mainland Australian bidder to the ones currently in the race will be accommodated.

Suddenly Wollongong, Canberra and western Sydney, who are in a race to fill one spot in 2010-11, are feeling a bit more comfortable. By 2011-12 an additional three teams, not two, will be required to fill the quota.

On the matter of importing more players from Asia, I am with the President.

Recently the J-League imposed a 3+1 rule under which at least one of each club’s maximum quota of foreign players has to come from an Asian country. The AFC then expanded that approach, only a couple of weeks ago, and decreed that the rule would also be imposed in the AFC Champions League.

These are good and clever propositions meant to assist Asian player development and to build solidarity within Asia. Australia has to fall into line if it is to be fair dinkum about its claim that its membership of the AFC is bona fide.

Indeed it’s time the FFA considered a rule similar to the one imposed by the J-League. Why not? We have imported enough mediocre and useless non-Asian players already. And the meagre few we have brought in from Asia have been mostly good.

No harm would be done, surely. On the contrary. The Kazu Miura experience at Sydney FC in the A-League’s first season was a monumental success and a masterstroke. It put bums on seats at the SFS and the Sydney FC brand received massive exposure in Japan.

It wouldn’t take Einstein to rattle off a list of Asian big names, or even not so big names, who could bring us similar benefits.

Promotion and relegation, to which Bin Hammam subscribes and would like to see implemented here, is a tougher prop in our case. Right now it would be totally unrealistic.

Where in the world could we find an entire second division to the A-League when it is a struggle to identify one or two with the guaranteed security and viability to join it? Can we gather up a collection of eight, ten or twelve Wollongongs to make up a second A-League tier? One doubts it.

But it has to be placed on the agenda, however long term. Ultimately Australia has to fall in line with the rest of a world in which promotion and relegation is the norm. No sense in being silly and alone. Football is the world game.

All of this, and what Bin Hammam is on about, is not just about our own interests. It is about being good Asian citizens and about giving something back to Asia and giving it faith that accepting Australia was a good thing and of benefit to the region in the first place. It’s a give and take thing.

Johnny Warren would tell me that Australia’s attitude to joining Asia in the old days was tantamount to: ‘How about a r....t?’ It doesn’t work like that and never did. In football we are now Asians and we’d better behave like it.

Rebecca, do shut up

On another topic I cannot let this opportunity pass without saying something about the silly, juvenile article Rebecca Wilson wrote in the Daily Telegraph.

Her GPS must have gone haywire on the way to work that day because her car obviously took her to another planet.

Wilson, a kind of Ray Chesterton in drag, contended that ‘soccer’ in Australia was in crisis because Gamba Osaka out-skilled and outplayed Adelaide United in the ACL final.

Which is like saying German football is in demise because Bayern Munich got pumped by Zenit St Petersburg in last season’s UEFA Cup. Or that Spanish football is on the brink of death following Real Madrid’s twice in a row loss to Juventus.

She claims, quite correctly, that Australian players lack the technical skills needed to compete at international level. Wow, what a revelation!

I guess I should feel proud that what Johnny Warren and I and thousands of others have been saying for 40 years has finally got through to Rebecca Wilson. But she ain’t fooling anyone. Most of us can smell an old fashioned soccer basher from a hundred miles.

The curious thing about this is that Wilson’s late father, Bruce Wilson, a lovely man, was a sports journo of serious integrity with a distinct affection for football.

He wrote warmly about it often, including after attending Australia’s victorious game against England at Upton Park in 2003, on which he reported with pride and enthusiasm.

This, we gather, didn’t rub off on his daughter who clings mysteriously to the belief that rugby league, her sport of choice, is some kind of cultural treasure which must be protected, above all against the smelly hordes from the north who, with soccer in their saddlebags, threaten to over-run us, rape our women and gallop off with our children.

I have news for her. The smelly hordes are coming not just from the north but from the east, south and west, from everywhere. Soccer (‘We refuse to call it football,’ she says) will soon engulf this nation to the point that we will all love it so much we won’t be able to breathe.

The times are a changing. So live with it, girl.