Read, as in the results of a broad and comprehensive survey by the authoritative World Soccer Magazine to rate the world’s best domestic club competitions.

In trying to arrive at the most credible conclusions possible, World Soccer conducted a worldwide analysis across eight different criteria. So this is not just a ranking list based on the standard of football, the biggest crowds or the best finances. It’s all of those things and more combined.

The eight categories were: attendances; finances; goal averages; the number of domestic title winners over the past 10 years; the most number of successful coaches (or managers); stadiums; star players; and the league’s success rate in international tournaments.

Points were awarded for each league in the top ten in each category and then totalled up to arrive at the ultimate, overall winner. The results are published in the current (May 2013) edition of World Soccer.

The survey was based on the 2011-12 season in most cases (including in Australia), so it’s likely the A-League will be ranked even higher in the next survey. Still, 20th place among over 200 countries with domestic competitions (not all of them professional, of course) is very impressive. It will not escape anyone that eight years ago the A-League didn’t even exist. Neither will it that the A-League strives to grow in a country more preoccupied by at least four other sports.

Australia scored points in two of the eight categories: goal averages, where with 2.7 per game it was in seventh place, and in the number of ‘star players’. The latter category was based on the number of players that were squad members in the 2010 World Cup finals. Thus, with 18 such players honing their trade in the A-League, our home competition finished in 10th place, above the likes of Greece, Russia, Brazil and the Netherlands.

In the category of the highest attendances, though the A-League didn’t make the top ten, it came an elegant 20th in the world with an average of 10,819, just below Portugal. With an average of 12,351 fans in the recently completed 2012-13 season, it is likely that in the next survey the A-League will rank around 16th, above Switzerland, Belgium and Ukraine.

Germany’s Bundesliga was the best attended league with an average of 45,116, some way ahead of England, 34,600, and Spain, 28,796.

In the area of finances, judged on the basis of which league attracted the most revenue, the Premier League won hands down with 2.5 billion Euros, way ahead of the Bundesliga, 1.74 billion, and La Liga, 1.72 billion.

The Eredivisie in the Netherlands was the place to see the most goals, 3.26 per game. Belgium (2.88) was second, Germany (2.86) third, and England (2.81) was fourth.

The category of the number of domestic title winners in the past 10 years was meant to indicate the strength in depth of each league as well as a measure of each league’s entertainment value.

Here the ranking was distorted. Argentina won with 11 and Mexico came second with 10. But those two leagues both have an opening and closing championship, effectively two titles given out each year. The next best was Japan with seven J-League winners in the past decade.

The A-League did not figure in the top ten in this, presumably because it has not yet had 10 seasons. But it should have with five winners in its first eight seasons, equal to Germany with five in the past ten, not to say England with only four.

In the category of managers, or the league with the most successful coaches, those that have won major titles in the past decade, England was the winner with five, edging out Germany and Brazil, each with three.

World Soccer also considered stadia as an important category. The magazine explains that there was a need to consider how fans are treated on matchdays and the comfort in which they watch games. The runaway winner here was the United States where 13 new stadiums, tailored for football, have been built since the turn of the millennium. Germany was next with nine. South Africa, another World Cup host in the relevant period, also figured in 10th place with five.

A definition for the number of ‘star players’ also had to be found and here World Soccer opted for the last World Cup and who appeared in it as the indicator. England, whose money attracts the biggest celebrities, won this easily with 76, ahead of Italy, Spain and Germany. Australia came in tenth with 18, just edged out by Japan which had 19.

Finally Spain won the ‘success’ category where the leagues were ranked according to the number of different clubs that have reached the last four of the major international club tournaments, the UEFA Champions League, Europa League and Copa Libertadores in the past ten years.

Spain produced 10 such clubs, finishing ahead of Brazil which had eight, in turn one ahead of England’s seven.

So, after collating all results across the eight categories, the league which emerged as the best in the world is Germany’s Bundesliga, ahead of England, Spain, Italy and Brazil. France’s Ligue Un, considered one of Europe’s ‘big five’, came in ninth.

There are four leagues outside Europe and South America in the top 20: the USA’s MLS (7th), Japan’s J-League (11th), the Chinese Super League (14th) and Australia’s A-League (equal 20th with Colombia and Poland).

But the Germans took the big prize, as they will, I guess appropriately in the Champions League final at Wembley on 25 May.

I have only experienced pleasure at witnessing the lingering coverage over the ensuing week. And it will probably continue for a while longer.

Let’s first put this to bed as we look back. The match itself was not especially memorable. We have seen many grand finals that were more so, even stretching back to the NSL. It was entirely one-sided, the Wanderers were totally outplayed and Central Coast Mariners thoroughly deserved the win. Congratulations to the Mariners.

Yet the event received unprecedented media space post-game, especially in Sydney, fuelled by the wonder of the Wanderers’ fans who, in just the past six months, have become as iconic as any player, team or coach.

If you scour the post-match media coverage, you will see more pictures, video footage or words written devoted to the red and black mob than you will of any player, any goal or any piece of the on-field action.

In an earlier article Richard Hinds wrote in the Sydney Morning Herald: “This is a sit-com featuring the live studio audience. A play where the best lines are recited in the stalls. A sporting occasion that truly does belong as much to those in the grandstands as to those on the pitch.”

And then, “The Wanderers fans might not be as numerous as those of the world's renowned clubs. But that the RBB has become a drawcard in a league where the word ''crowd'' was not always a collective noun is a potent symbol of the game's progress.”

The RBB, beyond the perimeter fence, were indeed the stars. Even the flare-throwers got off, lost in the smoky haze for the adulation they drew by their heaving passion and unique, throbbing affection for their team. Their devilish red and black colours dominated and were the seducers of the scene.

The press elation, I believe, was not just a product of wonder but of discovery. For some time now, and I’m talking 50 years or so, this kind of active, noisy, picturesque support by partisan fans has been part of the game, ever since Liverpool’s Kop began to sing You’ll Never Walk Alone, circa 1963.

Yet it took this long for most of our people, our media, to discover it. The discovery should have come earlier. The rhythmic chanting, the singing, the boisterous colour, the thunder of the fans behind the goals, what distinguishes football from other sports and other so-called ‘codes’, have been part of the A-League from its beginnings and part of the local game even before that.

The penny is finally dropping. Football is not a sport and its more even than a religion. It’s a culture.

Like all cultures, football has its rituals, its customs, its deities, its language, its music, its respect for its history, its sense of identity and its urge to celebrate and demonstrate it. Football’s ultimate source of strength is its fans, the global football nation, billions strong, who live and breathe the game every minute of their lives and express through it a sense of their belonging.

This is not a game in which only results matter, and who finishes first, sixth or last. Those things are sideshows, numericals by which rivalries are measured over short instants. They are not where a football club’s strengths are rooted.

The Wanderers, a name worn by a club that is but one year old, deliberately celebrates Australia’s first registered football club, founded in 1880, 133 years ago, and domiciled in Sydney’s west. With it the A-League’s newest club formed an umbilical cord with the birth of the game in Australia and the game’s origins in the region.

The choice of the club’s home venue, Parramatta Stadium, is no coincidence either. It was on Parramatta Common where the 1880 vintage Wanderers played the Kings School on 14 August 1880, believed to be the first ever game of Association Football played in NSW.

From these things the fledgling club and its fans gained an immediate enrichment, a cause, a thing to believe in, a podium from which they could do their cheering, a spiritual and not just a geographical home.

This is the way club football the world over works. The Wanderers and their fans didn’t invent it but they are already unsurpassed in Australia in being able to showcase football as a culture rather than just a sport.

They are not alone of course. Each A-League club already has its noisy, passionate, active fans, some even more numerous than those of the Wanderers. Yet it is the RBB that has thrust this kind of unique fandom onto the front and back pages.

Understanding football culture doesn’t come easily for those who are new to it, much less for those who have no grasp of the game’s soul.

As JB Priestly once put it, “To say that these men paid their shillings to watch twenty-two hirelings kick a ball is merely to say that a violin is wood and catgut, that Hamlet is so much paper and ink.”

As the world globalises, and Australia is drawn into the web, expect football culture to become more and more a part of the Australian way of life.

That is precisely what I did, lobbing in beautiful Budapest in late March when the spring temperatures should have been in the high teens but, instead, were barely above freezing.

My ultimate destination was the village of Felcsút, population 2,000, 40 kilometres from the Hungarian capital and site of the Ferenc Puskás Football Academy. Why go to Felcsút now (rather than in the more sensible warmer months)? Because it was Easter, and Easter in Felcsút means the holding of the annual Puskás-Suzuki Cup.

Fool I might be but I won’t apologise for travelling so far for a youth tournament. I love youth tournaments, always have, for three principal reasons:

:: The minds of the kids have not yet been soiled by the need for tactical expediency, so natural attacking instincts generally prevail. Defensive ploys in youth games are rare.

:: Kids rarely cheat. They learn that craft, sadly, later in their professional lives.

:: Kids have a natural hunger and ambition to impress, to stand out, and will often try the daring, flashy stuff, much more than when they’re older, by which time it has been beaten out of them.

These are elements that can provide serious entertainment and this tournament didn’t disappoint.

The Puskás-Suzuki Cup is a six-team event for under-17 teams, run over four days. Three of the teams, with which Ferenc Puskás was associated as player or coach, are permanent invitees: Honvéd, Real Madrid and Panathinaikos. Another, the team of the Academy itself, is also a permanent participant.

The remaining two teams are by special invitation. This year the guests were a team representing the Gheorghe Hagi Academy in Romania and an Australian team from Melbourne, where the great man lived and coached for two years in the early 1990s.

The Australian entry was championed by Melbourne businessman Robert Bélteky, a football tragic with Hungarian genes and huge admirer of the Puskás legacy, who not amazingly pondered the notion that a Melbourne team should take part, given the great man’s memorable time in the city.

It was a hastily arranged young squad, marshalled together at a few weeks’ notice and it was not surprisingly outclassed in Felcsút. The Aussie youngsters lost all three of their games, including the decider for 5th place to the Hagi Academy. No matter. They took part. The ice was broken and a better prepared Australian squad, perhaps, can enter next year.

As an Australian, I hope so. This is a quality tournament with high technical standards, pretty close to those at the FIFA youth tournaments. Australian players can supremely benefit.

Real Madrid won the trophy after a four-year drought but deservedly. The young all-whites were the best team, appropriately handsome in their play, with some outstanding individuals.

They edged Panathinaikos 2:0 in the final with some sparkling football and parading some gifted young players. Put these three names in your notebook for future reference (and remember you read them here first):

:: BORJA SÁNCHEZ – Madrid’s number 10, an elegant playmaker with velvet feet and the touch of a surgeon, not to say a sharp brain.

:: Francisco PEREZ – their number 8, a lithe specimen of a teenager with a gift for turning defenders inside out, again and again.

:: Aleix FEBAS – wearing number 20, a small, all-dimensional, deep midfielder who commanded the team’s organisation. All agreed that he was the player of the tournament.

I should also mention Madrid’s number 9, a tall centre forward with beautiful, soft feet who goes by the name of Jack Harper. To which I responded by asking, what kind of a name is that for a Real Madrid junior? The answer came that he’s Scottish. How he came to be in the vicinity of the Bernabeu in the first place, I still do not know. Suffice to say, with apologies to all Scots, that his technique was reminiscent of Jimmy Baxter more than any other Scot I have seen in the past couple of decades. Or more.

There were others. Like Honvéd striker Norbert Feketics, who scored two magnificent individual goals in the bronze medal match against the Puskás Academy. He tormented the Aussies in their opening game. Keep an eye out for him.

Still there were more, surprising even a veteran watcher like me about the technical and tactical quality of young players from different parts of modern Europe, not just Spain but Greece, Romania and Hungary.

Hungarian football, once famous (or notorious) for the level of state support it was getting, has not been the beneficiary of government funding in more recent decades, even if the country’s current prime minister Viktor Orbán, a genuine fan of the game, gives more generously than his immediate predecessors.

Hungary’s current development system, if you can call it a system, relies on a vast network of club or independent academies. Most professional clubs have academies with MTK’s program at provincial Agárd (from whence rising Liverpool starlet Krisztian Adorján hails) being the most famous.

The Ferenc Puskás Academy, though independent, is effectively the youth program of nearby Videoton, the former UEFA Cup runner-up from the nearby city of Székesfehérvár.

I was told that all the academies in Hungary are good and of a high standard, despite not relying on a centralised curriculum or technical dogma.

I suspect it’s in the culture. Hungarian football, which has taken a deep fall from its 1950s heyday when it led the world in technical development, is still characterised by the belief that kids must learn technique, tactical craft and the use of the brain above everything before they can be good adult footballers, and that creed pervades the methodology in youth coaching in that country.

Hungary until recently was ranked below Australia on the FIFA rankings (it is now seven places above us). But its long football history and technical traditions give it entrenched beliefs which we in Australia are only starting to come to grips with.

The Australians who entered the tournament at Felcsút showed promise in lead-up matches, losing unluckily to Györ 2:0 and then beating Ferencváros 3:1. But once they hit the competitive reality of the Puskás-Suzuki Cup, nervousness set in and all confidence evaporated.

All the more reason for Australia to keep sending teams to the tournament every Easter. Or go even further, as one Australian parent who was in Felcsút is seriously considering. He is toying with the idea of enrolling his 15 year old son in the Ferenc Puskás Academy.

Now that could lead to a serious Puskás legacy for Australia.

Twitter: @lesmurraySBS

If that comes to pass, that fixture, in Sydney against Iraq, will be a promoter's dream (specially if Iraq is still be in the contest). It could even be another Iran or Uruguay type showdown, a prospect some of us thought we had lost after the ease with which Australia coasted to the finals of 2010 under Pim Verbeek.

But that campaign was a false dawn as we now know. Beating a path to the World Cup through Asia has become harder at the second attempt, not easier.

Australia's Asian opponents are now smarter and braver. Gone are the days when those opponents were intimidated by the sight of a bunch of strapping, muscled Aussies with high reputations for having earned millions in rich European leagues.

The fact is many of Australia's leading players, these days, have their club gigs in Asia, including some of the younger ones. So why should Asian players be scared of them?

Also, Asian players now know how to lift against Australia and do, as Jordan, Oman and Japan did on this campaign, even though the Japanese no longer need to. Japan, technically and tactically, has left us behind. They now live their golden generation, seven years on from when we lived ours and beat them deservedly in Kaserslautern.

Australia deserves to be exactly where it is on its qualification standings and in its qualifying prospects, let's not have any ifs and buts about it. Our team was outplayed by both Japan and Jordan and outsmarted by Oman, twice. Two draws by Oman against Australia when you consider the gap in ranking and reputation is an enormous outcome for them.

Australia struggling against Asian teams is now commonplace and no longer a surprise. The team even had its horror moments against Thailand. And it will have more. If one is to hope Australia will get something out of the Japan game in Saitama on 4 June, it is difficult to imagine where that will come from.

Australia was vastly outplayed and outclassed by Japan in their last clash in Brisbane, despite some Aussie claims to an heroic draw. Australia matched and was able to take the game to Japan only until Bresciano limped off and then it all turned to dust. Then Milligan got sent off giving us an out, whereby we could falsely claim a gallant draw playing with ten men.

The 2:2 draw against Oman in Sydney was more than a setback. It was a reality check about Australia's place in Asia and it has been coming for some time.

Not helping Australia in trying to overcome this new challenge in Asia is its ultra-conservative coach who lacks boldness, is fond of using an archaic 4-4-2 formation, usually with two defensive midfielders, and shuns creativity in his selections.

Starting the game against Oman without Bresciano and Tommy Oar was inexplicable in a game that was 'must win' even in Holger Osieck's words. That penny finally dropped for the coach early in the second half when Bresciano was introduced, immediately changing the game.

By the time Oar was sent on with just 13 minutes to go it was probably too late.

Australia is still in the box seat mathematically given that it can still amass 15 points after its remaining games which none of its rivals for second place - Jordan, Oman and Iraq - can. The most Jordan can get is 13 points, Oman 12 and Iraq 14.

This is why Australia's next game, away to Japan, now becomes critical. At one time, before the Oman game in Sydney, which most of us expected Australia to win, one could almost bank a loss in Japan as surplus to requirements. But not now.

In the event of a loss in Saitama, Australia would likely have to win its last two games to finish second in the group and advance. A number if outcomes are possible but Australia will need to pck up six points from its remaining games to be sure of keeping at bay Oman, whom it doesn't meet, on go difference.

Finishing third, facing the double task of beating the third-placed team in group A (probably Iran) and then the fifth best in South America, does not look relishing, not after this display against Oman.

In my view some uncustomary boldness and willingness to take risks will be required by the coach in the remaining games. Playing conservatively now is just about too late.

Twitter: @lesmurraySBS

Whether that was true or not of MacLeod, it’s fair to say that there have been many football coaches who have reached high office who knew little about tactics and used them even less.

Some have openly disdained them. Brian Clough, a brilliant and successful manager, said: "Players lose you games, not tactics. There's so much crap talked about tactics by people who barely know how to win at dominoes."

Yet tactics are widely used by coaches and managers in the modern professional game and, in our case, astute, tactical coaching has recently been sweeping through the A-League.

Tony Popovic is widely praised for his tactical nous and what that has already achieved for the Wanderers. John Aloisi, even younger than Popovic, also pays high attention to tactics, as do Graham Arnold, Ange Postecoglou, Gary Van Egmond, Mike Mulvey and the newly arrived Perth Glory interim, Alistair Edwards.

In this respect the A-League has grown a long way from its beginnings in 2005 when it was almost unanimously biff, bang and bingo.

Of course, in discussing these things one has to be clear on just what tactics are, for they are not to be confused with a playing style, a playing philosophy or a way of playing - a method.

For example the way Barcelona plays - its all-possession, attacking, forever probing method - is not per se a tactic or even a set of tactics but a strategic way of playing (and apparently a winning one). It’s also a style and a philosophy.

The way a coach sets out his 11 players and the way he wants them to play is a deliberate strategy and a method. That is a given. But, in Barcelona’s case, it’s never varied, whoever the opponent, and therefore it has little to do with tactical ploys to win certain individual games.

Indeed, it is most often Barca’s opponents who resort to specific tactics in order to stop the Catalan stampede.

The most fascinating of those has been the way Real Madrid’s Jose Mourinho has attempted to win successive Clasicos in recent times. Some didn’t work, others did, but Mourinho has always been willing to vary his tactics until he found an antidote to Barca’s relentlessness and Lionel Messi’s brilliance.

This is a classic demonstration of how football evolves in a tactical sense and has evolved since the first organised game was played.

Great, winning teams emerge over time and before long, smart, deep-thinking coaches find a tactical antidote in order to overcome them. Often (though not always) the new ploy then becomes the trend as other coaches try to mimic the new conqueror.

Barcelona, with its coach, Tito Vilanova, ailing in hospital, was decidedly outsmarted in three consecutive big games recently: once by AC Milan and twice by Real Madrid.

Milan was especially impressive in the way it executed the perfect counter-attacking game, winning 2-0 in the first leg of the UEFA Champions League round of 16 tie at the San Siro. The Barca attacking machine was suffocated, reducing the Catalan to just two shots on target to Milan’s six. Even Messi was neutralised.

It was a glorious tactical win by Milan.

But in the return, won 4-0 by Barca, Milan had no answer as the home team’s gifted set of players rose to the survival need and the Rossoneri were smashed. Method triumphed over tactics.

As it often does.

Brisbane Roar won two successive A-League titles under Ange Postecoglou with a method that was never compromised or varied or even tweaked in the name of tactics devised to beat a certain opponent. Even through a dreaded spell of five straight losses in the 2011-2012 season, Postecoglou, steadfast in his belief in the method, never flinched.

As we now know, Postecoglou was vindicated. Roar won the title.

I would now give anything to have been able to see a contest between the oiled Roar of Postecoglou and the present day Wanderers under the hand of the tactically astute Popovic.

Popovic is an accomplished student of tactical strategy. Already as assistant coach to Vítězslav Lavička at Sydney FC, he was in charge of analysing opponents and devising ways of beating them.

In one case, up against the formidable Melbourne Victory, he identified Kevin Muscat, ageing and slow, as Victory’s weak link and so advised Lavička. With Muscat exposed, Sydney won the game comfortably.

With the Wanderers, Popovic supervises a method – basically a counter attacking game – but he readily selects his team and lines up his strategy according to the opponent in each case.

So far it has worked well. But it’s a tiring and vulnerable way in which to run a team, one which relies all too much on the coach and his incidental cleverness. Heaven help the Wanderers should Popovic be forced to take a sickie.

History shows that truly great teams of longevity get their successes through a method, a breakthrough way of playing, and not by just having a coach who happens to be smart in the way he approaches games by games and out-thinks his opposite number on the bench in each case.

Tactics, despite what Brian Clough said, can win you games and even the odd title. But they will not win you greatness. Only methods, and the convictions that under-pin them, will do that.

Sydney Olympic was and still is a NSW State League club with an illustrious past in the old NSL and one with strong connections to the Greek community.

The match never went ahead. Some bright spark at FFA – and let’s not bother with his name – vetoed it. No A-League club was permitted to have this kind of direct and cosy relationship with an ‘ethnic’ club. It was fine for Sydney FC to play friendlies with Blacktown City or Sutherland Sharks but not Sydney Olympic.

The directive was disgraceful, discriminatory and probably illegal.

All this was in the name of the cleverly coined ‘Old Soccer, New Football’ marketing slogan – which, under more forensic examination, may as well have meant a case of ‘new football’ urinating on ‘old soccer’ from a great height.

What the game’s new governors were trying to do was to effectively create two distinct and separate football worlds: the new and the old, stupidly imagining that the two should never meet or overlap.

Now, six years on, FFA is on a mission to embrace holistically the State League clubs, those so called ‘ethnic’ clubs like Sydney Olympic included, in an effort to bring unity between the game’s pointy end and its throbbing, passionate underbelly and its lifeblood.

As I have said in a number of columns in this space down the years, ‘new football’ would be nothing and would not exist without ‘old soccer’. That penny has now dropped at FFA headquarters.

What made this clear was the recent launch by FFA of the National Premier Leagues (NPL), a move to promote and recognise the rich value the under-tier, semi-pro leagues and clubs provide to our game.

Said David Gallop, the freshman CEO of the FFA, "The semi-pro state league clubs have long been the engine room of Australia’s player development system and have always provided a local focus of football passion across the nation.

"Today’s launch of the National Premier Leagues model gives the state-based competitions the status and organisational structure they deserve."

Distilled down to more pithy English, this says, ‘Let’s at last recognise the passion-driven tier of the game as its true and indispensable lifeblood.’

And now there’s more, with the more recent announcement of the FFA’s ‘multi-cultural initiative’, meant to recognise and harness the natural links between football and the cultural diversity that nourishes the spirit of our nation and our nationhood.

This unmistakable and unbreakable link between football and our cultural diversity is indeed football’s big edge over the sports with which it competes.

Unveiling FFA’s Harmony through Football program, David Gallop said: "Football is the face of Australia and is a sport that truly reflects the cultural diversity of our nation.

"With 1.7 million participants, football is Australia’s most inclusive and accessible sport, one that bridges gender, age, linguistic, ethnic and religious divides.

"In 2012 FFA undertook a cultural audit of the A-League which showed that 87% of players have an overseas ancestry and 68% have one or more parent born overseas, both well above the national average.

"Football’s broad fan base similarly reflects this diversity and our aim to help foster this diversity through the Harmony through Football program."

Federal sports minister Kate Lundy added: "Sport is a powerful unifier which brings together people from diverse backgrounds. This initiative shows football living up to its status as the world game – a universal language and passion."

This is indeed the backbone of football in a culture and economy in which it wants to grow and compete successfully. It tries to prosper in a market and media space dominated by two team sports (AFL and NRL) flush with money and with a huge capacity to invest in growth.

Yet for all their money, neither AFL nor NRL can ever hope to boast of having the kind of natural affinity with our country’s cultural diversity that football has.

AFL proudly puts out press releases every time a player of a non-Anglo origin breaks into one of its teams. But it’s a hollow crow.

What matters is not so much who plays the game but who its followers are. A glance at the demographics that make up the A-League’s crowds and support base will affirm football’s appeal to our living diversity.

The pulsating support Western Sydney Wanderers enjoys in an area that is the heartland of multicultural Australia is further testimony of this edge football has over other sports.

And these fans are mostly young, too. So much for the ‘ethnics’ belonging to ‘old soccer’.

The fact is that football’s multicultural grassroots, including its State League clubs (‘old soccer’ if you will), have massive assets, which FFA in its early years blindly devalued and failed to harness.

That is essentially what is now changing. And it’s a bloody good thing that it is.

He said there are just three: Harry Kewell, Tim Cahill and Lucas Neill. After them, he added, there is daylight.

So Sydney FC, already a leader in signing designer brand footballers Yorke, Juninho, Del Piero), has upped the ante in the ‘bling’ stakes by signing the charismatic Socceroos captain, Lucas Neill.

This is a good thing. Sydney FC, a representative of the country’s biggest city, should always cultivate its image of having an instinct for glamour, even if it has not always done that in the past.

Of course, interestingly, it wasn’t just Neill’s powerful box media and public appeal that brought him to the club. Without doubt it was as much if not more down to Frank Farina’s need to stabilise his team’s shaky central defence, especially with the long term absence of Pascal Bosschaart.

Neill, with his unquestioned vast experience, surely offers a remedy.

None of us can foretell whether or not Neill will actually add to Sydney FC’s crowd numbers, although the price of the club’s sponsorship packages has probably just gone up.

Neill is a defender so cannot be considered ‘box office’ in the same sense that attacking, especially creative attacking players can (unless he’s Franz Beckebauer). Football fans by and large come to games to see attacking players, not defenders.

But they do come to support winning teams and there are no winning teams that do not have a solid, stable defence.

The A-League is having a splendid season in the rebuilding of its image and in creating the right headlines. This signing is another right headline, at least in Sydney and its bustling, hard-to-please market.

Lucas Neill, in his first game, will probably be branded ‘Judas’ by the hard core fans of Melbourne Heart for having rejected their club's offer. But he will be seen as a divinity by Heart’s Sydney FC counterparts. And by Sydney’s hard-slogging promotion and sales staff.

He replied saying the big future threat to sport is not so much doping but match fixing.

How?

He said what is increasingly happening is that the criminal elements are enticing athletes to dope and then, later, blackmailing them to throw games and events. If they refuse, they will be outed.

Now, football’s record on doping is relatively meagre. It is more the sports that rely on strength, power and endurance, like cycling, athletics and weightlifting that are vulnerable to this stuff. We know this.

But when it comes to match-fixing, football, being the generator of volumes of money that probably supersedes all other sports combined, is always the biggest potential victim.

It is an eerie coincidence that Europol’s astonishing findings on the level of match-fixing in football is now closely followed by the bombshell release of the Australian Crime Commission’s report on its probe into the use of drugs in sport.

Though details of the ACC’s findings are yet to come out, and FFA chief David Gallop is making soothing noises suggesting football has little to worry about, one cannot avoid thinking that football, too, may be part of this grand scandal.

If Gianni Merlo is right about the tactics of the crims, there is no use pretending that football is not a target, even in Australia where crims do exist.

We in Australia are indeed not immune to match-fixing in football. It has happened before.

In the 1960s, while I was an inquisitive junior club official, I once saw a photocopy of a cheque made out to a referee from the winning club in a match that decided the outcome of a major championship. The losing club chose not to pursue it for reasons that were mysterious to me then and remain so to this day.

I am sure the incident was not an isolated one and that there were other such cases down the years.

Drug-taking, too.

One prominent Socceroos player of the 1960s told me that before an international game the team doctor gave him a couple of little red pills, which he called ‘purple hearts’.

The player, not realising he had taken an amphetamine stimulant, felt he was flying, playing the game of his life until, to his shock, he was subbed at half time. "You’re off," said the coach. "You’re playing crap."

Match-fixing in football is, of course, nothing new, the first headline-making scandal occurring in 1915 when Manchester United, threatened with relegation, played Liverpool away.

Bookies offered 7-1 odds on United winning 2-0. The temptation was too much and seven players across both teams collaborated to throw the game, which included an incident in which Liverpool’s Fred Pagnam, oblivious to the scam, got a bollocking from his team-mates for taking a shot at goal. All seven players were later banned for life.

Betting is indeed the big poison. Football is rife with it, both legal and illegal. The major, billion-making bookmaker firms are among the biggest sponsors of the game, supporting big clubs (the gaming firm bwin was Real Madrid’s shirt sponsor for five years) and of the game’s media coverage.

Samuel L. Jackson, peddling the wares of a global gaming company, has recently become more prominent on the A-League’s TV coverage than Archie Thompson.

News bulletins broadcasting the breaking story on the global match-fixing epidemic come to us on TV screens ironically embroidered by the logos of betting brands.

Is this good for the game? Does this promote good health for our children?

One hopes the lid is finally being blown off the worldwide practice of match-fixing and other forms of cheating as eyes now turn towards lawmakers, police authorities and sports governing bodies to stamp it out once and for all.

FIFA this week launched a whistle-blowers’ website on which you, me, anybody can report any form of cheating or breaches of FIFA’s Code of Ethics. You can report anonymously or otherwise and your identity will be completely protected.

You can do it here: Fair Play - Joining Together to Protect Our Organisation Against Risks.

Here is FIFA’s Code of Ethics.

And here is FIFA’s Disciplinary Code, which covers doping.

It’s a good start.

But let’s see what comes out in the wash of the Australian Crime Commission’s ground-breaking investigation.

Let me echo the call by the crime authority for cheats, and witnesses to cheating, to come forward and testify. In football as well as other professional sports.

Will football be tainted? Who knows but I am bracing myself. A report in The Age of a $40 million betting plunge on an A-League match is very worrying.

Given the monumental financial temptations that hover over the beautiful game, I somehow doubt that football will emerge from all this completely clean.

Compounding the issue further is the matter of who should play the illustrious five-time European champion. Football Federation Australia wants it to be an A-League ‘all stars’ team (as in that which will play Manchester United in the same month), while the Victorians, who appear to have dreamt up the promotion in the first place, would like it to be Melbourne Victory or at least a Melbourne club team.

All of which reminds me of a very different era in which such things were never an issue. In those days the principal opponent for any overseas glamour club team was always, without exception or argument, Australia, the Socceroos.

That era, quite correctly, is now long gone. The last time Australia faced an elite overseas club on home soil was in a tour match against AC Milan on 11 June 1993 at Princes Park in Melbourne (when, incidentally, SBS was the promoter).

Before that, such clashes were commonplace stretching back many decades. Typically club teams would come for a handful of games, one against a NSW selection, one against Victoria and, finally as the icing on the cake, one against Australia.

The first such game I attended, as a wide-eyed teenager was in 1964, a match between NSW and Everton, then just crowned English league champion. Here’s the programme poster.

A whopping 52,000 packed the SCG to see Brian Labone and his mates. NSW was not the attraction. Another 40,000 witnessed the ‘test’ against Australia a few days later at the then Sydney Showground where the Aussie part-timers were walloped 5-1.

Such blockbuster exhibition games between Australia and star-billed clubs from abroad, in a country then starved of international football, became common. Similar attendances followed in tours by Torpedo Moscow, AS Roma, Manchester United - parading George Best, Dennis Law and Bobby Charlton - and even Santos showing off its mega-star, Pelé.

The biggest such game was between Australia and the New York Cosmos in 1977, when the demand to see Beckenbauer and Co was so high, gates were broken down and an estimated 80,000 crammed into a 40,000 capacity stadium.

But the fans came usually to see the foreign stars, never the Socceroos.

So it went on. There were tours by clubs just about every year. Visits by high profile national teams were rare. Scotland came for three games in 1967, Greece the same in 1969 and Uruguay for two matches in 1974, in one of which a karate chop to the neck ended the career of Ray Baartz.

With the exception of Manchester United in 1999, Australia's national team turning out against visiting club team continued until 1993 when the Australian Soccer Federation and its president, John Constantine, put a stop to it.

Constantine contended that Australia had to move on from the colonial cringe, gain some dignity and act like other self-respecting nations by playing only against other national teams. This dogma remains to this day, as indeed it should.

But where are the blockbuster games on home soil between Australia and credible, high profile national teams?

Where is our chance to roll up and watch as our representative team takes on and matches its wits against a highly rated and feared national foe? Where we can roar ourselves hoarse, wear our green and gold scarves and beanies, and root for our boys and will them to beat the best.

In the past decade or so we have seen visits by quality national team opponents: France with Zidane, Argentina with Messi, the 2004 European champion, Greece, and a Netherlands side which, eight months later, went on to play the World Cup final.

But this habit has mysteriously died. That game against the Dutch in Sydney in 2009, over three years ago, was the last time Australia had a chance to show to home fans what it can do against a highly ranked foreign nation. Why?

Now we welcome as guests Manchester United and Liverpool instead.

Naturally I am excited by seeing United and Liverpool in the flesh as much as the next man. But, just like the next man, I care nothing about the outcome of the games.

Will I be rooting myself silly for the ‘all stars’ against these teams? No I won’t. Will you? I am guessing you won’t either.

What you and I will be doing is rolling up to these games just to be there, in our many tens of thousands, just so we can tell our grandkids that we have seen Robin Van Persie and Luis Suarez.

Which will take me back again to the 1960s when we came only to see Charlton, Best, Beckenbauer and Pelé, but never to see our boys beat the pants off them.

So, if you will excuse the sacrilege, I don’t see much gain to be had for the advancement of our football in the visits of Manchester United and Liverpool beyond the sexy headlines, the photo opportunities and the money that will be made.

I would prefer that we were visited upon by Spain, or Brazil, or Germany, or Italy, for games from which we could actually extract some national pride or at least a test of our international capabilities.

And a chance to actually beat the legitimate best.

The maturity of the public discourse as the two are being wooed to jump ship and exit the A-League is a long way from how Australians once responded to player emigration.

When suddenly, out of the blue, Craig Johnston joined Middlesbrough in the 1970s most were elated at the thought that a 16-year old Aussie kid has made it with a first division English club. Though you wouldn't call Boro exactly a glamour club, then or now, at least it acted as a splendid platform for Johnston's next move to Liverpool, with which he won loads of trophies including two European Cups.

And so it went for the wave of emigrating young Australians, which began to curve upwards through the 1980s. Joining any professional overseas club seemed to be a good thing, so long as the club was European.

If there was a debate in those days, and there wasn't much, it was mostly about what the right age was for a player to go and rarely about where he was going.

Not until Mark Viduka joined Dinamo Zagreb when he was reportedly being courted by Real Madrid did we begin to perk up and ask, is this the right club for the boy? Did the kid make the right choice?

Indeed, as Pim Verbeek correctly said in an SBS interview a few years ago, "It's not when they go that matters but where."

This is the question that has been at the centre of the discussion over Rogic and Ryan.

The suggestion that Ryan should go for a 'trial' at a club in the fourth tier of Scottish football, when Scotland's first tier is not as good as the A-League, was met with not much less than outrage.

The idea that Rogic, superbly gifted in creative resources, might go to Reading, a club apparently heading for the drop from the Premier League, was also met with much derision.

You will note that the news that Bernie Ibini might end up at Club Brugge in Belgium was not so adversely received.

Brugge, even if it isn't in one of Europe's top-tier leagues, is an eminent club with a rich history, a former European Cup finalist and one of the traditionally two strongest in Belgium's top division. It is where Frank Farina and Paul Okon made successes of themselves as legionnaires, both later moving on to Serie A.

For a young player like Ibini, yet to gain his first senior international cap, it seems a good destination. Good luck to him.

Of course, identifying the right destination, and indeed the right timing, for an Australian player moving overseas is not an exact science. It can carry many determining elements:- what the player wants, what his parents want, what influence, expedient or otherwise, the agents exert on the player, even what country the player prefers ultimately to represent.

And you might ask, who are we the public and we in the media to meddle in these things and make judgment calls on what is best for an individual player's welfare? Isn't it the player's right in a free society to make his own choices?

Well, of course it is. But the blunt truth is we who make the judgments are not so much concerned about the player's welfare as we are about what is in the best interests of Australia and Australian football.

My own concern is what destination is the best for the player's future development? In other words, what is the place and club that will best facilitate the player becoming a high quality Socceroos player (or Matildas player for that matter), who in turn will bring glory to the country and enhance our football.

That is the prism through which most of us, I suspect, look at these things. What we want, for instance, is for Tom Rogic to be an accomplished player, if not a star, at the next World Cup in 2014 and we rather suspect he is not going to become that by playing for Reading in England's second tier. Hence the outrage.

A case in point is the immensely gifted Nick Carle. At 26, in 2007, he was the best player in the A-League. As the reigning Warren Medallist, he departed for Turkey where he stayed a short while, then ended up in England's second tier, first at Bristol City and then at Crystal Palace.

Three years after leaving, by which time he was 29, he returned having not improved as a footballer, not one iota. Now, at 31, he's in the Persian Gulf, on loan, scarcely talked about back home and his chances of being picked to play for Australia again are, to put it mildly, scarce.

The overseas adventure of a uniquely talented Australian player was heavily botched.

We who are concerned, trembled at the thought that the same may happen to Rogic or Ryan. And we had very good reasons.

Yet, in another form, it is still very much alive and can still be of enormous benefit to the development of footballers.

For those who were born less than 40 or 30 years ago, by ‘street football’ I refer to the impromptu, totally ungoverned games that kids used to play in the streets or public parks as a form of enjoyment, just about every day, usually after school until it was too dark to play.

These were the breeding grounds, pre-Messi, of all of the world’s greats: Pele, Garrincha, Di Stefano, Puskas, Best, Cruyff, Maradona and the rest. It was where all players learned and polished their technique and their game sense at their earliest ages.

In the absence of organised football in their age groups, in a world that couldn’t afford it or didn’t want to, these kids played in totally unstructured games without any adult supervision. There were no coaches, no referees, no parents. They just found a ball, set up two goals, divided their group into two teams and played.

In the process they learned simply by playing, by trying things, by taking risks, by wanting to take the mickey, and every time with a fierce ambition to win the game. This went on in every corner of the world, from the cobblestone streets of Scotland to the favelas of Brazil.

It still goes on in the poorer corners of the world, Africa, parts of Asia and Latin America. But in the more affluent parts, where kids can afford more comfortable and expensive diversions (like computer games), street football has died. This includes Australia.

Hence, the rise of small-sided games, SSGs, which aims to replicate street football, a wise concept that recognises the need for kids to play and develop by getting many touches on the ball. It is essential for their development.

But organised small-sided games do not fully replicate the true essence of street football. This is because they are supervised, with coaches often interfering and parents keenly peering, things that were absent in the young life of Pele who played against the wishes of his mum, with a ball concocted from nylon stockings stolen from a clothes line.

Yet impromptu games of football without supervision, even in the most affluent parts of the world, still go on. These are the huge number of social games that take place on weekends or even in midweek lunchtimes and afternoons everywhere, including in Australia. Just take a drive through Sydney’s Centennial Park on any Sunday and you will see them.

These games are organised ad-hoc by groups of mates, work colleagues and community groups whose common bond is the enjoyment of playing football. It’s a teeming playing population, which makes up a large part of Australia’s surveyed playing population of 1.7 million.

I know because I am part of it. On an average week, if I can help it, I play two games, one on Saturday and one on Sunday. It’s enormous fun. In each case players turn up, we pick two teams and we just play. There must be thousands of such games being played around the country in any given week.

The problem is this: there are very few kids that are involved in these games. The age levels are high, the playing groups made up of over 35s, over 45s or even more ancients like me. This is such a pity. Imagine what the young ones could learn by playing in these games, unsupervised and left to sort things for themselves without interference.

Every time I turn up at these things I look around to see if there are any 15 or 16 year olds or even younger ones around. There are some, occasionally, when one or two of the playing dads bring along their young son or daughter. But they are very few in number.

One man I know – a respected private academy coach – invites some of his pupils and former pupils in their mid-teens to these games in which he himself takes part. The kids love it because here they are allowed completely free reign to express themselves, without any superior gazing on them, without anyone blowing a whistle to stop play and make them do things differently.

If they make bad decisions or get into bad habits, they soon find out it’s not working and change things. It is called learning.

And here they learn street wisdom, so essential in becoming a successful player, but which is all too absent from the younger generation of players who are subjected to structure and supervision.

And, crucially, they learn to have pride and a winning ambition. Here they don’t play for trophies or points. They play only to satisfy an inner need to win and because they love to play. And mostly they are ferocious in their quest to win and beat the other mob. No motivation speeches required.

So ‘street football’ in this form still lives. The only pity is that not enough kids are part of it.

I would encourage the dads and mums who read this to take their football playing kids along to these things as often as possible.

In today’s world, at least in this country, they are the only places left where kids can learn from the beautiful freedom of just playing.

Nothing went right for him, culminating in a red card for a reckless challenge in the midst of a frenetic climax to a game of much drama. He has been banned for three matches and can’t return to Mariners’ lineup until the local derby against the Jets on 19 January.

But here’s the positive: it will, or should, serve as a significant signpost in the learning curve of a young man with immense gifts the likes of which we rarely see in our midst.

Rogic, with his capacity for surprise, his gift for escape from the tightest of defensive corners, and his yen for instilling fear among defenders, has been the subject of wide admiration since he began flirting with fame a very short time ago. The calls for his inclusion in the Australia squad were answered and he was not found wanting there either.

A few days earlier, when the Mariners were in Wellington facing the rugged tenacity of Phoenix, I curled up in my lounge chair unable keep my eyes off the game, purely because Rogic was playing. He had a splendid game and I was not pleased to see him substituted on 75 minutes when the Mariners led 1-0. With Rogic on the bench and his attacking threat numbed, Phoenix revived and levelled the game.

Against Sydney in the next game, coach Graham Arnold kept Rogic on as long as he could, until six minutes into stoppage time, with 96 minutes gone, the red card flashed and the boy was dismissed. It had been a torrid night, the dismissal a culmination of an unhappy day in a fledgling career.

He will get over it, of course. Not everything always goes right in a young footballer’s calling. If he has the right stuff he will bounce back.

What we admirers of Rogic need to note and accept is that he is not the full quid yet, as he cannot be at this age and neither can he be expected to be. The kid deserves a modicum of patience and respect. Let him be. And that would echo the advice Holger Osieck gave to the media just a few weeks ago.

Of course the media rarely exercises that kind of self-control and neither should it. If a young player provides a high level of excitement for the fans and gives hints of a prosperous future, the media’s only job is to report it.

But as fans perhaps we should remember Rogic’s age and that he may not be as mature as occasionally the game would demand him to be. The match against Sydney FC was a biggie, 17,000 on hand and Alessandro Del Piero at centre stage. With his team heading for a rare loss, the pressure was on and he lashed out with a high foot to recover a ball he had lost with a heavy touch.

It happens.

The episode will be a big test of Rogic’s maturity and his capacity to put it behind him and move on. In that sense this is an important episode in the young man’s career, even a chance to prove to himself his powers of recovery.

Rogic is undoubtedly among the finest and most creative attacking talents to come out of this country in the last decade. His call up for Australia, even after just one season in the A-League, was well justified. The only regret was that he was under-used in the East Asian Cup qualifiers in Hong Kong. Osieck, a conservative boss, missed the opportunity to more fully test the boy’s international potential.

Reports now suggest Rogic may skip the A-League in the January transfer window and head overseas. Whether he does or not, I will not be alone in hoping Rogic bounces back from his ban and reproduces the form needed to have him challenge for a Socceroo spot when the World Cup qualifiers resume in March.

In that I also hope he is well protected by referees.

After the most recent injury to Del Piero, Sydney FC coach Frank Farina has called on referees to better protect playmakers from being targeted. He is absolutely right.

That call should also go for Tom Rogic. He, too, is a playmaker. And a pretty gifted one.

I wish a very happy New Year to all readers of this column and thank you for your support in 2012.

Twitter: @lesmurraySBS

Not happy for the league and even less happy for Heart.

It was more than a fifty per cent fall from the nearly 11,000 that rolled up for the club’s first home game of the season against Wellington Phoenix on 14 October. It was 66 per cent lower than the league’s season average gate, which after 10 rounds is at just under 13,000.

Heart sits in seventh place on the table, only just out of the top six on goal difference. So the low turnout cannot be put down entirely to lack of performance.

So what is the problem? Why can’t the second professional football club in a city the size of Melbourne, and one as enamoured by sport as that city is, do better? And how chronic is it?

I believe it has primarily to do with identity – something, a key thing, that distinguishes the club from its geographical rival.

There is, let me stress, nothing too wrong with the way the club as a football business appears to be run. The board, the CEO, head of football John Didulica, and head coach John Aloisi do not deserve to be faulted.

But the club’s identity, its distinctive place in Melbourne’s sporting culture, is becoming more and more difficult to pinpoint.

Yet this matter of identity is critical. It is the essence of what prescribes a genuine rivalry, a point of difference between all clubs let alone those that are of the same city. As one punter on Twitter disturbingly put it, ‘The Heart stands for nothing.’

In football the world over and throughout history, clubs have been identified through something they represent, something they stand for.

This identity, this point of distinction, can be rooted in many things, such as location, social class (as in River Plate-Boca Juniors or Carlton-Collingwood in AFL), ethnic roots, race, nationhood (Barcelona-Real Madrid), religion (Rangers-Celtic) and even the way they play, the kind of technical culture they represent.

This need for a distinctive identity was not lost on Heart and its founders when the club was launched.

In the absence of having a geographic distinction, in order to find some kind of a polar opposite to Melbourne Victory the club chose to take the cloak of ‘beautiful football’, a way of playing that gave it a sense of self. Hence the appointment of John van’t Schip as coach, a man who represented the sweet Ajax ideology.

It was a matter of having a distinct culture and it worked for a while. The team played and insisted on playing the smooth passing game, even if it didn’t always bring the desired results and, worse, even though Brisbane Roar played it better.

Van’t Schip drove a top to bottom approach with the youth team having to play the same way and with the same philosophy and with the young players being given ready openings to the senior team.

But somewhere through last season, Van’t Schip’s second, the philosophy began to be diluted. Now, under John Aloisi, it seems to be more than ever about results (even though, as Roar has shown, ‘beautiful football’ can and does bring results).

It’s a difficult challenge for Heart. The club has a survival need for a distinct identity while it equally needs on-field results to stay afloat and satisfy its fans. Marrying these two things is never easy.

Its rival, Victory, has a rich identity simply by having been the first A-League club to take root and having taken the city early. It has a proud winning record, is seen as a big club, and has always invested in star quality: Muscat, Thompson, Hernandez, Kewell, Flores, Rojas etc.

In Sydney, there are no identity issues in the local rivalry. Sydney FC is seen as the ‘bling’ while Western Sydney Wanderers, the league’s newest club, represents a location with a teeming football population. The identity of WSW is etched in its very name.

Heart, as one observer put it to me, needs a circuit-breaker to stop the slide. Hence its genuine interest in pursuing David Beckham. And if the club doesn’t get Beckham, it has to pursue another magic name that will bring back the bums to its seats.

But even that will be a short term measure. It will still continue to face the challenge of having to cultivate a genuine identity.

The sacking of football director Gary Cole is the latest symptom of this apparent chronic malady, coming after the capitulation of coach Ian Crook and the string of bad results which yielded the club just one point out of a possible 15 in its last five games.

The jettisoning of Cole, who held the same position at Melbourne Victory over a period that brought two A-League titles, does little to convince that the sickness is heading for a cure.

Cole’s tenure, which began last December, lasted 11 months. He was appointed as part of what seemed a forward-looking restructure and executive strategy by a club that’s football agenda had previously been driven by men in suits with little real football background or expertise.

Now, as a result of yet another restructure, he is gone. The club’s fans may be excused for wondering which restructure is the real deal and which restructure will actually last.

The popular supposition is that it is new coaching appointee Frank Farina who triggered the exit of Cole and it was Farina, engaged on a short term contract, who insisted that he takes charge of all football matters at the club.

But this is doubtful and one should stop short of blaming Frank Farina for Cole’s sacking. It is unlikely that Farina had anything to do with it.

After the decision to show Cole the door, Sydney FC issued a short, terse press release in which Farina was not even mentioned, the club citing an internal restructure in which the position of football director was made redundant.

But later, in an AAP report published on this website, the decision was put down to the new coach with chief executive Tony Pignata saying: “Frank's come in and Frank will be running the football department and the decision was that the role, regardless who was in it, was surplus to requirements so we've made it redundant. It's a discussion we've had with Frank. That's how he's done things in the past and we've brought Frank in and we're going to give him the full support.”

Not quite.

Our information is that Gary Cole had been sidelined as football department chief and primary advisor to the board on football matters well before Farina came in.

Cole, in fact, was not party to the decision to appoint Farina and indeed he was totally overlooked in the process of finding a successor to Ian Crook, a critical procedure given the string of results, the need to have those results turned around and the strategic importance of who the new coach should be.

Yet the headline writers were fooled. Said one of them: Sydney FC listens to Farina, sacks Gary Cole.

This did not happen. The decision to shut down Cole’s role, and Cole himself, was made sometime before the need to identify a new coach arose. So Farina is not to be blamed for it.

What this says about the Sydney FC board and management’s capacity to run a football club is not much. Twelve months ago the club chose to go the way of appointing a football director to head up its football activities and picked a proven man, a Socceroos representative with a track record in these things, Gary Cole, as the prong of that strategy. Now that whole strategy, not just Cole, is out the window.

What this suggests is that Farina has been picked as the fulcrum of a need to deliver a new solution, all things football deferred to him as a man to find the club’s way out of the woods, with the men in suits who chose him retiring to their desks to wait and see what he does.

It’s a tough ask on Frank. I feel for him.

Farina is very capable of rising to the task of turning the results around and may do so, at least in the short term. But that will still not answer the legitimate question of what the club’s governors have in mind for a long term strategy for the club’s football identity and what they have had in mind for it in the past eight years.

Under the managerial system, the manager is the boss and answers only to the board. This is what Farina will be, effectively a manager not just a coach, at least for the next five months.

Under the other system, where the broad football agenda is driven by a department head, the football director, who is detached and quarantined from first team results, the head coach is only responsible for the technical management of the first team and nothing else.

I prefer the latter, for it ensures that the football agenda and the club’s football brand, as prescribed by the board, remains continuous and intact, no matter how the first team performs and who the head coach is.

By reverting to the managerial system, the Sydney FC board have chosen to not just appoint a new first team coach but also to anoint him as the club’s football monarch, much like Alex Ferguson is at Manchester United.

And they did this, remarkably, on a short term contract.

All will appear to be well if the first team results come and the crowds – which have fallen from 35,000 to 12,000 – return.

But results alone will not deliver long term stability, something that has eluded this club from its inception.

Consistently ruthless. And consistently stupid when it comes to running a football team.

His last four managers, all of whom have been sacked, lasted between 223 and 262 days. Only the charismatic and trophy proficient Jose Mourinho and Claudio Ranieri, the man Abramovich inherited with the title deeds of the club, lasted longer.

The firing of Roberto Di Matteo, who in his short stint led the club to the FA Cup and UEFA Champions League titles (the latter being the club's long elusive holy grail), is only the latest victim of which there will be many more, there is nothing surer.

Rafael Benitez was quickly installed as Di Matteo's replacement. At least Rafa already knows that his tenure will be short, not going beyond the current season, with Pep Guardiola already being courted to replace him.

Benitez will probably do an ok job. He's well versed in the art of results and how to get them. What he's not well versed in, and never has been, is how to get results and play sexy football at the same time. And playing sexy football is, we are told, also something Abramovich craves.

So here is the really big question of the day: Will Pep seriously consider taking the Chelsea job? Will Pep take the risk of trying to fashion out of Chelsea a team that plays the football that adheres to his philosophy, something that will require voluminous personnel changes and a lot of time, a thing which Abramovich never seems to have?

Cynics will say, why not? Pep will get himself a mega contract and, if he's prematurely sacked, collect a mega payout. The big Russian kahuna has already paid out almost $120 million to the men he fired before their contracts were up.

It's not rocket science to conclude that Abramovich could achieve both titles and sexy football (as in the Barcelona model) with a bit of patience. For that he would have to give Guardiola at least two seasons. But history shows that kind of staying power and strength of conviction is not in the Abramovich DNA.

What of the Chelsea fans, who also thirst for results in the belief that greatness can be achieved by the mere winning of titles? They, too, should turn to the famous words of Danny Blanchflower who pointed out a long time ago that football was not about results but, above all, about glory.

Blanchflower was drawing on his own playing experience while captaining a glorious Tottenham in the 1960s. He knew a thing or two about attaining trophies and glory at the same time.

Chelsea, led by a Di Matteo living under the tyranny of the owner's impatience, did lift the Champions League trophy last May. But while a victory it was, glorious it was not.

Abramovich, who has run team affairs at Chelsea astonishingly badly since he's been its proprietor, should make up his mind whether he wants trophies in the club cabinet or actual club greatness.

On the modern television landscape if a sport or an event can score a joint free to air-payTV deal, it means it is now so-called mainstream and is no longer on the periphery.

In Australia, football now joins only two other sports, AFL and rugby league, whose premier club competitions enjoy this mix. Starting with the 2013-14 season all games will be covered live across the two platforms, as they are in AFL and NRL.

It is not the first time, of course. For a short period in the 1990s the National Soccer League (NSL) was covered on both SBS and the C7 pay network, although never with all games beamed out live.

In the vast majority of markets and countries of the world, sports and events which refer to themselves as ‘major’ or ‘mainstream’ are, at least in part, on free to air. In most places where a sport is only on payTV, those sports are seen as peripheral or second tier, sports still seeking growth. To break through the glass ceiling, they need free to air television. This is something the A-League has now achieved.

Despite contentions to the contrary, it is an instinct by all sports organisations and promoters to have their product on free television, no matter what the massive payoff is for being on payTV. This is because, by its nature, free TV plays to larger potential audiences, which is what brings about brand penetration. It is what the sponsors want and are willing to pay larger amounts for. Free TV, put simply, is the most powerful marketing and promotion vehicle any vendor can have.

You would probably expect me to say this, of course, but there can be little doubt that, in finding its way to free TV exposure, in SBS the league has come to the right place. As have the Socceroo World Cup qualifiers which will also be on SBS, screened on a one-hour delay.

SBS, after 32 years of covering football, remains more than just a football broadcaster. SBS still believes it is not just in the football broadcasting business but in the football promotion business. It is in the SBS DNA to promote football and build its markets, whether it is for the World Cup (for men and women), the UEFA Champions League or the A-League, largely due to its government decreed charter.

The network has been doing this since 1980 with demonstrable results.

SBS also has form in living happily with a payTV partner. This was the case when both SBS and Fox Sports broadcast the English Premier League through three rights contracts from the mid-1990s to the mid-2000s.

This happy symbiosis can now resume and is bound to bring enormous benefits to the League and the game. It may just be a three-way marriage made in heaven.

There are six - Eli Babalj, Aziz Behich, Matthew Leckie, Tommy Oar, Tom Rogic and Matt Ryan - who are under 22. Another four - James Holland, Ryan McGowan, Adam Sarota and Matthew Spiranovic - are under 25.

That's a total of 10 of an emerging age out of the squad total of 19.

This is decidedly new from Osieck who, as a conservative coach, has so far been to the right of Mitt Romney.

But it's good and will be welcomed by many, including me, who have done their share of harping that the time to rebuild the Socceroos and invest in youth is long overdue.

Of course this does not remotely represent the full journey of rebuilding, far from it.

For a start we have no idea how many of these young boys will actually get on the field against the Koreans, much less be in the starting side.

The other obvious question is whether or not it's too late and how long will the youngsters last in the calculations of the national coach, given the critical World Cup qualifiers coming up in the first half of next year when, surely, the temptation for Osieck to revert to the old guard will be strong.

But even the most cynical will not suggest that the coach would have picked these players if he didn't intend to use them or at least try them in the Korea game.

Which then will put the onus back on the kids to prove themselves and take their chance.

Even in the worst case we can expect at least four of this spring generation to start against Korea. If Holger was to start with all of his so-called older players, and remain faithful to his favoured 4-4-2 formation, this is his most likely starting lineup:

Schwarzer - Wilkshire, Neill, Spiranovic, Behich - Sarota, Valeri, McKay, Oar - Brosque, Thompson.

But he could go bolder and go with a diamond midfield, using Rogic as his number 10 and throw in Babalj as one of the front two.

In that event his lineup could be: Schwarzer - Wilkshire, Neill, Spiranovic, Behich - Sarota, Valeri, Rogic, Oar - Brosque, Babalj.

Now that's a lineup which has age on its side (apart from Schwarzer, of course).

It's a pretty exciting one, don't you think?

Whatever permutation the coach chooses, we can only hope the experiment fires - for the kids, for Holger, and for us. It will not be before its time.

As a kind of era of technical enlightenment grips the A-League most of the coaches, especially the emerging ones, are trying to give us all hope by deploying modern methods and tactical philosophies.

But the question is, do they have the players who understand it? Or is it the coaches who are falling short in properly imparting to the players what they have in mind?

Let’s be frank. What most of the teams are now trying to do, with varying degrees of success, is an Everest above what we had to watch, in some agony, during the early years of the A-League.

Gone is the foul culture of the biff and bash, the relentless artillery fire of the long ball and the obsession with fighting in preference to playing that epitomised 2005 when, truly, Miron Bleiberg’s Queensland Roar was about the only team that tried to play football.

Now, almost every team in the league treasures the need to keep rather than waste the ball and has adopted the sacred principle that without possessing and using the ball you cannot win football matches.

‘We gave the ball away too cheaply,’ is now the most common post-match cry among losing coaches.

A few years ago a more common diagnosis was: ‘We lost the fight. We didn’t want it enough. We didn’t show any pride,’ or other variations of the same cop-out.

This is good. Power to the coaches who believe and long may they persevere.

But of course they are a long way from succeeding. Apart from the admired and envied Brisbane Roar, the teams that are trying to play this way are only still trying and, at best, are in prolonged transition towards their goal.

Sydney FC, Melbourne Victory, Newcastle Jets, Western Sydney Wanderers and Melbourne Heart are all works in progress.

Adelaide, coached by a regenerated John Kosmina (once a war horse coach who now talks more about ‘good football’) and probably helped by an ACL lead-in, is further advanced. Central Coast is already an accomplished outfit in the way it wants to play, as are Perth Glory and Wellington Phoenix, who are no longer in transition.

The two teams who are struggling most in this shift are Sydney FC and Melbourne Victory.

Sydney FC began its work just about with a blank sheet of paper: a new, untried coach who believes in the all-attack, possession game, and a largely new set of players, including the regal Alessandro Del Piero.

To date the team is yet to click and remains reliant on the skills, set plays and charismatic influence of the great Italian. Any semblance of the Ian Crook ideology coming into fruition, not to say a sign that his colleagues actually understand the technical lingo of Del Piero, remains elusive.

In Victory’s case the coach, a proven champion, has found it difficult to immediately duplicate the pleasantries and smooth winning ways he achieved at with Roar.

Ange Postecoglou appeared shocked after the first round loss to Heart, protesting that his team was not supposed to be in transition any longer. But it was clear that it was, and still is.

What is clear is that getting Australian players, especially those honed on old, archaic technical dogmas, to play the modern way is proving challenging. It is one thing to preach a modern tactical ideology. Getting the players to understand it is quite another.

For this I blame the primitive methods by which our players have been brought up from their toddler years. Not too many of our players who are now in the early to mid-20s were taught enough ball skills when they were eight, nine or 10, and few were taught about movement and space when they were 14.

This is now changing of course, beginning with the strong trend towards small-sided games and more intense skills coaching for children before the growth spurt. But for those players who were mal-coached 10 and more years ago, it’s almost a case of teaching old dogs new tricks.

It will be hard and it will be slow. But it’s doable.

The argument will run that in the case of the Brisbane Roar the transition was quick and immensely successful. So what’s the hold-up elsewhere?

The answer I have to that is that at Roar, Postecoglou astutely assembled a squad of players and coaching staff who were all receptive enough to quickly grasp the philosophy and what it had to take to implement it. This, apparently, he has not yet been able to achieve at Victory.

The backroom staff, including now head coach Rado Vidosic and fitness guru Ken Stead, remained in Brisbane after Postecoglou left. Continuity in the philosophy and methodology is guaranteed.

I write this after the end of the campaign’s fourth round, so it’s still early days to draw sweeping conclusions and make bold predictions.

But it seems to me the teams that are finished products - Brisbane, Central Coast, Perth, Wellington and, to a lesser extent, Adelaide - will rule the league this season.

The others are all still growing and have some catching up to do.

“Who keeps telling me I shouldn't be in the Socceroos? Who keeps telling all us old boys we shouldn't be part of the Socceroos?,” he inquired.

Sure. But Archie may have also pondered at the wonderful pass that set up his goal, provided by Tommy Oar who, at 20, is 14 years his junior.

I loved Archie’s wonderful header, so perfectly placed beyond the Iraqi keeper. But I loved Oar’s sweetly timed and weighted curling chip that preceded it even more. Why? Because Tommy Oar is the team’s future and it is he who gives us hope.

I don’t quibble with the notion that if a player is good enough he is young enough. What Del Piero is doing at 37 is the testament which most immediately comes to mind.

But that also works in reverse. Maybe Tommy Oar is good enough and therefore old enough. Maybe some others of Oar’s generation are, too, if only they were given the chance. We surely won’t and cannot know until they are.

There is a doctrine being widely adhered to that Australia’s international strength has declined because the country’s best young players no longer play in Europe’s most elite and most competitive leagues.

It’s a fair argument. But it does not mean that the international careers of these players must be put on hold until they break into the first teams of Liverpool, Bayern Munich or AC Milan.

They are the best we have in that generation, wherever they happen to play and whether we would wish it to be otherwise or not. Like my old dad used to say every time I complained about the dinner that was put in front of me: “That’s what you’re having, son, and that’s what you’re going to have to like.”

We simply have to invest in the best youth we have and not keep wishing we had what we don’t have.

In any case, why the resistance to introduce youth when the older guys are no longer playing in the top leagues either? Are the leagues of the Gulf States good quality competitions? Is the MLS? Are they better than the second tier European leagues, where many of the younger boys are playing?

I doubt it. I doubt, come to think of it, if they’re better than the A-League. Only the money is.

Indeed I would like to have someone explain to me why only two players from the A-League – Thompson and Mark Milligan – are deemed fit to be in the Australia squad. Surely there could be more.

It may have been true - back in Pim Verbeek’s day - that a Bundesliga training session was more beneficial to a player than playing in the A-League. But the League has come a long way since then, technically and tactically.

And competitively. Our young players in the A-League are now playing in front of large, boisterous, noisy crowds and under serious pressure. They are mostly coached by well accredited young coaches who are trying to play a modern way and instil in them modern philosophies.

When it comes to this, the Matt McKay story is educational. When he became the standard-bearer of Brisbane Roar’s glorious championship run in 2010-2011, he was finally given a chance, at 28, by Holger Osieck. He has been there ever since, often as Australia’s best player.

So why weren’t others given the same chance? Did Erik Paartalu not deserve a look in? Or Mitch Nicholls? And why is Shane Stefanutto, once a Socceroos player, now less of a left back than David Carney, who can’t get a club run in Uzbekistan?

There may be perfect explanations for this, to which I am not privy and all of which are carried around by Holger in his head.

But you get my drift. The A-League is no longer inferior to many of the leagues from which the national coach plucks his players. It is, in fact, a good league in which young players are getting their grooming and in which it is not easy for young players to succeed.

After the 2010 World Cup, there were calls from some in the media, including me, that the rebuilding process for the national team should begin there and then. It didn’t. It still hasn’t.

Following the Asian Cup in early 2011, when the need to win was preferred over the need to rebuild, we were told by FFA technical director Han Berger that he and Osieck would fast track the younger players so they would be ready for Brazil 2014 as competitive players.

There has been no fast-tracking. The challenge to experiment and blood the young men, even in friendlies, has been squibbed in the interests of short-term results. Only two of the young generation, Matthew Spiranovic and Robbie Kruse, have been given regular opportunities in the 17 games played since the Asian Cup.

That is not even fast tracking, much less rebuilding.

The old, reliable Aussie spirit and attitude once again got the Socceroos over the line against Iraq and it’s now a safe bet that the team will qualify and be in Brazil in 20 months’ time.

But I fear that unless the rebuilding begins, and begins fast, the Green and Gold Army won’t be dancing on the sands of Rio.