Andrea Pirlo, commanding midfield architect for many years of AC Milan, Juventus and the Italian national team, has joined New York City in the MLS, the USA's professional league.
The move triggered questions in Australia, among them, why did he not come to Australia instead and why did he not get signed by Melbourne City, owned by the same well-stashed sheikhs of Abu Dabi who own New York City.
After all, only three years ago Sydney FC managed to sign Alessandro Del Piero, a player of an even greater fame and acumen than Pirlo. This off-season the same Sydney FC signed a little known Slovakian named Filip Hološko and called him a marquee player. Perth Glory has done the same with Diego Castro Gimenez. With the greatest respect, Diego Castro who?
Why is this? Why is the A-League not getting the marquee players it once did? After all we did have Dwight Yorke, Juninho and Robbie Fowler. Not to mention Del Piero.
Well one reason is that it is the MLS that is getting them. In recent years the MLS has tweaked its marquee player rules - they call them 'designated players' over there - which now allows clubs to sign more big names for bigger money.
Kaká is the biggest earner on a salary of $7.2 million per season at Orlando City. Sebastian Giovinco, who never could hold down a regular start at Juventus, is next, raking in $7.1 million a year at Toronto FC.
Steven Gerrard is on $6.3 million at LA Galaxy while Frank Lampard is on $6 million at New York City.
These are salaries way beyond the affordability of any A-League club.
But curiously, Andrea Pirlo is listed having a salary of $2.3 million which, according to my information, is less than what Del Piero was getting in Sydney. So what happened there? I believe Sydney FC did inquire about Pirlo but is saying his demands were too high.
At a recent charity luncheon in Sydney, FFA chief David Gallop told the audience that his organisation made inquiries about Ronaldinho after the iconic Brazilian left his Mexican club, Queretaro, but his financial demands were out of the ball park. He ended up signing for Fluminense in Rio.
In my opinion Ronaldinho would have been worth at least $4 million per season in the A-League in terms of likely return on investment. I would be surprised if Flu is paying him that much but I could be wrong.
The one Australian club that could afford to compete with the MLS in wooing players, because of its financial backing, is Melbourne City. Yet for some reason City is not taking up this opportunity. It's difficult to fathom why.
It's not as if they have a big market share in Melbourne and are a threat in any way to Melbourne Victory.
We know the club's owners spent serious money on a state of the art technical facility but it's probably time they made a serious statement on the field of play about their genuine ambitions. And their members would be saying they should start spending money on their team we all know they can afford to spend.
As it is, apart from building a training centre, it is difficult to see where the A-League and Australian football has benefited from the takeover of Melbourne Heart by Sheikh Mansour and his family, reputed to be worth more than $1 trillion.
Iconic marquee players, as the Del Piero experience proved, can be a massive boon to the A-League. They may cost a lot of money but they also make a lot of money for their clubs.
But let's buy marquee players not Clayton's marquee players, provided of course we can afford them. Marquee players, in the simplest terms, are defined by their capacity to boost revenue, to add to the gate, to add to membership numbers, shirt sales and TV revenues, and not their capacity to score goals or put in crunching tackles.
And coaches should be bypassed when identifying them. We in Australia have this prim and proper culture which demands that the coach has to have the final say on marquee player signings because he lives or dies by his results.
In most other, higher worlds this is nonsense. Can you imagine Florentino Perez, the Real Madrid president, going to Rafael Benitez or Carlo Ancelotti to ask for permission to sign Gareth Bale or Cristiano Ronaldo? Not in your life.
Signing marquee players is a business not a technical decision. Coaches will at times reject the signing of an iconic, big-name player not to look after the interests of the club but to protect their own backsides. That is why, in business decisions, they should be bypassed or even over-ruled.
A good example, and there are many, is when Ferenc Puskás was signed by Real Madrid president Santiago Bernabeu in 1958. The Galloping Major was 32 kilos overweight with a pot belly the size of a bus. The coach said to Bernabeu, 'Look at him. He's fat.' To which Bernabeu replied, 'Getting him fit is your problem, not mine.' Puskás went on to not just lose his excess kilos but play eight years for Madrid, scoring 156 goals in 180 games.
