Asian Champions League Beckons

Phill Chadwick reports, to finish first in the A-League this season means nothing when it comes to qualifying for the Asian Conference League.

With Adelaide United still undefeated at the top of the A-League, who could blame ever optimistic fans for dreaming of future glories?

One of the major benefits coming out of Australia's move from the Oceania to the Asian Football Confederation is the chance for two of our club sides to play in the lucrative and, increasingly prestigious, Asian Champions League.

There is considerable prize money available, as well as a berth in the Club World Championships. Ok, maybe five rounds is a bit premature to start predicting Adelaide's triumphant future, but, seriously, there are a few problems to be overcome between now and then.

The first one is the choice of entrants. This is taken from the offical Asian Champions League website:

"Teams qualify for the AFC Champions League as their national league champions or as the winners of a national cup competition (as specified by National Associations where there is more than one cup competition)."

Easy, isn't it? The national league champions are the Grand Final winners aren't they? Well, arguably, Australia's peculiar top-four finals series, a strange concept to the world of Football, could be seen as more of a cup competition than a Championship, at least in world terms.

When the Asian Football Confederation set up the entry criteria, I would bet that they envisaged a Champion emerging in the normal way. That is, teams play a home-and away series, of however many rounds, and the team at the top of the table after that is the Champion. In the meantime, you have a knock out cup competition to decide the other place. If a Club were to "do the double", the runner up in the championship would get the nod.

Now that is the fairest way. In our league, the best team after 21 rounds should get the first place in the Asian Champions League. The Grand Final winner should get the other place. If that team is the same as the "Minor Premier", the minor round runner up should get the second place.

The alternative, as some have suggested, that the two Grand Finalists get the places, fails the test of fairness for two reasons. First, you only have to be marinally better than average (ie finish fourth out of eight) to make it into the finals series. A few good performances and an ounce of luck at the end of the season and a Grand Final berth is easily achieved.

Second, we don't have a knockout, FA Cup-style, competition, so everything comes down to gaining a berth in the Grand Final, a very strange concept to most of the Footballing world. We run the risk of sending our third- and fourth-best teams to play in Asia. Twenty-one rounds of fierce competition could count for nothing. The two best teams for any given season are the minor premiers and the runner-up. Of that there can be no doubt. The Australian assertion of the worthlessness of that achievement is, to me, quite strange.

But we are stuck with the Finals Series play-offs, so we have to live with that, but the minor round must have significant weight when choosing our Asian representatives. Let's not devalue that.

One other issue will also become problematic when Asian Champions League football is on the agenda. That is the very limited 20-man squad. It will not take much of a mid-season injury toll, and a few suspensions, to make that size squad look very thin indeed and I worry about the quality of our ACL challenge if our clubs are going to be straight-jacketed with such small squads in the long term.

Another related issue was brought up by Adelaide United Coach, John Kosmina, in the Adelaide press this week. He worries about the squad players not able to get a regular A-League match. Where do they play? For most of the A-League season, the local leagues are not playing. His answer, which I totally agree with, is to play State Premier Leagues concurrently with the A-League, during the summer months. I would go one step further and have each A-League team enter a reserves side in their local Premier League, similar to the way Melbourne-based AFL Clubs have affiliates in the VFL.

That way the development of juniors, our future A-League players, and the maintenance of match-fitness for other squad members could be kept under the control of the A-League clubs. Existing local clubs may not like that idea, but at this time, what is good for the A-League is good for all Football clubs in this country and they should be able to see that.

The alternative system such as where Adelaide Crows and Port Power players are doled out to SANFL teams, with no coaching, tactical or development control is a very poor alternative.

So come on round 21, will Adelaide still be top? Maybe, maybe not. But one thing I am sure of. If the team that is top at that time is not given a place in the Asian Champions League, a grave injustice will have been done.

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