FORGET about the World Cup. Forget about the A-League’s ambitious but ill-conceived expansion plans. The real game-changer for soccer Down Under may well be a surprise development in England during the week.
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For those who missed it, Charlton Athletic – currently playing in the League One (third-tier) competition – announced on Thursday that Belgian owner Roland Duchatelet was close to selling the south-east London club he took over four years ago.
The likely new owners are a group of businessmen, including multi-millionaire Essendon AFL board member Andrew Muir, who call themselves the Australian Football Consortium.
According to their website, the consortium was launched (in April last year) “to acquire an underperforming English football team with a view to elevating the club back to the Premier League”.
After conducting feasibility studies on several other clubs, they settled on Charlton, who most recently appeared in the Premier League in 2006. Last season the “Addicks” finished sixth in League One and were eliminated in the play-offs for promotion to the Championship.
Duchatelet’s asking price has not been reported but he apparently paid £14 million ($A25 million) for the club back in 2014. That sort of cash would appear well within the means of the consortium when you consider Muir banked $870 million last year after selling his share in electrical wholesalers The Good Guys.
In their mission statement, the consortium declare that they “understand the importance of the fans in English football” and “are committed to our responsibility to honour and respect the history and tradition of the club and ensure that the fans are respected as key stakeholders in the process”.
Obviously it will be important not to disenfranchise a supporter base that dates back 113 years, but perhaps the most exciting aspect of this proposed takeover is the opportunity to create a club that becomes effectively the shop window for Australian soccer.
Since Newcastle’s own Craig Johnston blazed a trail at Liverpool in the 1980s, a host of Aussies – in particular Tim Cahill, Harry Kewell, Mark Bosnich, Mark Schwarzer, Mark Viduka, Lucas Neil, Mile Jedinak and Aaron Mooy – have followed the same path to fame and fortune.
But rarely have any of our expats featured in the same top-flight English team.
Imagine if suddenly we had a side playing in the most high-profile league in the world that was not only owned and managed by Australians, but was able to stockpile the best talent to emerge from this nation.
The A-League could effectively become a feeder competition for a single club, in this case Charlton.
Socceroos players would form the nucleus of the squad, supplemented with strategic imports from other nations.
Retaining Charlton’s red-and-white home kit would be a no-brainer, but perhaps for away games the colours could be green and gold.
It would also make sense to establish an academy team, to be filled largely by the best young Australian talents.
It might all sound like pie in the sky, at this point, but potentially this could be chance for the sleeping giant of Australian sport to transform into a juggernaut.
As things stand, the A-League appears to have reached a hiatus. Crowds for most teams (fortunately not Newcastle) have been in decline, and plans to expand the competition have kicked off, despite the continuing struggle Wellington and Central Coast face to remain viable.
Moreover, the best players are invariably cherry-picked by clubs overseas, many of which have no salary-cap restrictions.
Of Australia’s World Cup squad, only three of the 23 players were chosen from the A-League. The rest ply their trade in England, Scotland, Germany, Holland, Belgium, Turkey, Japan, South Korea and Saudi Arabia.
But what if Charlton became the preferred destination for ambitious Aussies? What if one day a team based in London, featuring a large Australian contingent, was able to win the FA Cup or Premier League … or even the European Champions League?
Can you imagine the support that team would generate on this side of the globe? It would be like cheering for the Socceroos on a weekly basis.
It is Cinderella stuff, of course, but perhaps no more so than when Russian oligarch Roman Abramovich arrived at Chelsea, or when Thai billionaire Vichai Srivaddhanaprabha bought minnows Leceister City, and bankrolled arguably the most remarkable sporting triumph of all time.
Admittedly there is a long way to go.
Winning promotion to the Championship will be easier said than done.
There are myriad big, famous teams in England’s second tier, and only three of 24 are promoted to the Premier League every season. It’s a dog-eat-dog environment.
Success for every club hinges on its financial capacity. Vast sums of money will be required for the Australian Football Consortium to realise its ambitions, and the investors will need to be both generous and patient.
But why not dare to dream? Where there’s a will, there’s a way.
