A-League News Thread

[Nate]

obvs means nothing but he's a 77 on FIFA, seems a really strong signing

[mus-28]

Spaniards are the new Brazilians.

[mus-28]

Central Coast beat WSW 3-2 in a friendly yesterday. Redders played the 1st half and kept a clean sheet. Heidelberg Utd's English striker Dan Heffernan grabbed a 2nd half hat trick for CCM, not doing himself any harm in earning a deal, but pretty underwhelming in terms of a Visa signing.

[Tesla]

Just fold CCM already, tired of their bullshit. Enough with the backpackers and players from the lower leagues of England.

 

Edited August 7, 2015 by Tesla

[thisphantomfortress]

Just fold CCM already, tired of their bullshit. Enough with the backpackers and players from the lower leagues of England.

 

Heff has been playing well in the NPL down here and was picked up while playing for Heidelberg. But the lower leagues of Australia are worse than the lower leagues of England so I suppose your point still stands. 

[Nate]

Just fold CCM already, tired of their bullshit. Enough with the backpackers and players from the lower leagues of England.

 

Their biggest ever signing at the time was probably John Aloisi, says it all really

[jw1739]

Significant changes to the FFA's salary cap rules announced.

See http://www.a-league.com.au/article/ffa-makes-changes-to-a-league-salary-cap-regulations/1wotlw01hpsbh1ig6tb3cjgxzg

 

[thisphantomfortress]

Significant changes to the FFA's salary cap rules announced.

See http://www.a-league.com.au/article/ffa-makes-changes-to-a-league-salary-cap-regulations/1wotlw01hpsbh1ig6tb3cjgxzg

 

A step in the right direction 

[Tesla]

A step in the right direction 

How so? 

Shittest changes. Getting so complicated, just get rid of the cap.

Increasing minimum salary spent to 90% of the cap when clubs are already making huger losses? Retarded.

[n i k o]

The 2 int. marquees is good as it simply allows clubs more freedom. Also allows a second marquee of better quality to be chosen as opposed to let's say a Kennedy. 

Loyalty player is bullshit and is driven, maybe not totally, but definitely a large influence by the Archie issue at victree. 

Minimum salary spend will will surely be offset a bit by the increase in minimum wage increase, but I agree with tesla about forcing clubs to spend more than they want. FFA so afraid of even a slightly unbalanced league. 

Guest player loan increased to 14 weeks. Hopefully we don't fall for this again. Don't want any excuses from JVS about how lampard or pirlo caused imbalance in the team. 

 

 

 

[jw1739]

The minimum salary spend and loyalty bonus are sops to the PFA in order to remove the "Australian" limitation on the second marquee.

But I agree with Tesla in that eventually the cap will have to go and so will all these rules and quotas.

[Tesla]

To elaborate on my previous post.

yes the move to two marquees not limited by nationality is good, but the rest I dunno.

The loyalty player thing is complete BS. There is zero justification for it, just the FFA once again trying to help out Victory/Sydney (doesn't say anything about consecutive years so I guess Brosque is eligible, could potentially move him off marquee). 

The mature rookie player rule isn't too bad, some incentive to sign NPL players certainly has some merit and will provide some value to football in this country to justify some sort of exemption, unlike the above loyalty player BS that adds no value to anyone but the club signing the player. But I question the implementation more than anything, seemingly no cap on this? Why not a 100-150k cap? Even better, should just make it 55k of salary for this player doesn't count to salary cap, so if the player is on minimum (not unlikely given they are coming from NPL) they are completely outside of cap, if they end up on a higher salary (eg 90k) then it's still a significant incentive (eg only 35k under the cap in the 90k example).

The homegrown player rule, similar to the mature rookie, is okay and provides a nice incentive for youth development which the league in general lacks, but again it's the implementation that could be better. I'm not sure if the limit is how much the player can be paid or how much the player can be paid under the cap (and the rest over the cap) but it really seems quite high TBH. If they could be paid 100k outside of the cap and the rest under the cap seems good enough to me, the highest paid players under the cap would be on 250-300k, knock off 100k and that's down to 150k-200k, a substantial enough incentive if you ask me. But lets not forget most of these homegrown players won't even be touching that salary.

Salary cap banking, not a huge deal because it's limited to 105% of the salary cap but it's a shit rule if you ask me. Punishes teams who are fully utilising the cap each season and adding to the quality of the league.

Increasing the salary cap floor is the worst, if anything it should be reduced given the amount of clubs with financial issues.

Raising minimum salary, better if it didn't happen but it's too be expected. PFA really need to fuck off now and stop pushing for the minimum to be increased going forward. Not sure what the most recent figure is when it comes to median full time pay in Australia but it's probably just below 55k, so even the worst A-League player is getting paid more than the average person, really nothing to complain about. Of course the average A-League player is making a lot more.

Instead of all these exemptions etc just increase the salary cap amount.

Side note, weren't we and WSW meant to be getting some extra cap space since we are less able to take advantage of the loyalty bonus? No news on that?

Edited August 11, 2015 by Tesla

[Shahanga]

Was going to post similar to Tesla. You can see the negative influence of the PFA here. Minimum salary for U21 is ridiculous, should be 40k to encourage clubs to give kids a go. SalAry floor going up is also ridiculous, would have been better if itd been scrapped completely. minimum salary going up 10%? Seems a hell of a rise to me. Before anyone gets up me these guys don't have to play football professionally and most (all?) have other employment options that would pay better (because they could also get NPL $), so they are in a position to negotiate. Having said that I don't object to this as much as the other 2, especially youth wages, which is jeopardising football in this country.

to explain more with able to pay low youth wages and no (or a much lower) salary floor a team like CCM could go heavy on youth, which would create great opportunities for emerging talent.

 

[jw1739]

The basis for introducing the "loyalty bonus" is blatantly obvious when FFA's press release mentions just one player from one club...

[n i k o]

The basis for introducing the "loyalty bonus" is blatantly obvious when FFA's press release mentions just one player from one club...

Surely you know anything that isn't mainstream opinion is a conspiracy. It simply can't be true jw. 

[Dylan]

All rule changes at the FFA are always brought in to help Sydney or Victory. 

[cadete]

Surely you know anything that isn't mainstream opinion is a conspiracy. It simply can't be true jw. 

I tend to agree the timing looks a bit convenient to me as well...

If it was a rule that directly affected a SFC situation right now I a sure an Anti Zionist comment would have been made by someone on here by now.

[jw1739]

All rule changes at the FFA are always brought in to help Sydney or Victory. 

...and/or to legitimise what they've been doing in the past that was actually outside the intent of the rules then existing.

[jw1739]

Seems like these changes are not necessarily acceptable to the PFA.

http://www.heraldsun.com.au/sport/football/professional-footballers-australia-have-refused-to-rule-out-strike-against-football-federation-australia/story-fni2wcjl-1227480203401

 

[bt50]

Typical Union Flogs.

next.

[jw1739]

On the change to the "Guest player" rule...now that a guest player can play in 14 matches, more than half of the actual league matches, why not simply make him a third marquee player?

[bt50]

On the change to the "Guest player" rule...now that a guest player can play in 14 matches, more than half of the actual league matches, why not simply make him a third marquee player?

Yeh dunno, doesn't make much sense really.

[Tesla]

Seriously what's the point of a salary cap if you have 3 marquees?

Might as well make all visa players outside the cap and one Australian marquee per team. Obviously cap is then reduced. So end result is ensuring that Australian players are spread out across the clubs and that the visa players are really of a high quality.

[n i k o]

Means the Australian players on the pitch will be playing against better quality players and it will hopefully flush out the shit Australian players that shouldn't be in the starting eleven. 

[jw1739]

Seriously what's the point of a salary cap if you have 3 marquees?

Might as well make all visa players outside the cap and one Australian marquee per team. Obviously cap is then reduced. So end result is ensuring that Australian players are spread out across the clubs and that the visa players are really of a high quality.

You know I'm in favour of removing the cap altogether. What I meant is that if you allow two marquees plus a guest who is allowed to play14 matches per season you have the equivalent of 2 and 1/2 marquees already so why not make it 3 and be done with it?

[n i k o]

These 3 will be our full time refs this season. God help us.

 

[Jovan]

These 3 will be our full time refs this season. God help us.

 

totally.

 

That last FFA cup game against phoenix they used 2 extra officials.  4 penalties. 

Watch the over zealous nit picking these 3 are going to produce to justify their full time status. 

It's going to be a balls up from the get go. 

[raw10]

A-League Launch - Season 11 :

In case you really want to watch it.. nothing exciting really.. but hey if you are bored something to entertain you I guess

[Jovan]

A-League Launch - Season 11 :

In case you really want to watch it.. nothing exciting really.. but hey if you are bored something to entertain you I guess

do work in sales?😁😁😁 😁😁 

[Jestr]

[n i k o]

FFA and PFA have finally agreed to a new CBA.  About time as well. Salary cap looks like has gone up to 2.6 million and will go up to a minimum of 2.85 million by 2017/2018. 

[n i k o]

[n i k o]

http://www.news.com.au/news/nsw/red-card-the-banned-football-fans-from-10-a-league-clubs/story-fni0cx12-1227618277879

 

If you've been banned from attending games there's a chance your face is here, although there's not many City supporters. A lot of scum supporters though.

 

Edited November 21, 2015 by n i k o

[n i k o]

Here are comments on the 442 forum regarding this issue:

http://au.fourfourtwo.com/forums/default.aspx?g=posts&t=111334

Edited November 22, 2015 by n i k o

[Young Polak]

7 hours ago, n i k o said:

And for everyone's amusement have a read of he comments that are across the board regarding this issue:

http://au.fourfourtwo.com/forums/default.aspx?g=posts&t=111334

There are some people who have been wrongly accused of by the police for misbehaviour on different levels and later released, not convicted and/or and were apologized by the police force through a letter and what not, but these people were still banned by the FFA and who are too stubborn to look into these cases. Their names were within the ban list database that the news corp got hold of and were publicly named and shamed, ignoring the privacy policy the FFA promised

Hardly amusing and pretty fucked up

Rumors going around that there are random photos of people uploaded with randomized names to increase the amount of "stadium bans" that the news organization wants to claim

[malloy]

27 minutes ago, Young Polak said:

There are some people who have been wrongly accused of by the police for misbehaviour on different levels and later released, not convicted and/or and were apologized by the police force through a letter and what not, but these people were still banned by the FFA and who are too stubborn to look into these cases. Their names were within the ban list database that the news corp got hold of and were publicly named and shamed, ignoring the privacy policy the FFA promised

Hardly amusing and pretty fucked up

Rumors going around that there are random photos of people uploaded with randomized names to increase the amount of "stadium bans" that the news organization wants to claim

I cant really comment on Perth Glory, West Sydney or Brisbane. But none of the other teams bans appear to be randomized names with random photos.  I strongly suspect that all names and photos are legitimate if not then it would be only one or two that aren't. 

I would also go as far as saying that the majority are probably deserving of their ban and this is why the FFA are unlikely to rescind a ban for someone who is known to cause trouble despite the findings of police.

 

Edit: This is not to say that I agree with the names and photos being published. As I do think it is somewhat disgraceful.

Edited November 22, 2015 by malloy

[n i k o]

2 hours ago, Young Polak said:

There are some people who have been wrongly accused of by the police for misbehaviour on different levels and later released, not convicted and/or and were apologized by the police force through a letter and what not, but these people were still banned by the FFA and who are too stubborn to look into these cases. Their names were within the ban list database that the news corp got hold of and were publicly named and shamed, ignoring the privacy policy the FFA promised

Hardly amusing and pretty fucked up

Rumors going around that there are random photos of people uploaded with randomized names to increase the amount of "stadium bans" that the news organization wants to claim

@Young Polak At the time of posting this there wasn't any comments about defamation or talk about the seriousness of some of these accusations. I've edited my post. 

[Pete Heartspur]

18 minutes ago, n i k o said:

@Young Polak At the time of posting this there wasn't any comments about defamation or talk about the seriousness of some of these accusations. I've edited my post. 

Seriously, paedophiles are treated with more privacy!

[n i k o]

1 minute ago, Pete Heartspur said:

Seriously, paedophiles are treated with more privacy!

That was the first thing I thought of when I saw it. 

[n i k o]

UN eyes tax on football tickets, Uber fares to raise funds for humanitarian aid

Updated about 3 hours ago

PHOTO: British soldiers distribute aid packages in Zubayr, near Basra in Iraq, in 2003. (Reuters: Yannis Behrakis)

MAP: European Union

A $21 billion shortfall in global humanitarian aid could be addressed by tapping into innovative sources of finance, like smartphone apps, the football industry and wealthy Islamic donors, a United Nations panel of experts says.

Key points:

• Micro-levies on 'mass-volume' transactions considered, like air travel and football games
• Muslim alms-giving funds eyed, worth at least $300 billion each year
• Funds already raised from tax on airline tickets to fight AIDS, malaria

In a new report, Too important to fail: Addressing the humanitarian financing gap, the nine panellists said despite rising global wealth, the "outdated" aid system had been unable to meet all the world's needs, including those stemming from financial crises, natural disasters and violent extremism.

The price tag for global UN aid efforts skyrocketed from $3 billion in 2000 to $35.7 billion last year, according to the experts.

Last year, a funding shortfall forced UN agencies to cut food rations to 1.6 million Syrians living in refugee camps, a move now seen as having partly triggered the mass exodus of refugees to Europe.

"The world has never been so generous ... and yet never has our generosity been so insufficient," said European Commissioner Kristalina Georgieva, who co-chaired the panel with Malaysia's Sultan Nazrin Shah.

She said helping victims of catastrophe and war was "morally right and also in our own self-interest, as the [Syrian] migrant crisis has shown".

Among the ideas discussed in the report were micro-payments levied on so-called "mass volume" transactions, such as airline tickets, said Ms Georgieva, adding that such schemes already existed.

For example, the UN's global health initiative UNITAID persuaded 10 countries to impose a small tax on airline tickets to raise funds to fight malaria and AIDS.

Ahead of the report's publication, Ms Georgieva said the panel had made initial contact with the world football governing body FIFA and had considered how funds might be generated from a "global luxury tax" or small levies on entertainment purchases or taxi rides, for example on users of the Uber smartphone app.

"Five cents, that level of micro levy on a massive volume, we think is possible," said the former World Bank economist.

However, she said the panel, which included banking executives, civil society leaders and government ministers, had not come to a consensus on specific proposals, with some of them being "dead against taxation".

Plan floated to tap into Islamic social finance

Another option proposed by the report is to tap into the billions generated annually in the Muslim world from alms-giving, or "zakat". 

Those donations amount to between $338 billion and $816 billion annually, according to Islamic Development Bank estimates quoted by the report. 

Just one percent of "zakat" would make an enormous difference in global funding, it added.

Financial contracts known as social impact bonds, which aim to offer return for investors when pre-agreed social outcomes are achieved, could also be more widely used in disaster-prone regions, the report noted.

 

So what is wrong with providing actual aid (water, food, building material etc.) that will be directly distributed to these countries that need assistance. I wouldn't trust the UN or anyone to actually use every cent for its desired purpose. What's everyone else's opinion on part of your membership going to the UN? 

Edited January 17, 2016 by n i k o