It wasn’t meant to be like this. In November 2006, when Sydney FC and Adelaide were confirmed as the first Australian clubs to take part in the Asian Champions League, Sydney’s then chief executive, George Perry, was enthusiastic about the opportunity to represent Australia on the international stage and to improve the club’s finances.

“The Asian Champions League gives our partners and the Sydney FC club a great chance to increase exposure in the important Asian market,” Perry said.

Fast forward a decade and Sydney are sizing up their fourth ACL campaign, but the promise of an Asian goldmine has not yet been fulfilled. In fact, if the experience of this year’s participants is any guide, Sydney and the other qualifiers will be looking at a huge drain on their resources in 2018.

Last month Adelaide’s chairman, Greg Griffin, complained that Australian clubs taking part in the ACL had been left to absorb losses of more than $200,000 each by the lack of support from FFA and the Asian confederation.

Griffin told the Adelaide Advertiser the financial impost was “a disaster” and maintained that his club and Brisbane Roar had considered withdrawing from the competition “because we are all bleeding cash representing Australia”.



The reasons are not hard to find. Away games in Asia involve huge travel costs that have almost never been defrayed by large crowds at home – no Australian team in this year’s competition has drawn even 7,000 as all three representatives exited at the group stage. Limited income from broadcasting deals and marketing mean Australian clubs have little or no chance of breaking even unless they reach the later stages of the competition, and only two have gone past the quarter-final stage in 27 attempts since that 2007 debut.



I think everyone can see the opportunity that lies ahead in the ACL ... just a little bit of patience is required Mark Falvo

Mark Falvo, the A-League’s head of strategy, international and government relations, says the Australian authorities are sympathetic to the clubs’ position, and expect more investment to flow in the next commercial cycle, beginning in 2020.

“We understand the challenges the clubs face. But I think everyone can see the opportunity that lies ahead in the ACL, I think everyone can see the possibilities, it’s just a little bit of patience that’s required,” Falvo says.

Losing money is only one element of the disappointment that has set in around ACL participation. When Australia joined the Asian confederation in 2006, hopes were high that both the national team and the clubs representing the infant A-League would benefit from a broader change in outlook. There was much talk of how football’s move chimed perfectly with the reorientation of Australia’s economic and cultural priorities. The federal government’s 2012 white paper Australia in the Asian Century (pdf) highlighted the value of joining the AFC and noted the “unique business networking opportunities” opened up by sporting links generally.



No one could argue the Socceroos have worse opportunities now than they did before 2006. But with the glaring exception of the hugely successful 2015 Asian Cup, there have been very few occasions when football has successfully engaged non-Asian Australians with the region, or Asian Australians with the local set-up.

The ACL has proved a particularly problematic vehicle for that journey. On the field, Australian clubs have never been able to undo the huge disadvantage of beginning their international campaign nearly a year after qualifying, and now that the A-League season stretches into May, they probably never will. Off it, that long lead-in gives them more time to prepare their commercial strategy, Falvo says (“the key to success is starting early”), but it’s a much harder sell when the most crucial games for financial success come at the same time as the business end of the A-League season.



Brisbane coach John Aloisi has bemoaned the fact that Australian clubs have not been given the best chance to succeed in the ACL. Photograph: Bradley Kanaris/Getty Images

The demands of midweek travel to Asia imposed a ludicrously unfair burden on Brisbane particularly this season, as they do on any team good enough to remain in contention for honours two years in a row.



As John Aloisi pointed out, his players had to fly to Thailand and back for a game that would be played in 36C heat and 100% humidity, arriving home barely three days before their A-League semi-final in Melbourne against Victory. His decision to field a drastically weakened team against Muangthong United – in a game that ultimately confirmed Brisbane’s failure to get through the group – was understandable, but hardly likely to foster any greater enthusiasm for the competition.

“We still play in a league in which the federation hasn’t given us the best opportunity to do as well as we would like to in the Champions League,” Aloisi told ESPN.

Muangthong’s excellent showing this year has at least punctured the domination of Korean, Japanese and Chinese clubs in the latter stages of the ACL. The competition as a whole, and Australia in particular, would surely benefit if clubs from Thailand, Vietnam, Malaysia and Indonesia could translate the vast interest in football in south-east Asia into stronger leagues and more credible challengers.

One cautious but welcome step in the right direction is the decision to implement the “4+1” rule from the start of the 2018-19 season, meaning one of the five berths for foreign players at A-League clubs must be filled by someone from a country in the Asian confederation. That should at least go some way towards balancing the flow of players which until now has sent plenty of Australia’s best to the Japanese, Chinese and Korean leagues (not to mention the Middle East and even south-east Asia) while a bare sprinkling of mostly modest talent – with the outstanding exception of Shinji Ono – has come in the other direction.

Again money is a big factor, but Australian clubs’ preference for European imports also suggests a blind spot in relation to Asia, despite all the expanding economic, migration and education links. While the prime minister is promoting links with China through the unlikely means of an AFL match, and off-season friendlies against Premier League teams attract vastly bigger crowds than any ACL game, it is clear that footballing bridges with Asia still need a lot more work.



Falvo says in contrast to the hoopla around last weekend’s one-off AFL match in Shanghai, football’s promotional efforts go on quietly, but consistently.



“Perhaps we don’t trumpet it quite as loudly as another code might, that’s because for us it’s not something that’s so abnormal we need to make a big song and dance about it – it’s actually part of what we do day in, day out, part of what we’ve been doing for over a decade now.”

In his 2015 analysis of Australian football’s long and mostly unconsummated relationship with Asia, Joe Gorman wrote that “Asia is no longer our ‘neighbour’ – we are increasingly and inevitably a part of Asia.”

But it is not inevitable that football will accept or capitalise on that – FFA, the A-League and the clubs still need to make it happen. As the A-League looks for a fresh lift and some new ideas at home, it is still struggling to reach out to the tantalising riches of Asia, which seem barely closer now than they did 10 years ago.

