Asian quota should be an A-League no-brainer

From someone sitting in Asia and looking on from afar, the debate in Australia about whether to adopt 'the Asian quota' - reserve a foreign player spot exclusively for those from AFC nations - is a little weird.

Keisuke Honda (L) and Kevin Muscat Source: Getty Images

For a league operating within the constraints of a salary cap and always looking for value for money, focusing on relatively close markets that offer plenty of that and more seems like an obvious thing to do.

Perhaps I am missing something.

Greg Griffin caused some controversy last week in Kuala Lumpur when, as chairman of the Australian Professional Football Clubs Association, he dismissed the idea.

"It’s not because we don’t see them as good players – some of the Asian players are outstanding quality – but we simply can’t match their salary requirements," Griffin said.

"A very good Asian player – like a [Keisuke] Honda or an [Shinji] Ono, who have been spectacularly successful in the A-League – requires a much higher salary than a very good Australian player."

There may have been plenty of criticism on social media but Griffin is no ignoramus when it comes to Asia.

As a former chairman of Adelaide United, Griffin was quick to see the benefits of engagement with Australia’s new confederation.

I came across him from time to time in various cities and we enjoyed a few beers in Tokyo back in 2011, I think. 

Among other things, plenty of which I am sure I don’t know about, he built a relationship with Chinese team Shandong Luneng and was enthusiastic and open to the idea of closer relations with the continent to the north.

In a league that has been criticised for being slow and reluctant to engage with Asia, here was someone who was anything but.

So it is a little worrying that someone in Australian football who clearly sees the potential benefits of Asian cooperation can be so wrong on this issue.

Using Honda and Ono as the evidence to dismiss the use of an Asian slot is akin to saying that, if you don’t get into Harvard or Oxford, there is no point bothering with university education.

The Japanese pair are, or were, established stars with glittering careers behind them with salary demands to match. There are not many Asian teams with pockets deep enough to afford them.

These are not really the kinds of players that Australia should be thinking about as there are literally thousands of cheaper options. Clubs just have to look. 

China could be another market. Griffin’s assertion that the average Chinese player is on $2.1 million a year is well wide of the mark.

That is a figure given for the squad for the top two Chinese teams - Shanghai SIPG and Guangzhou Evergrande.

This average includes and is greatly inflated by the sizeable salaries of foreign stars such as Paulinho, Hulk and Oscar.

You may as well take the average salary of a Manchester United player and say that English players are therefore too expensive.

The A-League should have already moved beyond this debate. No doubt the top Japanese and South Korean players at the peak of their careers are not only going to be too expensive, most of them are not going to want to come to Australia anyway. 

As discussed in the past, there is lots of talent elsewhere - Vietnam, India, Indonesia - good enough to play in Australia and cheap enough for it not to be an issue.

It is strange that Australia has seemingly made little attempt to position itself as a place for young Asian talent to develop and grow. 

A-League clubs would be better off investing money and especially time in building networks in Asia to keep tabs on talent before it becomes world famous and hugely expensive. 

Honda is part-time coach of Cambodia. Melbourne would be remiss if they are not using their star player’s unique role to put themselves into the right position to tap into the passionate Cambodian market for years to come.

Such efforts would quickly show that there is much more to Asia than ageing superstars.