Earlier this month, when Football Federation Australia denied Wellington Phoenix’s request to relax the W-League’s international player rules in order to field a Kiwi-heavy women’s team, the governing body cited its XI Principles document and reiterated its desire to “enhance and promote playing and development opportunities for women and girls playing football in Australia.”
“These are not merely words on paper and FFA will take the necessary steps to continue to promote these principles,” it said in a statement.
The denial of Wellington’s visa request, which would have increased the number of W-League teams to 10 and ensured more playing time across the board, was met with criticism from the wider football community – especially those who have enjoyed the recent resurgence of the Phoenix’s A-League side.
However, new research due to be released by FFA shows it was justified in denying the New Zealand-based club’s application, which would have given Wellington use of the W-League as a development pathway for their own national-team players at the expense of Australians.
The research, compiled in a report titled Women’s Performance Gap Report, provides hard data around Australia’s women’s football ecosystem and addresses the intersecting factors that have resulted in a concerning lack of player depth at international level.
Divided into three sections – senior international, youth international, and senior domestic football – the report compares various aspects of Australia’s national and domestic set-ups with the set-ups of 11 other top football nations including Brazil, England, France, Italy, Japan, the Netherlands, Norway, Spain, Sweden and the United States.
In an echo of the men’s performance gap report released in early November, the women’s version takes a holistic look at Australia’s football pathways and highlights its structural shortcomings. At the senior level, it found Australia has been over-reliant on a “core” group of Matildas over the past four-year playing cycle, topping the charts across all the nations studied, while also using the fewest number of players across that period.
Further, Australia has the fewest “fringe” players available for national team selection at 27, compared with the study’s average of 38. Just 18 of those players will be in their “peak performance age” (defined as between 22 and 31 years) come 2023 – the fewest among all studied nations.
Australia has also handed out the fewest international debuts (8) over the four-year cycle, just two of whom (Karly Røestbakken and Jenna McCormick) have amassed more than 200 minutes for the senior Matildas. “This indicates Australia lacks squad depth,” the report says, “with limited options coming through.”
By contrast, Australia’s closest neighbour in the study, Japan, has used the fewest number of “core” players (6), which possibly explains their underwhelming senior international performances in recent years. However, Japan has been planning for the future, with 50 “fringe” players amassing minutes for the national team over the same period. Forty of these players will be at their “peak performance age” at the next Women’s World Cup.
In terms of international exposure, Australia played the second-fewest number of international games (44) and against the least diverse (or “unique”) opponents (20) – especially Uefa nations – of the 11 studied.
At the youth level, the report found that Australia oversees the fewest number of youth international programs (3) and only offers two junior age groups, compared with nations such as Japan and the US, which operate national teams from under-15s through to under-23s.
This partly explains why Australia ranks last in qualifying for under-17 and under-20 Women’s World Cups, having not qualified for a youth tournament since 2006.
Australia’s international activity at youth level also falls shockingly short of the international standard. Australia played the fewest international matches (57) across the study period, including just eight friendlies in four years, compared with the study average of 94 or “almost double the total number of games, of any kind, Australia has played in the same time period.” Not a single game came against Uefa or Conmebol opposition.
Finally, the study looked at the growing influence of club football on player development. The findings are particularly bleak on this front, especially when comparing minutes offered in the W-League with other top women’s leagues.
“A player in a top-flight club in Spain has the opportunity to play three times as many top-level games as a W-League player,” the report says. “Australia’s domestic league structure – with a maximum of 14 games on offer – allows for just 113,444 match minutes, compared to the case study league average of 291,660 minutes.
“The lack of match minutes on offer in Australia’s W-League has consistently required players in or on the fringe of the national team to play abroad season-on-season. The maximum minutes played by an Australian who only played in the W-League was 4,552 (Perth Glory’s Kim Carroll).
“By contrast, 21-year-old Spaniard Cinta del Mar Rodriguez played 8,569 minutes for club Sporting de Huelva in four seasons. An Australian in the W-League would need to play every single minute of eight full Regular Seasons to surpass this figure. This inability to regularly and consistently play top level match minutes has led to an alarming gap between Australia’s national team players and the rest. This gap is now insurmountable without strategic reform.”
Worryingly, this gap looks set to grow with almost every senior Matilda now playing in one of the European leagues included in the study. These league seasons are longer and played alongside multiple other cup competitions, meaning there are more club minutes available, while the W-League continues to lag behind with its 12 regular-season rounds plus a two-week finals series.
Indeed, the number of W-League match minutes played by youth internationals has fallen from 60% to 22% in the last decade, with just 14 playing two full seasons (or 2,160 minutes) over the study period. By contrast, 66 Netherlands youth players hit this match-minute benchmark.
These interwoven factors are creating a dangerous feedback cycle that threatens to further exacerbate the problem. “There is an increasing reliance on a small core of players; this leads to fewer opportunities to new fringe players to debut and establish themselves; the fringe players then struggle to bridge the gap in experience and quality to the core players; meaning the small core players are again increasingly relied upon to play as often and as much as possible.”
This data, complemented by a similar study by the players’ union, Professional Footballers Australia, provides some of the most compelling evidence yet that Australian football must be re-engineered to address the gaps created by decades of under-investment and disregard for its developmental responsibilities. In this light, then, FFA denying Wellington’s relaxed visa request makes sense. The question now is how the wider game – from FFA to clubs to member federations – should respond.
