Window Shopping: Jets Spend January In Deep Talent Pool Swimming With The Sharks

Newcastle Herald

Saturday January 17, 2009

ROBERT DILLON A-LEAGUE

CONTRARY to popular belief, importing overseas talent to the A-League is not as simple as hopping on the internet, ordering a prolific striker, a midfield playmaker and a rugged defender and waiting for them to arrive, gift-wrapped, on the next available flight.

Newcastle Jets fans have been growing increasingly disgruntled in recent weeks about the club's inability to recruit some highly credentialled reinforcements for the coming Asian Champions League campaign.

The Jets have just 14 more days until the January transfer window closes, after which their options will be limited until the next international transfer period, in July.

They will still be able to sign free agents, but their ACL squad must be finalised by February 11.

Given the time constraints, there are mounting concerns about how many players, if any, Newcastle will add to their depleted squad and whether they will make more impact than the likes of Mario Jardel, Jorge Drovandi, Edmundo Zura and Jesper Hakansson. The pressure is on. The Jets need to strike soon, and more than once.

But shopping for overseas players is an inherently complicated, risky business. No sport on the planet is as mercenary as the round-ball code.

Football agents make used-car salesmen look like pillars of the community, and the players they represent are invariably loyal only to their hip pocket.

In the grand scheme of things, the A-League, which has a salary cap of $1.9 million, must be close to the bottom of the pecking order. Players know there is vastly more money to be earned in Europe, Asia, the US, or even more exotic destinations like Dubai.

As an example of what A-League clubs are competing against, a survey of English footballers in 2006 revealed that lowly League Two (fourth-division) players earned an average income of #49,600, or more than $100,000.

Only a handful of players at each A-League club would be on that sort of coin.

With their limited budgets, the odds will always be stacked against A-League outfits, especially when the Aussie dollar is compared to foreign currencies and transfer fees are taken into account.

An added complication for Newcastle is that they don't want to sign hired guns for the ACL alone but players who will be here for next A-League season and beyond. That way they can chase success on the international stage and then hit the ground running on the domestic front.

There are basically three price ranges in which Australian clubs can browse for talent.

They can rummage around in the bargain basement for a young unknown from some third-world country in South America or Africa, and hope that he lives up to his DVD highlights and does not succumb to culture shock.

Alternatively, they can chase an established player in the prime of his career like Zura who is not quite good enough to land a contract in one of the world's glamour leagues.

The final option is to pay an exorbitant amount for a superstar whose best days are obviously several years behind him. And as Jardel, Juninho and John Aloisi have shown, a player can't score goals with his scrapbook.

Meanwhile, for every player who attracts an offer from the Jets, there are usually a dozen other clubs around the globe also waving their cheque books.

As the deadline looms, clubs will become more desperate. But so too will the players without a club. Jets coach Gary van Egmond describes it as "like a game of chicken".

"I can honestly tell you there are players in England, Italy, Brazil, Gambia, Africa there are a number of options that we've got," van Egmond said yesterday. "It's a case of ensuring that the agents are on the up-and-up with regards to the money they want.

"Just recently we had a player who was ready to come out, he was going to trial for us, and just before he was to board the plane his price nearly tripled.

"They're the types of pitfalls that you have, which obviously don't sit well with us."

Jets chief executive John Tsatsimas said he understood that fans were frustrated but insisted there had been no lack of effort behind the scenes.

"All I can say is that we're doing our best in terms of trying to get the best side we possibly can on the field," Tsatsimas said.

"The fans are entitled to be disappointed . . . [but] we've been working on this way before the January window.

"It's not like we woke yesterday and said, 'It's halfway through January'.

"We're doing everything we possibly can to get the proper side on the field for the ACL."

Nonetheless, the grumbling among the Novocastrian faithful grows louder by the day.

And it is likely to reach a crescendo unless Jets management produce some coups before the month is out.

"We're doing our best to get the best side we can on the field."

JOHN TSATSIMAS

© 2009 Newcastle Herald

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