Fred and Greg Owens

I feel like writing about football again, but don’t have that much match material to rant about. So until the next ACL match, I think I’ll go over a few issues that have popped in the A-League and Australian football since that one-sided affair of Feb 18, 2007.

Just quickly, I’ll comment that I thought 6-0 was overkill. As much as I love Melbourne Victory, I’m a football fan first and foremost. I would have preferred to have seen a closely contested match where the fan would have been biting their nails, rather than the ruckus that was the final. Briefly, I preferred our 2nd leg semi-final win over Adelaide. It was more heartbreaking for the opposition. :)

Now onto the topic of the moment, Fred. Mike over at the Football Tragic has already commented on this. In short, the A-League is meant to be a professional league. Players, much like employees in any other company, will want what’s best for them. In Fred’s case, DC United have offered Fred the kind of financial security that A-League simply cannot offer due to salary cap restrictions.

There is no doubt that Fred was an amazing player, but the reality is that the A-League has a salary cap in order to be sustainable. The cap also create an even playing field across the whole league, preventing a cashed-up club from buying all the best players, and creating a closely contested competition. Clearly Perth and New Zealand had teething problems.

Back to Fred. A move to the US is also an opportunity to raise his young family closer to home. This is something that Central Coast has been able to offer Greg Owens. It has not gone done too well over at the Adelaide forum (it’s a similar response to that regarding Fred at the Melbourne forum…)

I hope that the two of them are happy where they are, or will be, going. Especially in the case of Owens, who had a horror February 18 but otherwise has the ability to pay much better football – if he keeps his head in check.

While I’m on Owens and his awful A-League final, I’ll just jump up and defend him for a moment. Regardless of if he was injured or not, or if he was injured and should have played or not, I don’t think left-back is quite the right position for a hot-headed, attacking-minded player like Owens.

P.S. Do you like my new Melbourne-ised look? :)