How much credit should the NSL get for the ‘Golden Generation’ of Socceroos?

It is a question that has divided football fans for a while now: what was behind our Golden Generation?

Was it luck, or did the National Soccer League do more for youth development?

I’ll take a deep dive and – a spoiler – the conclusion is a bit of both.

The case for luck

The players born between 1976 and 1980 were outrageously good by our standards.

Tim Cahill, Harry Kewell, Mark Viduka, Mark Bresciano, Vince Grella, Lucas Neill and Brett Emerton all managed at least six seasons where they played at least 25 games in a ‘Big 5’ league. John Aloisi narrowly trails that achievement, doing it five times.

Want to know how many players born outside that four-year window have managed the same achievement? Just Mark Schwarzer – who managed that feat for a whopping 14 seasons.

Mark Bosnich also got close with four seasons, while Stan Lazaridis, Mathew Leckie and Aaron Mooy all managed three seasons playing at least 25 games a season at the top and these are some of the absolute standout players outside that purple patch we came to know as the Golden Generation.

In the season leading up to the 2006 World Cup, our squad managed a combined total of 23,232 minutes in the Big 5 leagues.

Comparing this to the squads at the 2004 Euro, we would have been the ninth-best team on paper ahead of football-mad countries like Portugal and Croatia.

It doesn’t pass the pub test to claim that a nation with a single semi-professional league and where football is the fourth most popular football code would have regularly produced this level of quality year in and year out if not for the A-League replacing the NSL.

Apart from my own incredulity, it is worth looking at the birth years immediately before and after the Golden Generation.

This may kill a few sacred cows, but most of our players were standout second-division players, sometimes riding with a promoted team.

Sometimes they’d have some good seasons with top teams in second-tier nations like the Netherlands, Greece or Scotland and, maybe, at their absolute peak, having 1-3 good seasons in a Big 5 league where they manage at least 25 games.

To be concrete, I want to look at players who either:

• Played 25 match seasons for a promoted team in the second tier of the Big 5,
• Played 25 match seasons for a top team in a second-tier league that plays Champions League football, or
• Did not play more than three 25-match seasons for a Big 5 club.

As much as I’d love to have rose-coloured glasses, this seems to be the level our elite players regularly achieve.

For those born 1971-75, there are seven players achieving this Josip Skoko, Paul Okon, Stan Lazaridis, Ned Zelic, Kevin Muscat, Danny Tiatto and Paul Agostino.

Of course, there were two players Bosnich and Schwarzer who did better than that.

For those born between 1981-1984, they still were young enough to go through the NSL development system before it shut down in 2004 and we see a lot of players at basically the same level.

This cohort includes Carl Valeri, Mile Jedinak, Scott McDonald, Richard Garcia, Brett Holman, Brad Jones, Adam Federici and Luke Wilkshire.

If we look at those born in the next 12 years from 1985-1997, we see we have produced players at a similar level to the sort of level, including Mat Ryan, Mat Leckie, Tom Rogic, Aaron Mooy, Cameron Burgess, Massimo Luongo, Jackson Irvine, Nikita Rukavytsya, Adjin Hrustic, James Holland and Awer Mabil.

What is interesting about this list is that while the quality is similar to the players the NSL produced outside of that purple patch, the quantity is well down.

In 1971-75 we produced nine players who were at least standout second-tier players, in 1981-85 we produced another nine, in the next 12 years a mere 11, roughly a third of the rate of what we produced before.

So while the Golden Generation was probably an outlier, there is still a gap in youth development to explain. Filling this gap would make a big difference to the national team.

Consider our best nine players for the current Socceroos, imagine if the next best nine players were of similar quality.

That is what we are currently missing out on.

So what did the NSL do?

This brings me to look at what we did to produce youth in the NSL era.

In the NSL era, there were multiple complementary efforts at youth development. First, there was the AIS Centre of Excellence. This started in 1981 and continued well into the A-League era.

Contrary to the popular myth that the AIS funding actually increased in the A-League era, reaching a peak in 2010/2011.

Repeated failures to qualify for the Olympics, however, resulted in funding getting slashed repeatedly until its inevitable closure soon after Rio 2016.

Second, there was the National Youth League. While this continued in the A-League era, it used to be a full home and away season.

According to Libero Consulting, nearly 40% of players in the National Youth League ended up with an NSL contract compared to half of that in the A-League era.

These days, a quarter of contracts are given to foreign players. However, there are not enough foreigners to fully account for the drop in contracts.

Libero argues that the longer youth league season made for better preparation for senior football. Some clubs such as Marconi and Sydney United also had B teams.

Players learn different things facing the best youth compared to facing men at a lower grade early in their careers.

It is interesting that the clubs that had the double whammy of both a youth and a B team were the most successful in producing Socceroos.

A third factor was that the NSL, unlike the early years of the A-League had youth teams for every age group.

According to Craig Foster, the A-League was the only league in the world where there were no underage teams.

A-League clubs recently fixed this issue, but in hindsight, it seems no surprise that there was a drop in quality.

A fourth factor was how our underage rep teams were used. Until recently, the Joeys, Young Socceroos and Olyroos would only play official tournaments.

In the 90s we would have regular tours of Europe and South America and Les Scheinflug would use form in these tours to push clubs to start promising youth.

Stretching these players who were nearly ready to start for their clubs would accelerate their development.

A fifth factor is the lack of foreigners playing in the NSL combined with the drop to, initially, just seven Australian-based teams.

While foreigners raised the standard of the league, we went from 154 Australians starting each week in the NSL era to just 42.

Such an enormous drop in openings might be the dominant reason why we produced fewer players than in the NSL era.

We do not know what would have happened to youth development if we mirrored the NSL system, but it does seem implausible that the cut in the National Youth League, the lack of underage A-League teams, the severe reduction in domestic starting spots, the lack of reserve teams and the lack of youth internationals had zero impact.

Looking ahead

The good news is that a lot of these issues do look like they are being sorted out. Between A-League expansion, austerity measures reducing the number of foreigners and the national second tier the number of domestic starting spots should skyrocket.

Since the FA split from the APL, the FA has admirably put more effort into youth team tours.

A-League clubs now have reserve teams in the NPL and underage teams in academies which really just leaves the AIS and the NYL as the missing pieces in our development pathways.

You could argue the recent changes are already producing fruit. Those born 1998-2001 already include Connor Metcalfe and Denis Genreau who both played over 25 games for a promoted side.

Most of our players who achieved similar did so in their late 20s or early 30s.

For those born 2002-2005, we already have Alessandro Circati and Cristian Volpato achieving that standard.

Even if Volpato does not play for us, we did develop him, so achieving a 25-game season (just!) for a Seri A side at a young age is a promising sign.

Since they are achieving so much at such a young age, it is pretty likely they will end up in that superior category of player we produced in the golden generation.

Perhaps the jump in quality is the first fruit of the controversial national curriculum.

It is probably unfair to compare the youth development in the A-League era with the Golden Generation.

However, comparing other NSL era generations with what came next seems to, at a minimum, show a drop in quantity.

We still produced standout second-tier players, which seems to be our usual level over a 30-year period with the exception of the golden generation.

However, we produced these players less often. Some real questions need to be asked about why we decided to neglect youth development for a generation.

Further evidence this neglect mattered is found that reintroducing some of the youth development strategies of the past seems to have coincided with an uptick in the number of players we are developing.

We might even be seeing a rise in quality, perhaps due to the NTC improving the base level of coaching.

If nothing else, we have to hope the promises of A league expansion, an NST and the return of the NYL are not empty promises or we will continue to punch well below our potential.

We may be cutting costs, but if the transfer market is our way out of financial ruin then we may not be able to afford NOT to have a NYL.