A huge number of football teams have “united” in their name.
It’s no accident, and not just because Manchester United sounds a lot better than Manchester Divided (even if that is the reality in that city when it comes to footballing loyalties).
It all comes back to the age-old saying, “united we stand, divided we fall”.
Given this, perhaps it doesn’t require hindsight to question the wisdom of the A-League splitting from Football Australia on New Year’s Eve 2020.
Like a lot of things that happen on New Year’s Eve, it seems to have ended in a painful hangover and some deep regrets for many of those involved.
As a starting point, take the club owners.
Desperate to be free of Football Australia’s domination, the owners were a driving force behind the divorce, which, like most separations, was far from amicable at times.
But a combination of COVID, a broadcast deal with performance targets that haven’t been met (in part because the broadcaster’s streaming service lacks basic user features others have had for years), and the expensive — and now largely abandoned — rollout of a digital platform tens of millions of dollars in the making have left the Australian Professional Leagues (APL), and the clubs reliant on it, in a massive financial hole.
