a-league problem

I decided randomly to have a holiday game in FM08 running the australian a-league and a couple of others just to see what happens, but i am troubled at the state of the league in 2029....

Firstly, i have to comend SI for coding that the salary cap in the league is removed after 2018, as it was limiting the league and will probably happen in real life within a similar time timeframe. However, whilst they removed the salary cap, they also removed ALL the other league rules, namely the forienger limits. Because of this, when i had a look throughout the league i could only find 11 australian nationality players throughout the 8 teams, and the rest were foriengers. Also, of those 11 nationality players, only 5 were born in australia, the rest were naturalised by playing in the league for 4 or more years and being called up to the national team. Also, the national team was half filled with 16-19 year old youngsters from the AIS youth team (for those who dont know, only the AIS and its affiliates in the game are the only aussie teams to produce youngsters, but they are not part of the league) simply because there isnt enough players in the league avaible to the national team to choose from. I found this quite outrageous, and it means that the national team becomes quite rubbish (ie their ranking was 67 in the world).

Basically the one change i would have for FM09 would be keep the salary cap increases and eventual removal, but keep the forienger limits, as they keep the balance of homegrown players more even. Either that, or balance the AI's player purchasing choices so that more homegrown players make it into the league.

i'm all for the salary cap and foreign restriction being removed as it allows for a much better game.

what needs to happen is that more aussie clubs need to create regens, having only 5 or so team creating them will always result in a small number of quality aussies.

a majority of young players come from the state leagues, it really needs to be fixed. this also ruins any league swap you do with australia.

how about a forienger limit that grows as the game continues but still exists? Say, if in 2018 when the salary cap is removed, it rises to 6 or 7 forinegers, because i think this will force australian talent to exist and get regular gametime in the league and keep a good balance of homegrown players, whilst not limiting player roster choices? Having next to no aussies in an aussie league is a little rediculous....

Since the game may still be in design stage- can I make one far-out suggestion, which is to have the ability to add teams into leagues such as the A-League. This would be useful as we know it will be expanded to at least 10 by 2012 (probably before) and it will help make the game that bit more realistic.

I understand that SI may have copyright and t&cs' that would halt such an idea- but if the user could add the teams themselves I think that would be a way to get around it?!

yeah, the A-League doesn't really work in the game unfortunately, it just gets too frustrating after a while. Hopefully the introduction of the youth league IRL will be reflected in future versions and will improve the overall playability of th A-League in the game.

As for the idea of the user adding teams etc - nice idea, but you're right, the licensing arrangements wouldn't allow it, plus the way they program the game, the various league structures are hard-coded.

I was actually reading a thread in the data issues forum the other day on the a-league, apparently you could add teams to the league in 7.0.1 and the game would still run, generate fixtures and soforth, so obviously the capacity for the game to be able to handle the editing of leagues is there. Its really a question of wether legally they are allowed to do it of course.

The foreign player rule is there as there can only be 3 players in an asian champions league match squad. The A-League allows 4 so I think if anything this should be brought back to 3, not gotten rid of. Does the ACL get rid of its player limit? If so then there is no reason that the A-League cannot get rid of theirs too. The salary cap thing works for me, but please leave the foreigners alone

On the "foreign born" players issue , all nations whose DB sucks on average PA do the same , you shall see some medium / low European leagues ....

I agree that the foreigners rule should stay on for the long-haul. I'm looking at Melbourne Victory in the 2020s and they have no Australians- it's like an Arsenal squad... which isn't what the A-league was set up for!

Copyright aside, would it be possible for SI to implement something in the leagues where users can change the A-league and MLS to enable them to work the same, but include more teams (I'm thinking A-league could be as big as 16 teams by 2020 and would love to give it a try on the game if possible... without losing anything) Is this something we should add on the FM09 wish-list?