Government belt-tightening has cost the A-League All Stars a lucrative showdown with Bayern Munich in Sydney, ruining plans for a bumper weekend of football that also included a women’s showpiece involving Barcelona – and the potential involvement of Socceroos coach Graham Arnold.
The clash with the 32-time Bundesliga champions would have been played the Friday night before the A-League Men grand final on Saturday, June 3 – the first to be staged at CommBank Stadium as part of a controversial multi-year deal with Destination NSW.
The A-League Men finals series was launched on Tuesday.Credit: Getty
But according to multiple sources across government and football, the newly elected Minns government decided over the weekend that it could not justify paying Bayern’s multi-million dollar appearance fee at a time when it is facing a significant budget challenge.
Negotiations were so advanced that some promotional content involving Bayern Munich players had already been filmed, while Arnold had been sounded out to coach the All Stars and lend credibility to what would have otherwise been seen as a money-spinning end-of-season jaunt for the Germans, turning it into a Socceroos audition of sorts for local players.
It comes as a major blow for the Australian Professional Leagues, which had promised to build a ‘festival of football’ around the A-League grand final after signing the eight-figure agreement with Destination NSW to lock in Sydney as the location for men’s and women’s deciders through to 2025. It now has no high-level European content in place to augment the week as originally hoped.
That deal for the grand finals, sources said, did not include any built-in funding for the All Stars concept, which meant the APL had to seek extra money from the government for it separately, leaving them vulnerable to a change of mind from a minister – or, indeed, a change of government entirely, in this case, and the change of priorities that comes with it.
Sadio Mane and Bayern Munich were in line for a debut Aussie visit.Credit: Getty
The fee Bayern Munich were chasing was between $6.5-8 million, according to reports in the German press, but APL chief executive Danny Townsend said that number had been inflated and that scheduling and player and stadium availability were additional factors, and admitted the All Stars would probably not play in 2023 as a result.
“We were also not wedded to [the All Stars game] being in Sydney – we’ve always said all along we’ll share content around for the good of the game,” Townsend said on Tuesday at the A-League’s finals series launch.
“But I think in this first year, we would have loved to have had it there. It hasn’t happened. That doesn’t mean we haven’t got a great amount of football to look forward to in the next four or five weeks.
“The longer [talks] went on, the shorter the sale window went, and to make these things commercially viable, you really need as much of a run-in as you can. We had to make a call, and we sat down with Bayern and made that call. They were great to deal with along the way, but we just didn’t get there.”
Sources also revealed the ‘festival’ would have ideally been rounded out with a meeting between Barcelona and an A-League women’s All Stars team. Pencilled in for the Sunday of the same weekend, that match has fallen through for different reasons – mainly due to Barcelona’s progression to the semi-finals of the UEFA Women’s Champions League, which complicated planning.
Last year’s All Stars clash against Barcelona’s men was a massive hit, pulling a record post-pandemic crowd of 70,174 at Accor Stadium, helping to launch the career of Socceroos youngster Garang Kuol, and forming a critical part of the APL’s broader ambition to convert fans of European football into A-League followers.
Five months on from the announcement of the APL’s deal with Destination NSW, some fans are still so angry about the grand final decision – which reversed decades of tradition in the Australian game in which the highest-ranked team earned hosting rights – that they have committed to boycotting the finals series to send a message to the game’s administrators.
The Cove, Sydney FC’s main active supporter group, has said it will not attend Saturday night’s derby elimination final against the Western Sydney Wanderers in protest at the APL’s recent decisions and actions. Their counterparts, Western Sydney’s Red and Black Bloc, have chosen not to boycott, meaning a one-sided atmosphere is in store at CommBank Stadium, which Townsend confirmed will be the venue for the grand final, no matter who is in it.
“It’s disappointing, but at the end of the day, fans are entitled to take a position on things,” said Townsend, who was formerly Sydney FC’s chief executive, and for a time juggled that role with his job at APL simultaneously.
“I respect the position they take. I don’t agree with it, of course I’m going to say that, but at the end of the day, fans are fans of clubs and players and not the league. And although the clubs were complicit in the decision we made, they did that for a reason. We’ve been down that path, and we don’t need to go back over it.
“When we executed poorly on the [grand final] announcement, we were always facing an uphill battle … we just continue to do what we said we were going to do.”
