Perth Glory owner Tony Sage has called for a radical change to the A-League championship by taking the decider to a two-game play-off, replacing sudden-death finals.
Sage wrote to A-League head Greg O’Rourke advocating the move after Glory’s penalty shoot-out loss to Sydney FC at Optus Stadium.
Sage, who stressed it was not “sour grapes”, wrote: “Surely you now see the advantage of a two-legged GF.
“At least 40,000 to 50,000 would have turned up in Sydney for the return leg next weekend. This would capture everyone’s imagination as it does in Europe.
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READ NOW“The Premiers (or highest winner) get to choose home or away first game. I would let the Premiers get the GF spot automatically and the other five fight to play them.
“Then there’s an extra $2 mill-ion odd in the coffers and a much fairer system to the teams that win through, away goals before a penalty shoot-out etc.
“Just look at the recent Leeds v Derby, Aston Villa v WBA (English Championship) qualifiers and both the Liverpool and Tottenham Champions League games. Very dramatic and huge media and broadcast audience numbers.
“Because of the distance and the airline costs in Australia the fans will also love it. Football purists will love it.
“Only 750 Sydney fans turned up (at Optus). I can’t understand the resistance, it makes a lot of sense.”
Sage’s call comes after retiring Sydney captain Alex Brosque suggested scrapping the finals series and awarding the title of champions to the best-performed league team.
FFA boss David Gallop said strong attendances and ratings through the finals series, including Sunday’s record crowd of 56,371, was evidence of support for the existing format.
Meanwhile, Glory coach Tony Popovic said Sunday’s match was not helped by the pitch.
“We get a great stadium but in terms of the pitch, the conditions, if we had our own stadiums no one would have played here on Friday night (West Coast v Melbourne AFL game) and the pitch would have been prepared for a grand final,” he said.
“It’s something that we don’t have a lot of control over with A-League do we. That’s the situation that we’ve had every single year and I don’t really see that changing in the future.”