Wellington Phoenix coach Ernie Merrick says theย A-League must acknowledge FIFA international fixtures toย avoid depleted teams taking to the field.
Merrick's Wellington Phoenix will be missingย five starting players from its openingย match with Melbourne City on October 8 due to New Zealand's international fixtures against Mexico and the USA on October 8 and 11.
Wellington applied to have the match postponed but had the submission rejected by the FFA.
Merrick says it's time the league recognised international breaks to alleviate personnel problems for A-League clubs.
โWhere it does leave us, is in a very compromised position,โ Merrick said
โThat makes life very difficult for us but it also compromises the competition because there's other teams that will be saying โthey played them when they were half a team and now we've got to play them when they're a full team'.
โThat's going to happen four or five times this year because after the boys return from the USA they've got to fly to Perth and it's the long way around.
โThe next round of matches during the FIFA window it'll be the Oceania qualifiers. I'm tipping that some European-based All Whites won't be back for that game, so we could have eight maybe nine players out during the next FIFA window.
โThat's a big problem. I think if it's going to be fixed, it has to be fixed now and it'd be postponed but we're having no success with the FFA on that matter.
โIn the days prior to the FIFA forcing clubs to acknowledge and respect FIFA international windows if you had two players out you had to play the game and if you had three players out the game was automatically postponed.
โMaybe to bring back that type of rule might be a good idea.
โWhatever (the case), we've built a really good team and because we're doing so well, there's more players going to play for New Zealand and that's going to be a penalty for producing such good quality All Whites players.โ
Football Federation Australia's strong relationship with major broadcast partner FoxSports is reportedly one of the factors in the FFA's decision to reject Wellington's request to postpone the fixture.
Fans will not see Socceroos star Tim Cahill in action against Wellington in the opening fixture, they will instead have to wait until Round 2 against Melbourne Victory, with Cahill on international duty.
