CEO OPINION

$28 Million for Box Hill City Oval, While Football Is Being Pushed to the Back Seat

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Image Credit: (Bldg.Eng)

When nearly $28 million can be mobilised for one AFL venue in the City of Whitehorse, capital alignment is clearly possible. Federal, State and Council funding moved swiftly and decisively to support redevelopment at Box Hill City Oval.

Yet in that same budget cycle, Football, the state’s largest participation sport, received no transformational infrastructure commitment in the City of Whitehorse 2025 26 Budget.

At a time when Football faces a projected $385 million to $550 million statewide infrastructure requirement by 2035, there is no comparable capital signal in this municipality.

If participation growth is real, and the numbers confirm it is, why is investment not following it?

The Funding Breakdown

The redevelopment of Box Hill City Oval carries a total value of approximately $27 million to $28 million.

Funding sources include:

• $13.6 million Federal Government
• $6 million Victorian State Government
• Approximately $5.5 million City of Whitehorse
• AFL aligned contributions

This follows the earlier Michael Tuck Stand investment in the City of Boroondara.

Combined, nearly $60 million has now been committed to two AFL stands in neighbouring municipalities.

The capital was coordinated. Multi tiered. Politically aligned.

In contrast, the City of Whitehorse 2025/26 Budget allocates no funding for new synthetic pitches or Football facility upgrades.

That is not interpretation. It is fiscal record.

Source City of Whitehorse Council Budget 2025/26.

Demographics and Demand

City of Whitehorse is one of Melbourne’s most culturally diverse municipalities and home to one of the largest Chinese diaspora communities in Victoria, centered around Box Hill and surrounding suburbs.

Football is globally embedded within multicultural communities. Participation growth often mirrors demographic expansion. Demand is visible across junior registrations and female programs.

When infrastructure investment does not reflect demographic reality, misalignment follows.

Infrastructure signals priority. Priority shapes growth.

The Quantified Infrastructure Gap

According to Football Victoria Facilities Strategy 2025 to 2035, Victoria must deliver by 2035:

55 lighting upgrades
70 pitch reconstructions
80 pavilion redevelopments to meet gender equity standards
75 percent of competition pitches upgraded to 100 plus lux
85 percent of change rooms gender accessible

These are baseline requirements.

Conservative modelling places the statewide Football infrastructure requirement between $385 million and $550 million over the next decade.

Yet in City of Whitehorse’s capital works program, there is no pathway reflecting that scale of need.

Meanwhile, $60 million has been mobilised for two AFL stands.

The contrast is measurable.

The Volunteers Carry the Pressure

Infrastructure shortfalls do not first appear in Treasury briefings. They appear in club committee meetings.

Across Victoria, including Whitehorse, Football clubs are governed largely by volunteers. Mum and dads. Small business owners. Middle class Australians who give up evenings and weekends to keep community sport running.

In political language, they would be called the battlers.

They are not salaried executives. They are community stewards managing growth within facilities never designed for today’s scale.

When lighting restricts training capacity, when pitches are overused, when pavilions lack equitable access, it is not government that absorbs the pressure first.

It is these volunteers.

They are the ones who must explain:

Why do registrations close early?
Why cannot teams be formed?
Why are children being placed on waiting lists?

As a father of two, I can say plainly there is no more uncomfortable conversation than telling a child or their parent that there simply is not enough infrastructure capacity for them to play.

Not because demand is absent. But because investment is.

When capital alignment lags, volunteers carry the burden.

That is not sustainable governance. It is deferred responsibility.

“Delayed infrastructure doesn’t hurt departments, it hurts the middle class battlers who govern our clubs. Volunteer mums and dads are left explaining to children that participation has outgrown investment.”

Victoria is not the only jurisdiction facing growth pressure. The difference is how it responds.

Asia Embedded Football into Policy

In a recent Soccerscene interview, Hisao Shuto of the J.League explained:

“We don’t believe any single factor is prioritised above all others in player development. Each club equally values the development environment, including facilities, coaching staff, and the philosophy cultivated by the club itself.”

Facilities are foundational.

He further stated:

“J.League clubs contribute in multiple ways to increase youth Football participation, going beyond mere technical instruction to focus on both promotion and development within their communities.”

Japan embedded Football into municipal planning.

The K League followed similar principles.

They aligned capital with participation early.

They treated Football as civic infrastructure.

Where Is the Strategic Learning and Who Drives It

If Victoria wants to lead in Football export, where is the investment to study those mature markets?

Where is the bipartisan delegation to Japan and South Korea?

But this conversation cannot sit solely with government.

If a delegation is to be meaningful, the private sector must be brought into it. That is precisely why I have consistently called for a national and unified strategy that ends the age of silos in Australian Football. Fragmented thinking will not deliver structural reform. Coordinated leadership across government, industry and the private sector will.

Victoria is not short of business leaders capable of driving international engagement. There are passionate, prominent Football supporters within our corporate landscape, genuine shakers and movers who understand scale, logistics and long term investment.

One example is Lindsay Fox AC, who has led and participated in major international delegations, including heading the Prime Minister’s business mission to India and serving as co chair of the Australia India CEO Forum. He has represented Australian business interests at global summits and served in advisory roles such as the Committee for Melbourne.

The point is not individuals. The point is capacity.

Victoria has the private sector firepower to assemble serious, outcome driven delegations combining government, infrastructure specialists and commercial leaders to study how mature Football markets embed sport into municipal strategy and economic growth.

Delegation investment is not indulgence. It is capability building.

If we can align multiple levels of government for physical infrastructure, we can align public and private leadership for strategic learning.

The Unavoidable Conclusion:

Participation growth is documented. Infrastructure deficits are costed. Capital priorities are visible.

And it leads to a simple conclusion:

Two AFL stands total of $60 million. No strategic investment to learn from global Football markets, yet Football is told to take the back seat. If Victoria is truly the “Education State”, it is time we start acting like it.

This is not anti AFL. It is pro alignment.

If participation does not influence capital allocation, growth becomes strain. And strain eventually becomes stagnation.

The numbers are clear. The question now is whether leadership responds.

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Marie-Louise Eta makes history as new Union Berlin head coach

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Image credit: FC Union Berlin

In an historic appointment, Eta will take over as head coach of Union Berlin until the end of the season.

History in the making

Previously the first female assistant coach in Bundesliga history with Union Berlin, Eta will now take the reigns of the men’s first team on an interim basis.

Currently, the club sit in 11th place in the Bundesliga table, but with only two wins so far in 2026, relegation appears an all-too-real prospect, and one which the club is desperate to avoid.

“Given the points gap in the lower half of the table, our place in the Bundesliga is not yet secure,” said Eta via official media release.

‘I am delighted that the club has entrusted me with this challenging task. One of Union’s strengths has always been, and remains, the ability to pull together in such situations.”

Eta will begin as Union’s new head coach with immediate effect, and will be in the dugout for the club’s matchup against Wolfsburg this weekend.

 

A step into an equal future

Eta’s appointment signals a major step towards a more level playing field in the football landscape.

Furthermore, Eta joins other coaches including Sabrinna Wittmann, Hannah Dingley and Corinne Diacre who, in recent years, have blazed a trail for female coaches to step into the men’s game.

Wittmann currently manages FC Ingolstadt in Germany’s third division, and was the first female head coach in Germany’s top three divisions.

In 2023, Dingley became caretaker manager of Forest Green Rovers, and thus the first woman to lead a men’s professional team in England.

Diacre, now head coach of France’s women’s national team, managed Ligue 2’s Clerment Foot between 2014 and 2017.

 

Final thoughts

The impact therefore, is that Eta’s appointment will show future generations of aspiring female coaches that men’s football is an equally viable and possible pathway as the women’s game.

The time is now to level the playing field.

And while it may be a short-term role, its effect on attitudes towards equality and fair opportunities in the game will hopefully resonate long after the season ends.

“20 Years Ahead”: The System Quietly Reshaping Korean Football

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Image Credit: Goal.com / Getty Images

For all its consistency, Korean football has long carried an underlying tension.

On paper, it works. The national teams remain competitive, the player pool is technically sound, and the country continues to produce athletes capable of performing on the continental stage. But beneath that surface-level success, a more uncomfortable question has persisted about whether Korea has been simply maintaining its position while others evolve.

That question has driven the Korea Football Association (KFA) toward one of the most ambitious structural overhauls in modern football development: the Made in Korea (MIK) Project. Rather than focusing on short-term gains or isolated improvements, the initiative attempts to do something far more complex. It is rebuilding the foundations of how football is taught, understood and executed across the entire ecosystem.

Internally, the project has been described as having “brought Korean football 20 years ahead.” Whether that claim ultimately proves accurate remains to be seen, but what is already clear is the scale of the shift taking place.

From talent to system

The starting point was not talent, but structure. For years, concerns had been growing within Korean football circles about a lack of uniqueness in players, inconsistencies in long-term planning and an over-reliance on safe, risk-averse styles of play. The system, while producing disciplined and technically capable footballers, was not consistently producing players equipped to thrive in the most demanding environments. Environments such as Europe, where tempo, decision-making speed and adaptability define success.

Rather than attempting to patch these issues, the KFA chose to reimagine the system itself.

At the core of the MIK Project is the idea that high performance is not the result of individual excellence alone, but of an interconnected structure that allows that excellence to emerge consistently. Coaching, sports science, performance analysis, leadership and education are no longer treated as separate pillars, but as components of a single, integrated system designed to evolve continuously.

A new operating model

This philosophy is most clearly expressed through the project’s adoption of a cell-based operating model. In place of traditional hierarchies, the system is organised into small, cross-functional units, called “cells”. These cells are given autonomy over their work while remaining connected through shared frameworks and objectives. Each unit is responsible not only for delivery, but for learning, adapting and refining its approach on a constant cycle.

The intention is to bring decision-making closer to the pitch, allowing those working directly with players to respond faster and more effectively to the realities of the game. In an environment where marginal gains are often decisive, that speed of adaptation can be critical.

Closing the gap

Yet structure alone is not enough. The project is equally shaped by a clear-eyed assessment of where Korean football currently stands in relation to the world’s elite.

Comparative analysis has highlighted several consistent gaps: technical execution under pressure, the ability to operate at higher game speeds and effectiveness in decisive moments such as one-on-one situations. These are not deficiencies of talent, but of context. Korean players, while highly capable, have often developed within systems that prioritise control and precision over risk and spontaneity.

The consequence is a style that can become predictable under pressure.

Training for reality

To address this, the MIK Project has fundamentally shifted training methodology. Sessions are increasingly designed to replicate the intensity and unpredictability of real matches, placing players in situations where decisions must be made quickly, under pressure, and often in confined spaces. The focus is no longer on rehearsing ideal scenarios, but on preparing players for imperfect ones.

This approach reflects a broader philosophical shift that prioritises adaptability over perfection, and decision-making over repetition.

Evolving the Korean identity

Importantly, this evolution does not come at the expense of Korea’s existing strengths. Discipline, work ethic and technical proficiency remain central to the national identity. What the MIK Project seeks to do is build upon those foundations, combining them with the creativity, speed, and tactical awareness required at the highest level of the game.

It is, in many ways, an attempt to reconcile tradition with modernity.

A global ambition

The ambition underpinning the project is unmistakable. The KFA is not simply aiming to remain competitive within Asia, but to re-establish itself among the world’s leading football nations. That means producing players capable of not only reaching Europe, but succeeding there.

More than a project

What makes the MIK Project particularly compelling is that it does not present itself as a finished solution. Instead, it is designed as a system that evolves, adjusts and refines itself over time. In a sport where trends shift rapidly and competitive edges are constantly eroded, that capacity for continuous development may prove more valuable than any single innovation.

For other football nations, Korea’s approach offers an instructive case study. While many federations continue to debate philosophical direction, the KFA has committed to structural transformation, embedding its ideas not only in theory, but in practice.

Whether the project ultimately delivers on its boldest ambitions will depend on time, execution, and the unpredictable nature of the game itself. But one thing is already evident.

Korean football is no longer standing still.

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