Ronaldo a no show in Korea – Do players truly care for pre-season trips?

Juve's Portguese star Cristiano Ronaldo didn't play a single minute during his side's pre-season friendly in South Korea

Imagine being a soccer fan in South Korea.

You have your local sides such as Jeonbuk Hyundai Motors, Seoul FC and Suwon Samsung Bluewings. But you prefer the higher quality leagues of Europe.

Your national team’s stars play there, including Heung Min-Son, Lee Jae-sung and Hwang Hee-chan. You dream of one day, seeing some of the world’s best play live.

Then, Italian champions Juventus are announced as the headline pre-season tournament side. You’d be pretty darn excited wouldn’t you?

Australian soccer fans would be over the moon if Juventus came Down Under for a few pre-season friendlies.

Understandably, you want tickets to see one of the greatest clubs in world football strut their stuff.

Paulo Dybala, Miralem Pjanic, Giorgio Chiellini and Cristiano Ronaldo, just to name a few, will be kicking about in your own backyard.

Sounds good, doesn’t it?

Usually, this is where you’d see the phrase, ‘If it’s too good to be true, it usually is.”

The only difference this time is that in this instance, it shouldn’t be.

We’ve seen international superstars play pre-season matches across the globe before. English clubs Arsenal, Manchester United and Leeds United sent strong squads to their respective tours.

Granted, younger and lesser-known players were given priority but these stars such as Paul Pogba, Mesut Ozil and Pablo Hernandez still played in front of fans who paid their dues.

Heck, even Real Madrid took new star signing Eden Hazard on their tour of the United States.

They understood and respected how far some fans go for their teams, and that some fans can’t travel to watch league or cup fixtures. They tried giving them lifelong memories.

Autographs, selfies and just the experience of having your heroes out there will do that for fans of these clubs.

Juventus, however and specifically Ronaldo, didn’t seem to care.

Not only was Ronaldo barely sighted during signing and photograph sessions with fans, he didn’t even play!

Imagine taking one the most highly decorated and talented footballers to a country filled with passionate soccer fans, for him to sit on the bench. That’s ludicrous enough.

Now imagine paying to see this match with the promise that he’d be out there playing. That’s where the line is drawn.

Understandably, fans are suing as a result of not getting what they were promised.

The event has gone from a harmless, pre-season friendly to a dumpster fire that the Italian giants have only themselves to blame.

But this begs the question. Do some players genuinely care for their pre-season tours?

Combined with this Ronaldo incident, Arsenal skipper Laurent Koscielny refused to travel with the squad on the Gunners’ trip across the United States.

It is becoming increasingly commonplace in the elite world of soccer and only time will tell if it becomes an unfortunately commonality.

We understand that some players may not want to risk injury and that’s fine. Ruben Loftus-Cheek of Chelsea injured his Achilles tendon during a friendly match and is set for a huge stint on the sidelines.

He is one of many examples where a player jeopardises the side after an injury during a non-competitive fixture.

If clubs and/or the players themselves come out and say that they don’t want to risk injuries to their stars, that’s totally acceptable.

But don’t give fans hope for it to be taken away when they least expect it.

Imagine the uproar if Paul Pogba didn’t play any minutes for Manchester United in the Australian tour. Fans would be left feeling totally ripped off, right?

That’s how all South Korean soccer fans feel right now. Trust me, it’s not an enviable feeling.

 

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NSW Football Associations Unite Behind AED Mapping Project for Statewide Safety Network

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Twelve football associations across New South Wales have joined a statewide effort to map and register Automated External Defibrillators across sporting facilities, in a project that its organisers say will significantly improve emergency response times and save lives at community sport venues.

The Heartbeat of Sport AED Mapping Project, backed by funding from the Minns Labor Government to the Heartbeat of Football Foundation, represents the first comprehensive research into AED placement across NSW sports grounds. The data collected will be provided to NSW Ambulance and its GoodSAM team to enrich the existing AED registry available to ambulance and public first responders, and will feed into NSW Health’s newly released public AED map.

The project has drawn active participation from associations spanning the breadth of the state’s football community, including Eastern Suburbs, Manly Warringah, Granville, Southern Districts, Nepean, Northern Suburbs, Football Canterbury, Bankstown, Hills, Sutherland Shire, North West Sydney Football and Football South Coast.

When seconds matter

The urgency behind the project is not theoretical. At Doyalson Wyee Football Club, a 70-year-old player survived a sudden on-field cardiac arrest because an AED was available on site. The outcome of that incident – and the many others like it that occur across community sport each year – depends entirely on whether a defibrillator is accessible, charged and registered in the systems that emergency responders rely upon.

Sudden cardiac arrest kills without warning. The survival rate drops by approximately ten percent for every minute without defibrillation. In a community sport setting, where professional medical staff are rarely present, a registered and accessible AED is the difference between a player walking off a pitch and one who does not.

The mapping project addresses a gap that has existed largely unexamined. More than 2,400 defibrillators have been deployed across NSW sports and recreation facilities through the Local Sport Defibrillator Grant Program, with grants of up to $3,000 available to eligible organisations. But a device that exists without being registered in emergency response systems provides significantly less value than one that is accurately mapped and immediately locatable by ambulance crews responding to a call.

By encouraging clubs to complete AED registration surveys, the twelve participating associations are ensuring that the equipment already on their grounds is activated within the broader emergency infrastructure – translating a physical asset into a functional one.

Regional communities and the equity of safety

The project’s expansion of the #HeartHealthMatters Program, which brings CPR and AED familiarisation training to sporting organisations with a particular focus on regional areas, addresses a dimension of safety preparedness that often receives less attention than equipment access alone.

Knowing a defibrillator exists on site is insufficient if the people present during an emergency do not know how to use it. Regional clubs, which frequently operate with smaller volunteer bases and less access to formal training programs, face a compounded risk – less equipment, less training, and longer ambulance response times due to geography. The program’s regional focus acknowledges that safety infrastructure, like sporting infrastructure more broadly, is not evenly distributed.

The data gathered through the mapping project will also guide future investment decisions, identifying facilities that still lack AEDs and providing the evidence base for targeted grant funding to address those gaps.

Football associations that have already contributed AED data have demonstrated, in the words of the project’s organisers, strong sector leadership and a shared commitment to safeguarding participants at every level of the game.

For a sport that involves hundreds of thousands of players, officials and volunteers across the state each week, the ambition of the Heartbeat of Sport project is straightforward – that no preventable death occurs on a football ground because the right equipment was not there, or could not be found.

The A-Leagues Final Series important status also a secret hinderance

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The Isuzu A-League finals series is a huge event in the footballing calendar, though its contribution to stagnant attendance numbers in the league is something to be said.

If the 2025/26 finals series follows similar patterns to those before it, it will gather huge traction and strong ticket sales.

It is the largest event for the domestic league, bringing in massive amounts of viewership through media and gate receipts.

Finals series from years past have shown this, with the 2024/25 final, a Melbourne derby, being sold out within 48 hours and gathering significant viewership online.

The idea of a finals series lies within the Australian sporting ethos; the other sporting codes have had this tradition for most of their existence, especially in recent history.

Football, though, is different from the rest of the sporting codes in Australia, unique even. This has historically contributed to its inability to integrate into the same supported status as other codes.

Many in the Australian footballing community, supporter groups, players, coaches, and even the new Director of Football Australia, have voiced concerns over fan numbers in the league competition.

It wouldn’t be absurd to say that maybe, though profitable now, the finals series is actually taking away from the league itself.

Consider the media image: the league winner is called the “minor premiership,” and ticket sales and viewership figures reveal a huge disparity between the two parts of the A-League.

It must be said that an alternative that could work in unison with the league and possibly increase viewership of the league itself would be a great advantage.

It would allow the league to gain more jeopardy and drama, which could build greater interest in attending league games.

One alternative is already here.

No other sporting code in Australia has both a league competition and a cup competition. Football in Australia does.

The Hahn’s Australia Cup is our equivalent to the FA Cup in England or the Copa del Rey in Spain.

These are competitions that offer a finals option in a different competition entirely. They generate huge traction while never diminishing the importance of the league and, therefore, its popularity.

These cup competitions cannot be discussed without acknowledging some obvious differences.

They don’t face the same popularity issues that football does in Australia. It’s obvious the Hahn’s Australia Cup doesn’t yet gain the traction that the finals series does.

However, for a healthy footballing environment with increasing fan numbers, it should.

The idea of elevating the Hahn’s Australia Cup and scaling back the finals series is a complex question, one that is treated like a “no-go zone” by many in the Australian footballing community, and that is understandable.

Though big changes like this might, in the end, be credible options for the future of the sport in this country.

Larger plans must be set in motion, strategies that can be worked towards and refined along the way. It is the process by which all large organisations, business models and even national governments build their strategies.

Such a shift will be scrutinised and pushed back against.

Though with further fine-tuning and smart investment in development, not to mention the introduction of promotion and relegation and the possibility of changing the footballing calendar.

It could replicate the success that these two-competition models already enjoy in other leagues.

The added importance that the premiership would gain, the reality that every game matters, could alongside other strategies entice fans to more games, increase viewership and ticket sales, and create more dedicated fan bases. It works in other nations, very well in fact.

The possibility of two teams lifting a trophy, rather than one single event defining it all, sounds like a strategy that could deliver more engagement over longer periods of time.

Maybe Australian football doesn’t need to answer this question just yet. It is complex, difficult and it would require a great deal of work, including significant investment into the game, which is another issue entirely.

Yet as low attendance numbers persist in the A-League, even alongside increased media viewership, something needs to change for football in Australia.

The rise in popularity of this game and its dedicated community deserves bold ideas and forward thinking.

Ideas like this could eventually begin to change the landscape of the beautiful game in Australia for the better.

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