There is perhaps no greater reminder that Australia is a faraway island nation with limited global influence than the fact so many Australians pore over a niche form of online football content known as ‘Aussies Abroad’.
While the likes of Ned Zelic and Paul Okon were hardly the first Australian players to move to Europe, their arrivals at Borussia Dortmund and Club Brugge in the early 1990s coincided with a surge of interest in how Aussie footballers were performing overseas.
By the time Mark Viduka and Harry Kewell lit up the Premier League with Leeds United almost a decade later, Australian fans were well versed in keeping tabs on Aussies abroad.
So, it’s no surprise to see the online lists of Aussies plying their trade in Major League Soccer eagerly updated every time there’s another transfer. What is perhaps more surprising is that more Australian football fans aren’t tuning into the league on Apple TV.
“I feel like there needs to be a bit more exposure to Major League Soccer in Australia,” Socceroos and Nashville SC midfielder Patrick Yazbek said. “I still feel like a lot of Aussies have this misconception that the only alternative to watching the A-League is watching European football.”
It’s a perception Yazbek is keen to change, not least because many games kick off at an ideal time for viewers in Australia. In a country where the average Uefa Champions League game kicks off at 4.30am, most Saturday night MLS games start at the far more palatable hour of 9.30am on a Sunday morning.
“What more do you want than to sit down with a coffee and watch a game?” Yazbek said.
Socceroos springboard
Yazbek is one of a growing number of Aussies who have used a move to North America to help bolster their national team ambitions. Of the 25 players called into the squad for this month’s clashes with World Cup hosts Canada and the USA, three – Yazbek, DC United defender Kye Rowles and New York City FC midfielder Aiden O’Neill – play their club football in MLS. A fourth, defender Miloš Degenek – who recently captained the Socceroos against New Zealand in Canberra – was once a mainstay at Columbus Crew.
Yazbek, who started his professional career with Sydney FC in Australia’s domestic A-League, trod a well-worn path to Europe when he joined Norwegian club Viking in 2023. But it was his next move that raised plenty of eyebrows in Australia, with the Sydney-born midfielder swapping the cold of Stavanger for the relative unknown of Nashville.
It’s a move that has paid off for the box-to-box midfielder, with Yazbek featuring in both games for the Socceroos against New Zealand in September. He admits it was a conscious decision to move to a high-quality league where his performances were more likely to be noticed.
“I honestly think MLS is on track to becoming one of the best leagues in the world in a few years,” he said. “I’ve had so many discussions with my peers and teammates and I say to them: ‘I’ve only been here 12 months and I’ve already seen so much growth’”.
Professional opportunities
In a league bristling with names like Lionel Messi, Son Heung-Min, Thomas Müller, Miguel Almirón and Emil Forsberg, it’s probably safe to assume it’s only Australian fans interested in how the likes of Archie Goodwin, Giuseppe Bovalina and Lucas Herrington are faring on the other side of the world.
But while MLS has proved a viable launching ground for full national team honours – Goodwin, Bovalina, and Herrington are all Australia youth internationals – it has also succeeded in ways Australia’s domestic A-League has struggled to replicate.
One such area is full-time coaching roles – a domain Chris Sharpe knows well.
A goalkeeper by trade, Sharpe ended his playing days in Colorado in 2012 after stints in England, Denmark and his native Australia. Now in his 18th season with the club, he’s spent the past decade helping to shape the careers of a number of high-profile shot-stoppers in his role as the Rapids’ long-serving Assistant and Goalkeeper Coach.
“I think it’s very uncommon in the world of football,” Sharpe said of his unusually long tenure with the Rapids. “It’s probably a bit more common with goalkeepers and goalkeeper coaches though – especially if goalkeepers are on long-term deals – because there’s a bit of a special bond between a goalkeeper and goalkeeper coach.”
It’s a bond that has seen Sharpe oversee the likes of USA national team goalkeepers Tim Howard, William Yarbrough and Zack Steffen. Howard, who remains the most capped goalkeeper in US men’s national team history, even asked Sharpe to introduce him on stage when the latter was inducted into the National Soccer Hall of Fame in 2024.
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Sharpe admits he’ll have mixed emotions when the Socceroos run out to face the USA at in Colorado Dick’s Sporting Goods Park on 14 October, but the Sydney-born coach says he is grateful for the opportunities his adopted homeland has provided.
“Having been here for so long, I’ve kind of built my life and my career here,” he said. “The US has given me opportunities that I might not have had otherwise, so I’m really grateful for that.”
A changing model
Adam Waterson is another Australian who traded the comforts of Down Under for a life in Major League Soccer.
The long-serving Head of Strength and Conditioning at Los Angeles Galaxy joined the club just two months before the arrival of Zlatan Ibrahimović, but says young Aussie players are now just as likely to attract the attention of MLS scouts.
“Honestly, you’re in the shop window,” Waterson said of the league’s subtly shifting transfer strategy. “There are clubs all around the world now that are looking at MLS as a bit of a development league.”
After finishing second to cross-town rivals Los Angeles FC in the Western Conference in 2024, Galaxy went on to win MLS Cup with a 2-1 victory over New York Red Bulls. Despite the presence of high-profile former internationals like Maya Yoshida and Marco Reus, it was the contributions of Joseph Paintsil, Gabriel Pec and Dejan Joveljić – who went on to join Sporting Kansas City for $4 million in the league’s first cash-for-player trade – that proved decisive.
Galaxy paid around $19 million in transfer fees to acquire the relatively unheralded Pec and Paintsil, but as Waterson points out: “they won us a championship.”
And with clubs across the league utilizing a mix of high-profile recruits and raw young talent, it’s a model that could see MLS clubs continue to sign the best young Aussies, develop them, then move them on for even higher transfer fees.
“In the past, we spent money on players like Zlatan, Robbie Keane, Ashley Cole and Steven Gerrard,” Waterson said. “Now we’re moving away from that model a little bit, which could be great for young Aussie kids.”
Common ground
With MLS currently home to eight Australian players – along with a trio of New Zealand internationals in Michael Boxall, Finn Surman and Bill Tuiloma – it’s hard to imagine we’ve seen the last of the arrivals from Down Under.
Having recently lifted the US Open Cup with Nashville and with a World Cup on the horizon, Yazbek admits a shared language – and the ability to adapt to the physical demands of the league – have helped catapult him into the national team spotlight.
“This is the first real year where I’ve played probably almost 40 games and it’s been really good,” he said. “I’ve been involved in a winning team, which is important, too.”
While Australia coach Tony Popović can afford to experiment now that his Socceroos side has booked its spot at next year’s World Cup finals, he’s generally shown a preference to those playing regularly for their club sides. That should hold Yazbek – who played 80 minutes of the recent US Open Cup final win over Austin FC – in good stead.
“Before coming to Nashville, it was certainly a consideration,” he said. “It was a question of: ‘will this facilitate my national team ambitions?’”
Now, having thrust himself into the national team limelight, he’s in a good spott to book himself a spot on the plane to a World Cup played in a region he knows well.
“In coming to MLS, I did feel like I was taking a bit of a leap because I was one of the first young Australian players to move here,” he said.
“But I feel like having taken the leap and trusting that playing in this league regularly would help me, I think it has all worked out really well.”
