James Johnson has pledged to ensure that the 2021 edition of the FFA Cup will be completed despite yesterday’s announcement that the 2021 NPL NSW season has been cancelled.
The Australian footballing public have expressed their concerns that the competition may not be completed, with community sport training not able to occur under the lockdowns imposed in Victoria and NSW.
The FA CEO illustrated the deep passion he embodies for the competition introduced in 2014 to journalists this week.
“The FFA Cup is really close to my own heart, I absolutely love this competition, it’s an absolute priority for me personally and the organisation.”
“We want to make it into something really special, we think it’s something we can really grow and we took a lot of steps leading up to the kick off but now we have a lot of challenges ahead of us”
However, logistically speaking with the structural changes to the FFA Cup as well as the grand prize of a lucrative half-spot for the Asian Champions League, Johnson deems it imperative that the competition is completed despite the upheaval.
“We’re looking at every way we can to get the competition up and play it again, we want to finish the season… we have to finish the season because we allocated an Asian Champions League slot to the FFA Cup… we don’t want to lose the opportunity for an Australian club to play in the Asia next year.”
Some have called for the exclusion of NSW sides from the competition, with a revised structure being looked at by Football Australia.
“We’re looking at different models, we’re looking at starting later, we’re looking at different formats from different rounds of the competition”
“The goal is to start and to finish… the last is to quit”
Image Supplied: Football Australia
