Hiddink Swoops for Archie

Have we seen the last of Archie Thompson? Having lost 1-0 to Adelaide, Victory seem sure to accept PSV's offer purchase the striker, which will secure him a home in the buildup to the World Cup.

It's been a brilliant freewheeling season for Thompson, who has climbed into the upper echelons of national team selection and been a wonderful ambassador for the A-League in its nascent days. Considering their fiscal problems, Melbourne can certainly use the money from the sale, rumoured to be as much as $1 million. Whether or not the Thompson deal will focus the attention of other European clubs on Australia is questionable, though. Given Hiddink's involvement with the Australian national team and the substantial gap between the end of the A-League season and the start of the World Cup, the pending Thompson transfer is a unique situation. Of all the players in the league he is the most likely to make Hiddink's finals squad. Petrovski, Bolton, Fyfe, Colosimo, Beauchamp, North, Brosque and the rest would probably not be adequate first team performers for PSV nor many other upper-tier clubs in the largest European leagues. As the Karl Dodd departure to a second-tier team in Romania reminded us, however, the majority of our home based players are almost always thinking about a career Europe. One of our priorities for the FFA, then, will be trying to make sure we attract as many players back from overseas as possible in order to offset the inevitable flood of quality talent moving abroad. Whether the likes of Viduka, Schwarzer and Kewell would ever want to play - or even live - in Australia again is seriously debatable. But as the recent return of Jamie McMaster has happily demonstrated, the exceptions are far outweighed by the norm. Tracking potential returnees will be a very interesting aspect of the offseason.