Tthere is perhaps no better reminder that Australia is a remote island nation with limited global influence than the fact that so many Australians pore over a niche form of online football content known as “Australians Overseas”.
While the likes of Ned Zelic and Paul Ocon 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 Australian footballers performed overseas.
By the time Mark Viduka and Harry Kewell broke out in the Premier League with Leeds United almost a decade later, Australian fans were well aware of how to follow Australians overseas.
So it's no surprise that online lists of Australians playing in Major League Soccer are eagerly updated whenever another transfer occurs. What's perhaps more surprising is that more Australian football fans aren't watching the league on Apple TV.
“I feel Australia needs to focus more on Major League Soccer,” Socceroos and Nashville midfielder Patrick Yazbeck said. “I still feel that many Australians mistakenly believe that the only alternative to watching the A-League is watching European football.”
That's a perception Yazbeck is keen to change, not least because many games kick off at an ideal time for spectators in Australia. In a country where the average UEFA Champions League game starts at 4.30am, it's almost Saturday night MLS games start at the much more pleasant hour of 9:30 a.m. Sunday.
“What more do you want than to sit down with a cup of coffee and watch the game?” – Yazbek said.
Football springboard
Yazbek is one of a growing number of Australians who have used the move to North America to bolster their national team's ambitions. Of the 25 players called into the squad for this month's matches against World Cup hosts Canada and USAThree – Yazbek, D.C. United defender Kai Rowles and New York City FC midfielder Aiden O'Neill – play their club soccer in MLS. The fourth, defender Milos Degenek, who recently captained the Socceroos against New Zealand in Canberra, was once a mainstay for the Columbus Crew.
Yazbek, who began his professional career with Sydney FC in the Australian A-League, has followed a well-trodden path to Europe, joining Norwegian club Viking in 2023. But it was his next move that raised quite a few eyebrows in Australia: the Sydney-born midfielder swapped chilly Stavanger for relatively unknown Nashville.
The move has paid off for the box-to-box midfielder, with Yazbek featuring in both of the Socceroos' games against New Zealand in September. He admits it was a conscious decision to move to a higher quality league where his performances were more likely to be noticed.
“I truly believe that MLS is on track to become one of the best leagues in the world in a few years,” he said. “I’ve had so many discussions with my colleagues and teammates and I tell them, ‘I’ve only been here 12 months and I’m already seeing so much growth.’”
Professional Opportunities
In a league replete with names such as Lionel Messi, Son Heung-min, Thomas Muller, Miguel Almiron and Emil Forsberg, it is probably safe to assume that only Australian fans are 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 proven to be a viable launching pad for full national team honors (Goodwin, Bovalina and Herrington are all Australian internationals), it has also succeeded in something that the Australian A-League has struggled to emulate.
One such area is that of a full-time coach, an area Chris Sharp knows well.
A goalkeeper by trade, Sharp finished 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 has spent the last decade helping shape the careers of a number of outstanding goalkeepers in his role as the Rapids' longtime assistant and goalkeeping coach.
“I think it's very unusual in the world of football,” Sharpe said of his unusually long tenure with the Rapids. “It's probably more common with goalkeepers and goalkeeper coaches, especially if goalkeepers are on long-term contracts, because there's some kind of special bond between the goalkeeper and the goalkeeper coach.”
Through this connection, Sharp oversaw Team USA goalkeepers such as Tim Howard, William Yarbrough and Zack Steffen. Howard, who remains the most capped goalkeeper in U.S. 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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Sharp admits he will have mixed emotions when the Socceroos take on the United States at Colorado Dick's Sporting Goods Park on October 14, but the Sydney-born coach says he is grateful for the opportunities his adopted homeland has provided.
“Having been here so long, I built my life and career here,” he said. “The US has given me opportunities that I might not have had otherwise, so I’m very grateful for that.”
Changing model
Adam Waterson is another Australian who has swapped the comforts Down Under for life in Major League Soccer.
The LA Galaxy's long-serving head of strength and conditioning joined the club just two months before Zlatan Ibrahimovic's arrival but says young Australian players are now just as likely to attract the attention of MLS scouts.
“To be honest, you're in a storefront,” Waterson said of the league's subtly changing transfer strategy. “There are now clubs all over the world that are looking at MLS as a kind of development league.”
After finishing second to rivals Los Angeles in the Western Conference in 2024, the Galaxy won the MLS Cup with a 2–1 victory over the New York Red Bulls. Despite the presence of such high-profile former internationals as Maya Yoshida and Marco Reus, it was the contributions of Josef Paintsil, Gabriel Pech and Dejan Jovelic, who later went to Sporting Kansas City for $4 million in the league's first cash-for-player deal, that proved decisive.
The Galaxy paid around $19 million in transfer fees to acquire the relatively unannounced Pec and Paintsil, but as Waterson notes: “They won us the championship.”
And with clubs across the league tapping both high-profile recruits and young talent, it's a model that will allow MLS clubs to continue to sign the best young Australians, develop them and then promote them for even higher transfer fees.
“We used to spend money on players like Zlatan, Robbie Keane, Ashley Cole and Steven Gerrard,” Waterson said. “We're now moving away from that model a little bit, which could be good for young Australian children.”
General basis
With eight Australian players currently playing in MLS, as well as 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 the upcoming World Cup on the horizon, Yazbeck credits a common language — and the ability to adapt to the physical demands of the league — with helping him land on the national team's radar.
“This is the first real year I've probably played almost 40 games and it's been really good,” he said. “I was part of a winning team, and that’s important too.”
While Australia coach Tony Popovic can now afford to experiment with his Socceroos side booking their place at next year's World Cup finals, he generally favors those who play regularly for their club teams. That should bolster Yazbek, who played 80 minutes in the recent US Open Cup final win over Austin.
“We certainly thought about it before we came to Nashville,” he said. “It was a question: “Will this make my ambitions in the national team easier?”
Now in the spotlight of the national team, he is in a good position to book his seat on the plane for the World Cup, which will be held in a region he knows well.
“Coming to MLS, I felt like I had made a bit of a leap because I was one of the first young Australian players to come here,” he said.
“But I feel like I took the leap and believed that playing regularly in this league would help me, I think it worked out very well.”