In recent months, it has been fashionable for some of Australian soccer’s opinion leaders to lament the lack of top quality players available for selection in our national team.

And it was easy to show how badly the current crop compared to the heroes of the 2006 World Cup. Then, nearly every player that took the field was good enough to be a first team player in Europe’s top leagues; now, only a few Australians are.

The Socceroos’ alarming results added to the despair. From the moment they clinched qualification for the 2014 World Cup (which happened in June 2013, a full year before the tournament) until the beginning of last month’s Asian Cup, Australia’s record was dismal: three wins, three draws and 12 losses.

One of the reasons advanced for this nosedive was that, in the days of the old National Soccer League (NSL), it was easier for youngsters to get a run in the first team to help them develop as players. The NSL had more clubs (13 in its final season), was mostly semi-professional, and had relatively few overseas pros taking a spot that could have been filled by a local.

Now, our A-League is fully professional, has just 10 clubs (including one from New Zealand) and allows each of them to have five foreign players. Your arithmetic doesn’t have to be too flash to work out that the total number of Australians in the 10 starting teams each weekend could be around 60.

Take a chance on an unproven local teenager? Not if it might lose you a game or two.

Football Federation Australia has been trying to reduce the number of foreign players allowed at each club from five to four. The A-League clubs opposed this so a compromise was reached last week – the reduction will still happen but not until the 2017-18 season.

Part of the rationale is to match the Asian Champions League’s rules which do limit each club to four foreign players.

We’ll also do a better job nurturing domestic talent if the A-League has more A. Right?

Wrong.

Seven of the 14 Socceroos that played in the famous win over Japan at the 2006 World Cup either never started an NSL match or made fewer than five appearances in it before moving to Europe.

Four of the seven that did play more than a handful of NSL games (like most of those that didn’t) had gone through the development program run by the Australian Institute of Sport (AIS) before they made senior appearances for their clubs – their potential was identified when they were teenagers.

For years debate has raged about how much the NSL clubs contributed to the development of these players and how much the AIS program was responsible for. But that’s irrelevant to this discussion.

The question is whether potential Socceroos need the opportunity to play in our domestic competition. The career paths of the players that starred for Australia in 2006 suggest the answer is no.

The A-League has welcomed overseas players from its inception in 2005 with more than 30 appearing in season one. But that didn’t stop three Australian A-League players from winning a place in the 2006 World Cup squad.

Yes, a few duds came our way, but others helped improve the A-League’s standard. Players like former English Premier League great Dwight Yorke, who helped Sydney FC to victory in the first grand final, and Chinese striker Shengqing Qu, who shone at Adelaide United, weren’t taking the places of equally talented locals. They were better and the Australians in the A-League benefitted from playing with and against them.

It is perhaps a little mischievous to point out that, over the past week, those who sought to explain an apparent dearth of quality Australian players have either been a little quiet or have modified their opinions.

But in fairness, while the Socceroos were skillful and fluent in the Asian Cup, other factors, such as strength, fitness and spirit, contributed to their success. No one should imagine that more improvement isn’t needed.

To produce top players, having systems that identify and develop youngsters is far more important than the accessibility of the national competition. Those systems might be in clubs or sports institutes or federations but, if they’re not effective, tinkering with eligibility rules for overseas players won’t change much.

You only need to look to Europe to understand this. With its recent World Cup success and its teams often outshining richer clubs in continental competition, Germany is the new black.

So how many non-Germans can the teams sign? As many as they like.

The European Union ensures free movement of labour within it. A quota that would restrict EU citizens from signing for clubs in Germany (or any other EU nation) couldn’t be allowed. Bayern München, the country’s most powerful club, has more than a dozen foreigners on its books.

Clearly this hasn’t hurt the German national team and that’s because, over the last 15 years, cleverly investing money into producing top players has resulted in a conveyor belt of stars. If youngsters excel, they’ll eventually win first team selection.

Of the 14 players used by the Socceroos in the Asian Cup final against South Korea, 11 either play or have played in the A-League. That’s a decent endorsement of the competition and, more importantly, it suggests that the current set up isn’t impeding our better talent.

A-League fans certainly aren’t demanding a reduction in foreign players. Adelaide United supporters would scoff at any suggestion that Marcelo Carrusca (an Argentine), Sergio Cirio and Isaías Sánchez (Spaniards) should be replaced by Australians. Once you take out the Aussies that are in bigger leagues overseas, you’re left with few domestic players with the ability of those imports.

And even if we develop our own conveyor belt of young stars, there will still be a place for foreigners in our competition just as there is in every top soccer nation. They lift the standard of our league, help improve the Australians playing in it and bring more people through the turnstiles. Long may that continue.