Adelaide United coach Carl Veart wants an expanded and fairer A-League

Adelaide United coach Carl Veart has declared the A-League an unfair competition, calling for all teams to play each other the same amount of times.

The new season kicks off on Friday night, with the 12 clubs again playing just 26 rounds in the regular season.

While every team will play each other at least twice, teams will play against four other sides three times.

It doesn’t sit well with Veart, who also called for the competition to expand to at least 14 clubs.

“We’re still at least two teams short of where we need to be,” Veart said.

“We need the season to go for at least 30 games. (The) 26 that we play now, that’s too short.

“We only play four teams three times. It’s not quite a fair league in the way it’s structured at the moment.

“Until we can play home and away, everyone twice or everyone three times, that’s when it will be a fair league.”

Veart said more games would also benefit the national team.

“I think we need to play more games, especially if we want the Socceroos to have more success. Our players that are playing here in the A-League need more games,” he said.

“Hopefully, the season can go longer and that’s how we’re going to improve the quality of our players, especially the young players, to give them a platform to go on to bigger and better things.”

Not that there are many “better” football competitions in the world, according to Veart.

“The quality of the A-League is top notch,” he said.

“The English Premier League is the best league in the world by far, and after that a lot of the leagues are quite similar and I think the A-League is up there.

“The quality of football that we play ... I’ve seen stats where the A-League plays more football when it comes to the style of play than 90 per cent of the other leagues in the world.

“We play more football than the English Premier League.”

Veart’s Adelaide team come up against former EPL striker Daniel Sturridge on Saturday night when the Reds visit Perth to meet the Glory.

Veart said the ex-Liverpool marksman, who is likely to start on the bench after his recent two-week hotel quarantine stint, had a “great pedigree” but would be treated like “any other player”.

“As a coach I don’t look at individual players. I look at the team we’re playing against, and we’ll set up against the way that they play,” he said.

“We don’t ID anyone individually. It’s not that way that we play football, not the way I play anyway.”