The game-time of Australian football players in the world's top flight leagues has dropped an alarming 80 percent, a pioneer study has found.
The Professional Footballers Australia (PFA) has tracked every minute of Australia's 626 professionals between 2002-2016 in the world's top five leagues.
"The data supports the view that we are falling behind where we once were, so we need to redefine our approach to the complex area of talent development," PFA chief executive John Didulica said in a statement on Monday.
The PFA studied minutes played by Australians in top divisions in England, Germany, Spain, Italy and France.
"Australia's international competitiveness is under threat," Didulica said in the report.
"Performances like those against Chile in the 2017 FIFA Confederations Cup demonstrate that the gap between Australian players and the very best players in the world is not a chasm.
"Yet since 2005 the amount of time that Australian players have played in the big five leagues of Europe has fallen by around 80 percent."
But the study confirmed Australia's influence in Asian leagues was growing.
"Our players seemed to go in and out of fashion in other European countries such as Turkey, Scotland and Belgium," the report said.
"But our demand in Asia skyrocketed."
The number of players in Asia peaked at 31 in 2013 with China emerging as a key destination, hosting eight of the 20 Australians playing in Asia last year.
"If China drops its demand for Aussies as Japan and South Korea seem to have done, the Asian boom may be over, or our sights may need to shift to smaller, emerging leagues," the report said.
The study also analysed the 57 A-League players who moved abroad, finding "no particular advantage or disadvantage to moving overseas at any age."
The data showed players with more than 2,000 A-League minutes were more likely to establish themselves overseas than those who departed without that amount of domestic game time.