The news that Dutchman Dick Advocaat looks to have finally signed on the dotted line to take over the coaching role for the Socceroos should be welcome news to every fan of Australian soccer. It is also a time to reflect back on the 14 months since the bittersweet World Cup experience and glean that there are some lessons learnt from this time that should never, ever be forgotten by those in charge of football in Australia.
It was a strange time just after Germany. For me the euphoria of qualifying for the World Cup and witnessing all of our games in Germany, especially the games in Kaiserslautern, was tempered somewhat by a little voice in my head saying “remember where we were 12 months ago?” (There was also the annoying voice of a female from that delightful group “The Fanatics” who, when Craig Moore was substituted late in the game against Japan, asked those around her “who’s that?” in a disdainful way when his face was flashed on the scoreboard. None of her entourage knew, but that’s another story for another time…). For those uninitiated to Australian football, 12 months before the World Cup, we were in Germany losing all three games of the Confederations Cup and being coached by Frank Farina. And oh, I almost forgot, with the small task of again having to face the fifth place South American team in the World Cup qualifiers only a matter of months away. Those were dark days indeed and the despair and hopelessness that all fans would have felt when we reached the low point of the Confederations Cup should have lived with us all.
Thankfully it contrasted hugely with those joyful 10 minutes against the Japanese in Kaiserslautern and our overall performance at the World Cup. Humans, by our nature, nearly always forget the bad when they look back on life’s moments and I believe that this has happened with many Australian football supporters and journalists. The thing I really want to highlight is how badly off we were barely 4 months before that momentous night in Sydney where we beat Uruguay in the now famous shoot-out that booked our place at the World Cup.
We were at this low point due to an internationally inexperienced Australian manager.
Compare this to the huge achievements that were made in barely 4 months with an internationally experienced, renowned, and tactically astute manager. Then ask yourself, how the hell did we end up with an inexperienced Australian manager (Graham Arnold) in charge of the team for the Asian Cup and from the Australian media only having Craig Foster, Les Murray and the team from SBS questioning how it had occurred? This oversight by most of the Australian media beggars belief.
The bare stats for the Socceroos in their competitive matches since the World Cup reads as follows: played 14, won 5, drawn 3, lost 6. Not great, not completely disastrous. Graham Arnold has been in charge that whole time. I argue he shouldn’t have even made it past his second game in charge, the 2-0 loss to Kuwait. That result would never have happened under Hiddink. But even after such a disastrous result, there were some, such as The Age leading football journalist Michael Lynch, who made the extraordinary claim that Graham Arnold should be hired permanently for the Socceroos coaching job. Lynch’s article makes even more interesting reading 12 months on, especially how many things former Socceroo and now SBS analyst Craig Foster got right. My personal favourite part from the piece Foster wrote is the following:
“After Wednesday, Graham said that in the second half the players were "looking forward to their club games". I have difficulty believing this happened under Hiddink when everyone had to perform, all the time, and after the Kuwait loss away the excuses were the heat, the players, and the "World Cup hangover". Hiddink didn't make excuses, he made changes.”
Has anyone else noticed the similar, sorry excuses peddled out by Graham and his brother-in-arms John Kosmina after the Asian Cup? Les Murray in his article “Rid us of these cheats” writes: “The thick cloud of Australian excuses that drifted forth from Bangkok following the Oman game was suffocating. Left unchecked and allowed to run, this stuff will debilitate this team to the point where it will leave this Asian Cup with nothing.” Prophetic stuff.
The point I’m trying to make is this: How could anyone who has any knowledge of the many trials and tribulations Australia has faced as a football nation not have wanted us to hire another big name coach to take over as soon as the World Cup finished?
Why were people like Michael Lynch and leading football writer for the Sydney Morning Herald, Mike Cockerill, people who (apparently) know what they’re talking about writing articles read by thousands of people extolling the virtues of keeping Arnold on as Socceroo coach? The writers of these articles created a debate out of an issue that anyone with a brain and a memory would know was a non-issue.
Put simply as a nation still forging our own football identity it is even more important for us to have a coach with an excellent international pedigree and experience as we will need all the help we can get on these fronts to make up for our lack of tradition, our lack of opportunities to play together and consequently gel together as a national team, and technical competence. I can hear people saying “Well, if we get Dick Advocaat in now, there’s no harm done really is there?”
I’ll explain why I think there has been some harm done by not getting a big name coach in straight after the World Cup.
Australia as a football nation gained a lot of respect from our performances in Germany. Living in Europe I can safely say that the level of knowledge and respect for Australian football that the average European fan had rose by about 80% after Germany. Simply stated, it put us on the map.
Mumbling to these same people 12 months later that we were beaten by Iraq pretty much erased that new-found respect. But it is obviously not the respect of other fans that is important. The most serious issue, and one that I think is most worrying for the immediate future of Australian Football, is the respect of the clubs and the players themselves. Here are a couple of worrying quotes, first from World Cup hero Tim Cahill: “ I understand me playing for Australia frustrates him [his Everton manager David Moyes], but you can never take away what we achieved as a country. Now I understand that when I come back from this, maybe I will have to think differently. My priority now is Everton and the Australian manager knows this. I'm not in any rush to be thinking about Australia.” From Mark Viduka: “Australian football's in transition as well and we don't know who is going to be the new manager. So until that's sorted, you don't know, it might have an effect on my decision.” And finally from Liverpool manager Rafa Benitez: “My players travel more than Phileas Fogg in "Around The World In 80 Days". Javier Mascherano had to play a friendly for Argentina in Australia. That must have been really important.”
Without drawing too long a bow, would any of these quotes have happened if we had installed a high profile and quality manager 12 months ago and gone on to win the Asian Cup?
I doubt it very much.
I not only believe that it is vital for our 2010 world cup campaign to have both Mark Viduka and Tim Cahill heavily involved, but, and this is important to remember, to have their managers allow them to come back to Australia or Asia even more often than they have in the past as now we are qualifying through Asia we will have to play more important World Cup qualifying games more often. This means that, like it or not, we will need to have a good relationship with the managers of our big players in Europe. Rafa Benitez’s comments may have been in jest but do you think he would have made such a joke if Argentina were playing Spain for example, or the reigning Asian Cup champions with a high profile manager?
My hunch is that if it were not for journalists like Michael Lynch and others suffering from memory loss about where Australia was before Hiddink, we would have installed a manger a long time ago who would have built on the momentum from the World Cup and the great work done by Hiddink before and at the World Cup.
Just like in Orwell’s Animal Farm where the animals tell each other to always remember what it was like when the farm was controlled by humans, as Australian football fans, without a hint of irony, we must always remind each other of what it was like before Hiddink came.
Not doing this would mean losing it all and winding up back where we were. The good news is it is not too late to fix the inaction of the past 14 months.
So on that note, welcome Dick Advocaat, you are arriving just in the nick of time…
It was a strange time just after Germany. For me the euphoria of qualifying for the World Cup and witnessing all of our games in Germany, especially the games in Kaiserslautern, was tempered somewhat by a little voice in my head saying “remember where we were 12 months ago?” (There was also the annoying voice of a female from that delightful group “The Fanatics” who, when Craig Moore was substituted late in the game against Japan, asked those around her “who’s that?” in a disdainful way when his face was flashed on the scoreboard. None of her entourage knew, but that’s another story for another time…). For those uninitiated to Australian football, 12 months before the World Cup, we were in Germany losing all three games of the Confederations Cup and being coached by Frank Farina. And oh, I almost forgot, with the small task of again having to face the fifth place South American team in the World Cup qualifiers only a matter of months away. Those were dark days indeed and the despair and hopelessness that all fans would have felt when we reached the low point of the Confederations Cup should have lived with us all.
Thankfully it contrasted hugely with those joyful 10 minutes against the Japanese in Kaiserslautern and our overall performance at the World Cup. Humans, by our nature, nearly always forget the bad when they look back on life’s moments and I believe that this has happened with many Australian football supporters and journalists. The thing I really want to highlight is how badly off we were barely 4 months before that momentous night in Sydney where we beat Uruguay in the now famous shoot-out that booked our place at the World Cup.
We were at this low point due to an internationally inexperienced Australian manager.
Compare this to the huge achievements that were made in barely 4 months with an internationally experienced, renowned, and tactically astute manager. Then ask yourself, how the hell did we end up with an inexperienced Australian manager (Graham Arnold) in charge of the team for the Asian Cup and from the Australian media only having Craig Foster, Les Murray and the team from SBS questioning how it had occurred? This oversight by most of the Australian media beggars belief.
The bare stats for the Socceroos in their competitive matches since the World Cup reads as follows: played 14, won 5, drawn 3, lost 6. Not great, not completely disastrous. Graham Arnold has been in charge that whole time. I argue he shouldn’t have even made it past his second game in charge, the 2-0 loss to Kuwait. That result would never have happened under Hiddink. But even after such a disastrous result, there were some, such as The Age leading football journalist Michael Lynch, who made the extraordinary claim that Graham Arnold should be hired permanently for the Socceroos coaching job. Lynch’s article makes even more interesting reading 12 months on, especially how many things former Socceroo and now SBS analyst Craig Foster got right. My personal favourite part from the piece Foster wrote is the following:
“After Wednesday, Graham said that in the second half the players were "looking forward to their club games". I have difficulty believing this happened under Hiddink when everyone had to perform, all the time, and after the Kuwait loss away the excuses were the heat, the players, and the "World Cup hangover". Hiddink didn't make excuses, he made changes.”
Has anyone else noticed the similar, sorry excuses peddled out by Graham and his brother-in-arms John Kosmina after the Asian Cup? Les Murray in his article “Rid us of these cheats” writes: “The thick cloud of Australian excuses that drifted forth from Bangkok following the Oman game was suffocating. Left unchecked and allowed to run, this stuff will debilitate this team to the point where it will leave this Asian Cup with nothing.” Prophetic stuff.
The point I’m trying to make is this: How could anyone who has any knowledge of the many trials and tribulations Australia has faced as a football nation not have wanted us to hire another big name coach to take over as soon as the World Cup finished?
Why were people like Michael Lynch and leading football writer for the Sydney Morning Herald, Mike Cockerill, people who (apparently) know what they’re talking about writing articles read by thousands of people extolling the virtues of keeping Arnold on as Socceroo coach? The writers of these articles created a debate out of an issue that anyone with a brain and a memory would know was a non-issue.
Put simply as a nation still forging our own football identity it is even more important for us to have a coach with an excellent international pedigree and experience as we will need all the help we can get on these fronts to make up for our lack of tradition, our lack of opportunities to play together and consequently gel together as a national team, and technical competence. I can hear people saying “Well, if we get Dick Advocaat in now, there’s no harm done really is there?”
I’ll explain why I think there has been some harm done by not getting a big name coach in straight after the World Cup.
Australia as a football nation gained a lot of respect from our performances in Germany. Living in Europe I can safely say that the level of knowledge and respect for Australian football that the average European fan had rose by about 80% after Germany. Simply stated, it put us on the map.
Mumbling to these same people 12 months later that we were beaten by Iraq pretty much erased that new-found respect. But it is obviously not the respect of other fans that is important. The most serious issue, and one that I think is most worrying for the immediate future of Australian Football, is the respect of the clubs and the players themselves. Here are a couple of worrying quotes, first from World Cup hero Tim Cahill: “ I understand me playing for Australia frustrates him [his Everton manager David Moyes], but you can never take away what we achieved as a country. Now I understand that when I come back from this, maybe I will have to think differently. My priority now is Everton and the Australian manager knows this. I'm not in any rush to be thinking about Australia.” From Mark Viduka: “Australian football's in transition as well and we don't know who is going to be the new manager. So until that's sorted, you don't know, it might have an effect on my decision.” And finally from Liverpool manager Rafa Benitez: “My players travel more than Phileas Fogg in "Around The World In 80 Days". Javier Mascherano had to play a friendly for Argentina in Australia. That must have been really important.”
Without drawing too long a bow, would any of these quotes have happened if we had installed a high profile and quality manager 12 months ago and gone on to win the Asian Cup?
I doubt it very much.
I not only believe that it is vital for our 2010 world cup campaign to have both Mark Viduka and Tim Cahill heavily involved, but, and this is important to remember, to have their managers allow them to come back to Australia or Asia even more often than they have in the past as now we are qualifying through Asia we will have to play more important World Cup qualifying games more often. This means that, like it or not, we will need to have a good relationship with the managers of our big players in Europe. Rafa Benitez’s comments may have been in jest but do you think he would have made such a joke if Argentina were playing Spain for example, or the reigning Asian Cup champions with a high profile manager?
My hunch is that if it were not for journalists like Michael Lynch and others suffering from memory loss about where Australia was before Hiddink, we would have installed a manger a long time ago who would have built on the momentum from the World Cup and the great work done by Hiddink before and at the World Cup.
Just like in Orwell’s Animal Farm where the animals tell each other to always remember what it was like when the farm was controlled by humans, as Australian football fans, without a hint of irony, we must always remind each other of what it was like before Hiddink came.
Not doing this would mean losing it all and winding up back where we were. The good news is it is not too late to fix the inaction of the past 14 months.
So on that note, welcome Dick Advocaat, you are arriving just in the nick of time…
2 comments:
Now that is a massive blog-entry ;) Look forward to reading more of your thoughts on soccer. I'll contribute with some comments, especially if you, at some point, should forget to mention the greatness of Liverpool...
Very true! The world cup momentum has been poorly managed by Soccer Australia.
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