I thought I was persona non grata with Football Federation Australia but at least someone appears to be reading my work, judging from the Memorandum of Understanding that was signed late last week by the FFA and its Indonesian counterpart, the Football Association of Indonesia or PSSI.

While it stops short of a joint World Cup bid, this is welcome news, one of the best things to happen to football in this country since joining Asia.

Back in 2007, I urged the FFA to start “thinking dangerously” in regard the football relationship with our huge northern neighbours and just over a click of two years on it’s finally happened.

The benefits of the five-year agreement are both tangible – coach and player exchanges, more friendlies, a leg-up for Australia into the ASEAN zone of the Asian Football Confederation – and highly symbolic.

FFA chairman Frank Lowy called it a “landmark agreement” and believes the two federations “can be important vehicles to assist in the development of relations between our two countries and their governments”.

That they can. It’s his “football diplomacy” mantra brought to life and he and FFA chief executive Ben Buckley can be justifiably proud.

Of course it’s easy to be cynical about it – would such an arrangement have been brokered if we weren’t bidding for a World Cup? – but it would also be churlish. The reasons for the deal coming to bear are really immaterial.

What’s more important is we as two very different nations – one predominantly Christian made up of a few islands, one predominantly Muslim made up of tens of thousands – embrace the opportunity football gives us to have a better relationship as people.

Why we have such a poor understanding of a country just 500 miles to our north is one of those odd quirks of our history we should be moving heaven and earth to rectify.

That has taken football, not politics, trade or tourism, to be an agent of change in that relationship is really not surprising.

Sport, especially the world game, has a habit of breaking down barriers.

So let’s savour this small but significant moment in our history and show our appreciation by turning up (and tuning in) in droves when the Merah Putih play the Socceroos in Brisbane on March 3.

There’ll be much more than football to cheer.

Roaring Hot

Yesterday's most commented articles

• Russian rugby league at crisis point [74 comments]
• Can Payne be excused or is he the A-League’s Henry? [54 comments]
• Rampant Reds thrash Force [49 comments]

Most read articles last 3 days

• Rugby fans must acknowledge problems
• Russian rugby league at crisis point
• Razor-sharp Mitchell leads Waratahs rout

Check out Aussie site which unearths all things cool and creative.
SPONSOR

It wasn’t so long ago that Matthew Spiranovic was being talked up as the next great Socceroos defender, having burst on to the Bundesliga scene as a teen phenom with FC Nürnberg.

But last week Spira left Germany on loan for Japanese club Urawa Red Diamonds, the latest in a trickle of Aussies trying to reignite their fading representative careers by decamping to the Land of the Rising Sun.

The number of Australians playing in Japan presently stands at four: Eddy Bosnar at top-tier side Shimizu S-Pulse, Mark Milligan at JEF United (where he came in to replace Bosnar), Josh Kennedy at Nagoya Grampus and the aforementioned Spira.

Since the early 1970s the likes of Dennis Boland, Mark Rudan, Graham Arnold and Steve Corica, among others, have all plied their trade at one time or another in Japan.

But does national coach Pim Verbeek rate the league and the other comp over the ditch, the K-League, that highly?

On the basis of selecting players for the national team, the answer appears to be no.

Towering unit Bosnar, who continues to be overlooked for the Socceroos despite having signed for one of the most exciting and best supported teams in the J-League, would likely agree with that analysis.

As would Sasa Ognenovski, who was a rock for Seongnam Ilhwa Chunma in the K-League, being part of a side that went to the final and qualified for the Asian Champions League.

Jade North and Antun Kovacic, meanwhile, would undoubtedly prefer we not mention them at all, their switches to Incheon United and Ulsan Hyundai Horang-i from the A-League failing to set the world on fire.

North, who has been the recipient of some great forbearance from Verbeek, will be very lucky to get to South Africa at all.

Only Kennedy, Mr Rent-a-Melon for Nagoya and the Socceroos, has got any consistent love from the Australia coach.

If you look at Verbeek’s CV, outside of his roles with Korea Republic, he hasn’t had a great time of it in the Far East. Two spells as a club coach in Japan, first with then-amateur-cum-J2 club Omiya Ardija in the late 1990s, followed by a short stint at Kyoto Purple Sanga in 2003 (he quit the job for Netherlands Antilles).

Nothing to crow about.

Yet if you make the supposition that Verbeek doesn’t rate the J- and K-Leagues, it’s contradicted by his own statements, made to me in interviews, that “the organisation around the national teams and club teams [in Korea] is absolutely fantastic – the best of the best” and “I was really impressed by the [Japanese] culture, by the J-League itself”.

The only hint he has given me of his reservations about Japanese football in the various conversations I’ve had with the man was when he explained: “The Japanese play combination football. More Brazilian influences than European.

“Efficiency wasn’t so high because they were focused on combination and ball possession instead of scoring goals … in Japan, they always try to build out from the backline to the midfield to the striker and back and that’s the way they prefer to play.”

Too fancy for No-Frills Pim, then? Perhaps.

So, ultimately, is Japan a good move for World Cup hopeful Spiranovic?

Urawa is a massive club but is in a period of decline, having finished seventh and sixth in its past two seasons after a golden period in the mid to late noughties.

It’s thought Spira has come to plug the gap left by Japan star Marcus Tulio Tanaka, who sensationally quit the club for Nagoya Grampus, which on one level attests to the young Australian’s quality to be spoken of in the same breath as Tanaka, but also should be regarded as a reminder that he keep his options open.

My Roar colleague Mike Tuckerman, a former resident of Japan, explained to me recently: “Tulio went nuts at Urawa for selling Alessandro Santos to Nagoya midway through last season… he basically labelled the Reds back-room staff ‘idiots’ and they were determined to get rid of him.”

Let’s hope Spira’s loan deal isn’t so fraught with politics.

And for his sake and the nation’s, let’s pray he gets to play some football and Pim, most importantly, is watching.

Did Nicky Carle secure his berth to South Africa on the strength of his performance against Kuwait? Probably not. But will Pim Verbeek give him another chance? Undoubtedly.

Carle didn’t really put a foot wrong, running hard, getting from box to box, distributing well.

Yet as Andy Harper said at one point during the telecast, in the opposition half he kept receiving the ball with his back to goal and never had anyone running off him.

There wasn’t much of an opportunity to play himself into any sustained pattern of attack, though at times he showed a nice understanding with Luke Wilkshire and his perfectly weighted free kick in the fourth minute caused the necessary panic to cough up Dean Heffernan’s poacher’s special.

So it’s not over for Nicky yet by a long stretch but the final Asian Cup qualifer in March, against Indonesia, looms as a make-or-break game for a man who Jason Culina, Harry Kewell and Tim Cahill have marked as a creative wizard for the Socceroos.

The problem for Nicky, though, is twofold: the continued rise of Dario Vidosic, who played very well in Kuwait, and simple mathematics.

The draw against Kuwait and Oman’s win over Indonesia in Jakarta has given the Omanis a real shot of nabbing one of the two qualifying spots. They sit on seven points, one behind Kuwait and Australia, and have home advantage against the Kuwaitis in Muscat on March 3 to conjure up their own great escape.

Verbeek should be confident that even with his A-League players on deck he will have enough firepower to account for the hopeless Indonesians, who lost 2-1 in Jakarta to put them out of reckoning for the Asian Cup, a result that will surely seal the fate of coach Benny Dollo.

But his headache is that Australia and Kuwait are equal on goal difference. If Oman defeat Kuwait, they cannot take the risk of losing.

You would have to go back to Surabaya in 1981 when Les Scheinflug’s team fell to an 88th minute goal from Risdianto in a World Cup qualifier, a result that put Australia out of the race for España 82, to find the last – and only – time the Socceroos have succumbed to the Merah Putih in 14 meetings since 1967.

That, however, won’t be enough comfort for Verbeek. Especially so when the young Indonesian team could have some wind in their sails under a new – possibly European – coach.

Failure to seal qualification for the Asian Cup would be a political disaster for Football Federation Australia at the business end of the World Cup bidding campaign, so expect the bulk of the European cavalry to return for Australia’s final match on March 3, which means, unfortunately for Nicky, falling once again in the shadow of Bresh, Harry and Tim.

He can still get to South Africa, and for joga bonito’s sake let’s hope he does, but he’s going to have to revive his club career, and not rely on his representative one, to make his case for selection. How he will do that while being frozen out at Crystal Palace is anyone’s guess.

If talent were enough to book a seat on that Qantas jumbo, Carle would be one of the first players on board. But football’s never that simple.

While others will get to Johannesburg in comfort, Carle’s going to have to get there by working harder than he ever has before and praying that the ball, for once, falls his way.

That or a plain old-fashioned miracle.

The palaver surrounding Mick McCarthy’s decision to field a virtual reserves team for the match against Manchester United and the FA’s flogging of him with a proverbial lettuce leaf as punishment has raised an interesting issue that seems obvious but is rarely spoken about: what do clubs exist for?

McCarthy defended his axing of ten players from the side that had beaten Tottenham three days previously by suggesting it was the best possible line-up he could have selected because the nominal first XI were simply too fagged with exhaustion.

In reality, however, he was resting them because this weekend’s match against Burnley is considered winnable and crucial for Wolves’ “staying up”. He wants the same side that defeated Spurs 1-0 at White Hart Lane to be refreshed and raring to go at Molineux.

“Decisions I make to keep this club up will only be judged further down the line,” he said. “I would hope fans understand [what happened at Old Trafford, where Wolves were thrashed 3-0] because my decisions will judge whether we stay in the Premier League.”

And chief executive Jez Moxey has backed him, admitting he was “surprised by Mick’s team selection” but his manager “is very cognisant of what the fans want and I think what they want most is to stay in the Premier League.”

That, however, appears not to be the case, judging from the tenor of comments made by Wolves supporters. Arthur Williams, president of the North West Wolves fans’ group, told the BBC “there was something to be gained from that match on Tuesday” and that he and the other 3000 fans who made the trip to Old Trafford and forked out £42 each for a seat deserved much more from their club.

“My first reaction when I saw ten changes and players playing out of position was, I thought, grossly disrespectful.”

Many are now demanding refunds, which the club is refusing to pay.

So who’s right?

In my view, McCarthy and the club are in the wrong.

What is the point of Premiership survival if you also alienate your supporter base by giving up the idea of winning matches even before they’re played?

Much of what makes football fans so loyal and passionate, especially those who follow smaller clubs, is the promise that one day they’re going to live out their wildest dreams and see their clubs beat the Manchester Uniteds, Liverpools and Chelseas of this world. They want to see their spare-parts teams take it up to the very best and dare to dream.

That’s what McCarthy, Moxey and the rest of the Wolves hoi polloi just don’t appreciate.

While “staying up” is its own kind of title race for Wolves and other clubs in the drop zone, one just as transfixing and exciting as the battle between the Big Four and with its own attendant financial rewards, it should never take priority over the simple motivation of trying to win.

That should be the mindset all coaches and all players in the Premier League take into every match, no matter the opposition and no matter what’s at stake.

Otherwise what is the point of supporting a team?

Clubs exist because of people and for the people, nothing else. When they start acting like they exist for something else, like Wolves did this week, you know a little bit of football’s soul has been lost.

It’s very sad to see.

Republic of Ireland assistant coach Liam Brady has called Sepp Blatter an “embarrassment” to FIFA after the most powerful man in world football revealed this week he’d been petitioned by the Irish to have them join 32 already-qualified nations in South Africa.

More indiscreet, in my view, than an embarrassment and the Irish idea got what it deserved: knocked on the head.

What Blatter most clearly is, however, is a politician as two-faced as they come.

Not so long ago, in the wake of the Hand of Gaul affair, Blatter went public to tell the world he’d called Henry to offer him his support, comparing the French player’s indiscretion to some of his old antics as a player in Switzerland: “[Henry] was honest by admitting that he did use his hand, but it wasn’t his responsibility to tell the referee.

When I was a centre forward in my junior team, I definitely gained an advantage by pulling a defender’s jersey in order to score a goal. And I didn’t go and see the referee to tell him about it.”

Essentially, then, telling Henry he would have done the same thing if he had ever been in a similar position, as would most other park footballers.

But just three days later, following virulent criticism of his comments, he has announced Henry will be investigated by FIFA’s disciplinary committee for the double-handball at the Stade de France and described Henry’s actions as “blatant unfair play… seen all around the world. I don’t know the outcome of the disciplinary committee. Let them make the decision. Fair play must be maintained in our game.”

A complete 360-degree turn. If it was so blatant (a subject of debate) why hasn’t the referee Martin Hansson and his assistants been called to account?

If it really mattered what the world thinks why wasn’t a replay ordered when the world was clamouring for it, despite what the
rules state? And if Blatter cared a fig for due process why is he determining Henry’s guilt even before the disciplinary committee has had a chance to sit down and review the evidence?

The truth is Blatter is sensing there will be dark moral clouds over this next World Cup unless he and his organisation are seen to punish the French and specifically Henry. This on top of the severe damage the affair has done to FIFA’s own credibility and Blatter’s leadership by exposing the emptiness of his rhetoric.

Henry, basically, is being made an example of. But the punishment, whatever it may be, has come too late. Ireland is out of the World Cup due to French trickery and the tournament next June will be immeasurably tarnished because of it.

If FIFA wanted to make amends to the football world its executive committee this week would have agreed to basic improvements in the way the game is run: like having two goal-line assistant referees, like introducing a modicum of video technology. But yet again they failed to take the initiative when the opportunity to make a big statement was there for the taking.

Henry might be a cheat but FIFA is cheating us all out of having a better World Cup.

Check out Aussie site which unearths all things cool and creative.
SPONSOR

During the week your blogger flew to Kuala Lumpur as a guest of the Asian Football Confederation, ostensibly to attend the AFC Annual Awards. But it was also an opportunity for me to see how Asian football actually works and I came home convinced Australia has Buckley’s chance of getting the 2018 or 2022 World Cup.

Les Murray, who was also with me in KL, assures me otherwise and believes Australia has a very good chance to get 2022, and he’s probably in a better position to judge, being involved with FIFA’s ethics commission and serving as chairman of the Asia-Pacific Broadcasting Union Sports Group (ABU).

For me, though, what struck me instantly about the gathering of dignitaries, special guests and heavy hitters at the AFC awards was the power that resides in the western and eastern blocs of the confederation: namely Saudi Arabia/the Gulf states and South Korea/Japan.

More than three-quarters of the awards went to Korea and Japan alone (FIFA vice-president Chung Mong-joon shouldn’t have bothered sitting down) and Mohamed bin Hammam, the AFC president, was conspicuously pally with Sheikh Mohammed bin Hamad Khalifa Al-Thani, the son of the Emir of Qatar, and his enormous retinue of hangers-on, including Hassan Al-Thawadi, the chief executive of the Qatar 2022 bid committee.

Though Frank Lowy was appropriately seated three or four seats away from the president, Ben Buckley and the rest of the FFA delegation was squirreled away on a table against the far wall. Even Les, in his capacity as ABU chairman, had a better seat.

During an interminable traditional Malay dance performance, Lowy got up and started walking around, looking lost. I walked over to him and asked him if he needed help. “I’m trying to find my people,” he said, referring to Buckley, and I pointed him in the right direction.

Australia was nominated in five awards out of a possible 18, and only Matthew Cream, as AFC Assistant Referee of the Year, took home a statuette. As we all well know, no Australian players were nominated in any of the categories.

It was a fairly underwhelming evening from a parochial perspective, especially at a time when the FFA is trying to put its best foot forward in the race for 2018 or 2022.

Meanwhile Qatar 2022 was pulling out all stops and sparing no expense, setting up a booth in the lower lobby of the Shangri-La Hotel where the awards took place, giving away T-shirts, stickers and ornamental glass footballs and flying in their star spruiker, Sami Al-Jaber, the Saudi Arabian World Cup legend, for photo-ops and interviews.

Australia had no such presence.

So in, many respects, apart from Lowy’s perfunctory address to the International Football Arena conference in the same hotel on the Tuesday , I would consider it an opportunity lost.

The FFA chairman talks of Asia being “the centre of the future of world football”, and I would agree, but from what I’ve seen Australia is just a peripheral player in the region, far from where the action is. The sales pitch needs to change.

Talking incessantly about Asia is only drawing attention to the strengths of the other bidding nations – Qatar, Japan, Korea and Indonesia – which are better placed to maximise the benefits Lowy talks about.

What would be a better strategy is for Australia and Indonesia to forge closer ties, and there was gossip during the week in KL that Indonesia had urged a meeting of ASEAN football leaders to admit Australia to the South-East Asian zone of the AFC as a full member.

While an Australia-Indonesia joint bid is something far off, it’s not beyond the realms of possibility.

As Lowy and Co know only too well, being a force in Asia is not about the size of your country but the quality of your relationships. The Australia–Indonesia one must now be a priority.

Now I’ve got all the time in the world for Craig Foster, a professional and personal mate. We’ve even talked about working together on a project. But he’s being unusually provocative in calling for Guus Hiddink to replace Pim Verbeek as coach of Australia at the World Cup.

While I have the utmost respect for what Hiddink has achieved as a coach and what he did for Australia in 2005 and 2006, it isVerbeek who has earned the right to lead Australia at the World Cup and it would be an outrage if he were demoted.

I say that not as someone who especially likes the way Verbeek’s teams play, because I do not, nor the players he picks, because again I do not, but he is entitled to prove to us all that his vision is the right one. He can only do that by leading us to success at South Africa 2010 without having to worry about looking over his shoulder for Hiddink or anyone.

Hiddink has failed with Russia and failed badly. His famous luck ran out this week against Slovenia but in truth it should have happened long ago. The Dutchman is a maverick, a bluffer, someone who has the uncanny knack of taking the right opportunity at the right time and demanding heavy remuneration for it. He is unquestionably good at his job and a brilliant motivator but so are many others in his game. They just don’t have his aura or his agent.

Conspiracy theorists might point out that the men who appointed Hiddink to the Socceroos in 2005, Frank Lowy and Phil Wolanski, are still running the show at Football Federation Australia and could well be tempted with a trip down memory lane. That might be the case. But Verbeek and his wife are close personal friends of Wolanski, so there is as much chance of Wolanski stabbing Verbeek in the back as there is me having dinner with Graham Arnold. It ain’t going to happen.

South Africa 2010 is Verbeek’s arrival as a coach. The moment he’s been waiting for his entire life. He’s made other people, Hiddink and Dick Advocaat among them, look good and now it’s his turn for some time in the sun.

To bring in Hiddink now over the top of Verbeek would be the biggest slight that could ever be perpetrated on the man. Foster contends, “I’d be surprised if Verbeek had a massive problem with it.” But the truth is he’d be livid.

Where I think Fozz does have it right, though, is his assessment of Hiddink’s discipline of players and man-management style as diametrically opposed to Verbeek’s, or the “polar opposite”. That is: not getting close to any of the players, making certain players know they don’t have a mortgage on their positions, not brooking any crap from anyone.

In my opinion, Australia could do with a little more of the Hiddink approach and less of Verbeek’s comparative softness. He’s given his players way too much licence.

But for me, Verbeek should stay. No questions.

If any country is to make a beeline for Hiddink’s services it should be South Africa, which must be ruing its decision to reappoint Carlos Alberto Parreira. Hiddink would have been perfect for Bafana Bafana.

Still, there’s a long time between now and June. Anything can happen. As we saw this week in Slovenia. When Hiddink says, as he did following the game in Maribor, that “the question of whether I will continue to UEFA Euro 2012 will require some time for thought” and “we’ll talk about the future at a later stage”, you just know he’s got another trick up his sleeve.

But who’s he fooling now?

I can’t pretend to have known much about Robert Enke, the German footballer who threw himself in front of a train this week, but I was more than familiar with the emotional architecture of his story, having written a piece on depression among sportspeople a few years ago for Inside Sport magazine.

In the sporting world, as everywhere, it is rampant. But sport itself presents unique challenges for those working to destigmatise mental illness.

That’s because so many sportspeople, especially in professional ball sports, have to function in macho and ultra-competitive environments where showing any amount of frailty, timidity or weakness can get you dropped from the team or ostracised in the dressing-room.

Depression demands they keep silent.

And so they do, from their teammates, their coaches, often their families, suffering in silence until one day you or I pick up the newspaper or log on to the internet and read that this person whose existence we took for granted is gone.

That’s what happened with Enke.

He kept it to himself until such time as he could take it no more and left behind a letter explaining his torment. His Germany and Hannover 96 teammates are in shock, having known nothing of his troubles. The Nationalmannschaft’s next match, a friendly against Chile this weekend, has been cancelled.

Enke’s death comes only weeks after Paul Williams, the former SBS football commentator, also took his own life. As my SBS colleague Les Murray wrote with great courage, not sanitising the tragedy for anybody, Williams died “in a dark place and in a dark state of sinister despondency, shivering in the ultimate cold of hopelessness… harangued by demons against whom he had long fought but by whom, in the end, he was out-manoeuvred.

“It was, as so often happens in football, a victory for senseless injustice.”

Senseless injustice might be acceptable on a football field, because it’s only a game. In any case one cannot prevent the movement or trajectory of every pass and ensure the result we want. But senseless injustice, when it comes to the ultimate contest of living and dying, is something we should never accept.

Sportspeople need to know they can reach out for help without retribution or judgment. Most can’t, or feel they can’t, either when they’re mid-career or retired, and so we keep on hearing stories like Enke’s and Williams’s that shock us to their core for their needlessness and waste.

Mental illness has destroyed too many lives for us to sit by and let the carnage continue. We all need to do more for those among us who are struggling, particularly men – be they mates, brothers, sons, fathers or whoever, whether they play sport or not. Getting another beer into them and asking them to cheer up isn’t the support they need.

Enke’s death was needless. But if one person is saved by hearing his story and choosing to get help, it wasn’t in vain.

May he rest in peace.

———-
Anyone feeling disturbed by this story or otherwise needing help can take a first step by visiting http://www.beyondblue.org.au, or calling Lifeline (24 hours) 13 11 14, or Mensline Australia (24 hours) 1300 78 99 78.

So Pim Verbeek has cut Scott McDonald adrift. Good. It was overdue. Which is not to say McDonald is not a quality player – judged on his profile and goals he’s still our best sharpshooter in Europe.

But overall, in his 15 international appearances to date, he’s not performed to the standard required of a national-team striker and never quite come across as a player who looks like he’s comfortable in the team.

Whether that is just confidence or how he’s been played in Verbeek’s system is inconsequential. McDonald needs to own up to the fact he simply hasn’t been good enough, despite plenty of chances to acclimatise and make the position his own.

The coach isn’t about to change his system to fit around the player. Verbeek’s going to South Africa 2010 doing it his way.

So how McDonald responds to the challenge of being left out is now up to him. His World Cup chances aren’t shot but they have definitely been dealt a blow no matter how much Verbeek tries to play it down as a result of having “plenty of options”.

In the meantime it’s time for other strikers to step up and put him out of the picture completely.

Many moons ago when he was still playing in the A-League I tipped Bruce Djite for big things but his adventure in Turkey has hardly set the world alight and this would explain why his opportunities with the Socceroos have been so limited.

Djite has a physical presence McDonald does not. McDonald is more of a Tim Cahill-like player, a rover who can sniff a goal amid chaos. A second-ball “cleaner”, if you will. Djite offers a bit more: tall, strong, able to hold the ball up and play others in, as we saw him do so frequently with Nathan Burns at Adelaide United.

A genuine target man, albeit one who, because of his youth and inexperience, still has a long way to go in being the finished product.

Verbeek’s mixed things up a bit by calling in Djite while ignoring Nikita Rukavytsya, even though Ruka’s arguably in better form, scoring in Cup games in Holland but not breaking into FC Twente’s first team. On the weekend Djite played his first SüperLig game for Genclerbirligi since August, coming on as a second-half sub.

In reality it’s going to come down to Djite vs Rukavytsya for a berth in South Africa so Verbeek is simply giving both players a decent platform to impress.

We’ll likely see Djite dropped for the next game in the New Year and Ruka called in.

(Sorry, parochialists: Archie Thompson, Mark Bridge and Alex Brosque have virtually zero chance of making the final 23-man squad for the World Cup, despite Verbeek’s mentioning of the trio in a press conference this week.)
So is Verbeek compromising our World Cup interests by taking such a gamble in dropping McDonald?

In my view, quite the opposite. In fact it’s one of the bravest things he’s done so far and bravery is not a word frequently used in connection to our national-team manager.

Though it’s late in the piece it’s better he start taking risks now than never. If he can take a few more we might just stand a chance come June.

Check out Aussie site which unearths all things cool and creative.
SPONSOR

So Melbourne Heart wants a piece of Mark Viduka and Josip Skoko? They’ve also expressed passing interest in Michael Petkovic and Ljubo Milicevic.

Can Football Federation Australia check the licence again and make sure “heart” wasn’t a typo? It wasn’t Melbourne Hajduk, was it?

In all seriousness, though, the FFA would be well served getting as many teams into Melbourne as possible, thinly disguised minority social clubs or not, simply because it’s the only part of Australia where football seems to be doing alright. Elsewhere it’s going down the toilet. Attendances and atmosphere are at pitiful lows for the A-League. The game, let’s not mince words, is in a bit of trouble.

I was talking to Les Murray in Sydney today about why he thought Melbourne had got it right when no one else could and his answer was simple: “They embraced the ethnics, Jess. You go to a Victory match and they’re all there: the Croats, the Greeks, the Macedonians, even the Asians. They’re all there. And they love it. Melbourne is like no other city in Australia.”

There’s been a suggestion that Melbourne Heart might undermine the position of Melbourne Victory and undoubtedly it will affect it to some degree but I can only see its presence in Australia’s greatest sporting city as a boon for the sport and a challenge to the hegemony of the AFL in Victoria. Not to mention a true derby that doesn’t need the FFA’s already overtaxed spin doctors to pump it up.

The club has recruited a very credentialled manager in John van ‘t Schip (ex Ajax, Genoa, Oranje), signalling its intentions immediately, and appointed a very capable administrator in John Didulica, former legal counsel at the FFA, one-time PFA chief executive, brother of Joey and Melbourne Knights and Sydney United player. Combined with a chief executive with AFL experience, Scott Munn, and a moneybags in “colourful racing identity” Peter Sidwell and you have the makings of something potentially great (and, blessedly, an extra annoyance to the AFL).

If anything can drag A-League football out of its current malaise, it’s something born in Melbourne.

I’m curious, though, about the connection between Sidwell and Phil Wolanski, a member of the FFA board. Both have been mentioned in media reports as owners of the Sutton Grange operation near Bendigo.

All well and good so far.

The only thing Heart needs right now is a new name. Roar, Fury, Glory, Victory, Heart? When’s all this crap from the minds of American marketing jackasses going to cease? The results of the competition to find a new one can’t come a moment too soon.

But for now let’s wish everyone attached to the new club good luck and hope they can deliver, unlike Gold Coast, on what they promise.

The A-League will thank them for it.

Finally, some commonsense from Football Federation Australia, with Frank Lowy realising the game is up for the A-League and the Australian World Cup bid if drastic changes aren’t made – and made now.

At a function hosted by Melbourne Victory, Lowy acknowledged the future of the game wasn’t in being squirreled away on pay-TV and said “there’s no doubt that the game needs to be shown on free-to-air from time to time, or certain parts of the competition on free-to-air”.

This is a seismic statement from the FFA chairman and will have Fox Sports executives, to extend the earthquake metaphor for a moment, shaking in their boots.

With two years left on their seven-year, $120m deal, Fox would have been forward-planning to embed themselves even further in the profile of the local game, withstanding the rights already purloined by SBS, which include the 2010 and 2014 World Cups. Instead it has been left on shakier ground than ever before.

Football has been Fox’s glittering prize: A-League matches, A-League highlights shows, Socceroos qualifiers in Asia and for the World Cup, home friendlies.

A not inconsiderable bounty.

In the process, broadcasting careers have been made and a wedge driven between Fox and SBS for the bragging rights as the “home of football”.

But it appears Lowy has cottoned on to the fact that if he is going to bid for the World Cup, a mission whose raison d’etre is to bring the game of football to as many people as possible, he can’t at the same time be seen to be denying it to the majority of Australians, the very people he needs to get behind the campaign.

Hence his new, calculated message of “football to the people”. Up until now, true to his businessman’s creed, it was “football to the highest bidder”.

Football fans would be right to be cynical about it but hardly in a position to complain. For the game to truly grow it does need to be seen by as many people as possible, and that is on free-to-air.

What Lowy must equally do, however, is not make the same mistake as his predecessor, David Hill, and sell the game’s soul – or part of it – to the station with the biggest ratings or advertising revenue. Hill’s selling rights to Channel Seven back in the late 1990s was one of the greatest mistakes in the history of Australian sport.

Who can forget the slogan: “NOBODY SCREWS SOCCER LIKE 7”?

A former chief executive of its then-pay TV arm, C7, even admitted in an email the network had deliberately “suffocated the sport” in order to appease the AFL, who transferred its own rights from Seven to Nine and Ten.

No, the rights must go to the station that will do the right thing by the game. That station is SBS.

I say that not as a SBS employee (though I am) but as a football fan who appreciates what SBS has done and continues to do for the game I love. No one else, in my opinion, comes close to their passion for the game and the credibility and intelligence of their staff.

Give it to SBS, Frank. And let’s all get on with the show.

I can’t decide whether Oman coach Claude Le Roy looks like Tom Petty or an aged Joni Mitchell, but there’s no doubting he’s one mightily pissed off dude. And for good reason. Not the fact his valiant Omanis fell victim to another one of Tim Cahill’s get-out-of-jail goals, but because Socceroos team manager Gary Moretti “insulted” him at half-time in Wednesday’s Asian Cup qualifier in Melbourne.

Le Roy wasn’t mincing his words in the post-match presser: “In 30 years I am a coach, I never receive an insult from anybody, but the behaviour of this man at half-time is not of the quality of this country, this team and this staff.

“I am not going to repeat [what Moretti said]. I just wanted to tell you that it’s not at the level of a country like Australia.

“We are not cheaters. I am not liking it when the players [ask for medical assistance] on the field – but it happens only two times in the first half. We were not going to cheat, not to lose time or waste time. I never ask that of my players.”

From the tenor of the comments it’s clear what Le Roy was suggesting Moretti had said – so what the hell was the Australian official doing?

More importantly, why on earth does he need to be on the sideline?

The bloke’s a glorified booker of hotel rooms, for god’s sake. Is he on the technical staff? Does his input affect the course of proceedings?

Or is he like Phil Wolanski, the team’s head of delegation or whatever they’re calling Frank Lowy’s eldest son’s best mate these days, and there presumably just because it makes him look important?

If Moretti can’t keep his mouth shut, he has no business being on the bench. He certainly does not have the remit to be mouthing off to the coach of the Oman national football team. What an embarrassment.

Especially at a time when this country critically needs the support of Arab nations in our quest to bring the Asian Cup and World Cup to our shores.

We have enough image problems overseas without his impertinent observations.

What’s more breathtaking about Le Roy’s allegation, however, is that the same charge of cheating could easily be made against the Socceroos, two members of which Le Roy amusingly (and correctly, in my view) disparaged as “assistant referees” for their habit of persistently whining and hectoring.

There was Tim Cahill complaining to the referee about shirt-pulling during a corner kick when replays showed him literally shoving an Omani to the turf.

Then there was Harry Kewell appealing for a corner when it was clear he had had the last touch.

And how the whole result could have been different had that penalty claim gone against Scott Chipperfield late in the second half when he brought down an Omani without touching the ball. Instead it didn’t and those supposedly cheating Omanis took it with good grace.

The Australians were very, very lucky to get the result. They might not be so lucky with voting for the Asian and World Cups, though, if they continue behaving with such classlessness and tactlessness.

Over at Goal.com, my mate John Duerden has a fantastic piece up suggesting Australia and Indonesia combine their World Cup bids to have a shot at either 2018 or 2022.

With the Rio Olympics going to Brazil and the chastened Americans firming as a favourite for 2022 with 2018 inevitably going to Europe, the chances of Australia getting anything at all are looking decidedly gloomier.

Sorry, Kate Ellis. We look f***ed.

Something the Indonesian bid has always been. It hasn’t stood a chance in hell.

So, why not do as Duerden suggests and make the most of this bad situation and get a little creative?

As readers of this column and my work at The World Game and ESPN STAR Sports well know, I have long been an advocate of closer Indonesia-Australia ties, so what Duerden is proposing warms the cockles of my heart. When Australia joined the Asian Football Confederation, one of the mantras of FFA chairman Frank Lowy was “football diplomacy” – that football could achieve things in our region that politics and trade could not.

I believed him. It was one of the main themes of a book I wrote back in 2007 – how Australia was using football to get closer to Asia; that through football we were slowly coming to realise what were really were and had been for some time: an Asian football nation.

But “football diplomacy” apropos Asia seems to be a low priority at the moment. All the buttering up is being done in the halls of FIFA, with Lowy angling to get his World Cup.

In my view it’s the wrong approach. If Lowy really wants to bag a World Cup, he’d be better off doing away with trying to charm Jack Warner and cosying up to Indonesia, one of the most important markets for football in the world.

As Duerden writes in his story, “Indonesia has the population and the passion… Australia has the knowhow.”

Combined it would be a formidable bid, covering all the important bases and spread the tournament across an impressive geographical area. Australia and Indonesia boast between them three of the biggest
stadiums in the world.

More importantly, though, it would be uniting two antithetical cultures: Christian and Muslim, West and East, and that would be a considerable advantage to the bid. FIFA likes to think of itself as an organisation that promotes peace and fraternity through football, so what better opportunity than Indonesia-Australia 2022?

Obviously the massive disadvantage is transportation – Indonesia is not up to par by any measure – but cheap labour could solve that problem thriftily and inexpensively by the construction of new roads and rail networks in the major cities.

Security issues, too, would be a concern but what better incentive to finally smash Jemaah Islamiyah than the promise of a World Cup on Indonesian soil?

The terrorists’ cause would actually be ill served if they tried to do anything untoward during a World Cup. If there’s one thing Indonesians love more than anything else it’s football.

Indonesia-Australia 2022 might seem pie in the sky, but so was Rio 2016 not so long ago. Lowy’s motto in life is to “push the limits”. Well, let’s see what he’s made of.

Check out Aussie site which unearths all things cool and creative.
SPONSOR

While the Australia 2018-2022 bid might have taken some succour from the withdrawal of Mexico from the race for hosting the World Cup, there looms a significant event on the horizon that will pose a whole new challenge: the official launch of the Russia 2018-2022 bid by the Russian Football Union before the October 10 Russia Vs Germany World Cup qualifier at the 80,000-capacity Luzhniki Stadium in Moscow.

On the day there will also be a conveniently arranged tribute match to Lev Yashin, featuring veterans from Germany and Russia including Lothar Matthäus.

Something to warm the cockles of Franz Beckenbauer’s heart.

The World Cup-winning captain, of course, is a member of FIFA’s executive committee, the body that decides who gets what.

Significantly, the Russians have enlisted the help of Andreas Herren, formerly FIFA’s director of communications, who worked for years as Sepp Blatter’s PR flack/apologist, and US-based marketing group Helios Partners, which worked with the Russians to secure a successful bid for the 2014 Winter Olympics for the city of Sochi on the Black Sea.

The choice of Helios was approved by Russian prime minister and Clayton’s dictator Vladimir Putin.

Combine this with the world’s most wanted coach in Russia manager Guus Hiddink, a national team on the rise (Russia is placed sixth in the FIFA rankings, a remarkable turnaround from 1998, when it was ranked #40), a Euro 2008 semi-final finish, a domestic league that has produced a UEFA Cup champion in Zenit St Petersburg, and an economy that released a clutch of dodgy oil and gas oligarchs into the European football ownership circuit and you have a formidable opponent.

In my opinion, Russia is the real sleeper candidate for 2018 and is advantaged more than anything else by history: extraordinarily the world’s biggest country has never hosted a World Cup.

Significantly, its chief rivals from Europe – Spain and England – have.

With six stadia already suitable as approved World Cup venues, there are plans to build nine more and name a total of 14 host cities. An impressive spread. Government funding has already been secured.

Australia 2018, by contrast, is a study in bureaucratic dithering and only five stadia meet FIFA requirements. A minimum of 12 must be nominated by December.

Most of the host cities will be on the eastern seaboard – concentrated in NSW and Victoria – with doubts about whether any games will take place in South Australia and Western Australia at all, subject to funding for stadium rebuilding/expansion.

More and more the Australia 2018-2022 bid looks quixotic, a view I’ve held from the beginning, while conceding that we are an outside chance for 2022.

Frank Lowy’s hubris and mortality is compelling it forward, of that I believe there is little doubt, and he deserves a World Cup for what he has given football in Australia, but right now I’d rather see all that money spent in shoring up the crumbling foundations of the A-League.

A World Cup might be a nice way to remember Lowy when he’s gone, but I’d rather still have an A-League in nine years time.

Wouldn’t you?

Is it Let’s Bag Jesse Fink Week or something? First there was Les Murray at The World Game gently chiding me for defending Emmanuel Adebayor. Now Davidde Corran at The Roar has let out a very public groan at another one of my impassioned open letters to Pim Verbeek to play Richard Porta.

I’m a sensitive little flower, so please be kind, readers.

But I’m going to lob another verbal hand grenade in the direction of the FFA this week and tell them to get their bloody act together to counter these player raids by Asian clubs. They need to do something, which is better than what they’re currently doing, which is nothing.

Followers of this column will know I’ve written extensively on the subject, so this is not the place rehash all the arguments for why Australian football needs to not only be vigilant but strong in the face of such relentless poaching.

You well know the wheres and whys.

What is new, however, is where the reported interest in Asia is coming from. India is slowly eating away at Australian domestic cricket and it threatens to do the same with domestic football.

The premier Indian domestic football competition, the I-League, whose new season kicks off in October, might be regarded as a joke now, and for all intents and purposes it is.

But FIFA and the AFC have a strong interest in the long-term growth of the game on the subcontinent, the All India Football Federation and I-League are being overhauled in key administrative positions, and the sheer economic windfall that companies stand to make should the game take off means there will never be any shortage of interested parties wanting to make the sport work.

It might take 20 years. It might take 50. But India is going to be a power in football and a smart A-League club should be making connections now – if only ceremonial – with those teams that will emerge as Asian superclubs in the future: Mohun Bagan, Mahindra United, Pune, Dempo and Churchill Brothers.

The prospects of players going to Indian clubs in the short term is minimal, and will likely begin and end with state league players unable to land A-League contracts and wanting a bit of an adventure.

But a shrewd chief executive should see the benefit of looking at someone such as Baichung Bhutia, India’s most capped player who is coming to the end of his career, Nehru Cup hero Subrata Pal or new wonderboy Sunil Chhetri, who was knocked back for a UK work visa and so couldn’t join Queens Park Rangers, who wanted him on a three-year deal.

He’s currently cooling his heels at Dempo in Goa and would undoubtedly relish the prospect of Asian Champions League football with an A-League club. (Dempo was defeated in the playoff for an ACL place by UAE club Al-Sharjah in February.)

A big market. Big exposure. Big commercial prospects. With the possibility of a decent footballer thrown in the mix.

It might all seem a bit fanciful and ambitious, but that’s the whole point of running a business, isn’t it? If the A-League can gain even just a small foothold in Indian football, it’s making a very wise investment in its own future.

Waiting for Lucas Neill to join a new club has felt like waiting for Guns N’ Roses to release the Chinese Democracy album – the only difference being Axl Rose finally managed to put us all out of collective misery and release the bloody thing.

Three months after he walked out of West Ham a free agent, Neill gave the impression he was on his way to bigger and better things and asked for forbearance from fans and the national coach as he prepared the “masterpiece” of his professional career.

But is providing injury cover for Phil Neville at Everton what anyone really expected? And for about the same money he was being offered to stay in London?

Was it worth the wait?

Not in my book. It’s a massive disappointment. Especially when Neill had the opportunity years ago to join the biggest club on Merseyside, Liverpool, and turned them down. But at least, and at long last, it appears he’s going somewhere and can get back to doing what’s really important: representing his country as captain and preparing his team for the World Cup.

Hopefully, too, I can shut up about it.

This saga went on way too long and was a blight on Australian football, far more damaging than anything Tim Cahill allegedly got up to on the turps in Kings Cross. What annoyed me most about it was the almost complete suspension of critical analysis in the mainstream press of Neill’s dangerous poker game. The only time he ever got decent column inches – and spuriously – was when Michael McGurk got shot.

Shameful.

Our old mate Slippery Jim will no doubt delight in the rumoured return of Nicky Carle to Australia as a guest player for the Newcastle Jets (what a joke, so-called greatest Australian footballer ever, you’re an arsehat, Fink, yada yada yada) but there doesn’t seem to be a lot in the story and knowing Carle’s ambition to make the World Cup squad I don’t think he’d countenance it for a minute. I’m sure he’s unimpressed the story’s been played up in Australia and will feel rightfully embarrassed it’s got back to Palace when he’s trying to make all the right noises.

The person who really should be worrying about his future is Carle’s bete noire, Neil Warnock, who presided over a 4-0 humiliation by Scunthorpe – the mighty Scunthorpe – over the weekend, with Carle unused in favour of the Frenchman Alassane N’Diaye.

That leaves Palace in 20th position after six matches in a 24-team league, 12 points behind league leaders West Bromwich Albion.

Who’s gonna survive the season?

If I was a betting man I’d put my money on Carle over Warnock and we all know what a new manager might do for Carle if he doesn’t get a move elsewhere in the meantime.

Given the tenuous position he holds in Verbeek’s World Cup plans, you can rest assured Carle won’t be calling any prospective new club’s bluff like his national captain. Say what you like about him, but Carle’s still a footballer that plays for all the right reasons.

It has not been a good week for Lucas Neill. In fact, it’s been a terrible few months for the Australia captain. But I’m sure having his name dragged into the Michael McGurk story tops it all off.

What possible relevance Neill has to the investigation into the Sydney businessman’s murder and why we should be privy to such information in the first place is something I hope a future episode of Media Watch examines.

Neill didn’t deserve having his face plastered across the front pages of the dailies just because he once met McGurk. Should the barista who made McGurk’s morning coffee or the owner of the laundromat who dry-cleaned his shirts also be outed in the press?

What Neill should be excoriated for, brutally, is his shirking of responsibility as captain of the Socceroos. I’ve done it a few times in recent weeks and I’m happy to do it again because he deserves to be hammered. Whether you regard it as tedious is not really a concern.

His personal motives have already seen him miss two important matches for the national side and there could be a third, if he does not have a club by October. At the rate he is going, that is firming as a distinct possibility.

Already this week Neill was going to Atletico Madrid then he was not.

Then there was Réal Zaragoza, but they turned around and said he had priced himself out of a deal. Now Sunderland, the mighty Sunderland, is back in the picture, offering him $76,000 a week. And yet he still hasn’t signed on the dotted line. He hasn’t played a competitive match since 17 June.

Nearly three months.

What on earth is he stalling for? But more importantly, should he be allowed to continue stalling?

In my opinion, no. And for that Pim Verbeek has to take some heat.

Comments such as “I will start to get worried when he is not playing his games in April and May” are really rather amazing.

This is our national captain, the most important man in our back four in the coach’s estimation, the leader of the team, the marshal of our defence, and yet Verbeek tolerates his withering because he’s “waiting for the right club to sign the right deal”.

Sunderland is the right club? Apart from money, what the hell can they offer? I had to laugh when I saw a headline at Goal.com: REPORT: FORMER WEST HAM DEFENDER LUCAS NEILL WANTS MORE MONEY.

Raging favourite for Bleedingly Obvious Statement of the Year?

Yet Neill’s agent, Paddy Dominguez, has suggested that his client is not financially motivated. It’s hard to see it any other way.

Neill’s search for the “right club” and the “the right deal” is compromising our World Cup hopes. There are only two matches other than the Netherlands friendly scheduled at the present time between now and the end of the year, two Asian Cup qualifiers against Oman, which Neill, even if he is playing for a club by then, will likely miss, as Verbeek is bound to select A-League players only.

That means if he hasn’t found a club by October and missed the Oranje game, he won’t play another international in 2009.

That, by any measure, is not what one should expect of the captain of a national football team. Especially so with a World Cup campaign just around the corner and especially so again when his side was so completely outplayed by Korea Republic and the defence is in conspicuously in need of major surgery.

Pim, get on the phone and order Neill to join a club. Wasting more time is not a luxury our nation can afford.

Check out Aussie site which unearths all things cool and creative.
SPONSOR

Interestingly, your writer got an email during the week from a well-placed source in South Korea, one of the more powerful figures in the game in that country, telling me a story that appeared in the Australian press last week attributing quotes to Jade North had caused quite a ruckus at North’s club, Incheon United.

The story, which appeared on various websites in Australia, quoted North as saying, “I played three games in a row for Incheon after returning from international duty against Japan and things were going well.

“But for some reason I haven’t even been in the squad in the past five weeks and it’s now just a matter of keeping myself fit and trying to get a move.”

Damning words: trying to get a move.

This, apparently, was all news to Incheon and they bailed up the player demanding an explanation. North, according to my source, “told them that he never talked about wanting to move or mentioned anything ‘behind-the-scenes’… it seems like he said something in Australia thinking that it would never get back to Korea.

“The fact is, the coach [Ilija Petkovic] just doesn’t rate him which has been fairly clear from the beginning – though it can certainly be said that as he only played three games in an unfamiliar position, he never got a fair crack of the whip.”

(Bloody internet. You’ve got to be careful what you say – a few careless words and they can come back to bite you in the arse. Hard. I’ve learned that myself, even though I didn’t always heed the lesson the first time. Such a mad dog.)

Having missed a chance to move in the August 31 transfer deadline, North’s lucky, then, that he seems to have such a loyal champion in Pim Verbeek.

And with Lucas Neill missing from national duty once again, he is sure to assume a leadership role in the centre of defence for Australia Saturday night AEST.

But was the move to Asia worth it?

The $2 million contract was the big sweetener, of course, seriously good money for a middling A-League player, but primarily North made his transfer to Korea to keep himself in the World Cup frame.

Which, at the time, would have seemed like a good idea, with so few Socceroos playing at home. But now they’re filing through inbound immigration like a planeload of Japanese tourists on a package tour.

The rules of the game have changed. Verbeek now seems to have come around to the idea that playing in Australia is good enough and, crucially, all the “returning Roos” have the distinct advantage of being in the national coach’s face pretty much week-in, week-out, though only Jason Culina and Shane Steffanuto have made the trip to Korea. North, meanwhile, is so visible in Seoul he might as well be playing behind the DMZ.

Too late to even return to Australia, though there was talk this week of a return as a guest player to North Queensland Fury, the club he was signed on to as a marquee player before being released for Incheon having not kicked a ball.

Ending up in Townsville is hardly where he would have hoped to end up, but anything’s got to be a better result than North’s season in purgatory at Incheon.

Surely a little bit of a concern, isn’t it, that Pim Verbeek seems happy to allow Lucas Neill the luxury of not playing for a club between now and the beginning of next year?

This was his comment on the announcement of the Socceroos squad for the September 5 friendly against Korea Republic in Seoul: “’I will start to get worried when he is not playing his games in April and May. Then we have a problem. The situation is a little bit special. I am waiting like everyone else until he knows his final decision. He’s waiting for the right club to sign the right deal. People don’t know his motivations. They don’t know what he is thinking about.”

No, you’re right, Pimbo, we don’t know what he is thinking about, and can only speculate. But we’ve been assured it isn’t about money.

Said Neill’s agent Paddy Dominguez midweek: “He’s already declined some extremely lucrative contracts, so if he was financially motivated, he would have accepted one of those.”

Phew. And people were calling him greedy.

Money hungry or not, it still doesn’t change the fact Neill’s not doing anyone a favour except our opposition in South Africa sitting on the sidelines not playing when other teams are deep into their forward planning for the World Cup.

If anyone suggests otherwise, then why play friendlies at all?

All these experimental line-ups Verbeek is using might come to nought if they aren’t tested in combination, regularly, with our likely World Cup captain. And I don’t think there’s any question Neill is going to be in South Africa. So when’s the penny going to drop? Something has to give.

Personally I think Verbeek has given Neill way too much rope. Just like he did with Viduka (whom he has reportedly not spoken to since June).

The soap operas of both players have been an unnecessary even damaging distraction and there is a good case to be made that Verbeek has erred by allowing both to carry on as long as they have.

Equally, though, we have to give Verbeek some credit and assume he is making decisions in line with what he sees as the best interests of the team.

One thing Verbeek is not is a fool. He’s very loyal to his players and is intolerant of criticism of them or his management of team issues. I’ve felt myself his wrath after some things I wrote about Nicky Carle and Richard Porta. We don’t meet for coffees any more.

But the guy is not infallible, and certainly in the case of Lucas Neill comments such as “I will start to get worried when he is not playing his games in April and May” really do give rise to questions of where loyalty ends and lack of objectivity begins.

No Socceroo should be allowed to think he can walk into the team any time he likes. It appears, however, that Neill could well take away that impression.

Ain’t it a funny world? Jason Culina arrives home in a blaze of publicity and a couple of mil in the bank as the A-League’s finest advertisement. Then he turns around and says it’s a poorer technical standard than the National Soccer League. Gee, thanks for coming, Jason! Who needs Frank? Bring back Labbo!

The Gold Coast United and Socceroos midfielder, who used to get around for Sydney United and Sydney Olympic between 1996 and 1999 so knows what he’s talking about, told SBS’s The World Game on Thursday: “I can already see that Australian football has made giants strides forward. It is run very professionally and the facilities are excellent. The game has also improved from a tactical and physical perspective.

“Technically there are some good players but when you compare them to those who played in the old NSL, I’d have to say there needs to be some improvement.

“There might be plenty of foreigners but in the old days we had plenty of Aussie players who were just as good or even better.”

Which is wonderful to hear, because for some time now old hands who have seen the best of both “old soccer” and “new football” have been saying pretty much the same thing.

And they haven’t just been talking about the 1980s or 1990s; in their view, even back in the 1960s there was better football being played by newly arrived migrants and part-time footballers who drew big crowds to stadiums such as Lambert Park in Leichhardt, in Sydney’s inner west.

I can’t vouch for that personally as obviously I wasn’t around then but in 2007 when I was doing interviews for my book about Australian football with men such as Rale Rasic, Archie Blue, Atti Abonyi, Ray Baartz and other luminaries of the era, it was a common theme in their reflections of the period.

So it really needs to be called into question how far we’ve come as a football nation.

What Culina’s comments do highlight, and it’s a point I’ve been making for years now, is the continued triumphalism of physicality in the Australian game and the commensurate neglect or outright shunning of flair.

If a player has any of those “European” qualities the usual view of indentured coaches is that he won’t cut it in the rough and tumble of Australian football. He doesn’t get a trial, let alone signed. So he is compelled to leave for overseas, where his skills will be rewarded and honed. To stay at home would be to let them atrophy.

So many times I hear stories like this from agents of or people close to young players trying to break it in the A-League, especially footballers of Asian or African heritage. Some of the A-League coaches won’t have a bar of them – too small, too light, too slender, too fancy – so they’re packing their bags for Europe or South-East Asia, where their gifts are more appreciated.

The A-League was supposed to stem the player drain but it could be argued we’re losing more players than ever before. And we’ll keep on losing them till the words of people like Culina are properly heeded and addressed.

It wasn’t so long ago, November last year, in fact, that Zeljko Kalac was talking about returning to Australia to coach in the A-League. Coaching, not playing.

“I’ve had a lot of critics in my career, and if I went back and tried to play in the A-League, my motivation would only be about 30 per cent and when it’s that low you are bound to make mistakes,” he told SBS. “That would just give fuel to people who would want to knock me. No thanks.”

Funny that a guy who puts so much store in motivation can turn his back on his representative career because he’s lost the will to fight for the No. 1 jersey and decides he’s happy being a permanent back-up keeper at AC Milan.

Who could blame him though?

What goalkeeper coming to the end of his career would turn down that opportunity? Italian digs. Nice fat pay cheques. Hanging out with Ronaldinho, Clarence Seedorf and, until recently, Kaka.

Get a few jerseys signed for the lads back home. Spend a few bob down the betting shop. A bloody doddle.

But ten months on, Kalac’s charmed life has come to an end.

New Rossoneri coach Leonardo has decided the Australian is surplus to requirements at the San Siro and terminated his contract by “mutual consent.”

Kalac’s replacement is AS Monaco’s Flavio Roma.

It really was too good to last, especially for a player who is a model of inconsistency. Kalac should be thankful he managed to stay there nearly four years and made a motsa in the process.

Some regard him as an inspiration. An Australian at AC Milan? Respect.

Others, such as Mark Schwarzer, take another view: that Kalac took the easy option. Didn’t challenge himself.

Certainly Schwarzer makes great hay out of the fact he is playing regular first-team football for a European club and his old adversary is not. Equally, though, it could be said Schwarzer never challenged himself by taking up offers from Bayern Munich and Juventus when they were on the table.

He didn’t take them up because he wasn’t guaranteed first-team football.

The pressing question now, though, is does Kalac have the humility to come back to Australia and find that motivation he says he would lack playing in the A-League?

I hope he does.

He has made all sorts of noise about wanting to put something back into the Australian game and I don’t think there would be a better way to do that than still be playing. He’s 36, hardly a senior citizen for a goalkeeper, and would have two or three seasons left in him.

There’s talk of a Parma move but that in my view would not a fitting end to Spider’s career: it should be in Australia, in the A-League, when he’s still got something left to give.

If Jason Culina can come back at the age of 28 (he just turned 29), then there’s no good reason why Kalac can’t come back now.

There wasn’t a whole lot to be proved by being a benchwarmer at Milan, but there’s plenty in swallowing his pride and coming home.

Check out Aussie site which unearths all things cool and creative.
SPONSOR

As much as anyone I want to see Jason Culina and his fellow “Returning Roos” in the A-League, scrapping it out with home-brand players in what promises to be our most interesting domestic football season yet.

Their profiles are good for the game, good for exposure, good for advertisers, good for fans.

My issue, however, is that some time ago I came around to Pim Verbeek’s way of thinking: that it was in our nation’s World Cup interests to have as many national-team players as possible contracted with European clubs.

Now the Socceroos coach has done a complete U-turn – the A-League supposedly will do – yet hitherto I haven’t seen any compelling evidence for why.

Have you?

Have things really changed that much since Verbeek declared the Australian league was inferior to a Bundesliga training session?

Most of the coaches are the same or at least the same sort of quality. Australian clubs couldn’t get to the quarter-final stage of the Asian Champions League in this year’s competition. The salary cap, as I argued a couple of weeks ago, is still inadequate to compete with rival leagues in Asia and good local players are still taking the first opportunity to leave no matter who comes knocking.

Is the football more free flowing, European? Or is it the same, hoof-it-up-the-guts, hack-the bastard-down brand we’ve all come to know and loathe?

I’m not entirely sure what it is, but I’m hopeful if not certain we’ll see some better football in 2009/10.

Perth Glory showed glimpses of how good they can be late last season. Gold Coast has demonstrated it has a bit of flair. Sydney FC look like they have shed the straightjacket John Kosmina put on them. Branko Culina, a man who dresses like Miami Vice never went off air, will make an imprint on Newcastle and has already flagged his intentions by giving Kaz Patafta license to thrill. Melbourne and Brisbane can be exciting in spurts.

The others – Central Coast, Adelaide, North Queensland and Wellington – will likely underwhelm.

Perhaps, though, the A-League really has hit its straps with all these players coming back and Robbie Fowler playing for the Fisters. Perhaps Verbeek, who is rarely wrong, is right to have confidence in it.

Perhaps the Socceroos won’t be affected by having so many of its squad playing back home.

They are all topics that can be debated till the cows can home. The only thing that is damn near irrefutable is that the A-League is here to stay. In five seasons it’s established itself as a sporting competition that more and more Australians are starting to watch, follow, and, most importantly, care about.

I’ve been feeling the A-League’s absence in my life these past few months far more than the EPL or ACL and even missing the commentary team from Fox Sports, which is saying something. And if this scribe can get nostalgic about Ang Postecoglou, it has to be half alright.

Along with most of Australia, I was stunned that Karmichael Hunt has been poached by the AFL to play for the new Gold Coast AFL “franchise” in 2011. It’s either the most brilliant piece of recruiting in Australian sport – ever – or indisputably the dumbest. I am not sure which way to lean.

What is becoming clear, though, with the innumerable defections of rugby league footballers to union and the switching of players from union and AFL to boxing, is that old barriers in Australian sport are tumbling down.

Anything is fair game.

The prevailing belief of administrators and moneymen, erroneous though it may be, is that if you’re tall enough and big enough and catch a ball, you can just about do anything.

There is some credit to the idea.

There was Deion Sanders, of course, who managed to excel at the top of America’s two biggest sports, Major League Baseball and the National Football League, for the better part of two decades.

But equally there was Michael Jordan, the greatest basketballer of all time, who retired when he was at the peak of his career to play baseball.

The experiment was a failure. Jordan never made the transition to the MLB, languishing in the minor leagues, and went back to the NBA with his tail between his legs, chastened and just a little embarrassed.

My own view is that the AFL’s aggressive pursuit of the Brisbane Broncos fullback has been motivated as much by its avaricious desire for publicity and the commercial benefits that flow on from it as much as its genuine belief that Hunt can “cross over”. Judging by the amount of newsprint the story gathered today, they’ve already made their money back.

So why stop at Hunt and rugby league? It got me thinking about what A-League players the AFL might pursue – and there would be plenty of reasons to do so: after all, isn’t the A-League and football the real threat to the preordained might of Australian Rules?

Danny Allsopp seems a likely contender.

Still youngish, at 30, he stands over six feet and, as John Kosmina well knows, packs a bit of muscle. He’s quick for a big man, good with his feet and could be rebuilt as a sort of poor man’s Barry Hall if the AFL’s lab rats got to him in time. There doesn’t seem to be any international future for him with the Socceroos, so I’m sure he’d consider a good offer.

Or his Melbourne Victory teammate Archie Thompson, also 30.

Elastic with explosive pace and a hound’s nose for goal, you can picture the guy in a midfield scrapping and collecting role, and importantly, like Allsopp, he has Buckley’s of making it to South Africa 2010.

Former A-League player Bruce Djite, now with Genclerbirligi in Turkey, is in my opinion the true Karmichael Hunt of Australian football – 22, six feet tall and a big unit – but unlike Allsopp and Thompson, he’s got the world at his feet.

He will make it to the World Cup – and no amount of money would persuade him to defect, especially when he has the potential to make ten times more as a professional player in Europe.

Allsopp and Thompson, however, are ripe for the plucking.

If Hunt can cross over, they certainly can – and better still, the AFL would be driving a dagger through the heart of the biggest football club in the country if they pursued the pair, striking a massive blow against the fastest growing sport in the land.

Football Federation Australia: you have been warned. Start shoring up your defences.

Brendon Santalab pissing off to China is hardly going to sink the SS A-League but you really have to wonder about what having a contract actually means in this day and age.

Santalab signed for two years with the North Queensland Fury and didn’t even play one regular-season match before being pilfered this week by the Chengdu Blades, a Chinese Super League club. Almost half a dozen Aussies now get around in the Chinese comp and more will follow.

Is our own national comp really so weak that we can’t hold on to a player who a couple of seasons ago was getting around in the NSW Premier League?

Clearly, the answer is yes.

Football Federation Australia has to take some of the heat. They’ve been tardy in countering the new Asian Football Confederation dispensation that allows Asian club to acquire an “Asian berth” player (one from the AFC zone) and so bypass normal visa restrictions and continue to moan about the lack of money in the comp.

But there is money in the league.

Look at Melbourne Victory – they are the biggest club in the A-League but can’t spend above and beyond the salary cap. So they’re aggressively pushing into basketball and rugby union and hoping to turn Victory into a southern-hemisphere version of Barcelona, an SC as opposed to an FC.

By rights, Melbourne should be allowed to spend their money as they see fit. They’ve been a standout performer among a clutch clubs that haven’t been able to keep themselves above water without the FFA’s beneficence.

So why can’t the A-League replicate a competition model like the one in Germany that allows clubs to spend money on player salaries as a proportion of their turnover while being forbidden to go into debt?

Yes, it might nudge Melbourne to even greater dominance of the league but who’s to say they don’t deserve it? Would the administrators of the EPL do the same to Manchester United? La Liga to Barcelona or Réal Madrid? Serie A to AC Milan or Juventus?

It’s part of the reason why the Bundesliga, while not the most successful in European competition, is one of the most profitable if not the most.

And it would go some way in servicing the great and enduring problem of player retention in the A-League.

Yes, the Fury is a different kettle of fish to Victory and is only just finding its way as a football club and a commercial entity, but the basic concept is sound.

The more revenue any A-League club can turn over through the turnstiles or off the park in commercial deals, the more they can spend on players and on thwarting the predations of cashed-up Asian clubs.

And so the revolving door of players to Asia can at least be partly jammed and we don’t lose average players such as Santalab the moment some obscure Chinese club knocks on the door.

The salary cap was well intentioned but it’s out of kilter with what’s required to survive and prosper as a national competition in a confederation filled with predatory rivals.

It’s time for a serious rethink.

Now far be it for me to go around make wild allegations and expounding conspiracy theories, but don’t you think it’s a remarkable coincidence that Tahj Minniecon has come down with swine flu just when the player is involved in a bitter club–vs-country battle for his services?

It’s like the bad old Leeds United days of Harry Kewell and his litany of “nagging injuries”.

Not suggesting anything untoward, of course, but you would hope that Football Federation Australia is dispatching its own doctor to inspect Minniecon and come up with an independent assessment.
Gold Coast coach Miron Bleiberg, it should be pointed out, is under no obligation to release Minniecon for the Young Socceroos’ training camp/mini-tournament in Argentina ahead of the World Youth Cup in Egypt, not falling on FIFA-designated international dates, but it is undeniably in his club’s interests not to rock too many boats at the FFA.

The two camps have had a frosty relationship so far – especially over fixture scheduling – and the Minniecon impasse is a problem neither wants while also not being prepared to give an inch either way.

Now swine flu has come to the rescue, simultaneously releasing the pressure for action on both sides. It’s so fantastic a scriptwriter couldn’t have made it up.

But even if he does have H1N1 virus, should Minniecon be compelled to travel to South America? In my view he should.

I’m thinking back to the case of Karmichael Hunt, the Brisbane Broncos and Queensland rugby league star who contracted swine flu in early June and after the obligatory period of quarantine and requisite doses of Tamiflu took the field against the Bulldogs at Suncorp Stadium days later.

The Young Socceroos’ tournament starts on July 22, six days away at time of writing, so in essence plenty of time for young Minniecon to serve the 72-hour quarantine, take his Tamiflu and get on the plane to Buenos Aires.

Bleiberg might be correct in asserting he does not have to release Minniecon but morally he should relent. To a man and woman Australian football fans condemned Leeds and other English clubs for not releasing our stars for national duty, and the same should apply to Gold Coast and any other Australian club that tries the same trick.

Every member of the Australian “football family” contributes financially, by way of straight tax, match revenue or registered player levies, to the upkeep and ongoing wellbeing of our national teams.

So we should rightly expect that when a player is called up that he (or she) is not prevented from representing the nation, especially by an Australian coach employed by an Australian club playing in an Australian league.

To stop that player would be, dare I say it, un-Australian.

Now Bleiberg might sound a bit exotic with that thick Israeli accent, and dress like Hannibal Lecter on holiday in Rome, but he’s been resident here for more than two decades.

He owes all of us a whole lot more than he is giving.

Check out Aussie site which unearths all things cool and creative.
SPONSOR

Last week in a column for The World Game, I criticised Lucas Neill for appearing to have chosen Turkish Süper Lig club Galatasaray over his current employers, English Premier League club West Ham.

As it stands currently, Neill is playing for no one, having not signed with Gala and not accepted a new “extension” with West Ham.

I copped a bit for having a go at “Luca$h” for flirting with a lesser league just a year out from the World Cup, with some readers bringing up the case of Jason Culina as another example of a current Socceroo dropping down a few career pegs for financial/lifestyle considerations. Isn’t he potentially letting down the Socceroos cause as much as Neill?

The point is a valid one but I think there is a difference.

First, let me say I don’t necessarily support Culina coming back to the A-League, a view shared by the Australia coach Pim Verbeek. It is up to Culina himself to prove he has what it takes to maintain the sharpness and professionalism that has made him one of the first names inked on Verbeek’s first XI teamsheet.

He will be up against it and no matter how much the midfielder says his standards won’t drop, the A-League is clearly a step down from the Eredivisie. (The same pressure will apply to Mile Sterjovski, Jacob Burns and Chris Coyne, Perth Glory’s new triumvirate of signings.)

So how, then, is Neill a unique case?

Essentially, Neill is our captain. Culina is not.

Neill commands a massive leadership role both officially and unofficially, on the pitch and off it. He is the player all the younger players within the team by definition must look up to and his contemporaries – Kewell, Cahill, Schwarzer, et al – must respect.

Kewell and Neill are old friends and if Neill joins “H” at Gala there are obviously going to be no issues of disrespect. But Schwarzer has already cast his own doubts on the merits of Culina’s move to the A-League and the same doubts should apply to any prospective move by Neill to the Süper Lig.

If Neill goes to Turkey, Cahill and Schwarzer will be our only top-line Socceroos playing first XI football week-in week-out in the EPL, with Blackburn pair Vince Grella (far from first XI) and Brett Emerton (coming back from injury) and Hull’s sparingly used Richard Garcia the only other players getting around in the comp.

Is that really the most ideal scenario for Australia 12 months out from South Africa 2010?

The Socceroos need a captain who is playing at the highest level available to him and I don’t care what anyone says – the EPL is a better league than the Süper Lig.

What better preparation for our most important defender than having the world’s most dangerous players – Torres, Drogba, Van Persie, Rooney, et al – bearing down on you every week?

And the suggestion that because Gala is playing in the Europa League (the old UEFA Cup) it makes it a better option for Neill than West Ham is just a crock. Gala’s first game on July 16 is against FC Tobol Kostanay of … wait for it … Kazakhstan.

How is that going to be a real test for our national captain?

As a Socceroos fan, I’d like Neill to stay in the EPL where, on reduced terms or not, he has an opportunity to play his tenth season in arguably the best league in Europe and play yet another as captain.

Is Galatasaray offering Neill the captaincy? No? Then how can it be beneficial to the Socceroos?

No matter how many ways you look at it, for the sake of our World Cup ambitions, Neill has to stay to England.

To be fair to Con Constantine, the great ogre of Australian club football, he does make a good point about the propriety or lack thereof in Football Federation Australia’s role in poaching Gary van Egmond from the Jets to the AIS and the national under-17s.

“This has hurt me, the club, the players and the fans,” he told Ray Gatt on Tuesday. “The worst thing is that FFA is supposed to be the policeman of the game, but they are not doing their job properly. This wouldn’t happen anywhere else in the world. I am a businessman and I would never dream of conducting my business this way. If the FFA want to fine me, well, it would be like fining Jesus Christ because of the treachery of Judas.”

A good line, and bang on the money.

How can the FFA, an organisation that tosses out fines and suspensions like a bag lady feeding pigeons, effectively “tap up” one of the coaches of a competition it runs without seeking permission from the club’s owner first and without so much as a hint of self-restraint or self-censure?

It is pretty shameless. But who’s policing the police?

Technically you would imagine the AFC or FIFA would be the cop for such matters, but historically both have shown scant interest in getting involved in neighbourhood scuffles, leaving them to be sorted out by the national federations involved.

It serves a president’s political interests of course, to keep as many federations as he can onside. Mohamed, Frank and Sepp are certainly pally enough. How could Con hope to get anyone’s ear among all the backslapping?

No chance. But he was right to speak up and give the FFA a piece of his mind.

They can be a law unto themselves, clearly.

As for Van Egmond himself, one can hardly blame him for wanting out when such a better off was made and after what has been such an annus horribilis at a clearly dysfunctional club, but he did sign a four-year contract of his own volition, Constantine did give him a break when he was “selling Pepsi” and he did have a duty of care to his players, whom he has more or less abandoned just a month out from the start of the season.

He doesn’t come out of this with his reputation enhanced.

It’s quite an irony, too, for Van Egmond to entrusted with such responsibility over our country’s best young players when he has such a chequered record handling young players at the Jets.

As a shrewd blogger named Krones remarked on my Half-Time Orange column for TWG on Monday: “How could he possibly be considered for this position after his comments about the young player [Jesse Pinto] he played for 5min last year and tore off the pitch and his treatment of Kaz [Patafta]? Hardly the sort of thing you would expect from a development coach. Short memory the FFA have.”

I completely agree. I thought Van Egmond’s hooking of Pinto earlier this year after just coming on against Adelaide was one of the worst examples of coaching I’ve ever seen.

We can only hope Dutchy recognises his own mistakes, personal and professional, and can pass on those lessons to his charges so they can be both better people and footballers.

Everyone is entitled to make a mistake. It appears Dutchy’s quota, though, was filled some time ago.

You’ve got to hand it Tim Cahill. He might have acted like a plonker in his infamous interview with Melanie McLaughlin, but he’s kept football in the news for the past fortnight. Better than in the news, actually on the front pages.

In fact, the regularity with which the Everton and Australia midfielder makes news has probably made “Cahillgate” redundant as a cover-all.

With any given day you’re not sure what news Cahill is making: allegedly getting into dust-ups with bouncers, having a blue with News Limited, spruiking his kids cancer charity, being the guest of honour at the Johnny Warren Football Foundation dinner and turning up late, having his name linked with Manchester United.

Now he’s making news all over again by confirming to SBS’s The World Game that all is not well inside the Socceroos camp.

This topic has been the talk of football circles for some time now but got forgotten amid our country’s qualification for the 2010 World Cup. For good reasons various journos were too afraid to touch it.

However it was too radioactive to die altogether.

“It doesn’t take rocket scientists to work out what’s happened in the past couple of weeks,” he told Les Murray in an interview to be aired this Sunday, apropos of his own troubles with the press.

“There are players’ agents involved who are very bitter. It’s difficult to explain because you think that you can play football and nothing else matters but factors outside the game do affect the team.

“It’s one of those issues that will definitely be addressed with the FFA and players because it’s something that has made me angry. As a team, when we play we are unbelievable but outside, when it comes to other issues, it’s a little sad.”

Sad and clearly divisive, as evidenced by an email sent by “a big-name player” (or on behalf of that player, if rumours are to be believed) to News Limited last weekend when the fallout from the nightclub affair was still pitting news organisation against football federation with no signs of a ceasefire.

“You don’t go around abusing people and acting like a big-time Charlie,” part of the email read that was published in the Sunday Telegraph and the Herald Sun. “Ever since the World Cup it has just gotten worse and worse. Some of the boys have let the whole superstar thing go to their heads and they act like they are untouchable.

“What gets me is the guys that are doing this sort of thing the most are the ones running around the place and telling everyone how they do this and that for the kids and how they want to be role models.

“It’s a bloody disgrace and I’m glad that people are finally taking it a bit more seriously. If we don’t pull our heads out of the sand and be honest with ourselves, the World Cup will be a disaster.”

Whooah.

Ray Gatt, The Australian’s longtime “soccer” writer, wrote the next day that the email was a “punch that has the power to suck the breath out of the Socceroos and cause a rift in the camp with less than 12 months to the kick off of the World Cup finals in South Africa”.

He’s not too far wrong.

Something has to be done about it but Pim Verbeek, the Australia coach, is currently out of the country. The FFA likely won’t touch it. They’re acting and have been for some time like there’s no issue at all.

Nor can a rapprochement be expected to be brokered from within the playing group, given that elements in and around that group are allegedly the source of all the trouble in the first place.

It’s messy. Decidedly messy. And not good at all for a team going to the World Cup and needing every advantage it can get.

But one thing is clear. Cahill, for all that is said about him, good or bad, has done his country a big favour by publicly acknowledging there is a problem. That’s the first step in resolving it.

It’s now up to the rest of his team-mates to put their differences aside and find some real unity rather than just presenting a united front.

If they can’t do that, then God help us in South Africa.

Over at The Finktank, my column for SBS, I’ve leapt to the defence of Tim Cahill after he was smeared last weekend by the Sunday Telegraph for a nightclub incident it appears never happened.

But after his embarrassing performance in front of the cameras after Wednesday night’s Australia Vs Japan World Cup Qualifier, in which he scored two goals, he’s deserving of some rebuke.

Melanie McLaughlin has come along in leaps and bounds as a broadcaster with Fox Sports and she is a great asset for that company to have: telegenic with brains and something useful to say about the game she covers.

The same cannot be said for all of of her stablemates, male and female, at the pay-TV station. (For the record, let me state I’m a big fan of the work of Simon Hill and Mark Bosnich, both of whom call a spade a spade, and Paul Trimboli, whose enthusiasm for the game is infectious and who is turning into a great game analyst.)

So McLaughlin deserved much more respect than she got from Cahill, who chose to ignore the questions she asked of him in her now-obligatory post-match on-field interview and didn’t even doing her the basic courtesy of looking at her when she spoke.

Standoffish, his tongue rolling around in his cheeks, it was a disgraceful display from Cahill, who has every right to nurse a grievance with the way he was treated by the Sunday Telegraph but should have no issue with a bright, pleasant young woman just trying to do her job.

The opening question she asked of him was hardly threatening, a joke about how popular he now is in Japan.

But instead of smiling or offering a laugh, Cahill just turned away to look at nothing and muttered, “I’d just like to thank the crowd, the lads, a great turnout in Melbourne. I’m so proud to be here, so proud to play tonight so I think the credit just goes to the crowd, you were brilliant.“

She tried again.

Same response, after which Cahill scampered off without so much as even acknowledging her presence.

Cahill was deserving of sympathy for the way the Sunday Telegraph handled the nightclub story but in his exchange with McLaughlin he managed in one fell swoop to come across both as arrogant and self-regarding, and certainly undeserving of anyone’s compassion.

It is worthy of sanction by the FFA, especially considering Fox Sports is an official partner of the federation.

Fox Sports, which is owned by Premier Media Group, deserves better for the millions it puts into the game and which keeps the FFA in the black.

What happened in Kings Cross, meanwhile, is not and has never been worthy of sanction.

The problem for Fox is PMG itself is part-owned by News Limited, the publishers of the Sunday Telegraph.

So Cahill was making his own statement, albeit a misguided one. His beef should be with Neil Breen, the embattled editor of the Sunday Telegraph, not poor old McLaughlin or her bosses at Fox, who had nothing to do with that Tele story and who wouldn’t have known anything about it.

As most of you well know, I’ve worked at Fox myself, so I know intimately how various parts of the News Limited organisation function in splendid isolation.

“Synergy“ is the mantra but it’s not the reality on the floor.

So Cahill must be called to account by the FFA for this performance.

Short of that, McLaughlin and Fox deserve a contrite apology. He might have scored two goals and won his team the game, but Cahill also spoiled a great night by behaving like a petulant six-year-old.

Everyone loves a winner, but no one likes an ungracious one.

Check out Aussie site which unearths all things cool and creative.
SPONSOR

There were many talking points to come out of Wednesday night’s Australia Vs Bahrain WCQ, a major one being the continued and inexplicable international career of Brett Holman, which I have attended to in my Friday column for The World Game. It deserves a blog on its own.

Another is Scott McDonald, who couldn’t hit a barnyard door with a cowpat and whose time as a striker for the Socceroos must surely be up.

But what I found most interesting – and there wasn’t that much to find interesting at Homebush; it was probably the most tedious thing I’ve seen since one of those interminable Andy Warhol art movies from the 1960s – was the way Sydney’s Daily Telegraph launched a blistering character attack on Pim Verbeek in the lead-up to the game, blaming his media ban on players for the poor attendance.

It continued on Thursday.

Phil Rothfield, the executive editor of the sports pages, declared: “Soccer will never make it as a major sport in this country while Pim Verbeek is in charge of our national team. Forget about the boring style of soccer, it is Pim’s petulance and disdain for Australian culture which [sic] is holding the game back.”

Coming from a paper whose golden-boy reporter Nick Walshaw calls Scott McDonald “Scotty Mitchell” and which rated Holman’s performance as “6/10” you really have to question the wisdom of listening to anything the Telegraph says.

But it’s the biggest-selling paper in Australia’s biggest city, so we need to take notice.

Now I’ve made my own criticisms of Verbeek here and on TWG while also commending him, but the Telegraph has stepped over the line. We were all disappointed by the media ban, by the withdrawal of players including Tim Cahill, by the very late substitution of Nicky Carle for Holman, but they are the prerogatives of the national-team manager, whose job is to best prepare his team for South Africa 2010 as he sees fit.

He may not be right – in regards keeping Holman on the pitch I think he made a grievous error – but they are his decisions to make and we must respect his position, his experience and his reasons for making them.

So Pim himself is not holding the game back. Frankly how that can be said about someone who has just led Australia to the World Cup really is quite perplexing.

In my view what is holding the game back is the mediocrity of the media that reports on the sport we all love, chief among them the Daily Telegraph and its satellite papers in the News Limited family.

Four years on from our second World Cup qualification, they still have no idea what they’re writing about.

It is the stubborn persisting in calling it “soccer”, even on Fox Sports, the so-called “home of football”. It is the sequestering of live coverage of qualification games on to pay TV, where only those people who can afford it are able to watch our national football team while the vast majority of people are forced to go without.

Yes, I write for SBS, and it is thankfully how I earn a living, but even if I didn’t I’d still thank God for its very existence. SBS employs people with passion, fearlessness, knowledge and a real commitment to the sport – and has demonstrated that commitment through thick and thin, even back in the days when Socceroos was a dirty word.

That much cannot be said about many other media outlets when it comes to football.

There was a moment in Fox’s coverage before the Qatar match in Doha last weekend that summed up for me the fairweather nature of so much of the Australian media’s relationship with the biggest sport in the world.

Robbie Slater, the former Socceroo, was in the midst of praising Verbeek for getting Australia to the World Cup and then made an aside about criticism of the Dutchman as having come from “the usual quarters”.

The irony of this is that Slater, “soccer’s number one analyst” according to his column byline for News Limited, was the biggest critic of Verbeek’s appointment, even before he arrived in the country.

“Underwhelming” was his choice of word to describe how he felt about Verbeek being selected over the Frenchman Philippe Troussier.

Now Verbeek, if we are to judge by the tenor of the commentary on Fox, can do no wrong. Slater, particularly, is a Verbeek cheerboy.

Football cannot be held back in this country so long as there is a vibrant, knowledgeable, independent and committed media behind it that engages people with the sincerity of its passion and the sophistication of its debate.

The sport is just too big, too beautiful to be curtailed.

SBS is leading the way. Now it’s up to the rest of the side to pick up its game.

This is my 100th blog for The Roar and I’ve had a blast getting to know a lot of you. Special thanks to The Bear, Stifler’s Mom, Vicentin, Kazama, Midfielder, Ben of Phnom Penh, Millster, Sledgeross, Dasilva, Dickroo, Dazza Japan, Koala Bear, Mick of Newie, Pippinu and even the exasperating Slippery Jim (or Contrarian, as I’ve come to know him).

Your input has been enlightening, entertaining and always challenging. This small corner of the world game is better off for your presence.