Postecoglou must be new Socceroo manager

Holger Osieck ended his association with Australian soccer an unpopular coach whose side capitulated 6-0 twice in succession.  If anything is liable to have a manager fired, it is a pitiful loss against reasonable opposition and the German was dismissed in the immediate aftermath of Saturday’s match against France.

According to the normal chain of events, speculation is gathering as to the identity of his successor with the most high-profile names being Socceroo Swami Guus Hiddink, ex-Chile and Athletic Bilbao boss Marcelo Bielsa and – for some unknown reason – Roberto Di Matteo.  Were Australia focusing solely on the World and Asian Cups of 2014 and 15, an “impact signing” excelling at tournament football – and hopefully at pulling strings at European clubs – would seem a wise investment.

However, none of the three “names” above would be inclined to hang around to create a platform for future development; to an ambitious non-Aussie, the most appealing aspect of the Australia job is almost certainly its potential for a quick profit. 

Australia has lacked footballing identity since the 2010 World Cup. Until that time, the boys in Gold were a lineup of predictably loveable maulers: their backline boasted Craig Moore, Lucas Neill and Scott Chipperfield while the midfield was manned by uncompromising sorts Brett Emerton and Vince Grella.  The team’s only lightweight, Harry Kewell, flitted about behind man-mountain Mark Viduka and his unsettlingly-physical Boy Wonder, Tim Cahill. 

With the Green and Gold army clamouring for generational change and the press conferences of some of the Socceroo elite seemingly endorsing such claims, Football Federation of Australia Chairman and all-around-Daddy-Warbucks-figure Frank Lowy has narrowed the association’s focus and suggested the biggest hire in Australian soccer is likely to be from the FFA’s back room, the A-League. 

The Australian national team needs to be the pinnacle for any Australian footballer. While the A-League has strengthened, the player pathways that produced the Golden Generation that peaked in 2006 have become overgrown.  A strong Socceroo side with structures based around player development both at home and abroad is an absolute necessity for football to become more deeply rooted in the antipodean sporting consciousness.  The coach best able to implement such a program must be employed.

For the first time in a generation, an Australian is almost certainly the best person for the position.

Lowy has effectively narrowed the field to three candidates – Tony Popovic of nascent Western Sydney Wanderers; former interim Socceroo manager Graham Arnold, now of the Central Coast Mariners; and Melbourne Victory kingpin Ange Postecoglou.

All the candidates present convincing resumés despite high-profile failures.  Of the three, Arnold probably comes with the most baggage due to his underwhelming Asian Cup leadership of 2007; however, he has developed a consistently good Mariners outfit despite a tight budget even by A-League standards.  His appointment may be seen as a reward to a company man. Popovic has a jaw-dropping level of natural talent for management and served an impressive apprenticeship before taking a journeyman bunch of Wanderers into the league finals in their first season.  Questions remain, however, as to his experience.

Even with these negative aspects, were Arnold or Popovic to earn the position, Australia could feel confident about the Socceroos’ future. 

However, the most compelling choice is Ange Postecoglou.  After turning the Brisbane Roar from also-rans into dominant Premiers, he is currently re-shaping the A-League’s biggest club into a younger, more vital side; his modus operandi is to turn young footballers into disciplined and productive units.

This is based in part about his coaching philosophy: his teams hold the ball and use it rather than Osieck’s haphazard, “needs-must” approach.  In an age where Australian youngsters have struggled to claim positions for the National side, pragmatism has few uses even focusing solely upon next year’s Cup.  If a player – especially a youngster – knows ahead of time what is expected of a Socceroo, he is in far better position to prepare.

Despite the short lead-in to the World Cup, the FFA is in an enviable position.  They can finally choose a manager to mould a team with the future in mind rather than employing someone they hope is able to bring about short-term results.  The Round of Sixteen would of course be nice, but the Socceroos can no longer afford to focus on the twilights Schwarzer, Neill and Cahill.  The outlook must now be on the retirements of James Holland, Tom Rogic and Matthew Spiranovic.

The A-League: spread too thin

The furore surrounding Clive Palmer and Gold Coast United has cast more unwanted focus on soccer's position in the Australian sporting hierarchy. The club failing is bad enough, but for component on-field parts to auction themselves to prospective employers is like your soon-to-be ex auditioning potential replacements in front of your eyes.

Most galling of all is for this failure to occur in particularly high-growth area in the fastest-growing state in the nation. If football couldn't survive – demented patriarch or not – on the Gold Coast, there are few options left for A-League expansion. The league looks destined to stay in the same locations. And this may be for the best.

Realistically, there are only two more locations into which the A-League can try and expand naturally into a city with a population large enough to support the game. The league has already failed in both locations, Auckland and the Gold Coast. Despite it's size, Auckland also drags with it the baggage of New Zealand clubs playing in the domestic league of an Asian confederation member when the country competes in the Oceania confederation. Other possible expansion locations are also fraught with problems – the AFL's Cats countenance no rivals in Geelong, while Canberra boasts an enormous fly-in, fly-out population and lots of roundabouts.

Ben Buckley and the FFA, the sport's governing body in Australia and administers of the A-League, let the phenomenally successful second A-League season (2006-07) go to their collective bonces. The league attracted an average of nearly 13,000 fans per game that year, while collecting additional fuel from rivalries which solidified between the league's marquee clubs Melbourne Victory, Sydney FC and Adelaide United.

However, the Victory's remarkable crowd numbers masked the true situation. The now-defunct New Zealand Knights averaged a pitiful 3000 fans. More telling should have been that Melbourne's attendance comprised nearly 30% of the entire league gate. With renewed interest in roundball left over from the Socceroos' 2006 World Cup run and FFA decided to capitalise on soccer's newfound popularity and expand.

They couldn't have been more wrong.

Since that year, four new teams have been created. Half of those have failed and now lie in ruin. A third, the Melbourne Heart is haemorrhaging cash, while the fourth, the Wellington Phoenix was born from the rubble of the Knights. With a population of slightly more than 22 million people The World Game's status as a distant fourth favourite football code, Australia simply can't support a national football competition which has more than ten teams. Thus, any expectation of healthy crowds or shirt sales at every venue is optimism verging on insanity.

While it is understandable the FFA wanted to expand while the game was at it's antipodean zenith, the league was a success in 2006-07 as a result of those nine teams, not despite the shortage of numbers. The game is healthier now than before the A-League's commencement, but to expect public interest to grow from all-time highs – especially when the tail end of the Golden Generation returned to pasture at home after a magical tour of Germany – was fallacy of the highest order. The league should have consolidated, rather than chosen to grow at a remarkably ambitious rate (including next season's likley West Sydney franchise, growing by five clubs in five seasons).

The argument against expansion is easy and tired, yet sport administrators fail to learn. No matter what the sport, clubs in a national competition need one of two things to succeed (and preferably both) – grassroots support for the sport, or a large enough populace to support a “minority” sport. By expanding into Far North Queensland,

When the league embarked on this Mr. Creosote-style inflation, not expecting local talent to be poached by higher-paying leagues, thus thinning the ranks of top players, was naïve. Add to that the established fact that expansion dilutes the talent-pool and suddenly the A-League doesn't provide the product it once did. That the young talent isn't coming through is just as damning – the simple fact is we can't supply the league with enough money, support or home-grown talent.

Because of this, the A-League should remain an nine-team league for the foreseeable future. Even the quick-cloned Western Sydney would be fallacy.

Part of the problem seems to be the FFA's complete misunderstanding of how many people it takes to fuel a football club. A vast majority of Australians couldn't tell you the left-back for their local A-League club, which explains why the sport struggles for recognition as a serious national competition, especially at a local level. It's time for the A-League to accept, for the time being, their place in the Australian sporting landscape. Give the people what they want – quality football. Clive Palmer seems to have forgotten, but this isn't accomplished with teenagers and faded stars, but with well-coached professional athletes.

To quote The Rock, it's time for the A-League to shut their mouth and know their role. It is possible – foreseeable, even, given junior participation – that in the longest of terms, football overtakes Rugby Union and even cricket in the national consciousness. However, that is also unlikely, especially when the FFA damages the A-League brand with repeated failed franchises.

Shocker: Billionaire football club owner is mental

The Australian A-League, a competition set up to minimise infighting and partisanship while maximising club longevity, has again slid inexorably into disarray. And this time, it's one man's madness rather than hyper-optimistic expansion or Kevin Muscat perpetual battle with the red-mist.

The lone figure isn't even Harry Kewell.

Although the league is markedly strengthened from it's nascence, the competition – and the Football Federation of Australia (FFA) – have been rendered impotent and the fall guy of a former owner.

To paraphrase Python, Clive Palmer is an ex-owner.

When the league expanded three seasons ago, the Gold Coast appeared to have the strongest of the two expansion licences. Their locale was growth market, they boasted a solid squad and even a passable coach who pinned the team to “franchise” players Shane Smeltz, Jason Culina and Michael Thwaite. Only three years later, the FFA has revoked the club's licence and the team looks as if it has passed football's Event Horizon.

Who knows why Palmer decided to bid for the initial licence. Why the FFA granted him a team is no secret: his dimensionally-transcendent pocketbook made him irresistible. But Australian mining magnates have an unwavering tendency to the irregular: just ask Lang Hancock, Rose Porteous and Gina Rinehart.

Since obtaining the rights to own Gold Coast United, Palmer has persistently, and even maliciously, undermined his football club with ludicrous management decisions. The last of which, where he personally appointed debutant seventeen year-old Mitch Cooper club captain, cost him his the remaining shreds of his credibility. His rap sheet is stupefying in it's capacity self-destruction and therefore incriminating.  This copy doesn't include slamming football as a sport and an open challenge for FFA Chairman Frank Lowy to pit their respective wealth against each other in court. Football is better off without him.

It's now becoming apparent soccer in Australia can't win. Where in the bunker days of the old NSL it was lack of money that turned fans away, this time it is the expectation of those who do spend. There seems to be no middle ground and it is this which Lowy and offsider Ben Buckley must see as their utmost priority.

Remembering Unthanked Socceroo heroes

November 15, 2005.

Six years ago Australian football changed forever. It was on that night that Guus Hiddink's Socceroos upset Uruguay to claim their first World Cup berth since 1974.

The team featured the best collection of footballing talent Australia had produced to that point, led by Mark Viduka and the genius Dutchman who inspired almost single-handedly an antipodean worship of the principles of Total Football. Many still speak in hushed tones of Hiddink's regard for Australia and his "constant contact" with the Socceroos he befriended during their star-cross'd '06 campaign.

SBS commentator Craig Foster tweeted about the that incredible evening yesterday, reminding us that the national anthem was booed, of Mark Bresciano's levelling goal, how much we feared Alvaro Recoba and finally, Mark Schwarzer's saves and John Aloisi's incredible penalty. It ranks as one of my top three sporting memories of all time - I can remember the friends I watched it with, how many beers I drank and ever half-cut scream of delight at Schwarzer's heroics.

Source: Twitter.com

 That wonderful night - friends and I ran down the main street of our town in our underwear, so happy were we - was one of the highest points in Australian football, rivalled by the 1997 Confederations Cup and matches against Japan, Brazil, Croatia and Italy at the 2006 Big Dance.

Though that evening at the Sydney Olympic Stadium was wonderful, the administration that went into November 15, 2005 was perhaps more surprising that a Socceroo upset victory. For so long split by infighting, the FFA had reached a turning point in the years prior. If Cahill, Kewell, Viduka and Moore was our "Golden Generation", then Australian football's dream management team backed that talent.

They may even rival Aloisi and Schwarzer as the real heroes of that night.

Chairman Frank Lowy and CEO John O'Neill were installed in the years before and it was Lowy's hefty billfold that funded the temporary acquisition of Hiddink, who was then managing PSV Eindhoven. Though he brought a World Cup to Australian Rugby Union, O'Neill has never administrated more masterfully than over that World Cup campaign. As any business entity goes, let alone the a race-torn and struggling sports administration, it worked superbly: Lowy provided the gift of vision, O'Neill got things done. This all allowed Hiddink to do what he was paid for: get the most out of his men.

After Lowy and O'Neill took office, they began by disbanding the ailing, nationalistic NSL and replaced it with the A-League. A complete re-boot was needed and the domestic game - while hardly thriving - is in much calmer (and less violent, except when Kevin Muscat and John Kosmina are involved) waters than ever before. The model ascended to such prominence in the next two years that the National Basketball League has recently followed suit in attempting to re-brand.

courtesy: free-football.tv

The pair also spearheaded Australia's move into the Asian Football Confederation. This was aimed at giving Australian domestic competition the chance to thrive in a stronger, more well-funded sphere of influence. Qualification wouldn't ride on a head-to-head versus New Zealand and then playing the fifth-placed Asian or South American team. As in business and politics, Australia now looks towards their nearest - rather than most phenotypically similar - relations.

This move brought about Adelaide FC's march to the 2008 Asian Champions' League final and empowered several fringe Socceroos to move to Qatar, China, Japan or South Korea for better remuneration than the nascent A-League could afford. Qualification for the World Cup is desirable; actually having a strong football fraternity is actually more crucial.

While we remember that wonderful night, it's also time to pay tribute to the visionaries behind it. If Hiddink is thought alongside Rale Rasic as as Australia's greatest coach, then O'Neill and Lowy deserve to be thought of with similar fondness.