The Sun-Herald

Saturday, May 31, 2008

It's now all about 2022. Apparently.

In the space of just two days, football in Australia aged four years.

This had nothing to do with the on-off-on World Cup qualifier with Iraq but everything to do with Sydney welcoming FIFA delegates from every corner of the world - and some from places that aren't even countries.

Yet or ever.

Australia, or at least Football Federation Australia, has recently been not unreasonably obsessed with bidding to host the 2018 FIFA World Cup.

Even Prime Minister Kevin Rudd smartly attached his carriage to the bandwagon, posing for photos with Socceroo Harry Kewell and, sensing the mood of the football nation, asked The Comeback Kid not to get injured again any time soon.

We might roll our eyes and mumble "Yeah, yeah, Kev, good one," but a Prime Minister who is a financial (check the last Federal Budget) as well as public supporter of football demonstrates that he's a man of our time.

Overlooked amid the hysteria surrounding the last World Cup was that Fabio Grosso's dive was not the only act of villainy during that tournament.

John Howard, then PM, opportunistically posed in a suddenly-discovered Socceroos tracksuit during the tournament, a move more deceptive than anything Grosso could muster.

Howards's favoured Baggy Green cap and Wallabies jumper must have been with the dry cleaner that week.

(There's a story about Howard cornering Jade North at an official reception at Kirribilli House after the World Cup and the rest of the Socceroo's teammates later ribbing him that the then PM, ever the star struck populist, had thought North was actually Tim Cahill.)

But we're getting distracted here.

The past week was a tough one for Australia's ambition to host the 2018 World Cup.

In fact, it was a tough week at our ambition to host anything.

First, an Australian bid for the 2009 and 2010 Club World Cup got the shaft, the United Arab Emirates (read Dubai) and Japan scoring top billing with the UAE bid eventually getting the nod for the next two years.

Australia, we were told by FIFA president Sepp Blatter, was simply too far away from Europe to be able to host a week-long tournament in December.

No matter that only one team from Europe competes in the CWC.

Maybe it was simply Blatter himself who doesn't fancy a long trip, even if he'd fly in to Sydney on his personal private jet.

So that was one down.

FFA chief executive Ben Buckley told me before the FIFA delegates descended on Sydney last week that he was going to take a gentle approach with the visitors in regard to the 2018 bid.

It's now arguable that no matter what wizardry he or his staff performed over the past seven days, the destination of the 2018 World Cup had already been decided.

At least, what was known was that 2018 wouldn't be Australia.

On Friday, Blatter revealed that the hosts for the 2018 and 2022 World Cups would be announced at the same.

That is, before June 2011.

It's unprecedented.

The reason?

Money.

FIFA believes binding both bids will allow it to milk as much from TV rights and sponsors as it possibly can.

Blatter, looking at his diary for the next 20 years, then had a brainwave.

With 2010 in South Africa and 2014 in Brazil, 2018 will be going back north, back to Europe, or at a stretch, the USA.

"As the next two World Cups will be in the southern hemisphere, it is perhaps logical that Australia concentrates on the 2022 tournament," Blatter said, gently letting us know that 2018 was dead.

Blatter is a master communicator who could pass a death sentence and leave a condemned man feeling good about getting the chance to eat a sumptuous last meal.

So, in other words, Australia? The 2018 World Cup? Get back in the box.

You can read the edited highlights of his FIFA Congress press conference here.

So 2018 becomes 2022 and our new rivals will be China, the USA, England (if Europe doesn't get 2018), Qatar (the home of AFC President Mohamed Bin Hamman), and Russia.

Pretty much, the new rivals are the old rivals but with stakes raised even higher.

Australia, welcome to the world.

Anyone for 2026?

Another event Australia won't be hosting is an alleged "charity" game involving the legendary Zinedine Zidane.

While others were quick to condemn Zizou for apparently snubbing Sydney and local kids scheduled to attend a coaching clinic, the truth appears to be simpler.

While Zidane diplomatically cited "personal reasons" for not making it to Australia, apparently contract with the local promoter behind the visit (the game had nothing to do with FFA) had perhaps not actually been agreed.

Oh dear.

• by Matthew Hall at 12:06 AM
• Comments (22)

Saturday, May 24, 2008

2018: Football, Meat Pies, Kangaroos

More than any other sport, Australian football teams have always reflected the true make up of our country.

Not so long ago, a name like Kasprowicz was as exotic as the True Blue Baggy Green Aussie cricket team got. Even Lenny Durtanovich, a fast bowling legend in the 1970s born in Western Australia to Macedonian immigrants, went by the name Len Pascoe.

Not so football, soccer, wogball, whatever you want to call it.

Back in 1956, at the Melbourne Olympics, the Australian team that beat Japan and the lost to India was made up of names like Lord, Bignall, Pettigrew, Loughran, and even a Smith.

We'd all agree that was a fair representation of Robert Menzies' 1950s Australia.

Ten years later, the country had changed. The national team played a tournament in Saigon during the Vietnam War, artillery rumbling in the distance.

The names on the teamsheet mirrored the products of a burst of European immigratio. Alongside Johnny Warren was Manfred Schaefer, Dick van Alphen, Billy Vojtek, and Atti Abonyi.

Around this time, Bob Dylan sang, sort of, "The times they are a-changing."

Dylan must have known that a bloke named Rale Rasic was soon to be in charge of the newly-coined "Socceroos". Rasic would take an Australian team to its first World Cup who looked just like the blokes you would see at the local supermarket.

There were Aussies originally from Scotland (Jack Reilly, Jim Mackay, Jimmy Rooney), Germany (Manfred Schaefer), Serbia (Doug Utjesenovic), a few token Poms (Peter Wilson, Ray Richards, and Adrian Alston), for starters.

Throw in locally born Johnny Warren, Col Curran, and indigenous pioneer Harry Williams and you had a team with many accents but was as proudly Australian as football, meat pies, kangaroos, and Holden cars.

Watch this to get an idea of what they were competing with.

Jump forward to 2006, when we had Bresciano, Popovic, Kalac, Chipperfield, Sterjovski, Kewell, Viduka, Schwarzer, and Aloisi. Sons of immigrants (as we all pretty much are with a few exceptions) and reflective of the excellent and tasty multicultural stew that modern day Australia is.

Last Friday, at another of the possibly never-ending staged events to promote Australia's 2018 World Cup bid, Football Federation Australia chairman Frank Lowy, an immigrant from Hungary, lined up members of the current national under-17 team, suggesting these Joeys were 2018 cannon fodder.

"We want to host, play in, and win the World Cup in 2018," Lowy said, maybe coming across like a mad but loveable granddad to these kids.

"Gee, Grandpa, enough with the pressure already," they didn't, but should have, said.

(Remember, if you will, 10 years ago the Joeys made the final of the Under-17 World Cup with Scott McDonald, Josh Kennedy, Jade North and Jess Vanstrattan.)

It was the team sheet, though, that sparked interest.

Of the 14 teenagers paraded as the faces of 2018, seven were born in Sydney, one in Serbia, and six in Africa.

SIX!

IN AFRICA!

While Danai Gapare's family is originally from Zimbabwe, it's the others who have a similar theme of sad-happy stories.

Phillip Lamin, born in Sierra Leone, arrived in Australia five years ago as a refugee.

Tedros Yabio, born in Sudan, arrived in Australia 13 years ago as a refugee from Ethiopia.

Kamal Ibrahim, born in Ethiopia, arrived in Australia as a refugee five years ago.

Julius Davies, arrived as a refugee in Australia from Liberia five years ago.

Million Butshiire (possibly the best-ever name in Australian football history), born in the Congo, arrived in Australia as a refugee four years ago.

Million turned up in Perth via Uganda and South Africa with no identification except for a collection of school reports. As you do.

Like teammates Ibrahim and Yabio, there was no way to prove his age until MRI scans authenticated their claims that 1992 could prove to be a very good year for Australia football.

This generation of Joeys will face many obstacles on the way to 2018, not least already war, famine, and poverty.

Of course, government policies, shock jock journalists, and ignorance - as well as good old-fashioned fate - could have pointed these players down very different paths.

Instead, meet the face of future Australia.

One that FFA is proudly parading as the boys Frank Lowy thinks can win the World Cup.

Anyone for a pie?

• by Matthew Hall at 09:27 AM
• Comments (19)

Saturday, May 17, 2008

2018: Get Dirty For The Beautiful Game

Two potentially self-destructive events have given Australia's 2018 World Cup bid a little nudge.

Manchester's streets more resembled downtown Fallujah after Wednesday night's UEFA Cup Final between Glasgow Rangers from Scotland and Russia's Zenit-St Petersburg.

But instead of a battle between US Marines and insurgents, Manchester copped rioting Glasgow Rangers fans who attacked police with such ferocity that one officer had a radio ear piece embedded in his head.

You can read one police officer's account of the night here.

Let me get this in early before the anti-football brigade hijacks any discussion - the trigger for violence was not Rangers' 2-0 loss to Zenit.

The mob of drunken Scots, men and women, went on the rampage because a giant TV screen erected in Manchester's city centre malfunctioned. What was intended as a city centre party for 10,000 ticketless fans turned into a riot. As you do.

Technicians attempting to fix the screen were pelted with garbage. Not unreasonably, they downed tools and probably went home to watch the game.

A day's worth of beer didn't help, either. Some of the mob had been drinking since breakfast and were so drunk by kick-off that, when the screen blacked out, they were unable to comprehend instructions or directions to a different screen that had been set up as Plan B.

So off they went, leaving a trail of beer-bellied destruction across Greater Manchester.

Their behaviour is even more intriguing because Scottish fans traveling abroad, at least to support their national team, are usually exceptionally behaved.

At the 1998 World Cup in France, I sat under the Eiffel Tower and watched men dressed in kilts and red Braveheart wigs embrace Argentine fans and sing songs together praising Diego Maradona.

Maradona's Hand of God "goal" against England in 1986 was enough to qualify him as a Scottish folk hero, it seemed.

Yet a few weeks later, after Argentina beat England on penalties, I ran with the local gendarmerie - and imported undercover British police - as they chased rioting English fans through the streets of St Etienne.

The Scots? They'd gone home long ago or were sleeping off hangovers under the Arc de Triomphe.

British Prime Minister Gordon Brown, himself from Glasgow's Govan like Manchester United manager Sir Alex Ferguson, was aghast at Wednesday night's scenes.

"I want to do everything to avoid us being put in a position where we might be at risk of an application for the 2018 World Cup not being acceptable because of this," he said.

In plain English: "Jesus bloody Christ, you lot. Are you stupid, or what? Let's pray that this, and anything similar in the future, doesn't screw up England's bid for 2018."

Tedious yobs aside, more intriguing are maneuvers within UEFA, European football's governing body, around 2018.

Just as the Asian Football Confederation will only back one bid from our region for 2018 - China is our powerful and impressive local rival - the Europeans will support just one bid from their own powerhouse.

Or at least that's what UEFA president Michel Platini, a smart, politically savvy, respected ex-footballer, told the England FA last week when he said he doesn't want to see a brawl between European bidding nations over 2018.

Across Europe, interested parties include a combined Dutch and Belgian bid and more recently Spain, at the suggestion of FIFA president Sepp Blatter.

Russia, however, is looming as England's heavyweight regional rival and a recent decline in political relations between the two countries may make a battle for 2018 very interesting.

Yes, a World Cup really does carry that much weight.

Platini, who has huge influence within FIFA, has privately said that he won't even consider personally backing one European bid until consensus is reached. And that is for the bidding nations to sort out among themselves.

But what does this mean for Australia?

It depends how dirty Football Federation Australia want to get.

England, without doubt, would be a formidable opponent for our own bid if it gets the nod from Europe.

But how would we fare against Russia?

Or Spain?

Sepp Blatter and FIFA General Secretary Jerome Valcke arrive in Sydney later this week and will attend Australia's friendly with Ghana as FFA's guests.

FFA is hoping for a sell-out to demonstrate that Australians - especially in Sydney - turn out to support their national team and would do so again at a World Cup.

A good crowd is important but not as crucial as how Australia's bid wranglers play politics, especially over the following few days ahead of the FIFA Congress on May 29 and 30.

They might like to remind Blatter, a friend to all when the occasion warrants, about comments he made to me back in 2005 at that year's FIFA Congress in Marrakech, Morocco, where an Australian bid for 2018 was first floated.

You can read them here.

We can shake our heads with a tsk, tsk, tsk, at the unrest in England but we might also consider having a quiet word with the Russians during the upcoming FIFA Congress in Sydney.

Guus Hiddink may be coach of their national team but we might benefit if the Russians become our new best friends.

If we want to roll up our sleeves and get dirty, that is.

You can bet that everyone else making a bid will be.

Oh, and another thing. The English FA Cup Final is on this weekend. You may have missed it. That's OK. It's a sign of Australia's developing football maturity that an imported event is no longer a highlight of the local sporting calendar. Kids, unlike generations that came before, you may now sleep all the way through Saturday night. Or just record it off the TV.

• by Matthew Hall at 02:01 AM
• Comments (30)

Saturday, May 10, 2008

Why All The Hate, Haters?

Did Harry Kewell murder someone's favourite grandmother?

The amount of vindictive bile sprayed in his direction over the past week has been eye opening.

The storm clouds had been gathering ever since Liverpool fans booed him from the pitch as he hobbled out of the 2005 Champions League Final in Istanbul, an adductor muscle snapped in two.

But last week, the clouds got heavy and burst big time.

Intriguingly, the British media dropped a deluge on Kewell, branding the Socceroo an "expensive flop" who had "cost" Liverpool a "staggering" $328,000 a game over five years.

The tidbits hit the headlines, softening up the Liverpool public just days before Rafael Benitez publicly declared what those in the know (and what The Sun-Herald told readers months ago) considered old news.

Kewell HAD been offered a new contract by Liverpool several months ago but turned it down.

Most of us, too, would not agree to a one-year deal from our employer on drastically reduced financial terms when, in the ruthless and unsentimental world of professional sport, there are far better options elsewhere.

The stats show that - yes - injury prevented Kewell from making as many appearances for Liverpool over his five-year deal as everyone would have liked.

But claims that Kewell cost Liverpool big money for doing nothing is either naive, poorly informed, or just vindictive.

So why all the hate?

Players are club assets, they're insured against injury, and so Kewell's absence from injury has cost Liverpool very little except the extra success it may have had on the field had he taken part in more games.

Liverpool's insurance premiums may have risen, just like at Manchester United because of injury to Wayne Rooney, but then Liverpool, or its billionaire American owners, could afford it because of the MASSIVE financial windfalls from successful recent Champions League campaigns of which a certain H. Kewell directly contributed to.

Still, the hate continues.

The British media - The Sun, The Daily Mail, The Liverpool Echo, and The Evening Standard - blew their load on Kewell's misfortune.

Apparently other "expensive" long-term absentees like Manchester United's Gary Neville (remember him?) and Milan's Ronaldo are free from criticism and rightly so.

Being injured at a professional football club is purgatory.

Being long-term injured is Hell.

(Let's not mention Andriy Shevchenko, absent from Chelsea's ranks not because he's crook but simply deemed expensively surplus to requirements.)

It's not just the Brits.

Embarrassingly, would-be Australian pundits, who wouldn't know one end of Stanley Park from the other, nor (closer to home) how to get to Brenan Street, Smithfield, have since jumped on the bandwagon.

Toot-toot, indeed.

So why the hate?

Seriously?

What has Kewell done to inspire so many people with such strong opinions?

It's not like he's a careless party animal whose idea of rehab is picking up transvestite hookers in Rio nightclubs.

The Australian's idea of a wild time is a playfight with his kids in the family's romper room.

Or, if he really wears his party hat, lunch with Lucas Neill and their respective partners at a Manchester restaurant.

Is it jealously?

Schadenfreude - celebrating the misfortune of others?

Insecurity?

Reflected self-loathing?

Is the world suddenly full of Everton supporters?

The Kewell critics could be a whole untapped market for psychologists.

Interestingly, Kewell is not the only talented Australian player whose most promising career hit a rock just before an Aussie flag could be planted at the summit of world football.

For Kewell at Liverpool, see also Ned Zelic at Borussia Dortmund, Paul Okon at Lazio, and - with a whole different story - Mark Bosnich at Manchester United and then Chelsea.

Maybe Australia's best players are just made of glass.

In literary terms, Kewell now faces an intriguing Second Act.

It will be a very interesting summer in Europe where that dinner Kewell's manager had with Juventus officials in Rome last January (there, I've said it) may be end up being claimed as a tax expense.

Which, I'm sure, many people would just hate.

• by Matthew Hall at 01:50 AM
• Comments (133)

Saturday, May 3, 2008

Australia's Player Drain

Got a problem? Throw money at it. Hope it goes away.

That's the message sent by Football Federation Australia's new initiative to keep young talent in the A-League.

The plan works something like this. Each A-League club now has the provision to pay one player under the age of 23 an extra $150,000 outside the salary cap.

Hooray!

The thinking is that players like Nathan Burns, Bruce Djite, and Kristian Sarkies will spurn opportunities in Europe and stay in Australia for several more years if they're being paid big bucks.

"It's a very important initiative and one that we consulted with the clubs on and the players' association," FFA boss Ben Buckley said on Friday.

"In partnership with them, we can use this mechanism to try to retain players who may be enticed to go overseas on slightly larger financial incentives."

"So if the clubs use it wisely we think it has the real ability to retain some of the players who can do with an additional one, two, three years in the A-League before they may want to go overseas."

The concept is well intended but, unfortunately, the clubs and the Professional Footballers' Association may have sold Buckley's people a dummy on this issue.

The marquee player format has thrown up mixed results over the A-League's past three seasons.

Dwight Yorke worked for Sydney, Stan Lazaridis probably didn't for Perth, Juninho was underused, especially off the pitch. Some clubs have not even bothered hiring one.

But the whole issue of retaining young players in Australia has to contend with an irrepressible force that has nothing to do with the market.

The reason a youth marquee is destined to fail, even if PFA research says otherwise, is not because of club policy or economics.

It is all about desire.

Let's type that word again.

DESIRE.

Australia may have a comfortable lifestyle where you can train, go to the beach, and sip a cappuccino all in the same day.

But a player with real hunger to make it to the top will travel as far as their boots will carry them.

Unfortunately, that's further than Bondi Junction, or even Gosford.

They want to see the world.

Smell damp grass.

Breathe in cold morning air.

Kick a ball across snow.

Read (or look at the pictures in) La Gazzatta Dello Sport in a plaza cafe before work.

They are young and want adventure and want to taste life.

I know this because I've asked them.

Writing and researching two editions of my book The Away Game - and producing a TV documentary based on the same idea - resulted in a pretty thorough insight into players' motivations.

Plug, plug, plug, here's some links if you're interested in the book and the film.

Also check out this list of Australians playing overseas from the comprehensive Ozfootball website.

It's revealing to discover that out of over 100 Australians abroad only a handful are at top European clubs.

The rest? Try Greece (the third division!), Denmark, Romania, Macedonia, Croatia, and Georgia.

Even Scotland!

Here's Vince Grella, now a 10-year veteran of Italian football, sitting in a back room at Parma's training ground a few years ago and telling me about his Serie A debut.

Grella recalls a baptism of fire. It may have come too early, he thinks, but he will carry that experience with him for life.

In 2008, no amount of money will keep Nathan Burns in Australia if he has the talent to win the smallest of contracts on offer in Europe.

A European deal might not be with Manchester United, or even Derby County but Europe's lure is a rite of passage for every aspiring Australian footballer.

John Aloisi did it. Robbie Slater did it. Ned Zelic did it. Paul Okon did it. Harry Kewell did it. Graham Arnold even did it. Aurelio Vidmar did it. His brother Tony did it, came home, and went back and did it again. Lucas Neill did it. Nathan Burns will do it.

Keeping the boys at home, with their laundry done, meals cooked, and bed made by mum, won't help them in the long run.

If you're 23 years old and don't have the hunger to test yourself, don't have the desire, don't have the inner-strength, don't have the will to face the biggest challenge of your football career, you're not going to make it to the top anyway.

My apologies to FFA. This is way off message for how the A-League is being promoted but, in five words, get out of the house.

No amount of marquee money will compensate you for wondering what you could have been.

It's not good. It's not bad.

It just is.

• by Matthew Hall at 12:49 AM
• Comments (13)