The Sun-Herald

Saturday, July 26, 2008

Olympics TV Debate

As football fan Jimmy Barnes once sang, "Too much ain't enough".

Barnsey was apparently crooning about love, or something similar, but had he been singing in his shower last week, he may have referenced the Seven Network.

Seven raised the ire of Australian football fans when it announced plans for its coverage of the upcoming Olympic football tournament.

Or, rather, perceived lack of coverage.

The Olympics host broadcaster has found itself in a gluttonous position of having far too much on its plate, attempting to squeeze two-hour football games in between its mash potato regular programming and, possibly, frozen pea qualifying heats for swimming events.

Oh, and don't forget the suggestion that sometime during Australia's opening match against Serbia, which will be a delayed telecast in any case, the broadcast will cut away to a press conference announcing who will carry the Australian flag during the opening ceremony.

Hold the back page and - Archie Thompson - hold that shot!

Seven will be in a pickle if it turns out that Olyroos coach Graham Arnold has got the flag bearer gig.

Will they cut to the Shanghai dressing sheds for a post-match interview with Arnie while, in fact, we're simultaneously watching him at work barking orders at David Carney to drop back and defend?

Maybe the interviewer could ask Arnie what the result was so that those of us trying to watch the game can be out of our probable misery?

Ah, the complexities of the delayed telecast.

Of course, Graham Arnold, as the coach of the football team, is not a likely candidate to proudly carry the Australian flag around Beijing's Birds Nest stadium on Opening Day.

That role usually goes to someone who rides a horse or shoots a gun.

While Football Federation Australia were quiet on the news, Seven's schedule did spark not unreasonable hysteria among some fans.

Emails were sent to the network, press releases were distributed, and protests were planned, including a potentially hilarious idea to storm the Martin Place backdrop of the Sunrise morning show.

The website for the FourFourTwo football magazine published a news story about the frenzy that provoked an apparent legal threat from Seven and a verbal skirmish between the broadcaster and magazine over which media outlet was the more accurate.

All good stuff to distract us from Olyroo preparation that has seen Arnold's team lose to China and Japan in two recent games.

Yet Seven, for its part, has a long way to go before it regains the trust of soccer fans.

Most resentment stems from its 1998 purchase of the National Soccer League TV rights on the apparent assumption the league would be restructured.

This never occurred and so Seven loaned the rights to the ABC, only showing some Finals matches on its own network.

One of Frank Lowy's first tasks when he took control of the sport was to successfully dissolve the dud Seven deal.

However, Seven executives were candid during a recent government enquiry into Pay-TV that effectively shutting down soccer did benefit its own coverage of Australian Rules football.

Cue conspiracy theorists, who may have had a point.

Nobody Screws Soccer Like Seven became a popular and accurate slogan for fans at the time.

During one ABC NSL match broadcast in this tempestuous time, fans got a taste of what they might expect during this year's Olympic coverage.

The national broadcaster cut away from the added-time denouement of a nail-biting game to instead broadcast a five-minute cooking program neatly slotted in before the news.

It's not for me to tell others how to do their jobs but ABC programmers had absolutely no idea what they were doing.

Or maybe they did, which is even worse.

But don't fret football fans, similar things occasionally happened with ABC's netball coverage, too.

Of course, it needn't be this way.

While Seven and Aussie football fans sweat over how to see Australia try and win a historic medal for football on TV at home, they could instead travel to the USA.

That's where they can watch pretty much every single game of both the mens' and womens' tournament.

This will not involve hacking into satellites or pirate Internet streams.

This will happen by tuning into host broadcaster NBC's dedicated Olympic Soccer Channel as well as watching some matches spread out over the American network's sister stations.

Australia v Argentina, live?

Tune into the USA network where, in between episodes of Law and Order, you will also have the option to watch Mark Milligan in High Definition.

There's also USA v Nigeria, South Korea v Honduras, and China v Brazil.

Spoilt for choice and that's before logging on to NBC's website where games will be streamed live.

All this in a country that, if we believe what we're told, has no great love for soccer.

And no, NBC does not hold the rights to US international matches nor Major League Soccer.

I do admit, though, I have no idea where you can watch the announcement for who will be carrying the US flag at the opening ceremony.

But I'm sure we can read about it somewhere the next day if we're really that interested.

Irony totally intended.

While all this has been going on, we've missed one of the main sub-plots of the Olympic tournament: European clubs are refusing to release not just their overage players but also their underage players.

Milan has said that Brazil can forget calling up Kaka while Barcelona have said 21-year-old star Leo Messi will be required to play for his club in UEFA Champions League qualifying matches.

The reason is that the Olympic football tournament is not part of the international calendar. It takes place as most European clubs are kicking off their new seasons.

FIFA president Sepp Blatter issued a statement last week saying the stars' appearance is mandatory but the clubs stood firm. The matter will be judged by FIFA's Player Status Committee.

• by Matthew Hall at 05:21 AM
• Comments (45)

Saturday, July 19, 2008

Grace. Redemption. Deliverance.

Once, Mark Bosnich threatened to kill me.

I didn't take it personally. In this business you can't and, anyway, back in the day, I often received far more serious threats than those from an emotional goalkeeper paranoid about poor publicity.

At the time, Bozza had recently signed for Chelsea after an exhilarating second stint at Manchester United. He'd won the Premier League with United and been Man of the Match in United's World Club Championship win over Brazilian side Palmeiras that confirmed the English side as the best team in the world at the time.

But Alex Ferguson, for reasons that have never been revealed by the coach nor player, always seemed disappointed in Bosnich's return to Old Trafford.

Despite his role in United's continuing success, Bosnich's name was added to the list of great players ruthlessly discarded by the Scot: Jaap Stam, Ruud Van Nistelrooy, Dwight Yorke, Andy Cole, Fabian Barthez, and even David Beckham.

In eternal Old Trafford exile, Bosnich was offered a move to pre-Abramovich Chelsea, then only just waking to its status as a sleeping giant.

True to form, Bosnich had engineered a great escape. After all, if you're going to be forced out of Manchester United, the club that you joined instead of Juventus, Chelsea (even in 2001) could be considered a decent second-best.

So, when we spoke, Bosnich was not in the mood for any more criticism, especially from a bratty journalist back home in Sydney.

It would turn out, I was the least of Bozza's problems.

Things only got worse at Chelsea. Bosnich spent long spells out injured but, when fit, put in performances of absolute brilliance.

Then, of course, came distractions including a girlfriend who was a volatile superstar lingerie model and enjoyed hoovering large amounts of drugs.

Bozza, you see, rarely did anything by halves.

And so the crash. Anything Bozaa's girlfriend did, the Socceroo claimed he would do double.

Soon, according to Bosnich, he had developed a full-blown six gram per day habit. For those of you unfamiliar with drug use, that's a lot of cocaine. An awful lot. Especially when you're supposed to be a professional footballer.

Bosnich is not the only footballer to have used cocaine, even at Chelsea.

Not long after the Australian was busted and outed from the game, so too was Chelsea's Romanian striker Adrian Mutu who was allowed to rebuild his career in Italy.

Bosnich, too, is not the only Australian football player to be offered drugs.

There are other stories, untold publicly, of Australian players, even former Socceroos, crashing and burning like Bosnich. Lucky for them, they didn't have to face as bright a spotlight like Bozza.

Even Robbie Slater, when he was playing in the Premier League, can tell a story of being recognised in a pub and a stranger offering Colombian party favours.

Don't panic Fox Sports, Slater rightly declined and extricated himself from the situation quick smart.

But we're not here to moralise, or even dwell, on Bosnich's past experience. The whats and whys of how one of Australia's greatest athletes, a pioneer as much as Joe Marston in the 1950s and Craig Johnston in the 1980s, reached the highest heights and lowest lows, both professionally and personally.

Until recently, Bosnich was effectively dead to Australian football. He never answered his phone nor returned messages (I know, I called, as did others).

Then, thankfully, he began to thaw. He gave some interviews, returned to training with Queens Park Rangers, a local team in London, and last November met with Football Federation Australia officials in London for dinner.

FFA also invited Bosnich to Sydney for the FIFA Congress. It provided the opportunity to meet with his family for the first time in many, many, years.

We don't yet know which was the most bizarre transfer news last week - that Barcelona's Sammy Eto'o had flown to Tashkent to discuss terms with Uzbekistani club Kuruvichi or Bosnich's trial with A-League side Central Coast Mariners.

But we know that Central Coast's invitation is not a publicity stunt and neither is Bosnich's acceptance and prompt arrival in Gosford.

Maybe Bosnich will win a guest player stint at the Mariners. Maybe he won't.

The world turns and we move on, just like Bosnich didn't end up having to follow through his threat to me and, perhaps more remarkably, he's still alive, too.

Grace. Redemption. Deliverance.

Regardless of the eventual outcome, what's fitting is that an A-League club is able to supply the final pass to Bosnich from a move begun by FFA last year.

After all, if we can't look after our own, who will?

• by Matthew Hall at 03:59 AM
• Comments (21)

Saturday, July 12, 2008

The Away Game

For some Australian football fans, there's a very thin line between passion and madness.

Who, after all, would consider a 24-hour journey to a place called Tashkent to watch Australia play a football match against a country called Uzbekistan where our team's coach will possibly select goalkeeper Mark Schwarzer and 10 defenders and if absolutely nothing happens then we'll consider it a huge success?

Quite a few people, it turns out.

It was not just Socceroos coach Pim Verbeek and his Football Federation Australia staff who two weeks ago eagerly watched the qualifying draw for the next stage of 2010 World Cup qualifiers.

In a George Street bar, a group of Socceroos fans crowded around a television set and watched and waited for Australia's group rivals to be decided.

There was a little more interest than usual as Qatar (again!), Japan, Uzbekistan, and Bahrain were lined up with the Socceroos.

For Pablo Bateson and his friends, what was being unveiled was the list of countries they will be traveling to over the next 12 months to support the Socceroos on their campaign.

"A major attraction for travelling supporters is to experience vastly different cultures, and get out of the comfort zone of a cosy middle class Australian urban lifestyle," Bateson wrote in an email to me explaining his upcoming itinerary.

"Although we know little about this former Soviet Union state located in the heart of Central Asia, we're ready to hit the bookstores for Lonely Planet guides to get informed and begin to put a plan into action."

As a former contributor to the Rough Guides travel books, I'm obliged to recommend Bateson consider an alternative to Lonely Planet but, that aside, his passion and dedication is a thing of genuine wonder.

I first met Pablo in a hotel lobby in Doha a few days before Australia played Qatar last month. He had been in Dubai a week earlier and, in between matches, taken a side trip to Oman.

He was far from alone, as others staying in the hotel told tales of side trips to Cairo, all the while wearing Socceroo shirts.

"It still amazes me the length to which my fellow fans go to follow the Socceroos in all sorts of remote places," says Heather Kayatz, another travelling fan.

"There's such a comraderie between us all when we travel, with people from all sorts of backgrounds, looking out for each other and sharing the experience with an open mind and heart.

"If we can also be good ambassadors, then that will be a bonus for Australia, football, and our relations with Asian countries. Football is a passport to the world, and an international currency that can transcend politics, racial differences and social and economic disparities."

It should probably be pointed out that, rather than being a young blonde backpacker filling in time between high school and university, Heather is the other side of 70 years old.

She has travelled to watch Australia play all over the world since 1974 and for several decades believed she was alone in the stands as she watched the Socceroos in action in exotic locations around the world.

Talking to Pablo and Heather made me recall a trip to Auckland in 1997 to see Australia play New Zealand in a World Cup play-off.

Terry Venables was Socceroos coach, Mark Bosnich was in goal, Alex Tobin was captain, Robbie Slater and Craig Foster played in midfield, and Graham Arnold was up front.

Yes, Arnold and Foster were once teammates.

Ah, different days.

The interest in Australia's World Cup campaigns just over 10 years ago was so marginal and the visiting media contingent was so small that I was, at one stage, asked by another journalist what I was doing in Auckland.

I can name the Australian fans who travelled to Auckland by name because, after the game, I gave the entire contingent a lift back into Auckland in my rental car and we went for dinner at a restaurant later.

Hello again Don Parkes, who also used to travel weekly from Woy Woy to perform his job as an eloquent ground announcer at St George Stadium each Sunday.

I ran into Don Parkes again in 2006 in Germany, celebrating his birthday in a campsite not far from Ohringen, the Australian team's training headquarters.

On that day, it seemed that all Don's birthdays may have come at once as he, a veritable veteran, held court in front of other fans, some 50 years younger, regaling them with tall tales and true of former campaigns.

And hello again Harry and Mark Bowman, just two names from a family of which other members have also appeared to say hello in stadiums around the world.

The past World Cup in Germany gave many supporters, some of them new, a platform to experience the adventure of an Australia away game.

Some travelled independently; some as part of The Fanatics, a travel agency and very succesful business that also organises tours to cricket games and tennis matches and rallies around it's "Aussie! Aussie! Aussie! Oi! Oi! Oi!" chant; and in a developing sign of football's maturity there's supporter groups like The Green and Gold Army that Bateson belongs to.

"As coach Pim Verbeek recently acknowledged, the 12th man are the travelling fans and make an essential contribution to help lift the team to success especially in potentially hostile and intimidating atmospheres in far away places," Bateson says.

And, as we learned in Dubai when the Iraq Football Federation broke all known protocols to charge Australian fans $100 for tickets that were available to locals for just $3, travelling supporters can be easily exploited.

"FFA has to come up with a system that secures and allocates tickets for important away games so that the travelling fans have one less thing to worry about when following their team around the world and helping to provide that often psychological lift to the playing squad and staff," Bateon says.

After all, without fans, crazy or otherwise, sport is nothing more than a kickaround in a park.

No matter where it's played.

• by Matthew Hall at 06:14 AM
• Comments (33)

Saturday, July 5, 2008

Don't Believe The Hype

Australian football wasn't looking for a theme song but it just got one.

That's the only possible explanation for the omission of so-called wonder kids Nathan Burns and Bruce Djite from the Olympic team on Friday.

Instead of the two former A-League stars draping themselves in Olympic rings and gold medals and patriotically singing along to Advance Australia Fair, picture them instead as a hip-hop duo, beating out a version of Public Enemy's 1988 classic Don't Believe The Hype.

Bruce and Nathan can argue among themselves who will play Chuck D or Flava Flav, Public Enemy's focal points.

You can decide yourself by clicking here.

Interestingly, Don't Believe The Hype came from an album called It Takes A Nation Of Millions To Hold Us Back.

Oh, the irony. For Burns and Djite, that nation appears to be China.

But we digress.

The hype we are now being told not to believe is that Burns and Djite were the apparent future of Australian football.

Ladies and gentlemen, we were sold a sucker.

Burns was touted as a likely successor to Harry Kewell while Djite has, until last week, been likened as a man-most-likely to eventually step into Mark Viduka's big boots.

Graham Arnold, coach of the team that will represent Australia in the Beijing Olympic's football tournament, radically thinks differently.

Arnold said that Burns and Djite were omitted because they were too young and could not handle the heat.

"If there's one thing I've learned from playing in Asia it's that if players can't play in the heat, they can't play in the heat, no matter who they are," Arnold, who led Australia to a disappointing 2007 Asian Cup campaign in Thailand and Vietnam, said after his squad was announced.

"Unfortunately, Burns and Djite are only 20 and were pretty much between Olympic age groups and that made it pretty difficult for them," Arnold added. "I was looking for maturity, quality, athleticism, speed and tactical nous."

(Which suggests that both players are also stupid and/or immature, which they are definitely not).

Whether Arnold is right in omitting the two players will be revealed in China but, regardless, his judgment is a slap in the face for the A-League, a slap in the face for youth, a slap in the face for talented players hoping to play for national teams.

Arnold's way of thinking has either been miscommunicated (possible) or he has effectively put the skids on the international careers of Burns and Djite forever.

I hate to get dramatic here but think about it.

Effectively, two of the A-League's best players, two guys that have recently scored decent contracts to clubs in Greece and Turkey, apparently do not have the engines to perform in Shanghai (where Australia will play its group games) in August.

With Australia's international future cemented in Asia, the same logic suggests that Burns and Djite will only be selected for comfortable home games in an Australian winter.

Another thing.

Due to the vagaries of international sporting politics (basically, FIFA thinks the Olympics suck) the Olympic football tournament is restricted to under-23 players.

A concession is made to name three overage players if a coach so wants but FIFA doesn't want anything to overshadow its own World Cup showpiece nor interfere with the European big leagues that kick off in August.

But this is what makes the Olympic football tournament attractive: up-and-coming young players going hammer and tongs.

Recall, if you can, the epic 2000 gold medal game at Homebush where Cameroon outslugged Spain (Euro 2008 winners eight years later).

Young players. This is why we will marvel at the talent of young Lionel Messi, aged just 21, in action for Argentina when they play Australia on August 10.

But not Bruce Djite, aged 21, nor Nathan Burns, aged 20.

Alternatively, we can look at it this way: Graham Arnold has just demonstrated coaching genius and made two very tough calls.

He has selected names that will fit his idea of a squad rather than base selection on individual reputation.

He has steadied himself for criticism and, rather than believing the hype, has decided that - you know what? - Burns and Djite just don't cut it.

In Dubai several weeks ago, Football Federation Australia boss Ben Buckley addressed a lunch that included Pim Verbeek's Socceroo squad (yes, even Bruce Djite, who would a few days later play for the senior side in the Doha heat) in the audience.

Buckley said that minimum expectation from the Olympic Games was to come home with a medal.

That means a top three finish.

At the time, I recall thinking that was a big call from Buckley and that Graham Arnold would not appreciate such a tough agenda.

Now, by shunning two of the country's most talented players, the stakes have been raised even higher.

• by Matthew Hall at 09:19 AM
• Comments (21)