The Sun-Herald

Saturday, August 30, 2008

A Break In Transmission

While industrial action takes place at Fairfax Media, let's have a look at some interesting football fixtures this weekend...

In the USA
DC United v New York Red Bulls
New England v Los Angeles

In England
West Ham v Blackburn

In Spain
Tenerife v Gimnastic de Tarragona

In Italy
Pisa v Grosseto

In Turkey
Fenerbahce v Istanbul Buyuksehir BSK

Greece!
Olympiacos v Asteras Tripoli

Our pals in Asia
Saudi Arabia v Qatar

Argentina
Rosario Central v Banfield

Mexico
Guadalajara v Morelia

Brazil
Botafogo v Náutico

Chile
Colo Colo v Santiago Morning

Uruguay
Peñarol v Cerro Largo

El Salvador
Alianza FC v Nejapa

South Africa
Golden Arrows v Orlando Pirates

• by Matthew Hall at 04:01 AM
• Comments (1)

Saturday, August 23, 2008

Hope Saves The Day

The greatest story to come from the Olympic football tournament includes neither Leo Messi, Ronaldinho, nor Graham Arnold.

Thursday's game for the women's gold medal between the USA and Brazil had more tales of redemption than the Pope's personal library.

The story begins - and ends - with the superbly named Hope Solo, the goalkeeper for the US team.

If Australians Bruce Djite, Nathan Burns, and Ned Zelic ever thought they had difficulties coming to terms with team selection policies they might want to read this through to the end.

Solo's story caught fire during last year's World Cup in China when she was bizarrely dumped by coach Greg Ryan for the semi-final against Brazil after keeping three straight clean sheets.

In her place, Ryan selected veteran goalkeeper Brianna Scurry. The US got smashed 4-0. Scurry could take the blame for several goals. In an interview after the match, Solo said as much.

The fallout was heavy. Not only did Solo not regain her place for the third-place game against Norway, she was banned from attending the medal ceremony, from eating at team meals, from the team's flight home.

Totally shunned, she returned home and did what many might do in the same situation - she took a bath.

"If that's what depression is, I think I hit it," she told Sports Illustrated before the Olympics. "I wanted to give up. Why show up somewhere where 20-plus people hate you?"

Coach Ryan was fired after the World Cup and Swede Pia Sundhage took his place (Australian Tommy Sermanni was also approached for the job). Slowly, Solo was rehabilitated into the team although she stood by her original words and remained hesitant to become part of what was described as a "sorority house" atmosphere within the team.

The beginning of 2008 shut the door on a tough 2007 for Solo. Not only had she blown a fuse at the World Cup but her best friend had been killed back in April when she was hit by a car while jogging. Her father had died in June, three months before the World Cup. To borrow from baseball, three strikes and you are almost out. But not Hope.

Her dad was a Vietnam veteran, Hope's first soccer coach, but somewhat like his daughter, he didn't quite fit in. He disappeared when Hope was young, reconnecting a decade later when she was at college and he was homeless living in a tent.

She would visit him in the woods and take him meals. He would talk with her and come to see her home games. As some sort of tribute, Solo took her father's ashes to China for the World Cup and scattered them on the field before matches.

When Brazil beat the USA in that World Cup semi-final, the team returned to its hotel to be greeted by a crowd of cameras. It was tough for the US team to take such a loss, especially amid the drama surrounding Solo's sacking. Getting off the bus and facing cameras was not ideal especially when the people behind the lenses were laughing and seemingly enjoying their pain.

According to the US players, it turned out the camera operators were not members of the media but part of Brazil's victorious team who were sharing the same hotel. It was an experience that US midfielder Carli Lloyd would remember for some time.

"It's somewhat their culture, I guess, to rub people's noses in it," she said.

Ouch.

So, Thursday's Olympic final had a few things riding on it. While star player Abby Wambach missed the Olympics, having broken a leg in an earlier warm-up game against the Brazilians, Solo had been restored to the line-up.

Brazil, with top players Marta and Cristiane, were fancy and full of flair. Solo, however, stood tall and dived low. She kept the US in the match, each minute at 0-0 being 60 seconds closer to the possibility of a win against odds. If last year had been Hope Solo against the world, then 2008 was Hope Solo against Brazil, at least for 90 minutes.

Then, from nowhere, Carli Lloyd burst past the Brazilian defence and unleashed a skidding 25-metre shot that hit the back of the net.

Lloyd, it should be noted, had earlier been the only member of the US team to welcome Solo back into the group. She had sat next to the goalkeeper on the bench, visit her room, and share mealtime with her.

Hope saved the day. Lloyd won it.

Sometimes, in the end, being different, staying true to yourself, actually does make a difference.

• by Matthew Hall at 01:38 AM
• Comments (7)

Saturday, August 16, 2008

When The Olympics Mean Nothing

The Olyroos are dead and buried. So, now what?

And with Graham Arnold's top-level involvement with national teams now apparently history, what will his critics do with their time?

Move on, could be one suggestion. Apparently, we've got a World Cup to qualify for.

The Olyroos performance at the Beijing Games (or rather, Shanghai and Taijin where matches were played) was widely agreed to be underwhelming but it should have been hardly surprising.

The biggest embarrassment was not Graham Arnold's ultra-catenaccio approach against Argentina's performing circus (this was ugly but actually smart) nor the sight of defender Nikolai Topor-Stanley sent on in the dying minutes against Cote D'Ivoire in a desperate bid to pluck a goal from somewhere.

The work of some of my colleagues in patriotically whitewashing aspects of the team's performance can be considered just as cringe worthy as the barrage of criticism Graham Arnold faced from other quarters but the greater misdeed was pre-tournament talk that Australia was a medal contender.

Aussie! Aussie! Aussie! Oh, no you didn't.

The Olympic football tournament is an often entertaining kickaround that brings the International Olympic Committee big crowds and big bucks but that's the about it. The results of this essentially under-23 tournament mean nothing.

Success or failure is not a future form guide for either teams or players. Some recent history: in 2000, Australia was eliminated, as hosts, in the group stage after three straight losses to Italy, Nigeria, and Honduras.

Against Italy at the Melbourne Cricket Ground, the Australian team list read like this: Danny Milosevic, Simon Colosimo, Stan Lazaridis (an overage player), Hayden Foxe, Josip Skoko (another overage player), Stephen Laybutt, Brett Emerton, Mark Viduka (yes, overage), Kasey Wehrman, Vince Grella, and Michael Curcija.

Ignoring the overage players, only Grella and Emerton have since established themselves as senior national team players. Interestingly, the substitutes were Lucas Neill, Mark Bresciano, and Nick Rizzo, who recently joined Perth Glory after failing to break into Europe's top leagues.

In the final game, against Honduras, Jason Culina got a run as a substitute. The coach of that team, Raul Blanco, has been rarely sighted since. How the world turns. Was that squad indicative of Australian football's international future? Nope.

More recently, in 2004, Australia's squad included Eugene Galekovic, Brad Jones, Jade North, Shane Cansdell-Sheriff, Jon McKain, Adrian Madaschi, David Tarka, Ahmad Elrich, Ryan Griffiths, Luke Wilkshire, Anthony Danze, Carl Valeri, Spase Dilevski, Alex Brosque, and Brett Holman.

Luke Wilkshire went to the 2006 World Cup and Jade North, Brett Holman, and Carl Valeri are genuinely on the edges of the Socceroos squad. Others have failed to graduate.

So who, from 2008, appear likely to transcend the Olympics and establish themselves in 2010 and beyond? As suggested previously, Adam Federici now has a head start as Mark Schwarzer's heir if he can maintain consistency and play for his club regularly.

While Mark Milligan's next career decision will be crucial to his development, Billy Celeski, Mark Bridge, and Stuart Musialik showed there is genuine talent in the A-League.

The one player Pim Verbeek will want to fast track is Matthew Spiranovic, about to begin a season with Nuremburg in Germany's second division. Spiranovic has poise and swagger that suggests he may be have been pulled from the same shelf as Paul Okon and Ned Zelic, two of Australia's more cultured players.

So, I hate to pop the balloon but, as far as football is concerned, the Olympics mean nothing more than an opportunity for potential international players to gain experience and gather some nice scrapbook clippings for the future grandkids.

And that is where Graham Arnold, and Football Federation Australia's talk of a medal, got it very wrong.

This was a tournament ripe for outcasts Bruce Djite and Nathan Burns, playing professionally with established clubs in Turkey and Greece, to show what they've got and, more importantly, gain experience. These two, if Pim Verbeek is any judge, will have a role to play for the Socceroos in the not distant future.

Their omission remains baffling. Who knows, they may have scored a goal or two as well. Which, as everyone knows, is how you win games and medals.

• by Matthew Hall at 03:40 AM
• Comments (27)

Saturday, August 9, 2008

Great Expectations

Watching Australia's Olympic football team triggered waves of nostalgic romance.

The twin sub-plots running underneath this current Olyroos campaign - we are going to win a medal/this team is rubbish - swept me back to different times and different places, that long ago decade popularly known as the 1990s.

Specifically, an Australian encounter with Brazil at the 1997 Confederations Cup. Then, Terry Venables attempted to soothe our hangover of 1998 World Cup qualification failure by taking on the reigning World Cup holders.

Brazil, coached by Mario Zagallo, fielded a team that included Dida, Roberto Carlos, Denilson, Leonardo, Bebeto, and some guy called Ronaldo.

The Socceroos included Mark Bosnich, Ned Zelic, and Mark Viduka but also players from National Soccer League clubs like Alex Tobin, Milan Ivanovic, Craig Foster, and Damian Mori.

Truly, world class aristocrats against Aussie battlers.

Hold the back page (and they did), the final score was 0-0.

The more entertaining moments in a match Johnny Warren declared "the greatest ever result for an Australian sporting team ever" (Johnny was never one for understatement) included Mark Viduka spontaneously deciding to play as a centre-back, Craig Foster copping a cross in the goolies, and Tony Vidmar copping a Carlos free-kick in the guts.

It was that kind of game - ugly and beautiful all the same.

It was the type of result that made you proud to get stares when wearing a daggy Socceroos shirt to the local shops.

The core of that team burst onto the international stage five years earlier at the 1992 Olympic Games in Barcelona.

At the time, I was living in London in a small apartment above a newsagent. This was fortuitous because in the days before the Internet, the only way to follow the exploits of those Olyroos in Barcelona was via the one-line box scores buried in the sports pages of (some) English newspapers.

With no British team competing in Olympic football, there was no perceived interest in the tournament. Mr Singh, who ran the newsagent, spent the 12 days or so that Australia was involved, checking deliveries before opening his doors to the public.

When I heard his shutters go up early each morning, it was the signal to race downstairs where Mr Singh would personally report Australia's progress.

"Ghana 3, Australia 1," he announced the day after the first group game.

Over before we'd begun, I thought.

"Mexico 1, Australia 1," Mr Singh reported after game two.

At least we're out with some honour.

"Denmark 0, Australia 3," Mr Singh beamed, after our do-or-die last round game. "Your team has qualified for the next round."

I made Mr Singh show me the paper he'd read this in and crosschecked with another. It was true. There, after a result from a pre-season friendly between Colchester United and Huddersfield Town, were the Olympic football results.

Mr Singh was not playing a cruel prank. This Australian team could play!

"Sweden 1, Australia 2," he said, a few mornings later. "You are in the semi-finals where you can play for a medal."

But this is Australia, I thought. We didn't play football, or even soccer, for medals. It wasn't right.

For my next visit, Mr Singh was a little glum.

"Poland 6, Australia 1." He announced. "But maybe they were unlucky."

Normal service had been resumed. I bought the paper as a souvenir. The Olympic Games semi-final?! Maybe one day we might again play in the World Cup.

To celebrate, I wrote a congratulatory letter to the Australian Soccer Federation. Memo to Ben Buckley: despite placing an Air Mail sticker on the envelope to ensure prompt delivery, 16 years later I still have no reply.

That 1992 team included promising youngsters like John Filan, Mark Bosnich, Paul Okon, Ned Zelic Tony Vidmar, Shaun Murphy, Steve Corica, and Damian Mori, among others.

They were something of a golden generation who went on to have excellent careers at home and abroad.

Also in the side were players called George Slifkas, David Seal, Gary Hasler, and Steve Refenes who for, various reasons, didn't.

(Oh, and then there was John Markovski, one of Australian football's most talented and enigmatic characters).

Football fate can be both kind and cruel and the future, short- and long-term, of the team currently competing in Shanghai is far from decided.

So last Thursday, Australia's current under-23 team was in Shanghai mixing it against Serbia, the second-best European team at the their age level, with desperate commitment and passion.

It was initially pitched in some places as a battle between equals but, in truth, it was far from it. Interestingly, in a game of opinions, match reports (rather than a box score) were split. Australia either defied critics by playing clever football in the heat against superior opponents or escaped with a draw they did not deserve.

In truth, Australia was somewhere in between. This was a team of players from the much-hyped A-League outclassed and outplayed by technically superior opponents.

Matthew Spiranovic, playing in Germany with Nuremburg, was literally head and shoulders above his teammates.

In goal, Adam Frederici put in a performance that suggests, if he can be consistent and play regularly with his club, he has an edge on rivals to one day succeed Mark Schwarzer.

Argentina met Ivory Coast following Australia's game. The South Americans were breathtaking. The Africans, at times, too. Socceroos coach Pim Verbeek was in Shanghai and saw both games.

"Ivory Coast-Argentina was a great game," he said on Friday. "It was a high quality game. It will be tough for the Olyroos. We have to be honest about that. The players had a very good preparation. They are physically fit and now they have to show it."

"It is most important for these players to get international experience," he added. "I am very pleased with all the games they have had to play and how they are growing as players."

"It will be tough but I am 100 per cent sure they will give everything to go to the next round. I'm very interested to see how they play against a team like Argentina."

In other words, put on your crash helmets, we're about to get hammered.

Or, this being Australia, maybe not.

Some expectations for this Olympic team extend way beyond reality but Verbeek was again spot on.

It's been inadvisable to hype prospects for a medal, especially when that talk comes from those close to the team. That approach doesn't suit us and likely never will.

Call me old fashioned, but just like 1992 and 1997, Australia is an underdog and always should be.

It's what international football success has been built upon.

As Mr Singh would no doubt romantically agree, it is better to be surprised than be disappointed.

• by Matthew Hall at 02:09 AM
• Comments (3)

Saturday, August 2, 2008

Referees Under Attack

Here's one story few people wanted to talk about.

Last weekend Sydney United, a club that used to play in the National Soccer League, hosted Manly United at their Edensor Park home ground for a Football New South Wales Premier League fixture.

This was one of the last games of the current season and both sides were jockeying for position ahead of the finals play-offs.

Manly United snatched a 1-0 win. Sydney United copped three red cards. There was, it would be fair to say, some drama.

Some people weren't happy, especially one particular bloke who followed referee Matthew Gillet toward the changing room after the final whistle.

According to an official report by Gillet, the aggrieved individual was full of anger and abuse and continued a bilious barrage toward the ref and his assistants as the match officials headed toward the supposed sanctity of their dressing room.

The heat, even in mid-winter, was hot. So hot, in fact, that the referee asked his abuser for his name so it could be included in his official report.

The response was further verbal abuse and an alleged physical interaction that makes Danny Vukovic's infamous Grand Final high-five with Mark Shield look like the slap it was.

But it didn't end there.

According to the report, the referee was pursued into his dressing room, his assistants and other match officials pushed out of the way in the process.

We can also throw in more alleged verbal threats just to emphasise some points.

Other match officials had to shield the referee as more alleged abuse rained down.

The report states that the individual had to be restrained by the official match commissioner and, after he refused to leave the referee's dressing room, had to be removed by match officials.

In normal circumstances, the alleged incident would be not just inappropriate . It would be totally inexcusable.

As Central Coast Mariners goalkeeper Danny Vukovic has discovered, no matter what you think of a referee's decision, it is what it is.

Vukovic's five seconds of madness last February impacted his career so deeply that he made international headlines in a way that he would not have expected nor wanted.

His personal bottom line is a ban from the Olympic Games, an event that should be a peak achievement for any athlete, and an unwanted and perhaps unfair reputation as a nutcase.

Unfortunately for Vukovic, his transgression came at a time when referees in Europe had grown tired of continual abuse from professional players.

Some of the worst examples manifest in England's Premier League where players from top teams like Manchester United and Chelsea swarm match officials to dispute decisions.

The dubious conduct of managers and coaches like Sir Alex Ferguson, Jose Mourinho, and Arsene Wenger does not assist referees in doing their job either.

Behaviour has become so militant that during Euro 2008, referees had the word 'RESPECT' embroidered onto their shirts so that explosive players might allow themselves a last chance to relax before they gave their opinion on a match official's opinion.

But abuse of referees, and their assistants, is not limited to the professional game.

Watch any amateur match, of any age or skill level, and the man or woman in the middle will cop it.

On occasion, I have refereed games in a Centennial Park pub league that I also played in when regular refs were hard to find or had simply failed to show up.

I would never do it ever again.

There are only so many times you can be abused by huffing and puffing beer-bellied hacks before the novelty of blowing a whistle wears off.

I thought I'd seen the worst of local amateur football until, in another hack league at Scarborough Park near Monterey in Sydney's south, a player swung a punch at a ref.

I watched as his team mates rushed in to, I thought, pull their hotheaded friend away.

But I was wrong. Very wrong.

Instead of dragging their friend from a potential fracas the entire team piled into the referee.

Which brings us back to Edensor Park last weekend.

The aggressive and abusive individual named in the referee's official report is Mr Sam Krslovic.

The same Sam Krslovic who is Vice-President of Football New South Wales and therefore one of the local game's most senior and supposedly influential administrators.

So if individuals of such apparent high standing are unable to treat referees with respect then what's left?

Why would anyone even bother to pick up a whistle?

Football Federation Australia is aware of last week's incident but as the game comes under the control of FNSW it, at this point, has no jurisdiction on this particular controversy.

But the governing body does have an opinion.

" FFA's view is that manhandling a referee is inexcusable and not to be
tolerated," said a spokesperson.

Krslovic's alleged actions puts FNSW President Jim Forrest in a situation he probably never expected to find himself in.

Forrest explained in an email that FNSW's independent disciplinary tribunal, which looks at off-field incidents, will investigate.

"All parties will be present to argue their cased and a decision will be arrived at," Forrest wrote.

This won't happen until September, as one of the parties involved is away during August. Any appeal process ultimately stops at the door of FFA.

On Thursday, Krslovic told his President that he will "vigorously contest any allegations against him" but "is voluntarily standing aside from his position until the matter is dealt with,"

"I think Mr Krslovic has chosen the most honourable course of action and I commend him for what he is doing here," Forrest wrote.

This either means the referee's official match report in highly inaccurate or Krslovic's recollection of events is way wide of the mark.

On Friday night, referees met in Sydney to talk about a number of issues they face in their work. I was reliably informed Krslovic, and incidents like it, were discussed.

Whether the match officials view the deteriorating situation in the same way as the President of FNSW, and is elected colleagues, is another matter.

Which is, possibly, how this all began.

• by Matthew Hall at 02:27 AM
• Comments (62)