The Sun-Herald

Saturday, October 25, 2008

Truth, Lies, and Flawed Justice

Deception, it seems, is the only way to win.

A-League events last weekend asked a few questions about morals, ethics, perception, and justice.

It begins with Frank Farina, Queensland Roar coach, and a wily, street smart, guy.

Farina's CV demonstrates he knows how to play the game, on and off the pitch.

He was a gun striker with Club Brugge in Belgium with whom he won a Championship. He played, sort of, in Italy at Bari. He took Brisbane Strikers (remember them?) to a dramatic National Soccer League title.

He then moved to Sydney to coach Marconi (remember them?) because it would, apparently, enhance his credentials to be Socceroos coach. He was right.

Farina ended up as coach after a bizarre voting system where current Perth Glory coach Dave Mitchell was actually more favoured.

Farina was a compromise winner but still coached the Socceroos through a colourful 2002 World Cup campaign (and half of another before he was fired to make way for Guus Hiddink).

There's your set up: Farina certainly knows his stuff and that gives weight to his comments last week that he will no longer tell the truth to the media - and therefore the public.

In future, Farina is going to lie.

"The biggest lesson to come out of this is to make sure you don't tell the truth," he said after copping a $2000 fine for breaching Football Federation Australia's code of conduct.

Farina had earlier said that a referee's judgment (or lack of) in a Roar game against Adelaide United had been "an atrocious decision which cost us the game."

Probably accurate - but A-League administrators and FFA bosses don't accept public criticism of match officials.

"If you make a mistake by highlighting someone else's mistake then that's a bigger mistake," Farina said.

So, his solution? He will, in future, lie.

You lie, you win. Or at least not lose.

The same week, Sydney coach John Kosmina (another wily A-League character) wailed about a red card for his player Ian Fyfe who, according to match officials, clocked Perth Glory's Adrian Trinidad in the head.

Fyfe was sent off.

There is no argument Fyfe hit Trinidad. The issue is the dramatic tumble he took to ensure Fyfe copped the biggest punishment available and, so, shore up a win for his own team.

Trinidad exaggerated (he didn't lie) and won.

"I thought Trinidad - he milked it big time,'" Kosmina said.

"He had a free kick against him, he stood over the ball. That's delaying the re-start.

"Fyfe was trying to get him out of the road to take the free kick. He didn't king-hit him in the back of the head like he made out he did.

"Fyfey didn't hit him. (Trinidad) was rolling around holding his head, he had a good look around, got up and started limping off.

"I don't mind blokes using a bit of time-wasting tactics. I know street-smarts but there's a difference between street-smart and just being soft and cheap.

"It's still a man's game."

Like Farina's comments, there is a lot of truth in what he said. FFA seemed to agree and issued the following statement:

"FFA has also finalised a review of comments made by Sydney FC coach, John Kosmina, following Sunday's match between Perth Glory and Sydney FC.

"Contrary to some media reports, FFA has determined that Kosmina's comments are not prejudicial to an individual and therefore FFA will not be taking any further action against Sydney FC or John Kosmina."

With Farina, FFA was clearly supporting its referee, who probably made an incorrect decision to allow a goal.

With Kosmina, FFA appears to not support its referee so much, an official who made the correct decision to send off Fyfe, even if Trinidad, the victim, dramatically over-reacted.

Two different incidents.

Two different truths.

Two very different outcomes.

Who wins? Who loses?

My head hurts.

That's a tough one to explain to the kids.

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• by Matthew Hall at 02:00 AM
• Comments (10)

Saturday, October 18, 2008

Coaching In Crisis

Pim Verbeek is on a roll but a caution sign needs to be fixed to this bandwagon.

Let's be honest - Qatar were awful against the Socceroos in Brisbane last week. At times, it appeared the Doha Dandies didn't want to be here and the truth was - they didn't.

Qatar coach Bruno Metsu called for the game to be cancelled after a rainstorm dumped on Brisbane during the warm-up. It doesn't rain much in Qatar. That must have freaked out his team. Metsu's wily ways could have proved genius. Instead, they were his downfall.

But Metsu is smart, having made a life's work of turning the world's unlikeliest into world-beaters. Remember Senegal's dramatic opening game win against France at the 2002 World Cup? That was Metsu's work - although he had a little help from a then unknown guy called Al-Hadji Diouf.

What was impressive about the Socceroos' performance against Qatar was that the team went about its business clinically and with precision and won without fuss.

A 4-0 score line was a fair reflection of events (although Qatar's few chances should have led to goal - but they were so dire nothing was going to come off).

Still, while the national team appears to be in reasonable working order, elsewhere, there is concern.

Technical Director Rob Baan, who quits his post at the end of the year, has told me that the long-term future of the game in Australia is under threat if coaching is not improved.

Baan's concern is for all levels of the game - from parents in parks to A-League clubs.

At the top level, Baan wants to see more coaches travel abroad. Maybe, he said, Football Federation Australia can invest in international sojourns for coaches.

"Australia is so isolated and can't compete the standard to European level," Baan told me. "You have to go to Europe for experience. It is part of my philosophy that when the A-League is having a break, coaches should go on behalf of FFA to different countries and report back to Australian football."

Baan added that one of Australia's best bets for the future is the overseas football education already bestowed on players like Paul Okon, Tony Popovic, and Aurelio Vidmar (who is showing at Adelaide United that he may be one of the country's brightest hopes).

"With the generation of former top players who have played abroad - like Paul Okon, Tony Popovic, and Aurelio Vidmar - we have coaches now who have at least had experience abroad," Baan said.

"They have different experiences and have different knowledge that they bring back to Australia."

That, though, is of little concern to the many parents across the country that each weekend take the reins of junior teams - sometimes because there is simply no one else to do it.

Many of these "coaches" have no clue - through no fault of their own. Baan has recognised this and plans to make a national coaching curriculum available for every wanna-be and need-to-be coach in the country.

"The priority is at community and grassroots level," he said. "We don't have enough coaches there and we don't pay them enough. We have to rely on parents.

So, while we celebrate goals from Tim Cahill, Brett Emerton, and Josh Kennedy, let's also remember one of the greatest assets the sport has - it is universal.

Football is a little like a tree. It can be strong and beautiful in summer but, in truth, it's only as strong as its roots.

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• by Matthew Hall at 03:33 AM
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Saturday, October 11, 2008

When Rules Are Made To Be Broken

Things we don't talk about: Qatar should not even be here.

Rules are rules, it seems, except when they're a mess of legal mumbo jumbo.

Consider this - it's not complicated.

The team that should be playing Australia in this week's World Cup qualifier in Brisbane is Iraq.

Qatar should have been disqualified from the 2010 World Cup.

Plain and simple, it fielded an ineligible player when it played a qualifier against Iraq in March this year. That much is an indisputable fact agreed by Qatar, FIFA, Iraq, and pretty much everyone in football.

The controversy began when a Brazilian called Emerson turned out for Qatar in that game. Emerson may - or may not - have been eligible for fast-tracked Qatari citizenship but, no matter, he'd also played for Brazil at youth level, which is clearly against regulations.

Almost hilariously, those details have become less important as the saga has meandered its way though various levels of arbitration.

The quick version of the story is no one realised anything was incorrect until Chinese media picked up the transgression.

Iraq then appealed it's 2-0 loss. FIFA agreed Emerson was ineligible but decided that the Qatar FA was not to blame. FIFA did, however, decree that Emerson could not play for Qatar ever again.

Iraq again appealed and also took the case to the Court of Arbitration for Sport which decided FIFA's dismissal of an appeal was legitimate because Iraq had been a day late in filing its fee to make the original appeal.

Confused? Try being an Iraqi.

I telephoned Jorvan Vieira, Iraq's coach, after the CAS verdict had been made public. He was disappointed but realistic.

"We cannot fight money and we cannot fight power," he said.

Interestingly, Football Federation Australia has kept silent on the issue.

Maybe that's because it's still smarting from the treatment Australian fans received by the Iraqi Football Association in June, when Socceroos supporters were randomly charged $100 for tickets on sale to Arab speakers for $5.

Maybe FFA doesn't want to get into a diplomatic row with Qatar, where Asian Football Confederation President Mohamed Bin Hammam is from.

Qatar will host the 2011 Asian Cup and also has designs on a World Cup sometime in the future.

Maybe, too, Pim Verbeek would rather face Qatar in the final round of qualifiers, who he has twice beaten already this year. That would appear a simpler task than a tricky trip to Dubai or Damascus or maybe even Baghdad, to play Iraq who have a decent record now against Australia.

(Verbeek, for the record, told me he doesn't waste energy on issues over which he has no control.)

Maybe, maybe, maybe.

What's for sure, however, is the rules were clearly broken.

Qatar, which has a policy of importing and then naturalising foreign players for its national football team, fielded a player they should have not.

Qatar should then have been deducted three points, as the regulations state.

Iraq would then have qualified at Qatar's expense.

This didn't happen.

Iraq was shafted by superior powers - and not for the first time.

• by Matthew Hall at 10:09 AM
• Comments (22)

Friday, October 3, 2008

The A-League's Next Team

Is western Sydney a myth?

That might be a conclusion for those of us watching A-League clubs spread faster than an army of Cane toads.

Next season's competition will kick-off with a team from the Gold Coast and another Queensland side (let me write that again - another Queensland side) from Townsville.

I once knew someone from Townsville who, after a visit home, brought me back a bucket of fresh crabs to cook up so that's a good enough reason as any for an A-League team in Queensland's tropical north, I guess.

The grand A-League plan - and there is one - is to expand again as soon as is viable. Frank Lowy has touted an eventual 14-team league while the Asian Football Confederation would like even more clubs.

Expansion is inevitable and FFA has already granted a Melbourne group "exclusive bid rights" to establish a second team in Victoria, whatever that is.

Meanwhile, in Sydney, thumbs are twiddled.

Not so, it seems, on the South Coast of New South Wales where a guy called Eddy De Gabriele appears to have his act together and is putting the pieces in place for a solid club based out of Wollongong.

Many of my formative moments in Australian football occurred at Brandon Park, the former home of National Soccer League side Wollongong Wolves.

It was the venue for perhaps the greatest half-time entertainment ever - Chase The Wolf - where seemingly half the South Coast population under the age of eight (and a few over 18) would chase someone dressed in a wolf costume around the pitch.

Grab the tail - you win a prize.

Totally compelling and simple marketing genius.

Part of De Gabriele's case is the South Coast's rich football history.

"From the likes of Peter Wilson and Adrian Alston playing for Australia in the 1974 World Cup, to Scott Chipperfield, Mile Sterjovski and Luke Wilkshire in the record breaking 2006 World Cup," he trumpets on the bid's website.

(If De Gabriele can get Peter Wilson signed up as an ambassador he automatically gets my vote.)

You can read more here on an excellent website that puts the FFA's own efforts at new media to shame.

De Gabriele is totally right. The region is a cradle of football - from kids' games played on beachside parks to local heroes playing at the World Cup. Whether it is De Gabriele's bid or another that may be successful, the fact the region has no A-League representation is an unfathomable disservice to the sport in this country.

The South Coast hasn't impressed just Scott Chipperfield and Luke Wilkshire. Socceroo Tim Cahill is impressed enough to consider planting a grassroots academy alongside the club.

The South Coast, however, has a rival of sorts an hour or so drive south-west. Canberra is getting a little jumpy about its own lack of A-League love. Our capital had several teams in the NSL none of which succeeded in capturing the imagination of the city's population.

Then again, the same could be said for much of the NSL - except among die-hards - so perhaps we can grant Canberrans the benefit of the doubt.

We could argue that there's little to do in Canberra except leave so there should be no problem in drumming up support. That's something the Canberra bid sort of agree with. A bid group from the capital issued a press release last week claiming over 15,000 people will turn up to each home games. You can read more about the bid here.

Canberra is already proving to be a feisty potential franchise, issuing another press release when news of a second team from Melbourne appeared to jump the queue to A-League entry.

"The recent announcement by the FFA to seemingly hand the 11th A-League place to a Melbourne consortium, while possibility [sic] good news for the league, the way in which the 11th and possibly 12th places are decided leaves the 'new transparency' of the FFA still quite grey if not verging on an even darker shade of black," it read.

"For the record we have the finances, the five year plan and indeed 750 paid-up Foundation Members already, and 100 Ambassadors from across all the junior clubs in Canberra and the local region. (Interestingly we have more than the 600 The Mariners had for their first game and we're two years away.)"

"Or if as the market research suggests a second Melbourne and Sydney team are the preferred options, even despite Sydney FC's crowd concerns, should the Gong, Canberra and others work to progress their bids."

FFA denies that the Canberra bid was hauled in to "please explain" this media statement. Sources elsewhere claim it was.

One thing is for sure - there's passion out there for new teams.

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• by Matthew Hall at 10:59 PM
• Comments (18)