The Sun-Herald

Friday, December 26, 2008

Ref, Blow Your Whistle!

So, that was 2008.

Highlights? Talking points? There's a few.

Australia's 2018 World Cup bid is official
Frank Lowy takes on his possibly most-ambitious project yet. He's talked $45 million out of the Federal government to fund a campaign to convince the rest of the world (OK, 13 guys in suits) that Australia matters. Can he do it?

David Beckham™ joined AC Milan
It's only "on loan", mind you. Ha. Who would have guessed that Beckham™ would not conquer America? Who would have guessed his wife wouldn't either? Who would have guessed the superstar footballer would soon realise Los Angeles Galaxy are just not very good? Who would have guessed a stint at Milan was good economic sense for the "Beckham™ Brand"? All of us? Oh.

Sydney FC Continue to entertain
Just not on the pitch (unless you love horror movies). When the club was launched, a stated aim was to be "world class" (whatever that means). Who would have thought that aspiration would be related to drama? And you know the problem with drama? It can soon become tedious. Very tedious.

The not-so squeaky clean A-League
What do you mean a player from a Grand Final teams assaulted a referee at full-time and was banned by FIFA? What do you mean three players, including a former Socceroo captain and the skipper of an A-League club, were caught betting on games?

Cristiano Ronaldo is going to Real Madrid
No he's not. Yes he is. No he's not. Yes he is. No he's not. He's a slave. No he's not. He's trying to break a contract. Yes he is. No he's not. Shoot me now.

Mark Bosnich is back!
Who would have guessed that six years after playing his last competitive game for Chelsea Mark Bosnich would have made a comeback of sorts in Gosford, a few hours north of Sydney, for a team called the "Mariners". Certainly not Bozza. Even face down in a bowl of cocaine that kind of comeback would have seemed a little far-fetched. But it happened and these aren't the drugs talking.

Spain won Euro 2008
Hooray! A team wins a major tournament with style and a touch of romance. What do you mean 'What about Greece in 2004'? Exactly.

Abu Dhabi's royal family paid $450 million for Manchester City
Ha! Currently third from bottom in the Premier League, let's hope they kept the receipt.

Adelaide United made the Asian Champions League Final
But then forgot to turn up. Still, smashed 5-0 by Gamba Osaka was no worse an international embarrassment than that other 'advertisement' for the country, the movie Australia. Forza South Australia!

Joe Kinnear is announced as Newcastle United manager
He begins his first press conference with a five-minute rant at journalists that contains 52 expletives.

Australia's football team was "unlucky" at the Beijing Olympics
Yada yada yada. In fact, we just weren't good enough.

The Socceroos embark on a genuine World Cup qualifying campaign
They play poorly and still win!

A female footballer quits the game for porn
Eva Roob, once of German professional team Nuremburg, discovers there's more money to be made in the adult entertainment industry. But what if a male player did the same? Would anyone care?

• by Matthew Hall at 01:17 PM
• Comments (6)

Saturday, December 20, 2008

2018: The Contenders

With a lot of World Cup hot air, which countries are making a run for 2018?

It's worth noting that, as FIFA's Executive Committee sat down in Tokyo the weekend before Christmas to decide ground rules for the 2018 and 2022 bidding process, just three countries had officially declared an interest.

Here's the who, why, and why not to official bids and possible contenders.

DEFINITELY IN

England
The old-school sentimental favourite, England hosted the World Cup in 1966 (the only year it's won the world's top football trophy) and the European Championships in 1996. It has set up "England 2018", a bid body chaired by Lord Triesman, also the Football Association's chairman, and has government backing. England has history, facilities, and infrastructure. It also has enemies around the football world.

Belgium-Holland (Yes, combined)
Belgium and Holland successfully hosted Euro 2000, a tournament with just 16 teams rather than the 32-nation World Cup. Considered an outsider among the big boys, a key to success could come as a compromise candidate. Michel Platini, president of UEFA, European football's governing body, has privately said he wants just one bid from Europe. If not, he won't vote in his role on the Executive Committee when the time comes to decide.

Australia
In early December, the Federal Government agreed to fund Australia's bid with over $45 million in cash. That decision formally announced Australia was in the running for 2018. There are many positives to Australia hosting in 2018 but it will have to overcome challenges as well - primarily Europe's tight grip on hosts and, after 2010 in South Africa and 2014 in Brazil, Europeans will vote to bring the World Cup back to the northern hemisphere.

SERIOUSLY CONSIDERING

Spain
Angel Maria Villar Llona, the President of Spain's Football Federation, pledged on his reelection in November that bringing the World Cup to Spain (it hosted in 1982) would be a top priority. There has been talk of a joint bid with Portugal (host of Euro 2004) but Spain has stadium and infrastructure - not to mention cafés and restaurants - that make it a possible leading contender. It would attract support from South America and, probably, North and Central America.

Russia
There's money in Russia, sort of. While individuals like Chelsea owner Roman Abramovich have deep, deep, pockets, the government is experiencing financial difficulties, just like all countries around the world. There were even recent reports that it has requested refunds on loans to the 2014 Sochi Winter Olympic organisers. Prohibitive costs - Moscow is one of the world's most expensive cities - may make it a nightmare for common fans.

THE LONG SHOTS

Qatar
The Arab nation wants to be a player in the sports world but it's widely agreed that factors out of its control - like the weather in June when a World Cup would be held - makes success for a bid unlikely.

China
An ideal host for FIFA and its continuing push into Asia. Football is growing fast and, more importantly, so is the economy. But Chinese football is a mess on and off the pitch and 2018 may be a few years too soon.

DARK HORSE

United States of America
United States Soccer Federation boss Sunil Galati is on record saying the US will confirm its position once it knows the official bidding process. The US, which successfully hosted in 1994, would have a powerful bid. Watch this space. A lot.

Mexico
Should Mexico be successful for 2018 or 2022, it would be the first county to host the tournament three times - after 1970 and 1986. The Mexican Federation was ready to bid among its regional rivals had FIFA maintained its rotation policy and it's federation president has boldly declared "it is not a matter of 'if" it is 'when'".

• by Matthew Hall at 05:36 AM
• Comments (4)

Saturday, December 13, 2008

Who's Afraid of the World Cup?

Why so much self-hate, Australia?

It took about as long as Mark Bresciano required to turn debacle into success in the World Cup qualifier against Bahrain last month for the rowdy rabble to protest.

Sports Minister Kate Ellis had just announced the Federal government would contribute some $45 million to help Australia's 2018 FIFA World Cup campaign and the self-haters spewed forth.

The government's decision, mulled over at Cabinet level and not taken lightly considering the global economic meltdown, was an apparent outrage.

The response from some quarters was so predictable a primary school English teacher would have sent the essays back with red-inked crosses.

Spending that kind of money "in the naive belief that they would ever grant the World Cup to an isolated nation of 20 million people that don't much like soccer [sic] in the first place - all in the wrong time zone for prime time TV in Europe and America - is nothing short of crazy," wrote one columnist in a Saturday newspaper.

The same edition carried another opinion, with a correspondent seemingly unhappy at football favouritism: "Soccer [sic] will enjoy unprecedented government access and patronage. That should ensure the game has powerful political allies during what remains the difficult process of establishing the A-League and entrenching grass-roots development. What's more, as other football codes jostle for the crumbs that fall from the budget table."

That was the more measured opposition. Yet another columnist, rabid with rage at the idea of Australia making a professional, well-funded bid to rival England, the USA, Belgium and Holland, maybe Qatar and China, could not help downing litres of bitter.

"While other sports are bleeding and begging the Government for funding, soccer [sic] has been handed yet another golden egg," she typed, perhaps with two fists. "A sport that is absolutely incapable of supporting itself financially should not have been given such a massive cash injection."

"Staging a World Cup would give soccer [sic] bosses the right to trumpet to all of us that this is the only world game and that Australia has a real place in its upper echelons. It would also provide ample opportunity to gloss over the problems the code is suffering here."

"Rugby league, for one, lost a promised $10 million [in funding]."

On and on and on and on they droned.

Bwah, bwah, bwah.

While I yawn, for sure, the financial detail of Australia's bid should not avoid scrutiny. Far from it. Every dinner, dance, and bribe should be detailed accounted for.

This is nothing new for some of us.

Having been a keen student of the often Machiavellian politics of Australian football and the rampant exploitation of its past meager finances for many years before Frank Lowy's regime was installed by the Federal government (after a campaign mounted by media and grassroots supporters, I add), there's nothing I enjoy more than sifting through receipts to discover "soccer" officials had been treating visiting international dignitaries to "massages" on the sport's bill (this actually happened).

But that's not the story here.

The issue is why, why, and why, do Australians have such fear and loathing for a bid to bring one the world's biggest events to our shores?

Perhaps the greatest beneficiaries of this venture will turn out to be psychologists who could make a financial killing if they could get invite some of these fevered critics on to their couches.

Over the past few decades, Australia's attempts to qualify for FIFA World Cups has seen our teams take on opponents from North Korea, Japan, South Korea, Rhodesia, Israel, New Zealand, Iraq, Indonesia, Iran, Taiwan, Fiji, Hong Kong, Kuwait, Scotland, Canada, Argentina, Tahiti, Solomon Islands, Tonga, American Samoa, Fiji, Samoa, Vanuatu, and Uruguay.

In 2018, possibly, we might qualify as hosts.

How odd then that the greatest opposition comes from our own shores.

For those in the know, follow me on Twitter, here.

• by Matthew Hall at 04:28 AM
• Comments (35)

Saturday, December 6, 2008

The End Of The Affair

The A-League's relationship with New Zealand just got "complicated".

Unfortunately, it comes just as Wellington Phoenix begins to show that there might be some substance in Australia's long distance affair with an A-League club on the other side of the Tasman.

But more powerful forces are at work to expose the very folly of the concept.

The question being asked is "Why is a team from New Zealand, from another Confederation, participating in Australia's domestic competition?"

What's important is just who is asking the question. The answer: Mohamed Bin Hamman, the President of the Asian Football Confederation.

What's more important is Bin Hamman's persistence in asking the question and the ever-increasing heat he's applying to the topic.

Last week, ESPN ran an interview with Bin Hamman where he was quizzed on the future of Wellington Phoenix. The President was adamant. Under a current agreement, Wellington can participate in the A-League but after 2011, forget about it.

"Our criteria insists that all clubs are from the territory of the federation," Bin Hamman said. "We don't allow outside clubs to be part of that league. But considering that this club already has this permission from FIFA we presume they are also committed commercially, with their sponsors, TV rights holders and so on.

"We allow them to participate for now in Australia. But it will only be until 2011 after which either this club must definitely disappear or they'll re-register themselves in Australia as an Australian club under the law of Australia. That would mean that all New Zealand players would be treated as foreigners so they would only be able to have three New Zealanders playing."

In other words, New Zealand is from the wrong side of the tracks. We can have our fun now but soon it's going to be time to get serious.

Bin Hamman's options are as clear as you can get - either a New Zealand team has no future in the league or the situation is so absurd, a New Zealand team as Kiwi as a kangaroo, that it becomes even more of a folly than it currently is.

The timing of Bin Hamman's latest interview is also important. It took place last weekend, in Malaysia, right after Football Federation Australia Chairman Frank Lowy and CEO Ben Buckley met with AFC executives in Shanghai.

On that meeting's agenda was Wellington's future. Buckley will be quoted in this weekend's edition of The Sun-Herald claiming that, yes, there are problems and, yes, there's still work to do to secure Wellington's future.

Australia may give New Zealand a hug and a cuddle and publicly say that it wants the team in its league but if the big daddy of the AFC says there's no way that guy (Wellington) is going to spend time with his daughter (Australia) then, as fathers around the world know, that's pretty much the end of the issue.

Interestingly, Bin Hamman is a polished diplomat. I've met him on several occasions and his usual soft-spoken, measured and courteous manner mean his strong words are not rants from a neighbourhood bully.

Of course, all this has implications for A-League expansion. FFA will introduce four more teams over the next two years. It can't afford to introduce any more just yet.

If Melbourne has the 11th place in 2010 apparently already sewn up then there's just one place left to accommodate a second Sydney team (that Frank Lowy so keenly desires) and a team from either Wollongong, Canberra, or Tasmania.

All four regions have credible claims for inclusion.

But, again, there's the folly of New Zealand effectively taking the place of an Australian side.

When the A-League launched in 2005, FFA needed a New Zealand team. It was one of the best on the block.

Now, we've grown and developed, and maybe left New Zealand behind.

You can follow me on Twitter here.

• by Matthew Hall at 04:15 AM
• Comments (22)