The Sun-Herald

Saturday, August 29, 2009

Will Football Yobs Kill England's World Cup Bid?

Outrage swept across England earlier this year at the prospect of Rome hosting the final of the UEFA Champions League Final.

The Italian capital was "Stab City", according to The Times, the newspaper outraged by the potential threat to the safety of traveling football supporters.

The Times, bless its concern, organised a campaign that included a petition and open letters to civic and football officials to have the Final moved from Rome.

In its own words: How many people have to be stabbed in Rome before UEFA agrees to move the Champions League final? Roma's notorious supporters are stuck in the dark ages of the Seventies and Eighties, but that has not stopped Uefa from pressing ahead with its controversial plan to hold this year's Champions League final in Rome's Olympic Stadium. The time is right to make a stand.

Oops.

Last Tuesday, in London, gangs aligned to West Ham United Football Club and Millwall Football Club fought and rioted around West Ham's stadium.

West Ham hooligans stabbed an 'innocent' Millwall supporter and later during the game, mounted a pitch invasion that at times looked more like a Save The Whale rally than a football match.

I'm no expert on hooliganism but have experienced mob violence in several different guises close up and first hand in many countries across the world (I get paid for this).

In Scotland, I've watched young Protestants and Catholics, supporters of rival teams, fight in the streets over something or other that happened (off the pitch) hundreds of years ago.

In England, I've seen Chelsea fans attack a man watching a game with his grandson in their stadium because the 10-year-old kid wore a scarf of their opponents that day.

In France, during the 1998 FIFA World Cup, I watched England fans fight locals in the streets of St Etienne after their national team was eliminated from the competition.

That led to an invitation from British police (who had a special unit dedicated to the problem and present in France observing hooligan activity) to travel to Luxembourg and see their anti-hooligan efforts on an England away trip.

(On that journey, English fans without tickets tried to storm the stadium, failed, subsequently rioted, and smashed up the city centre instead; there were just 16 or so arrests).

That led to meeting one of England's most notorious hooligans of the 1990s and his "crew", a gang from Carlisle near the Scottish border, who politely asked if they could stay on my couch in London during a weekend of planned mayhem (request declined but I did buy one of them a pint).

In Australia, I've watched teenagers from the western suburbs of Sydney fight each other and them met later to enquire about their motivation.

In every case, football matches and teams were not the reason for violence.

The tribal aspects of following a team - we are the same but different to you - supplied a platform to unleash the inner - and not so inner - beasts.

It is no secret that tournament organisers breathed a sigh of relief when England failed to qualify for Euro 2008, hosted by Austria and Switzerland last year.

No England? The violence there was left to hooligans from Poland and Germany.

But the Football Association (English football's governing body) and the British government will be nervous about the amazing scenes, especially with the 2012 Olympic Games in London and the bid for England to host the 2018 FIFA World Cup.

The Times has not yet started it's campaign to stop either event taking place in London, the scene of last week's violence but, on its previous form, it can't be too long, surely?

For England's World Cup hosting rivals (of which Australia is one) you can be sure that, behind closed doors, the army of yobs might be the greatest thing to happen for their own respective bids.

• by Matthew Hall at 02:19 AM
• Comments (6)

Saturday, August 22, 2009

International Consultants & Your World Cup Money

Members of Australia's "bid team", some of the people working to bring the FIFA World Cup to Australian shores in 2018 or 2022, fly to Switzerland this weekend.

You can check the cast of characters here.

The trip is not for any formal lobbying - although there may be a few diplomatic cocktails at FIFA President Sepp Blatter's favourite hotel bar in Zurich.

This junket is a compulsory "workshop" held for delegations from all bidding nations.

On the agenda: FIFA will brief candidates on "legal requirements, media and communications, marketing and television, host city requirements, and corporate social responsibility".

But the event is a simple coffee break as Football Federation Australia spends the $45 million of funding it received from the Australian government for it's bid.

Some of that public money (ie, it's yours) is already on its way out of Australia, now allocated to international "consultants", attempting to advise FFA Chairman Frank Lowy on how to counter the ever-more impressive bid building from the United States.

When it comes to the US bid, Australia is struggling to compete.

Last week, the US Bid Committee announced a shortlist of 27 cities that will be further considered to host World Cup matches.

These include Dallas (a stadium with 100,000 capacity), Detroit (108,000 capacity), Los Angeles (92,000) and Phoenix (71,000).

Some of those cities even have two stadiums capable of hosting matches.

Earlier this month, it was announced Phillip Anschutz, American soccer's sugar daddy, had joined Arnold Schwarzenegger and Henry Kissinger the US bid committee.

Anschutz is one of the biggest players in the world of entertainment.

He's the grandfather of Major League Soccer having owned seven teams over its 13-year history.

He was the guy who brought David Beckham to America and his company, AEG, owns stadiums and venues all over the world.

While the Australian city of Adelaide still needs convincing to build a stadium suitable to host a World Cup match, Anschutz has a couple in his backyard he could probably lend South Australians.

Meanwhile, President Obama continues to get in on the game.

Last week, he wrote to FIFA President Sepp Blatter, thanking the governing body boss for dropping by The White House last month, as you do.

"I very much enjoyed our conversation about football, sport and the importance of education," Obama chirped. "I must congratulate your on your determination to break down social barriers, promote tolerance and encourage harmony between people around the world by spreading a message of hope by means of football."

Of course, in the world of backroom deals and FIFA Executive Committee politics, none of these frilly stadium lists and letters from Presidents may matter when it comes to vote crunch time.

That, at least, is what Lowy is hoping his expensive team of newly-appointed international consultants is about to tell him.

Advice is free, you see.

Especially when it's government-funded and someone else is paying for it.

• by Matthew Hall at 02:41 AM
• Comments (1)

Saturday, August 15, 2009

The Complicated Case of Manchester City

Right minded people - and there must be a few of you out there, surely - will prefer Manchester City be relegated from the Premier League this season.

Either that or hope Manchester United, Chelsea, Liverpool, or Arsenal are involved in a tense relegation struggle because the Premier League requires a shake up, one way or the other.

"Money can't buy me love," a 1960s pop group from Liverpool once sang and they got that right.

According to Paul McCartney, the song's composer, the lyrics were about prostitution.

Ouch.

City, you see, were always something of a non-event. They were a club that was likely to never win much, nor lose much.

They just were unless you're a Manchester United supporter and looked forward to the twice-yearly local derbies.

Ten years ago, the club was in the Third Division (currently known as League One - because it's actually League Three, get it? Me neither) with no hot water in the dressing room showers.

That's fine, unless you're a City fan, but then along came the government of Abu Dhabi (effectively a family) with Sheik Mansour bin Zayed al-Nahyan riding in from the desert wearing a blue scarf.

City, whose fans boast of being the only team geographically in Manchester, were now owned by a rich family from the Middle East.

A very rich family from the Middle East.

A family so rich that the club can not only now afford to buy the contracts of some of the world's best players but also pay those players unspeakably high wages, thus luring those players away from the more usual practice of signing with other clubs more likely to have success.

But this Abu Dhabi mob may be on to something.

They have taken one look at the Premier League, and the success Chelsea has experienced since sugar daddy Roman Abramovich became involved with the club, and decided the only way to beat them is to join them.

Forget a well-meaning policy of developing youth players over a decade (or even five years if you're Arsenal's Arsene Wenger).

Splash the cash.

Spend it and success will come.

So City went and acquired five centre-forwards (Roque Santa Cruz, Craig Bellamy, Carlos Tevez, Emmanuel Adebayor and Benjani Mwaruwari), spending around $300 million on transfers during the off-season in total.

And here's the tricky part.

The Premier League is often billed as the "world's most exciting league" or some such rubbish but that's not true.

In the past decade only four teams have effectively challenged for the title and only three of those have actually won.

This is the famous "top four": Manchester United, Chelsea, Liverpool, and Arsenal.

It's impossible, and players I have spoken with agree, to break into that elite group.

Exciting? Definitely predictable.

Then City perhaps make it interesting, assembling a talented team but one that is motivated solely by money.

To use the awful language of MBA graduates, this is an interesting "project".

For the neutrals, unlike City fans, we maybe get a win-win situation.

If City fails, we will watch a spectacular and expensive car crash.

If City succeed, the Top Four will be broken and this really will be a season more exciting than most.

But the moral compromise will be that money can buy success.

But probably not love.

• by Matthew Hall at 01:30 AM
• Comments (6)

Saturday, August 8, 2009

The A-League Returns, So Bring On The Clowns

Quotes, chaos, drama, soap, egos, idiots, and entertainment.

What you don't need to read here is yet more pointless predictions on which team will finish where and who will be the stars of the new A-League season.

For one reason, the A-League play-off format means 27 rounds will be played to decide which four dud teams are eliminated to make way for the "top" six who then fight it out to be the "best" team.

Rewarding mediocrity, finishing sixth in the "regular" season, still gives you a shot at being the "best".

Plus, the one-off sudden-death Grand Final allows a team three seconds of madness in a one-off match to waste an entire season's worth of good work by losing to a bad back-pass or a referee's poor decision.

You can be awful and great all at once.

It's entertainment. It's brilliant.

Certainly, Football Federation Australia's marketing of the A-League has gone up a few gears.

"The Players are committed - now it's your turn," claims one online ad that greets visitors to the A-League's official website. That sounds more like an ultimatum than a polite invitation.

"Be Part of Something Bigger" is the tag line for a TV commercial. OK, then, I'll stay home on the weekend and watch England's Premier League live on TV.

So will Melbourne Victory win the title this season?

Will Robbie Fowler prove to be more than an out-of-place pasty white English veteran playing footy in the tropics?

Has Sydney's shake-up made any difference to general ambivalence felt about the team?

Will John Aloisi score?

Can Perth return to their glory days?

Is Gold Coast United for real?

Anyone who claims to know the answers to any of those questions is kidding us, kidding themselves, or totally full of it. So as far as predictions go - pass the beer nuts.

Which brings us conveniently to Clive Palmer and Miron Bleiberg, respectively the owner and coach, of new team Gold Coast United.

Clive and Miron apparently boycotted their team's season kick-off against neighbours Brisbane Roar, because of some hoo-ha over the venue of the first game, or something.

As you do.

Clive considered not going to the game, apparently, while Miron refused to fulfill his contractual obligations (with FFA) to promote the match at press conferences.

In comical circumstances, Roar coach Frank Farina attended a public press conference in Brisbane last week accompanied by a cardboard cut-out of Bleiberg and said: "[Bleiberg is] a little bit disgraceful. All of us coaches and players, we have a duty to promote our game. I think it's their duty - coaches, players, administrators - to help promote football in this country."

Farina is right. This is about entertainment choices. We really can stay home and watch football beamed in from Europe rather than the inferior-standard A-League.

But perhaps Bleiberg is an errant genius. His no-show stirred up a sub-plot giving this game more headlines than it maybe deserved.

But maybe he's just a clown if his reaction to news he must acquire a coaching licence if he wants to take Gold Coast United into the Asian Champions League is any guide.

Under new Asian Football Confederation rules, coaches at a professional (key word) level must hold an "A Licence" by 2010 if they want to participate in AFC competitions.

FFA has said all A-League coaches must possess the same badge by 2011.

It is a similar situation facing Branko Culina, the Newcastle Jets coach.

"I don't really care about what FFA want or requires," Bleiberg said. "If I feel like taking the course I will, if I don't feel like it, I won't. Nobody is going to force me."

Unless of course, you want to be part of something bigger, as the marketing slogan goes.

It's going to be a long year but obviously an entertaining one.

Bring on the clowns.

• by Matthew Hall at 01:11 AM
• Comments (3)

Saturday, August 1, 2009

The Elephant In The Room

It's a great time for football in Australia - except for one thing we dare not talk about.

First, let's consider the good news. The highly-anticipated new A-League season kicks off this Thursday with Gold Coast United and North Queensland Fury joining the fray.

Gold Coast bring collateral - a millionaire owner flying his players around the country in a private jet, motormouth coach Miron Bleiberg, and Jason Culina, who left Australia unknown a decade ago to now be considered marquee material thanks to Guus Hiddink's affection for workaholic midfielders.

North Queensland, by contrast, bring a comical name and logo as well as Robbie Fowler, an English striker whose best days are long gone and may or may not be in Australia for a tropical holiday.

Entertainment, ahoy.

This has been an interesting week for Football Federation Australia. The bold governing body has pulled off a public relations coup instigating retroactive disciplinary measures for 'simulation', i.e. 'diving'.

This means a match review panel can discipline players after the event if the referee has awarded a penalty or an opponent has been sent off as the result of a dive.

Entertainment, ahoy, times two.

While that is all good news, on the other hand perhaps the most significant event impacting football in Australia took place on the other side of the world.

Last Sunday, CONCACAF, the confederation for North and Central America, held the final of its regional Championship at Giants Stadium in New York in front of 80,000 fans, most of them supporting Mexico against the United States.

Flashing lights: The crowd figure is importantly tied to the fact both the US and Mexico fielded second- or third-choice teams.

Also important is that FIFA President Sepp Blatter was in the crowd, watching the huge support for a match that barely matters.

Also on his itinerary? While Australian cities wrangle over just the idea of constructing potential stadiums, Blatter was already on a walk-through of the New Meadowlands, a state-of-the-art arena that will be a likely venue if the US hosts either the 2018 or 2022 FIFA World Cups.

Take a look here.

Blatter also visited the White House, met with President Obama, and extended an invitation to the Prez to attend next year's World Cup in South Africa with his family, including his soccer-playing daughters.

But it is what Blatter told US Soccer Federation President Sunil Gulati after meeting Obama that may be crucial to Australia's World Cup host hopes - or lack of them.

It's something that has been overlooked by pretty much all Australian media, too busy wearing green and gold goggles to look at reality of global football politics.

(Except for this report here by, um, me).

Blatter told Gulati this week that FIFA Executive Committee members are torn between Europe and North America for 2018 - a position that may knock Australia out of contention for both tournaments.

"If FIFA were following a policy of rotation then it would in fact be North America's turn [in 2018]," Blatter said, according to Gulati. (Note: Note to Oceania - not your turn).

"There are some within the Executive Committee that would like [North America in 2018] to be the case and that there are other members of the Executive Committee that would prefer every third World Cup should be in Europe, in which case 2018 will be more likely for Europe," said Gulati, relaying Blatter's views.

In other words, let Europe take 2018 and get ready for USA 2022.

Blatter, a big football flirt, has a track record of playing to the gallery and publicly saying what he believes the audience at the time wants to hear, especially when it comes to World Cup bids.

But once in a while the truth slips out.

The United States has a powerful case and Australia's World Cup bid may require more than a scenic and telegenic commercial with an invitation to 'come play'.

In New York and Washington DC, Australia's bid may have hit the wall.

Just don't tell anyone in Australia.

• by Matthew Hall at 01:31 AM
• Comments (7)