I'm back

Hooray!

Yeah, I'll admit, I'm lazy... I went overseas for a couple of months and didn't really find the motivation to write much once I came back. The way AUFC have been travelling hasn't really inspired me much anyway.

So let's get back into the swing of things. Here's a piece I've submitted for this month's issue of the excellent Half Time Heroes zine:

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I think we're now in a position where we can safely say that this year has not quite gone to plan for Adelaide United. Two thirds of the season has passed and we're sitting dead last, with misfiring strikers, a leaky defense and a coach whose motivational genius is exemplified by his suggestion that his players might benefit from having their heads severed from their bodies. Well, at the moment anything's worth a shot.

I do feel for Vidmar, though. He's obviously a capable coach, and he's still got some brownie points up his sleeve after the feats of last season and the ACL. But the pressure is definitely on, and it's showing. Bad results piling up, unhappy players and behind-the-scenes issues at the club create a vortex that is very difficult to escape from. And the fans want blood.

Football supporters aren't known for being the most rational creatures when things aren't going well. Once a scapegoat has been identified, the knives come out. Viddie is number one with a bullet on the terrace hate-list at the moment, with a few of the players not far behind.

Of course, by and large, we supporters don't know what the hell we're talking about. If decisions were made based on terrace opinion, Kristian Sarkies would have been sent packing last season. This year, he's been our best player. 'Two up front!' became a mantra earlier in the season for supporters sick of drab football - well now Viddie's tried it, and the team played worse than ever.

Once things are going this badly, the vortex of negativity is so strong that it starts to override anything positive. Last home game, for example, there was a period of play where Adelaide actually kept possession for a little while. The team was holding the ball, patiently passing it around outside Newcastle's penalty box, probing for an opening. Fair enough it wasn't quite like watching Brazil circa 1970 but it was the right idea. Behind me, though, there was a bloke going absolutely off his nut: "Put the fucking ball in the box you muppets! You are FUCKING USELESS!" This was the same guy that made donkey noises whenever Cornthwaite or Hughes went near the ball, and gave Vidmar a massive spray every time a substitution was not made.

Obviously, that guy was a moron. But for all his negative, irrational idiocy, one thing about his ranting struck me: at least he cared. It takes a lot of commitment to hate your own team so strongly. It's better than the antipathy of some of my mates, who have just gradually stopped coming to games because they can't be arsed any more. It would be nice if we could all go to every match happy, watch some great football and come away with a win every week, but reality doesn't work like that. Through the bad times, it's the discontent, injustice and endless disagreement that keeps us going as fans. It’s not pretty, but being a football supporter rarely is.

FFA: can't live with 'em, can't remain solvent without 'em

I got an email this morning from the club, confirming what we all knew was coming:

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Dear Friend (that's me!),

As a valued friend of the Adelaide United Football Club, I wish to inform you of an important announcement that will shortly be made public. Club owners, Bianco Trade Supplies, today handed back its Hyundai A-League Licence and therefore ownership of AUFC, to the Football Federation Australia.

It is business as usual for the club and notwithstanding the transfer back to the FFA of the club’s licence, Adelaide United organisationally and people wise, is healthy and stable; and remains a strong, vital member of the A-League competition. Preparation for the 2009/2010 HAL season will carry on as usual, including day to day administration, football and financial operations.

The financial and personal contributions made by owner Nick Bianco and former chairman, Dario Fontanarosa are truly significant. They leave a legacy that will survive for years to come, in creating an intrinsically Adelaide entity that has set the benchmark in our still evolving national competition.

Full details will be announced tomorrow.

Yours sincerely

Sam Ciccarello

Chief Executive Officer, Adelaide United Football Club

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So, it's official. Adelaide United's ownership is now, along with the newly-renamed Brisbane Roar, in the hands of the FFA. Which is not necessarily a bad thing: at various stages the governing body has aided or (in the case of Perth Glory) taken full ownership of other A-League clubs, with positive results.

The franchise system, which gives the FFA far greater centralised control than a system in which individual clubs are masters of their own destinies (as per the 'traditional' European leagues), can be a bone of contention. Some are uneasy with the notion of a big brother governing body being directly involved in the way clubs are run and setting all the rules.

This has been a source of frustration in the past for Adelaide fans, with the FFA carving up the club's winnings from its recent Asian Champions League campaign and distributing the loot between all eight clubs and the league itself. The only club not to actually profit from Adelaide United's ACL success, ironically, was Adelaide itself.

Some people might view the franchise system as socialistic. Which, in a way, I suppose it kind of is - the FFA is a powerful central administration which redistributes the wealth, ensuring that each of its consistuent clubs remains on a relatively equal footing, for the supposed betterment of the league as a whole. The downside of this is that the ambitions of individual clubs are somewhat hamstrung by the FFA's requirements, most obviously the limited salary cap. Clubs are prevented from growing and flourishing organically, as they might in a less regulated system.

The upside, as we are seeing now, is that when a club (or, in Adelaide's case, its owner) runs into financial difficulty, the FFA has the power and resources to jump in and steady the ship. So long as the governing body itself is financially sound, clubs' survival is more or less guaranteed. The abortive New Zealand Knights aside, I can't see the FFA ever actually cutting the cord on any of its clubs unless things really go pear-shaped.

Bianco wanted out; transferring ownership to the FFA gave him the ability to get out without fundamentally damaging the club. Now the club has time to find the right sort of investors. I don't see this as a bad thing for United at all. Let's line up a cashed-up sheik or Russian oligarch and really start cooking with gas.

Naoki Imaya's Football Vision

In my last post, I railed bitterly against the tendency in modern football to treat young players as expendable commodities, to be bought in bulk by large clubs and dispensed with if they prove surplus to requirements.

Thankfully, not everybody is taking that approach. There's a great article on the FourFourTwo website highlighting the work of former New Zealand Knights player Naoki Imaya. Having played in Australia, New Zealand, Switzerland and Germany, Imaya is a strong believer in the power of football in bridging cultural gaps and fostering understanding and cooperation between people of different backgrounds.

Back in Tokyo, Imaya has set up an English-language school that teaches football to Japanese juniors and adults. Through football, the students mix and interact with people from diverse cultural backgrounds.

In the FourFourTwo interview, Imaya is clear about the objectives of his school: "Aiming to be a world class player would be on anybody's mind who have tried to pursue a career in this beautiful game, but I think it is more important to aim to be a first class human being."

Imaya's vision also involves a sharing of football knowledge between Japan and Australia. "I hope in the future I can help the youth from Australia and Japan in some kind of an exchange program where they could learn each others' football style and build a better relationship between the countries as well."

Maybe I shouldn't be too cynical about the modern game. Imaya's football school is an example of the fact that there are still people and organisations around that see football as more than just a business and young players as people rather than robots. Here's hoping that there are people in Australia that are willing to take a similar approach.

If you can read Japanese (I certainly can't), you can find more information about Naoki Imaya's school at http://www.naocastle.com/blog/.

This is the modern world

Football can be a very positive social force. In modern western societies, people's identities have become increasingly attached to ephemeral and transitory things: income, occupation, social status, possessions. Following a local football club, and especially one that reflects an identifiable set of values, is an extremely important mechanism for a lot of men to experience identity as part of a community - a reprieve from the often-alienating demands of life in a society where getting ahead as an individual is everything.

Like the black and white cookie in the Seinfeld episode, football is a great leveller. It connects people across countries, cultures, religions, political beliefs, social classes, and income levels. Supporters bond to one another over a shared love of the game or the club. You can always strike up a meaningful conversation with a fellow fan, whether he's a university professor or a cleaner of public toilets.

Playing football, and sport in general, is obviously also important for kids' development into well-rounded adults. Values of teamwork, sportsmanship, humility in victory and grace in defeat are vital to counter the prevailing forces that encourage individual success - academically, socially, and as an adult monetarily.

At the highest levels of football, though, these values have been utterly perverted. The English Premier League has been disconnected from reality to the point where, especially for the top clubs, success is simply a question of purchasing power. England goalkeeper David James has written a very thought-provoking article for the Guardian highlighting the questionable ethics employed by EPL clubs (bravely including his own club, Portsmouth) in casting their nets wide and buying up huge numbers of promising junior players. This is usually a preemptive move designed to ensure that the players do not end up at rival clubs.

The effects of this are quite significant. It means that 'youth development' becomes a numbers game rather than a meaningful exercise in providing juniors with a solid football education. In the example of Portsmouth, the club has 180 under-nines on the books. Of these, maybe one will end up playing senior first-team football. The rest get loaned out to lower leagues in England and abroad, and end up being discarded when they are proven to be sub-standard.

These kids grow up believing that they are special, that they will become superstars, the next Wayne Rooney or Cristiano Ronaldo. Their well-meaning parents contribute to these pressures, as do the forces of society through things like reality television and a celebrity culture that fosters the notion that fame and fortune are quickly and easily obtained. Psychologically, it must be devastating when these young players finally realise that they will never 'make it'.

And, of course, the hegemony of the big clubs in the big leagues is reinforced by this practice. Buy up all the best young players and success is pretty much guaranteed. Actual youth development and the promotion of the club as a community focal point takes a back seat.

Leagues like the A-League, outside the top European tier, suffer in terms of their football development. The wealth of big European clubs, as well as the status of playing in Europe, is a huge carrot for young Australians. There are hundreds currently playing overseas, with only a few of them playing at a level higher than what they could experience in Australia.

Meanwhile, the big clubs are now little more than brands for fans to attach themselves to. Teenagers in Sydney or Singapore will declare their undying loyalty to Manchester United, Liverpool or Real Madrid, clubs from cities that they have never been to and to which they have no connection, on the basis of a well-marketed concept of the 'history' and 'traditions' of the club.

It's not hard to see how this sort of attitude to football as a branded commodity undermines its significance as a force for community identity. Success and image is everything (witness how many people jump off the bandwagon as soon as a club starts doing poorly - Sydney FC is a prime example). It must be slightly depressing for a lifelong supporter of an English side to see what has become of their club during the big-money Premier League era.

I don't really know what can be done to fix these trends in the long term, but I think Sepp Blatter's '6 + 5' rule, limiting the number of foreign players that a club can sign, is a good start. A cap on the total number of players a club can have on its books would also put an end to some of the extreme practices highlighted in David James' article. Ultimately, a salary cap of some sort would be a good thing for European football, but as long as the big clubs call the shots I can't see that happening.

Anyway, I guess the point of my rant is that here in Australia we have the opportunity to make sure that the mistakes of European football (mostly stemming from unregulated greed by the clubs) are not repeated. Frankly, I don't care if the A-League continues to leak its best players to Europe and Asia - as long as Adelaide United continues to represent the city, develops and gives opportunities to young local players, and provides an outlet for me to go and yell my lungs out every second weekend during the season, I'll be happy.

Australia's young Turks

Jedinak scores for Genclerbirligi

The World Game website is currently running an article about the young Australian players at Turkish club Genclerbirligi and the culture shock that they have had to face when settling in to their new environment in Ankara. The ritual slaughter of a goat to bring luck at the start of the season (and a second one when the luck wasn't forthcoming), the muezzins' call to prayer five times a day from countless mosques around the city, the food, the traffic.

Currently there are three Australians at Gencler: Bruce Djite , James Troisi, and Mile Jedinak. Like 1. FC Nuremberg a few years ago, Genclerbirligi has emerged as a 'home away from home' for Aussies abroad, with Nick Carle and Josip Skoko also having played there.

Other than football, there really aren't many other sports that offer players such varied cultural experiences. Ben Somerford's excellent 'Euroos' blog includes a pretty comprehensive-looking list of the Australian players plying their trade overseas. What's striking is not just the number of players making a living outside Australia, but the diversity of destinations - from Australia's footballing 'homelands' of England and Scotland to countries on the periphery of Europe like Romania and Turkey, to Asian countries like China, South Korea and Indonesia, to the United States. If and when these players are called up to represent their country, or return to play in the A-League, or turn to careers in coaching, administration or punditry, their experiences with tactically diverse football cultures and their contacts overseas can only help to enrich football in this country.

In line with our history as a nation of migrants, Australian football has through the years become a melting pot of disparate styles and mentalities. Waves of new arrivals - first from the British Isles, then from Greece, Italy, the former Yugoslavia and Eastern Europe, and now from Africa, Asia and the Middle East, have helped inform the football we play. Add to this the vital experiences being gained by Australians playing in tough leagues overseas and the concerted push by the FFA to add Dutch coaching, technical and tactical knowledge to the mix.

The young guys playing overseas, like the trio at Genclerbirligi, are the next generation of Socceroos. The trick for Australia will be to effectively harness the positive aspects of all of the diverse structural, cultural and technical viewpoints feeding into our football culture. Vive le difference.

Journalistic integrity

Or lack thereof. Check this out:

http://www.news.com.au/adelaidenow/story/0,22606,25065773-12428,00.html

It's absolutely unbelievable that our city's leading football journalist is willing to put his name to such a petty and personal attack. Here is Val Migliaccio 'interpreting' Vidmar's outburst (i.e. putting words in his mouth and leaping to conclusions). The full text below:

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What Vidmar said .. and what he meant
VAL MIGLIACCIO
February 17, 2009 12:30am

ADELAIDE United coach Aurelio Vidmar's outburst at his post-match press conference interpreted.

VIDMAR SAID: "It's a disgrace.
"We owe the world an apology. A performance like that was a disgrace."
HE MEANT: "I'm totally embarrassed by this performance."
VIDMAR SAID: "Politics, that's what I put it down to.
"There's too many people in this club with hidden agendas. That's the problem. That 4-0 result tonight was politics, nothing else."
HE MEANT: "I've lost control of the players' group. I tried to change it but it didn't work."
VIDMAR SAID: "Whether you're involved directly or indirectly, you have an effect.
"It has an effect on everyone."
HE MEANT: "I'm not at fault here, outside influences have cost us the game."
VIDMAR SAID: "Because of a pissant town, this club will never win anything until you get rid of that crap."
HE MEANT: "Adelaide's small-town mentality and factions are dividing the club."
VIDMAR SAID: "You should know, you can name them. You name them, you should know.
"Everyone's involved, mate, everyone. It's a disgrace.
"And you know, because you're (The Advertiser) involved as well."
HE MEANT: "How did you get the starting XI and the formation right in the first leg against Melbourne Victory."
VIDMAR SAID: "Things change very quickly.
"Someone's not happy with something they'll do anything they can to fracture it.
"Jealousy, whatever it is, whether it's ego, it smacks of all that at our club at this time.
"It's the underlying things around the club.
"I'm not going to name names."
HE MEANT: "People are trying to undermine me."
VIDMAR SAID: "I could not give a damn.
"I want to be the coach, yes, to work in a happy environment."
HE MEANT: "I still want to be the coach despite this outburst."
VIDMAR SAID: "You can't tell me that they've forgotten how to play football overnight.
"There's a lot of shit in your mind. You can't play football, you can't do anything."
HE MEANT: "They've forgotten how to win."
VIDMAR SAID: "It's going to be a massive heart-to-heart (with the players) on Monday morning."
HE MEANT: "Hopefully, I can win back the respect of the players' group."

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This is just unbelievable, and to my mind crosses the line between opinion piece and personal attack. Val Migliaccio's credibility has taken a huge hit with this sort of thing. Here's a response that I submitted as a comment on the Advertiser website:

Val, one of the most disappointing things to come out of this whole mess is that you seem to be using it as an excuse to gain revenge for your own personal grievances with Vidmar. If Viddie was out of line when he said at the press conference that you were part of the problem, your articles since then haven't exactly done much to dispel the notion. As an outsider it certainly looks like you've got your own agendas in terms of how the club should function - not really an ideal situation, given that as a journalist you're supposed to be an unbiased observer. Please, the people of Adelaide aren't idiots - we deserve a bit more impartiality from the football media.

It was Costanzo... with the lead pipe... in the conservatory!

And so the recriminations begin.

Who's at fault for Adelaide United's implosion? Vidmar? Stubbins? Bianco? Patzwald? The senior players like Costanzo and Valkanis? Everyone seems to have an opinion on the matter, not least the Badvertiser's very own Val Migliaccio. In this article, published on page 4 of today's paper, he takes extraordinary liberties with the notion of unbiased journalism in his reprisal for the shot Viddie fired at him during the post-match press conference..

The whole thing ends up looking like a hatchet job on Vidmar's character. It's a self-serving rant. Perhaps Viddie was wrong for having a go at him personally, but nobody can claim that Val hasn't been prone in the past to editorializing in his articles about AUFC and Vidmar. It's one thing for people within the club to play politics and pit their egos against one another, but its a whole other kettle of fish when journalists start doing it, especially as Val is pretty much it when it comes to the 'football media' in Adelaide.

This Fox Sports article suggests that the recent problems stem largely from a dressing-room rift caused by the axing of Costanzo, Salley and Diego. The other Brazilians, Cassio, Cristiano and Alemao, are also apparently unhappy. Four Four Two has run a similar story, reporting that two players in particular (no names, unfortunately) are behind the whole thing, with a source claiming that they are the same two players who were causing trouble 'a few years ago'. That would narrow it down significantly: Valkanis, Beltrame, Costanzo, Dodd and Pantelis are the only players I can think of that have been at the club more than a couple of years. That article also states that Cassio could be on his way out soon - I'll be very upset if that is the case.

Meanwhile, the SMH has run an article quoting a certain ex-captain of the club (let's call him 'Ross'), backing up the notion that there are certain senior players that are not getting a game (well, that rules out Dodd and Pants), were involved in Kosmina's downfall, and seem to be part of the current rot. Furthermore, according to 'Ross', there is at least one Board member actively trying to bring down Vidmar.

It's unfortunate having to watch all of this finger-pointing and infighting again. It's also very hard to know what or who to believe, because everyone involved naturally has their own agendas and biases. All we can hope is that it all gets resolved quickly so the club can concentrate on the future. There will be some good young players stepping up into the first team next year; I just hope that Adelaide United has regained some stability and direction by that point.

In the meantime, there's the game against Queensland this weekend. Win that and we're in the ACL again, and we've got a chance (slim as it may seem) of winning the Championship. Lose and, well, there's always next year. I'll be supporting either way.

Plundering the Great Southern Land

Here' s a rather interesting story from from United Arab Emirates paper 'The National', that I uncovered through my usual techniques of in-depth and thorough research (i.e. I clicked the Google news bar at the top of this page):
3+1 adding up to be a big winner

The article discusses the AFC's new '3+1' rule, wherein teams competing in the Champions League from this year onwards will be allowed to field three non-Asian foreigners plus one player from an AFC member nation. This has big implications for Australia:

It is Australia ... where the biggest bargains can be found. The A-League is still in its infancy and with a salary cap that is just under $2million for an entire squad, it is not surprising that some of the biggest stars down under are being tempted by relative riches abroad. Concerns are growing that the increasing exodus could do serious damage to the fledgling league.

The article goes on to cite the examples of Sasa Ognenovski and Jade North, who have both accepted lucrative deals in Korea. The situation is a bit of a headache for the FFA - it's unfortunate that our league will lose the talents of some of its best players, but these players are of course entitled to go elsewhere to sell their services for full market value. The money coming in from such transfers is important, as well, for clubs' finances.

So, where to now? I think it's a bit of a balancing act: with more money flowing into the league through such transfers it will become more viable for the FFA to increase clubs' salary caps. In turn, this will give A-League clubs more purchasing power and should, theoretically, increase the ability for clubs to retain their best Australian players in future.

The A-League will always lose its brightest stars to richer and more prestigious overseas leagues. But that's not necessarily a problem, as long as there is a production line churning out high quality young players to fill their place. Plenty of foreign leagues operate like this - the best Brazilian, Dutch, Argentine and Portuguese players (for example) end up in the 'Big 4' European leagues, but the high quality of the young local players in these countries ensures that the standard of play remains at a very high level.

We're already seeing young players from the National Youth League and the state leagues successfully step up into the A-League. The potential is there to ensure that every Djite, Jedinak or Ognenovski that heads overseas is replaced by a youngster of equal quality. As junior coaching and talent identification gets better, this will become less of an issue. The final piece of the puzzle will be ongoing increases in the salary cap, allowing the A-League clubs to retain their stars for longer and lure better foreigners and returning Australian players.

Con Air going down in flames

Not too long ago, the Newcastle Jets were actually a good team. Last season, in fact, they were so good that they won the championship despite having Mario Jardel on the pitch for most of the season. Even though they'd lost their best player, the gifted Nicky Carle, to England. Gary van Egmond was the new golden boy of Australian coaches, overseeing his band of freewheeling youngsters as they scampered around the field, gleefully embarrassing oppositions with swashbuckling attacks and intricate passing moves.

Now, fast forward to January 2009. Newcastle, usually one of the more consistent sides in the league, have unravelled faster than the overpriced Ben Sherman cardigan I bought last year. They have finished the season in last place, on 18 points and with a goal difference of -18. Their best players (with the honourable exception of Joel Griffiths, at least for now) are abandoning Newcastle like rats from a sinking ship, even as the club prepares for its first ever Asian Champions League.

The situation on the pitch would be unacceptable for any club's supporters. Newcastle are playing like a team of human-shaped sea sponges. But that's not even the worst of it - their current dismal performances (the ridiculously poor 4-0 loss to Sydney on the weekend being the cherry on the cake) seem to be merely a symptom of a much deeper malaise. There is clearly something rotten at the Jets - even when they were playing well some of the club's business decisions seemed extremely poor. Trying to lure Stan Collymore, or signing Mario Jardel and forcing the coach to play him against his better judgement, for example.

Gary van Egmond's honeymoon seems now to be well and truly over. His team has dropped from best in the land to worst, over the past year. And he hasn't handled it very well, taking every opportunity to shift the blame for his team's woes onto his players, with Patafta, Zura and Hakansson all feeling the pointy end of the stick at various times. But the real highlight of van Egmond's season, for me, was dragging Pinto - a young player on his first senior team call up, who came on as a second-half substitute - off the pitch again in the last ten minutes against Adelaide. He defended the move by stating (incorrectly, in my opinion) that Pinto was "the worst player out there". Way to go, Dutchie. He should be a motivational speaker.

As they say, though, the fish rots from the head. In this case, that rotten fish head is local entrepreneur Con Constantine. Constantine has an undoubted love of football - he's pumped millions of dollars of his own money into keeping the game afloat in the Hunter region during the lean times. But he also has a reputation as somewhat of a megalomaniac, keeping a strong guiding hand on all aspects of the club. He's renowned for being extremely tight-fisted when it comes to money matters - you could probably fill an entire matchday squad with past players and staff that have locked horns with Con, often in courts of law, over pay disputes.

You don't become a multi-millionaire without being a bit of a prick, though. These sorts of things are often par for the course when wealthy businessmen own football clubs. One incident occurred recently that went well beyond acceptable behaviour, however, even for an autocratic football club owner. To cut a long story short, Constantine subjected a group of representatives from Newcastle's supporter groups to a lengthy, abusive tirade during which he threatened to throw one of them off a balcony. Their crime? Protesting against club management for Newcastle's diabolically bad season, during a match. Upside down banners, chants, that sort of thing. You can read a thread on the Jets supporter forum about the whole matter here.

Con's rant, during which he labelled the supporters 'worthless' and 'nobodies' and threatened to ban one for life for being a disloyal troublemaker, says a lot about the culture of the club. There seems to be an atmosphere of deep distrust between management, staff, and fans. And that's not a good situation. If you could do a TAFE course on managing a football club, the first thing they would teach you on the first day would be 'Respect the fans'. Healthy support is the lifeblood of a healthy club. I recently got FIFA 09 on my Wii (top game it is, too), and when you play in manager mode you get brownie points for saying nice things to the fans. Choose the 'throw them off the balcony' option and you don't do so well.

You have to feel for the Newcastle supporters, watching helplessly as their beloved Jets crash spectacularly back to earth. As I'm sure Otis Redding would have said had he not perished in a plane crash of his own, all they're asking for is a little respect from the men at the top.

Taking stock of Australian football's modern history

Australian football is definitely in for a big year in 2009: before the year is over we will see the culmination of the current hotly-contested A-League season; a string of crucial international matches that will determine the Socceroos' entry to the 2010 World Cup, a new pair of Australian clubs taking on the challenge of the Asian Champions League, the start of a new expanded A-League competition featuring two new challengers in North Queensland Fury and Gold Coast United, and no doubt plenty of emotion, controversy, speculation, joy, and all the other things that make football so great.

We should stop for a moment, though, and take stock of the progress that football has made in Australia in little more than half a decade. Australian football has been on a steep upward trajectory since 2003, when the Crawford Report into the sport's governance was published. The recommendations of this paper led to a complete overhaul of the structure of the sport: Soccer Australia was succeeded by a new entity, the Australian Soccer Association, which in January 2005 became Football Federation Australia.

The Rebirth of Domestic Football

The A-League was launched in mid-2005 to great hype and fanfare: this was the 'new football' that was to replace the 'old soccer' of the NSL. The NSL, although home to a number of community-based clubs with long, proud histories and the breeding ground for a lot of great players, suffered from a chronic lack of 'mainstream' interest and a lack of professionalism. Moreover, the NSL fought an ongoing battle against perceptions that it was riven with corruption, ethnic nationalism, violence, and hooliganism (these perceptions were in some cases well founded, but it certainly wasn't the battleground that it's sometimes made out to be).

In one fell swoop, the FFA relegated South Melbourne, Marconi, Melbourne Knights et al to the bumpy suburban pitches of the state leagues, replacing them with shiny new family-friendly franchises boasting crisp colour schemes and snappy names concocted by sharp-suited marketing men in boardrooms. Whether or not you think this is a good thing, it certainly made an impact: the new league got off to a flyer. Big crowds of football fans and curious folks wondering what the fuss was all about witnessed a great first season, lit up by the abilities of the superstar Dwight Yorke and the fantastic skills of young Australians like Carle and Carney. A rampant Adelaide took out the league, but Sydney's class shone through in the grand final.

"Aloisi, for a spot in the World Cup..."

There's one date that will go down forever as the day Australian football came of age (if you will pardon the cliche): November 16, 2005. In front of 80,000 at the Olympic stadium in Sydney, Australia beat Uruguay in a penalty shootout to qualify for its first world cup since 1974. I don't think anyone who witnessed it will ever forget the emotion of the evening: Bresciano's first half goal, Schwarzer's massive penalty saves and Aloisi's historic kick (and the subsequent shirtless run up the sidelines, accompanied by Craig Foster's hysterical commentary - 'JOHNNY WARREN!!!! JOHNNY WARREN!!!!!). I got so excited I broke a lamp shade. There was such an incredible outpouring of emotion around the country - that night, more than any other, cemented football in the Australian psyche.

And then on to the tournament itself. After the buildup there was always the threat that the Socceroos would have a disappointing time of it at Germany '06. We all know how it unfolded, but let's indulge our nostalgia once more. There was the stirring comeback in the 3-1 win against Japan, with Cahill scoring our nation's first (and second) World Cup goal. Next was a respectable 2-0 loss to Brazil; then (to my mind) the pinnacle of the tournament - the momentous game against Croatia that saw Moore's penalty, Kalac's goalkeeping howler, Kewell's equaliser, red cards (including Graham Poll's bizarre and belated send off of Josip Simunic on a third yellow), and of course the final whistle, which amongst the chaos on the pitch signified that Australia had made it out of the group phase. The next match proved to be the Socceroos' last of the tournament - after holding the eventual winners (admittedly down to ten men) for most of the match Neill conceded an injury-time penalty, and the rest was history.

After Germany: the New World Order

Less than two months after the Socceroos' qualification for the Cup, Australian football passed another vitally important milestone. On January 1, 2006, Australia officially became a member of the Asian Football Confederation. This has enormous implications: at a national level Australia now competes against other powerful AFC countries for a berth in future world cups, rather than in a series of hugely uneven qualifiers against tiny Oceanian island nations culminating in one big playoff against the likes of Iran or Uruguay. We can play in the Asian Cup, and there's a very good chance that we will host one in the not-too-distant future.

The move to Asia is also a massive step forward for Australian domestic football, in that A-League clubs now compete in the Asian Champions League against the best clubs from powerful Asian nations like Japan, China, South Korea, Iran, Saudi Arabia and Qatar. So far Sydney, Melbourne and Adelaide have played and acquitted themselves well in the ACL, with Adelaide's fantastic winning streak seeing them into the final of the most recent competition. This year it will be Newcastle and Central Coast representing Australia on Asia's biggest stage.

A-League - Onward and Upward

Australian football was given a huge boost by the Socceroos' World Cup campaign, and this new wave of confidence in the game was reflected in big crowds and growing interest in the A-League in its second and third seasons. Melbourne dominated the league in 2006-07, playing excellent football in front of record crowds at their new home in the Telstra Dome. Their Premiership was backed up by a Grand Final win, in which a rampant Victory lived up to their name with a 6-0 demolition of the outclassed and overwhelmed Reds in front of 50,000 fans.

The 2007-08 season was a much more close-run affair, with the eventual Premiers Central Coast fighting tooth and nail until the end of the season for their title. They came up against Newcastle in the Championship match, and the Novocastrians took home the toilet seat after scoring the only goal of the game.

Crowds were well up across the board in 2007-08, but they have come back to earth a little this season. Signs are good coming into the business end of proceedings, though, with most clubs' attendences picking up again, which looks good for the future. The quality on the pitch this season has been of a pretty good standard; teams have been getting better at recruiting foreign players and identifying youth talent, and there's been some great football played.

Philip Micallef wrote a great little article, entitled 'How we're winning the battle for respect', on The World Game site recently. In it, he recaps some of the major achievements of Australian football during 2008, including among other things the expansion of the A-League, the inception of the National Youth League and the W-League, and the success of the Socceroos and Adelaide United.

As Micallef identifies, though, the greatest progress that football in Australia has made is in its ongoing quest for mainstream acceptance and respect. The profile of football has never been better; here in Adelaide it seems that the image of the game has really turned a corner. United are just as legitimate a topic for water-cooler conversations as are the Crows or the Australian cricket team - it seems to me that support for the game is here to stay. Fans have been 'rusted on', as it were - no longer do people come to games as a curious novelty, but instead because they are genuine supporters of the club.

The Crawford Report was published a mere six years ago, but the changes that the game has gone through since then are extraordinary. It's been a great ride, but it's far from over yet. One of the best things about being a football fan in Australia is that we have no idea what's around the corner. But keep it coming.

Long live the revolution!

The immovable brick wall of stupidity

Gustave Flaubert once said: "Stupidity is something immovable; you can't try to attack it without being broken by it." This is sound advice. This week, Rebecca Wilson came out with yet another anti-football article, this time bleating about the $45-odd million the Federal Government has pumped into the World Cup bid. There are, of course, plenty of sensible arguments against spending such a large amount of money on a sporting event. The problem with Wilson's article is that her arguments demonstrate a (deliberate?) ignorance of the issues at play, and stem instead from an emotional reaction informed by her own obvious dislike of football, the "terrible A-League", and its "fanatical fans".

Thus, I will not get angry - I will yield like a reed in a rapidly-flowing stream, recognising the immovable stupidity of trying to compare a bid for the World Cup with sports like swimming and Rugby League. The difference, of course, is that the World Cup cash promise is not just 'sports funding' - it's a well-thought-out political move to bring the biggest event in the world to Australia. It's our country flexing its muscles in the same way that it did when bidding for the 2000 Olympics. It's an exercise designed to increase Australia's international soft power standings, whether successful or not, and the economy will receive a huge boost if we actually host it. It's a win for the FFA and a considered gamble by the Federal Government. In all likelihood, if this $45 million was not going towards the World Cup bid, it probably wouldn't be spent on sport at all. It's not an either/or proposition.

I'm not angered by the fact that she is complaining about football's relative gains when other sports are missing out on the gravy train. Why? Because, to put it simply, it's an idiotic argument. Football is the most popular participation sport in Australia, by far, and is played by males and females of all ages and backgrounds. For years it has been the ugly sister, missing out while millions have been ploughed into the more fashionable cricket, Aussie Rules, and the Rugbies, as well as Olympic sports like swimming and rowing. Now it's time for a bit of equity, bitches. Why shouldn't football get more than other sports?

I can sense some righteous outrage building in my liver at the moment so I will move onto another point: her decrying of the fact that money will be spent on schmoozing FIFA bosses and other football bigwigs. Well, how else are we going to get the frigging thing? As if Australia didn't do exactly the same thing when bidding for the Sydney Games (and in fact a lot more than that: the words 'Olympics', 'Sydney', 'IOC' and 'corruption' make for an interesting Google search). Does Wilson complain about money being spent on the Olympics? Of course not. Would she rather see the World Cup bid money be put into Rugby League, a sport that is more or less unknown outside NSW and Queensland, the bulk of whose income is sourced from the wallets of pensioners and single mothers through poker machines, and whose 'World Cup' final failed to attract enough interest to fill Suncorp Stadium? Obviously, yes. Maybe I'm being unfair to Rugby League, though: its 'Rapists of Tomorrow' program for juniors has clearly been a successful initiative.

----

At this point I feel like I'm angrily beating my head against the immovable brick wall of stupidity, so I'll stop talking about Rebecca Wilson. Let's turn our attention to Geoff Roach's column in yesterday's Advertiser, shall we:

What the hell has Australian soccer done to deserve a $45 million handout from
Santa Rudd's Federal Government?

That one's easy, we've covered that: a) it's decided to bid for the world's biggest sporting event; and b) it's the most popular participant sport in Australia, bar none. Next.

voluminous stomachs of the conga line of lobbyists and power brokers

zzzzzz. Once again, show me another way to get anything done anywhere without anyone powerful getting a free lunch out of it. C'est impossible.

How does the AFL, the SANFL and the other Australian football codes feel about
such booty being thrown to foreigners, marketers, PR companies and other
assorted leeches rather than Australian kids playing the unique Australian game?

Well, if Mr Roach is representative of their opinions, pretty bitchy and borderline xenophobic, I'd say. An interesting exercise would be to count how many times Roach uses the word 'Australian' in the article. A cynical person might think that the use of the term is a deliberate device to paint football as an immoral foreign pastime indulged in by shady foreigners (probably black ones, too!) as opposed to our pure Australian game played by Australian kids. In Australia. Not that I'm accusing Roach of this: he's just a proud Aussie worried about Pies v Hawks having to be played elsewhere when the MCG's playing surface is invaded by a bunch of diving longhaired pansies and the stands are filled with hooligans that would stab you with a sharpened boat flare as soon as look at you.

It's fair to say that I got a bit angry reading Geoff Roach's article, as well. But there are little touches of stupidity in there alongside the fearmongering and implied racism. Calling the Football Federation of Australia 'FA', for example. It's FFA. FFS. If you're going to write something nasty about an organisation, and it's going to get published in a major newspaper, at least do the minimum amount of research to make sure you don't come off looking like an ignorant fool (like, you know, finding out the name of the organisation in question).

I'm not angry about what these people write. They're biased and ignorant, and they're clutching at straws in an effort to undo all the progress that our sport has made. I'm angry that so many people will get to read their stupid articles. And now I'm angry at myself for having spent the past two hours writing about those stupid assholes. Time for a cup of tea I think.

Rebecca Wilson Bites Back

Here is today's column in the Daily Telegraph, in which she refers to (almost) universally-respected commentator and pundit Simon Hill as a 'feral soccer fan', and questions his abilities as a journalist. I'm not quite sure why she singles out Hill, though, because her column has been pretty much derided from most corners of the sports media.

To be fair to Wilson, she has copped a huge amount of abuse over the past week in responses posted on mainstream news sites and football fan forums, ranging from people taking a dig at her journalistic credentials to inexcusably misogynistic and degrading comments about her gender and physical appearance. Even SBS's own Godfather of Football, Les Murray, wrote a scathing blog on The World Game site in which he made reference to Wilson's 'leathery skin' and 'ironed-on hair'. The offending paragraph now has been amended, but it was stupid and juvenile for Uncle Laszlo (who, to be quite honest, has been slipping for a while now) to stoop to such a personal level. I don't want to know the sort of personal hate mail that Wilson's email inbox would have been flooded with.

Rebecca Wilson stands by her original article. Which is fair enough: she meant what she wrote. Although, funnily enough, she makes absolutely no effort to back up her wild claims in light of all the eminently sensible counter arguments that have been flung her way. All I can say is that rumours of Australian football's death have been greatly exaggerated - of course, we'll have to wait and see whether her confident predictions of the ignoble demise of football in this country actually comes to pass. Somehow, I doubt it.

EDIT:
Here is a fantastic response to Wilson's article, by Kevin Airs on the FourFourTwo site: http://au.fourfourtwo.com/blogs.aspx?CIaBID=21

Better pathways needed for Indigenous footballers

For decades, Aboriginal players have been making a huge impact in Aussie Rules and Rugby League. According to the commonly held view, they possess skill, creativity and reflex far surpassing the levels of their non-Indigenous counterparts. This is often patronizingly referred to as 'black magic', an innate, instinctive ability characteristic of their race. To my mind, though, it is more likely that these skills flourish in some Indigenous kids, particularly those growing up in regional and remote communities, due to an upbringing which focuses strongly on sport, outdoors activity and the development of high levels of physical coordination from a very early age.

Whatever the reason, Aboriginal players are strongly represented within the stocks of Australia's major football codes, with the notable exception of the round ball game. Why is this? Surely the speed, agility and exceptional technical skill levels demonstrated by Aboriginal athletes, as well as their relatively slight frames, would suit round ball football perfectly? Certainly there are a few currently plying their trade in the A-League - Jade North, Tahj Minniecon and our own fearless leader Travis Dodd - as well as the European-based David Williams and Kasey Wehrmann - but the traditionally urban focus of football in Australia has made it difficult for promising kids in remote areas to get noticed.

Recognizing this, Mark Wakeling, the Director of Football for Alice Springs, has flagged the idea of National Youth League teams playing exhibition matches against teams made up of Indigenous youth players (see FourFourTwo's article A-League Needs A Red Centre for more information). I think this is an excellent idea, and one which ties in well with the new North Queensland team's stated aim to promote and develop football among the large Indigenous population of the region.

A logical extension of Wakeling's proposal would be the inception of a Territory-based Indigenous side actually playing within the National Youth League competition. I have no idea as to whether the talent exists for this side to be competitive, but given the NYL's specific mandate as a development tool for young players, it's something that would be brilliant for the game. Australia is a big country, and football needs to continue to bring its message to as many people as possible.

Rebecca Wilson v Football

Last Saturday, following Adelaide United's midweek loss to Gamba Osaka in the Asian Champions League final, Daily Telegraph columnist Rebecca Wilson delivered an article that can only be described as a hatchet job on Australian football. According to Wilson, Adelaide's "embarrassing performance" shows that there are deep cracks emerging in soccer's "carefully constructed masquerade".

She goes on to claim that the Australian game is stodgy and slow in comparison to the fast, skilful style played everywhere else, and paints a dismal picture of Australia as a third-rate football backwater, with ignorant fans oblivious to the fact that the rest of the world is decades ahead in terms of youth development, style, and technique.

Of course, she has a point, to a certain extent: the quality of play in the A-League and lower levels of domestic football is not as good as it is in many parts of the world, and Australia doesn't exactly churn out players like Argentina or Spain. As though we're not already aware of the difference between Lionel Messi and Ruben Zadkovic (hairstyle, for starters).

What's missing in her article is any sort of context. She makes direct comparisons between Australia and the Netherlands, a European footballing power that has been at the very forefront of tactical and technical development for four decades, without acknowledging the fact that Australian football has made huge strides forward in the past five years or so. She complains about the standard of the A-League, which has been in existence since 2005, compared to the Japanese J.League, which was formed in the early 1990s and is composed of clubs with huge financial resources to spend on players, coaches and youth development. In short, she takes a big swing at Australian football without bothering to look at the bigger picture.

At best, Rebecca Wilson's article is clumsy journalism; at worst it's a thinly disguised ambush on the round ball game, a swift and opportunistic kick in the guts following the code's 'slip-up' in failing to conquer Asia at the last hurdle. Nothing new, of course - Australian football fans are used to articles of this type appearing every now and then (see the excellent Das Libero for other examples of 'soccerphobia'). It keeps us on our toes, ever vigilant to the fact that although we have pushed our way into the sporting mainstream there are still some who find our presence unwelcome.