National Football Curriculum

The footballing revolution continues. The long, brave march towards footballing utopia has been given another prod in the back today, with the FFA's release of a National Football Curriculum which aims to improve player development and team performance.

I can haz Han Berger?

The main thrust of the football curriculum is that it heavily emphasises development of skill and technique. Skill development takes place within the context of game-related situations, rather than through drills that exist in isolation.

An extension of this is that the FFA has identified 4-3-3 as the ideal playing formation for 'proactive' football with a technical emphasis. As such, all of the FFA's 'development' sides - for example, the national representative teams underneath the Socceroos and Matildas - should be playing this structure. Increasing players' skills will, theoretically, be favoured over results.

Those that worry about the credentials of our domestic coaching stocks should be able to breathe a sigh of relief, as well - in future there will be specific minimum requirements for high-level coaching positions within the FFA structure, including national team, A-League, W-League, National Youth League, AIS and State Institute coaches and technical directors.

All of this is, to me, a good sign that Australian football is still going in the right direction. We have a governing body with a clearly-structured plan for ongoing development of the game. We're not going to see the results straight away, but things like this have to happen for football to benefit in the long run. Maybe one day, when I'm old and grey, we'll see the seeds planted in this decade finally come to fruition.

Around the Grounds

There's been a few big stories around the league this week.

For a start, it sounds as though the FFA are seriously considering implementing a proper knockout cup competition, akin to the English FA Cup, within the next couple of years. It's been on the backburner for a while but I never thought we'd see it happen this quickly. I'll write more about it some other time but, for now, I'll just say that I think it will be brilliant to have this mechanism for state league and lower level clubs to be able to play competitive matches against the A-League sides. Eventually, we may see the final rounds of the Cup take the place of the A-League finals series, which would be a big change - feasible once there are a few more clubs in the league.

Gold Coast United


The A-League's new boys are looking ominously good. In a press conference, the Toolies' (yes I'm trying to make this nickname stick) owner Clive Palmer officially announced that current Socceroo and PSV Eindhoven midfielder Jason Culina would be the club's inaugural marquee player. Well done.




Palmer, who is not renowned for his in-depth knowledge of the intricacies of the beautiful game, also stated that the Gold Coast is aiming to go undefeated through its first season. Oh dear. But they'll definitely be a force to reckon with: as well as Culina, their squad will include Shane Smeltz, Joel Porter, Tahj Minniecon, Adam Griffiths, Michael Thwaite, Jesse Vanstratten, several Brazilians that I've never heard of before and a Dutchman named Bas van der Brink. Sterjovski is probably staying at Derby, though.

Gold Coast United also used this press conference to unveil their colours (blue, yellow and white) and their badge:



The font used and general look of the badge are a graphic designer's worst nightmare - it's generic, garish and gaudy. Suits the Gold Coast to a T, I'd say. But at least it's relevant - the logo features a ribbon of blue (for the sea), a strip of yellow (for the sand), and.... wait a second... are those buildings FLIPPING THE BIRD????

Sydney FC

This week hasn't been a good one for the boys in baby blue. Reports have come out that, following the win over Wellington last weekend, two Sydney 'fans' assaulted Robbie Middleby in the stadium carpark. The reason? Seabiscuit, as he is affectionately known by supporters, is leaving the Blingers at the end of the season after signing with North Queensland. This is a guy who has been with Sydney FC since their inception, and has always put in a hundred percent for the club, who is moving on for the sake of his career. Those two morons should be given life bans from all forms of football, and castrated to boot.

As I write, Sydney have just lost 3-1 to Queensland, killing off their season for good. It was a great match, too - both teams played some nice football and Sergio van Dijk boosted fantasy league scores around the country with a hat-trick. Kosmina's career is looking a little shaky, one would think - but I think he deserves another season for the sake of stability.

Queensland Roar

The Oranje women have taken out the W-League title with a 2-0 win over Canberra United in the Grand Final, thanks to strikes from Lana Harch and Tameka Butt. The crowd at Ballymore was a very healthy 4,500 - women's football is definitely on the rise.

This may not be the only silverware to end up in Brisbane this season, either: the Roar are currently one game and a couple of fortuitous other results away from an A-League Premiership this season, and their form suggests that a Championship would be eminently achievable. Especially with the fat Scotsman Miller back on deck and SVD really starting to bang them in...

Perth Glory

One of the league's impressive youngsters, Nikita Rukavytsya, seems likely to leave Perth after securing trials with FC Twente in Holland. No matter: Perth have a likely replacement lined up in Zimbabwean striker Glen Salmon. Obviously I support this signing wholeheartedly, on the basis of his name alone.

Also, Eugene Dadi has signed on for another year, which is great news for the A-League: despite his aging body he's got plenty of class.

Melbourne Victory

The enigmatic Ljubo Milicevic has spoken out about his ill-fated time with Melbourne Victory, and the period of depression and soul-searching that he underwent after leaving the club:

'How Victory Turned Me Into An Angry Buddhist Porn Fiend'

I think he'd be the ideal replacement for Ognenovski in the centre of Adelaide's defence. Sounds like he wants to leave professional football behind though - a pity because of his talents, but you can't blame the guy for doing what's best for himself.

Adelaide United

Back on home turf, there's a couple of big stories out of Radelaide. Significantly, Dario Fontanarosa has stepped down as United chairman, to be replaced by Mel Patzwald (of Airport Travel Company - he did a great job organising my tickets to Osaka, so he gets my seal of approval). Hopefully Fontanarosa is taking a back seat in order to finalise his plans for the awesome new Estadio Dario:

I'm not holding my breath though.

Sadly, it also seems very likely now that Angelo Costanzo is out the door at Hindmarsh at the end of the current season. Obviously Vidmar and the AUFC management have not been reading this blog. I think he's still got a lot to offer the team, but he's unlikely to be a first team player at Adelaide and could therefore command a lot more money elsewhere. It's a pity because I always pictured him retiring in his home city. It's upsetting but I'm not about to hunt him down in the Hindmarsh carpark after a game because of it...

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!

Centre of Excellence for Stinky Seamen

The jewel in Gosford's crown.. their three-sided stadium.

The Central Coast Mariners, in a joint venture with the Wyong RSL, have decided to build a $40 million football complex, including training pitches, a 'boutique' stadium for National Youth League and women's W-League matches, an 120-room accommodation block, offices, a gymnasium, aquatic centre, conference venue and a sports science block.

Not content with being the league leaders in junior development and local community involvement, these fishy bastards are once again showing the rest of the league how to run a football club. Here's a link to the Marinators fan forum, where there's a bit more information about what exactly this project will involve.

Once again the Mariners are thinking outside the square and pushing the envelope, engaging their stakeholders and maximising their key deliverables, or something like that. It's good to see an A-League club looking into the future and thinking: 'Ooh yes, that'd be nice', then doing something in an effort to achieve that vision - unlike the Sydney FC or Newcastle Jets method, which appears to involve sacking people one by one and then desperately rolling the dice on unfit 'stars' until the team starts winning.

This development is able to take place as a result of investment by the Mariners Trust, a newly formed entity controlled by Lyall Gorman, Peter Turnbull and Sheffield United owner Kevin McCabe that holds a controlling stake in the club. It looks like these guys are putting their money on the line and developing a real long-term vision for Mariners. Good on them, and I hope it works out well - they're the best in the league off the park, and on the park they're actually starting to play some very good football. Good for the league and good for their standing in the community.