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What a huge week it has been for football in Australia this week.Where do I start?
FFA announces coach Holger Osieck
Slats v Kewell
Sydney and the two Melbourne teams rooted to the bottom of the table
And Clive’s cap fits.
Let me start off with my take on Round Two, (most of which has already been covered by the world's Number 1 ranked podcast for noteworthy sporting podcast - yes that's right people, The Football Sack Podcast)!
The draw really is in vogue at the moment with three out of the five games in round two splitting the points, the best being the first game of the round in Wellington as the Phoenix threw away a 3-1 lead in terrible conditions. The greatest part of this match was the quality of players on the score-sheet; Ifil, Greenacre, Smeltz and Culina lay claim to all being inside the top ten players in the A-League.
The other Friday night match saw new boys Melbourne Heart travel up to Newcastle to witness what might have been the goal of the year by Jets defender Ben Kantarovski. Unfortunately it was in the back of his own net. 1-1 it ended in Newcastle.
Saturday night had both of last seasons grand finalists losing. Sydney away to the exciting Fury and Victory at home in the boutique AAMI Park stadium to the Glory.
Nth Qld after two rounds look the real deal, led by the flamboyant Frantisek “Franz” Straka in his cream (white, off-white, bone, ivory or beige) jacket. The Fury look quick and organised. David Williams is showing the potential many pundits knew he had, and I’ve been super impressed with Akoto at the back.
Sydney will also be ruing the decision to let Chris Payne go after having a hand in both goals against his former club.
Now let me get the disclaimer (*) out of the way first. Yes I am a Victory supporter. But. I am a football supporter first and foremost and the way Perth Glory played on Saturday night was a horrible brand of football. To quote the Godfather of football in this country himself Les Murray “Jacob Burns was disgraceful”. The referee in charge Gerard Parsons' (who's profile is absent from the official A-League website) decision to allow four horrid challenges before brandishing his first yellow ticket (Grant Brebner) was a blight on the game.
Melbourne did have most of the possession for the game but the fact they were missing a striker was blatantly obvious.
Sunday’s game ended in Central Coast and Adelaide taking a point each. The Mariners had a late claim for a penalty but apart from that it was a dour match.
Holger Osieck
My initial reaction was disappointment when the announcement was made.
The FFA has signed a guy who has won nothing except the 2000 CONCACAF gold cup. The names that were mentioned leading up to the announcement were big, not necessarily great coaches. Well known names such as Sven Goren Erikson, Roanld Koeman, Ruud Gullit, Jose Peckerman and even Maradona – were the names that were going to get football on the back pages of the daily papers. But after tuning into his press conference and doing a little more research it comes across that the FFA have done their due diligence and picked the right man for the job right at this moment.
Osieck has no set formation and it looks like he will pick the best eleven players and set the formation to suit rather than the Verbeek theory of having a set formation and picking eleven players to suit that style.
Osieck speaks well; he seems very media friendly, which is an important criterion to fill for a Socceroos coach, as we aren't in a position where we can choose a coach on their ability alone.
Osieck has shown he has that ability, being able to bring through youngsters. He also has knowledge of Asia through his time with Urawa Reds.
He worked for FIFA between 2004 and 2006 as Chief of their Technical Department so his knowledge of the game must be very sound.
I now think the FFA have made a shrewd appointment and we hope that good times are ahead, starting with an Asian cup win in early 2011!
When Harry spat Robbie?
For those who missed the Fox Sports FC segment it was ugly, it was car crash TV at its best.
Slater's article has some merit, whilst Kewell has arguably been our greatest ever, the sideshow that has surrounded him over the past few years has taken away from the Socceroos as a whole.
At the next world Cup Harry will be touching on thirty-six and his pace that has been his main weapon will be long gone. In saying that Harry has done enough for the game here to be given the latitude to go out on his terms, if and when he sees fit.
Slater didn't need to write the article, it smacked of tabloid journalism. The 'he said, she said' at the dinner table should have been left at said dinner table.
The sport in Australia didn't need our foremost recognisable commentator going at it with our greatest export. The only positive it has bought is that it has been reported in every major media outlet over the past two days, and as they say any publicity is good publicity.
Harry showed that he can be very naive when it comes to the media. His point that the media should be there to support the Socceroos was cringe worthy.
The saddest thing out of this is that these guys were teammates and when Harry scored that memorable goal at the MCG on that fateful night in ‘97, Slater is the first guy to catch him. Lets hope the friendship can be restored for the good of the game.
If the Cap fits.
Coming from Melbourne, where the decision to go to watch sport live or watch it at home is as easy as deciding whether to get dressed before you walk out of the house, it is difficult to really understand the plight of Gold Coast United. It is hard to understand that a team which features players the calibre of Smeltz and Culina, a coach with the charisma of Miron Blieberg and play in a wonderful stadium can only draw 7,000 people to a game against a team 45 min drive away.
To play a game at Skilled Park GCU owner Clive Palmer forks out $80,000 per match - which on average draws under 4,000 people. Now that’s a fair bit of dough to be coughing up every second week.
So to stop the loss of about $60,000 of that cash Palmer has asked that three of the four stands at AAMI Park be shut. That saves dollars but does it make sense?
The last time this happened it was comical, it was a terrible look for the A-League (and more importantly the sponsors). Capping the crowd at 5,000 isn't exactly going to make people rush to get to the game is it.
So what needs to be done?
Is the problem marketing and promotion or ticket prices (Ticket prices are a little more expensive than what they are in the big markets of Melbourne and Sydney)?
Is the problem that the Gold coast isn't big enough to host an NRL team, an A-League team and a soon to be introduced AFL team?
Is it that in the middle of summer on the Gold Coast, families prefer to do other things like head to the beach or theme parks?
Whatever it is it needs to be fixed soon because the only time someone shouldn't get to watch live sport is if the stadium is full.
My Heroes of the Week
Nth Qld Fury,
A team that all and sundry predicted to finish dead last (aside from Jack and Christian – Edit), a team that lost the majority of their players including Robbie Fowler. A team that was nearly extinct after one season has so far gone across to Perth, snatched a draw and then followed up at home with a win over last years champions.
The coach is tactically sound and great to watch, Straka appeals to the fans and that alone should see a few more Fury fans get on board.
The team itself has a handful of future Socceroos in Williams and Isaka Cernak.
After two rounds the fury sit equal top of the table. An away win in Melbourne this weekend should see a bumper crowd for the round four home match against the Reds.
My Villain of the week
This one was hard to split between Jacob Burns and Referee Gerard Parsons. I will not use this forum again this season to criticise any refereeing but I need to say that the performance on Saturday night was the worst in the A-Leagues short history. Jacob Burns was lucky not to receive three yellow cards, with one of them easily a straight red.
Jacob Burns was hell bent on making sure the Victory players thought twice about winning a 50/50 ball and I have no problem with that but the tackling on Saturday night was dangerous and it should have been stopped early.
Jacob Burns has been a good player overseas and for the Socceroos but on Saturday he dropped a rung in every football follower’s eyes with his thuggery, which as mentioned above even riled the normally calm Les Murray into calling Burns disgraceful.