Has the FFA got it right this time?
29 January 2008

Roy Hay

I hope the FFA has got its World Cup preparations right this time. The Socceroos will go into their crucial home first qualifying match against Qatar on 6 February with a new coach, a team which has not played together in a tournament for 12 months and not at all since November and with no clear indication of the composition of the starting line-up. By contrast Qatar has played a series of matches against good quality opposition, has naturalised some Brazilian players for its team and has been preparing for this game for the best part of a year. Qatar may be well below Australia on the FIFA rankings, but these have never been an accurate guide to performance in head-to-head matches. It is not so long since Australia underestimated the difficulties of performing at its highest standard in the Asian championships early in 2007 and there is a real danger that the mistake has been repeated in this encounter with Qatar.

People forget how close we came to failing to qualify for the last World Cup. It took two spectacular saves by Mark Schwarzer and a nerveless finish by John Aloisi in a penalty shoot-out to get the Socceroos through against Uruguay. In the past the Socceroos had failed to gain a place by equally narrow margins, but there is no reason to believe that they will have luck on their side this time.

It may be the result of an unfortunate choice of words, but coach Pim Verbeek has made it clear that he considers that his A-League players eligible for selection are playing at a lower standard and making more mistakes than those who are plying their trade in Europe, even if some of the latter are fringe players at their clubs and some have not played competitive matches for weeks because of a mid-winter break. At the last World Cup our best players showed deficiencies in technique and tactical appreciation but almost compensated for that by incredible physical conditioning and fierce determination. It appears that we will go into this qualifying round some way short of those levels.

There are reasons why Australia finds itself in this position. The FFA had what it thought was a sound contract with another Dutch coach, Dick Advocaat, who was eventually seduced by a better offer from the owner of his Russian club. The upshot is that months passed before Verbeek was secured as a replacement for the previous coach Graham Arnold. Though the new coach has extensive Asian experience, mostly as an assistant coach, and will base himself in Australia, he does not yet have the moral authority which his predecessor, Guus Hiddink, brought to the post. Verbeek says he should be judged on results, and he will be, and he has impressed some domestic players of wide experience, including Melbourne Victory skipper, Kevin Muscat.

The FFA can point to the lack of opportunities to bring overseas and domestic players together and the logistics involved. This is not unique to this country and other east Asian qualifiers face similar problems. But the first round of qualifying occurs in the midst of the finals series for the A-League, when some of the potential players must have divided concerns. Given the huge importance of qualification to the progress of the game in Australia, and the financial benefits which flow from the World Cup, I hope enough has been done to give the Socceroos a level playing field, but I confess to being very concerned.

Roy Hay is the grandson of James ‘Dun’ Hay, captain of Celtic, Newcastle United and Scotland before the First World War and joint-editor of The World Game Downunder. He is currently writing a social history of Australian football with Bill Murray.

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