Who’s derailing the Socceroos express?
Roar Guru By Jesse Fink, 26 Jun 2009 Jesse Fink is a Roar Guru
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- 2010 World Cup, football, Melanie McLaughlin, Pim Verbeek, Scott McDonald, Socceroos, Tim Cahill, World Cup finals, World Cup qualifier
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Australia's Scott McDonald and Iraq's Haidar Hussain during the Australian Socceroos v Iraq World Cup qualifier. AAP Image/Dave Hunt
You’ve got to hand it Tim Cahill. He might have acted like a plonker in his infamous interview with Melanie McLaughlin, but he’s kept football in the news for the past fortnight. Better than in the news, actually on the front pages.
In fact, the regularity with which the Everton and Australia midfielder makes news has probably made “Cahillgate” redundant as a cover-all.
With any given day you’re not sure what news Cahill is making: allegedly getting into dust-ups with bouncers, having a blue with News Limited, spruiking his kids cancer charity, being the guest of honour at the Johnny Warren Football Foundation dinner and turning up late, having his name linked with Manchester United.
Now he’s making news all over again by confirming to SBS’s The World Game that all is not well inside the Socceroos camp.
This topic has been the talk of football circles for some time now but got forgotten amid our country’s qualification for the 2010 World Cup. For good reasons various journos were too afraid to touch it.
However it was too radioactive to die altogether.
“It doesn’t take rocket scientists to work out what’s happened in the past couple of weeks,” he told Les Murray in an interview to be aired this Sunday, apropos of his own troubles with the press.
“There are players’ agents involved who are very bitter. It’s difficult to explain because you think that you can play football and nothing else matters but factors outside the game do affect the team.
“It’s one of those issues that will definitely be addressed with the FFA and players because it’s something that has made me angry. As a team, when we play we are unbelievable but outside, when it comes to other issues, it’s a little sad.”
Sad and clearly divisive, as evidenced by an email sent by “a big-name player” (or on behalf of that player, if rumours are to be believed) to News Limited last weekend when the fallout from the nightclub affair was still pitting news organisation against football federation with no signs of a ceasefire.
“You don’t go around abusing people and acting like a big-time Charlie,” part of the email read that was published in the Sunday Telegraph and the Herald Sun. “Ever since the World Cup it has just gotten worse and worse. Some of the boys have let the whole superstar thing go to their heads and they act like they are untouchable.
“What gets me is the guys that are doing this sort of thing the most are the ones running around the place and telling everyone how they do this and that for the kids and how they want to be role models.
“It’s a bloody disgrace and I’m glad that people are finally taking it a bit more seriously. If we don’t pull our heads out of the sand and be honest with ourselves, the World Cup will be a disaster.”
Whooah.
Ray Gatt, The Australian’s longtime “soccer” writer, wrote the next day that the email was a “punch that has the power to suck the breath out of the Socceroos and cause a rift in the camp with less than 12 months to the kick off of the World Cup finals in South Africa”.
He’s not too far wrong.
Something has to be done about it but Pim Verbeek, the Australia coach, is currently out of the country. The FFA likely won’t touch it. They’re acting and have been for some time like there’s no issue at all.
Nor can a rapprochement be expected to be brokered from within the playing group, given that elements in and around that group are allegedly the source of all the trouble in the first place.
It’s messy. Decidedly messy. And not good at all for a team going to the World Cup and needing every advantage it can get.
But one thing is clear. Cahill, for all that is said about him, good or bad, has done his country a big favour by publicly acknowledging there is a problem. That’s the first step in resolving it.
It’s now up to the rest of his team-mates to put their differences aside and find some real unity rather than just presenting a united front.
If they can’t do that, then God help us in South Africa.
Recommend this story.
June 26th 2009 @ 9:58am
Robbos said | June 26th 2009 @ 9:58am | Report comment
Jesse,
You have beat around the bush, are you aware of issues within the socceroos camp? Or is it just big egos at work, especially amonst the player agents trying to secure sponsorship?
You are a lot closer to the action than most of us punters, either tell us what you know or don’t feulled the fire if you are unable to.
June 26th 2009 @ 10:03am
Janex said | June 26th 2009 @ 10:03am | Report comment
This could be a bit of the “old” football lingering around the successful Socceroo group. The new football cliche’ has certainly been adminstered successfully wherever FFA fingers can directly reach. However what of the “old” football agents, how or are they on board? With the success, and profile of the national team and key players, the marketabllty increases and therefore money on endorsements and engagments obviously increase. Certainly agents ego’s could be bruised, let alone their back pockets if thier ‘man isn’t getting, in their opinion, his just deserts. Tim has acknowlegded that there is some “smoke’, I just hope it’s not an ‘old’ arsonist that is at hand, otherwise WC 2010 could go up in smoke!
June 26th 2009 @ 10:09am
Albert Ross said | June 26th 2009 @ 10:09am | Report comment
The Daily Tell-a-lie has some recent form creating emails that didn’t actually ever exist.
June 26th 2009 @ 10:10am
Millster said | June 26th 2009 @ 10:10am | Report comment
I do agree with Ben and others on the simple fact that we are now being reported on, good and bad.
And to some extent I think we football fans need to suck on a bottle of harden-up.
I very rarely watch the (NRL) footy show but last night while channel surfing by chance I stopped on the segment where Vautin was encouraging Gould to stand for NSW Origin coach again, which prompted Gould’s comments about how broken NSWRL is and what was wrong with the code, with one headline issue for him being media relations. Very interesting segment.
Now here we are in football land all bemoaning the massive attention gained by League by the media and hoping for more (…but… perhaps naively, thinking that this attention will, or should, be all positive). At the same time one of the leading figures in League, a prime subject of our media jealousy, is wishing for radical reform in his own codes media relations and naming that aspect as one of the most broken parts of his game.
I’m writing by way of observation, without a specific conclusion in mind. But my general feeling is that we have to be careful in what we wish for. As football becomes bigger and bigger we will get more media attention and it will not be good – after all scandal sells better than fairy-floss stories. There will be agendas, divisions, things exposed, fabrications, all sorts of things apart from core reporting. We as a code have to grow up awful fast and develop a frot foot strategy to deal with this – and to me ‘deal’ means a combination of accepting the good and bad of the media profile, and managing it as best we collectively can. Its an absolutely vital element in the continuation of our game’s development.
June 26th 2009 @ 10:22am
GeneralAshnak said | June 26th 2009 @ 10:22am | Report comment
I have decided why these non news items are getting such an airing. Now that the EPL is in break, the HAL hasn’t started and the Socceroos don’t have any matches you need to do something to keep the page counts ticking over. I can’t wait til we have some more actual news to talk about, because this stuff is just boring.
June 26th 2009 @ 10:23am
Realfootball said | June 26th 2009 @ 10:23am | Report comment
It was of course the Daily Tele clowns who made idiots of themselves over the alleged “Pauline Hanson” nude shots. Its a tabloid rag with the ethics of a hyena and the collective IQ of a garden slug.
June 26th 2009 @ 10:40am
Dan said | June 26th 2009 @ 10:40am | Report comment
Robbos,
“the difference being RL has some history with sex related issues, while the Cahillgate was as big a story as the Fitler drunkeness, it was a non event.”
“Cahillgate”… Please stop if you want to live past today. Honestly, it’s bad enough with the likes of channel 10 now referring to Godwin Grech as the “utegate deepthroat”. I know you may have been quoting, but still, the ludicrous overuse of the suffix “gate” by people involving any minor controversy is stupidity of the highest order.
Back on topic, I would argue that Cahill’s comments were different, rather than less bad or worse than another “drunken Freddie” story, given the Australian context. Freddie was an idiot, but he came out and said he was, while Cahill acted as if he was an untouchable and arrogantly decided he was going to “punish the media”. In a country known for tall poppy syndrome, that’s bound to piss a few people off and with Soccer’s new noteriety it stands to reason that it’ll sell a few papers now too.
“60 odd people were evicted from the SOO the other night, if that happened at a football match, it would be frontpage headlines about ’soccer fans violence’. There is an inequality in the reporting.”
To be fair, that’s a rep that soccer has brought on itself… much like league with sex scandals, soccer has such a strong history of crowd violence that it’s just one of those things that immediately generates media interest and so it is more likely to be jumped upon if it happens in that sport (also, 60 people being evicted is nothing compared the numerous DEATHS that have occured in European soccer matches over the years – that’s why there’s a microscope on fan behaviour in the game) .
June 26th 2009 @ 10:41am
Millster said | June 26th 2009 @ 10:41am | Report comment
Realfootball – such newspapers exist in every country in the world and serve a particular demographic. No point getting angry with them, they are part of the mix will remain so as long as there is a demand for what they do. We just have to get proactive and intelligent as a code.
June 26th 2009 @ 10:42am
keeper11 said | June 26th 2009 @ 10:42am | Report comment
‘ Its a tabloid rag with the ethics of a hyena and the collective IQ of a garden slug.’
..and the so-called voice of ‘global city’ sydney…..very sad…
more like redneck footy central if one judges by its local media’s attitudes..
the crux of the matter is ..
the socceroos after a rock solid , hugely succesful if unspectacular qualafying campaign earned a historic second succesive WC apperance.
-the same week all federal government on both sides fully supported the massive initiative to possibly host the worlds biggest sporting event…
overall ..a pretty big and positive week for the code one would think ??
worthy of an uplifting piece back page of not front page??
( aka 3/4 front page league propganda piece post origin on ‘mighty maroons’
but..oh no..not to the shameless agenda driven news-limited posse from the melbourne storm media arm
aka ‘the strayan’ to putrid sewer inhabited by ‘the rag’ ‘..all self-proclaimed ‘masters of their own universe’..
who ofcourse have decided all this positive news on the sockah is ‘not in their interest’;..
have rolled out one beat up, half-truths, negative spin , rumour, inuendo…ANYTHING to deflect from the positive vibe and tasrnish the team and the code at one of its finest hours…
the stench of fear from this sc*m……
June 26th 2009 @ 10:53am
Dan said | June 26th 2009 @ 10:53am | Report comment
Keeper11,
Firstly, the Telegraph is the only place you will hear their paper referred to as “the voice of sydney” – anyone with half a brain in this city doesn’t really even consider it a news paper, but rather a second rate kitty litter.
Anyway, that aside, I feel that perhaps you’re either very young or simply don’t understand how media (particularly conservative media) works. Good news almost always loses to bad news and scandal. It’s just the way it works unfortunately and it’s what has made the likes of Murdoch the rich man he is today; he’s preddled on the lowest common denominator from day 1 and he’s succeeded. His “3 S” (Sex, Scandal and Sport and in India it’s the 4 Cs – Corruption, Crime, Celebrities and Cricket) media model has permiated the whole globe. Positive stories just don’t sell that well most of the time, so it’s not so much that there’s an agenda against soccer, than simply soccer is now being given attention and thus any scandal in the game is now worthy of print.