Gold Coast sinking under the weight of Clive Palmer’s ego
Roar Guru By apaway, 20 Feb 2012 apaway is a Roar Guru
- Tagged:
- A-League, Clive Palmer, football, Gold Coast United, Miron Bleiberg
Owners need to own and let the coaches coach. It’s an adage that a lot of billionaires around the world have trouble coming to terms with when they decide to buy a football club.
The bizarre week endured by the Gold Coast United Club has ended with the inevitable resignation of coach Miron Bleiberg.
The charismatic and polarising coach was quoted as saying he felt “stripped of his dignity” after being suspended for GCU’s most recent game agains Melbourne Heart.
This after he had offered a light-hearted response to the naming of 17-year old debutant Mitch Cooper as captain of the side – an instruction that came from Palmer himself.
Palmer is an enigmatic character. Rabidly right-wing, he nonetheless supports the abolition of refugee detention centres and has called for immediate granting of visas to asylum seekers, which puts him diametrically opposed to the Liberal Party ideology. As a self-made billionaire, I just wonder if he micro-manages his mining business in the same way he has appeared to do his football club.
His comments over the weekend that the A-League is a “joke” and that rugby league is a much better game hint at a man who has got bored with his plaything.
Yet he has often threatened to sue the FFA if they try to remove his A-League license from him.
Conspiracy theorists should be firing up pretty soon that he is an NRL plant. No, I don’t believe that for a second, please don’t slam me.
Palmer’s most gracious – and canny – move in Gold Coast’s short existence was to throw open the gates last season, which resulted in 15,000 fans pouring through the turnstiles for a game, unfortunately on the same day that it poured from the heavens.
It indicated that there was indeed a potential market for the club to tap in the region.
But every decision Palmer has made since then has indicated one of two things; being a mining magnate does not qualify you necessarily to run a football club, or that Palmer has felt the need to go to war with the FFA by being as contrary and controversial as possible.
Craig Foster in his Sun Herald article felt the FFA needed to share the blame for Gold Coast’s problems, that they did not provide sufficient guidance to Palmer when handing him an A-League license.
While that may be true in some sense, Palmer has shown a tendency to eschew any guidance from the governing body, and has seemingly got himself involved in matters of the club that he is ill-equipped to deal with.
Forcing Bleiberg to name Mitch Cooper as captain was nothing more than a publicity stunt and a terrible burden to put on the boy’s shoulders. Not that I doubt Cooper’s captaincy potential. Ray Wilkins captained Chelsea as an 18 year old but he was already an established first team player by then.
However, the big question is, what was Palmer doing naming the captain in the first place? And how long has this “direct interference” with team selection been happening?
Now that Bleiberg has jumped from the clearly listing ship, we may hear more of the pressures of coaching under the eye of an owner who can’t remain hands-off.
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The Crowd Says (14) | Page 1 of Comments
Have Your Say
- Explore:
- A-League, Clive Palmer, football, Gold Coast United, Miron Bleiberg
February 20th 2012 @ 8:23am
The Cattery said | February 20th 2012 @ 8:23am | Report comment
ON Fozzy’s assertion that it’s partly the FFA’s fault for not providing guidance, well you can’t escape the conclusion that it’s a lot the FFA’s fault for handing out the license in the first place, but I’m not sure that they are at fault for not providing guidance.
GCU built a formidable team in its first two seasons, challenging for the title on both occasions. GCU was the first to recruit a high profile socceroo who was still close to his peak, in other words, GCU did a lot of good things to get off on the right foot, but at the end of the day, there just wasn’t enough local support.
February 20th 2012 @ 9:15am
Chris said | February 20th 2012 @ 9:15am | Report comment
Your second paragraph is an argument against your first.
It’s hard for the FFA to be blamed for Palmer’s bizarre behaviour. The main problem with rich owners is that they care too much about the team – Palmer’s seems to be that he a) Doesn’t understand football culture, and b) doesn’t seem to care.
The other illogical thing is that in the same interview he boasts about what a small part of his overall business GCU is, but also seems to be very worried about the stadium deal.
February 20th 2012 @ 1:51pm
apaway said | February 20th 2012 @ 1:51pm | Report comment
Nothing about Clive Palmer’s involvement with GCU has been very logical in the past few weeks.
February 20th 2012 @ 9:13am
apaway said | February 20th 2012 @ 9:13am | Report comment
All good points, Cattery, and I would assert that Palmer rejected most guidance the FFA offered. From a distance, it appears there was no strategy to engender local support, aside from early star recruitment in the hope that name value would drag supporters to the stadium.
February 20th 2012 @ 9:56am
The Cattery said | February 20th 2012 @ 9:56am | Report comment
True- perhaps too much store was placed in attracting a big name (Jason Culina) – but it was certainly big news at the time, and got a lot of media attention, in fact, GCU got stacks of media attention just before their first season – more could have been made of that.
February 20th 2012 @ 10:02am
pete4 said | February 20th 2012 @ 10:02am | Report comment
On top of that it also sounds like the Gold Coast CEO Clive Mensink does the job in his spare time or something. He’s more worried about their mining jobs than GCU
February 20th 2012 @ 10:43am
The Cattery said | February 20th 2012 @ 10:43am | Report comment
Yes, good point, there does appear to be that implication.
February 20th 2012 @ 11:12am
Mickaka said | February 20th 2012 @ 11:12am | Report comment
Get him to Adelaide and move Palmer to a weight loss camp.
February 20th 2012 @ 5:14pm
The Cattery said | February 20th 2012 @ 5:14pm | Report comment
The potential loss of two Queensland teams in successive years represents a massive lost opportunity for the FFA.
Let me explain myself.
The two biggest competitions in the land get a massive advantage from their immense popularity in the two biggest cities in the country – they basically own their respective cities, and from that, a whole lot of advantages flow.
For a while, I’ve had this theory that if either of soccer or rugby could end up owning the third largest city (and state) in the country in a similar way, then one of those codes could start generating similar advantages for themelves.
Ignore for one second the fact that that would ultimately mean moving the head office of the governing body from Sydney to Brisbane, but for a short while, the FFA was well on the way to establishing a firm footing in Queensland to the extent where the A-League could have become the biggest comp in that state, and getting the same advantages that the AFL gets in Victoria and League gets in NSW.
The A-League had access to the best rectangular stadium in the land, and at one point had 3 teams in Queensland, and only last season had attracted 50,000 to an A-League grand final.
Get another SE Queensland team into the mix, and all of a sudden, you are well on the way to making Brisbane and Queensland yours.
But that opportunity is now lost, and will probably never return.
Rugby is now in the box seat, with the successful Reds (whose membership numbers are going through the roof and are the highest in Australia), and it too having access to the same rectangular stadium. With talk never far away about SANZA having six teams apiece in the Super Rugby comp, one can imagine the Gold Coast would be a good chance of getting that license, and with Queensland already one of two strong rugby states, then rugby is well on the way to grabbing the third largest city and state in Australia, and get those advantages currently available to the AFL and NRL.
February 21st 2012 @ 11:25am
trent said | February 21st 2012 @ 11:25am | Report comment
AFL has also taken a hold in Queensland. I think that’s part of the reason the Victory have done well – rugby hasn’t taken off in Victoria the same way AFL has in QLD.
In Victoria the A-League is number two behind AFL. In QLD (and NSW) it’s no.4 behind NRL, Super Ruigby and AFL. South Australia is similar to Victoria – even more so as there are no rugby teams of either variety in Adelaide.
February 21st 2012 @ 12:46pm
apaway said | February 21st 2012 @ 12:46pm | Report comment
Good theory Cattery, but I wonder whether it might work better by targetting Adelaide.
February 20th 2012 @ 5:50pm
futbanous said | February 20th 2012 @ 5:50pm | Report comment
The Cattery
Massive difference between Rugby & football in QLD. Rugby has always had a strong traditional support. Crowds particularly for Internationals used to fill Ballymore.
Football never has had a real professional presence even in the NSL heyday of Brisbane Lions & Brisbane City. Lions was lucky to pull 3000 tops & City 4000. Internationals if we were ever lucky enough to get them drew crowds generally under 10,000.
To expect plonking 3 teams in the state to raise the level of football to that of NRL in Sydney or AFL in Melbourne is pie in the sky stuff.
I see your point, but it aint going to happen.
You build strength from a strong starting base. Rugby already had it ,football didn’t in terms of crowd support.
For any new teams to be introduced into QLD the Roar had to have established concrete foundations as a professional football club & pull reasonable crowds consistently. Same for the Socceroos.
The Roar are only know starting to put down solid foundations & the Socceroos still need a few more games yet to get Queenslanders used to the idea of attending Association football matches in numbers.
The whole GCU/NQF expansion was premature in an underdeveloped professional football market in QLD.
February 20th 2012 @ 5:59pm
The Cattery said | February 20th 2012 @ 5:59pm | Report comment
futbanous
you’re probably right, then rugby looks well placed to increase its presence in Queensland, and not only that, to challenge League as the dominant code in that state..
February 21st 2012 @ 8:27am
crashy said | February 21st 2012 @ 8:27am | Report comment
Love the pun in the headline. The bloke seriously needs to lose a lot of weight or it won’t be just gcu with an uncertain future…
Cat- the massive strides that the QLD reds have achieved in qld is fantastic but I doubt it will overtake league anytine soon in terms of popularity. Although 30,000 members this year will secure the code’s financial future for many years to come.