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It’s time Sydney FC made good on their promise to become one of Asia’s biggest clubs. If ever the Sky Blues are to become a serious force, they cannot afford to get another coaching appointment wrong.
The news that Sydney FC had relieved coach Frank Farina of his duties was as predictable as it was unnecessary.
Unnecessary in the sense that chairman Scott Barlow didn’t need to sign off on a permanent deal for Farina in February 2013, before the Sky Blues had even crashed out of finals contention last season.
While it’s true that stability is sorely lacking at a club that lurches from one crisis to the next, surely Sydney would originally have been better retaining off Farina’s services on an interim basis, and using the 2013-14 off-season to commence a more thorough search to replace the departed Ian Crook?
That’s what they’ll have to do now, having more or less wasted what could be Alessandro Del Piero’s final season in a Sky Blues jersey.
Whether Del Piero stays on in a coaching capacity next season – perhaps with one of his former Juventus cohorts in tow – remains to be seen.
The mail almost two months ago was that Farina would not be retained as Sydney coach, regardless of whether the Sky Blues reached the finals.
Is it any wonder, then, that the former Brisbane Roar coach failed to inspire his team to any great heights, when all he ever received from the Sydney board was a string of mixed messages?
How is it that a team with a billionaire owner continues to err so badly when it comes to the relatively simple business of appointing a coach?
Farina, for what it’s worth, acted with nothing but dignity and decorum during his tenure, even if he was not everyone’s cup of tea – or beer.
But if the reclusive David Traktovenko is to make any kind of mark as Sydney’s owner, it’s about time he used some of his supposed football influence to appoint a genuinely world-class coach.
And he can forget conducting a ‘worldwide search’ before attempting to appoint ex-Central Coast and Vegalta Sendai coach Graham Arnold either, because word is that Arnold is being heavily sought by the Newcastle Jets.
Wouldn’t it be a public relations nightmare if Arnold ended up in Newcastle and Del Piero pulled on a rival team’s jersey next season, as could conceivably happen?
There’s a fine line between making a rushed decision and conducting due diligence, but it’s high time the Sky Blues got a critical coaching decision right.
It’s a shame to even be talking about it, in a week in which we should be celebrating the build-up to the A-League semi-finals.
Saturday’s clash between Western Sydney and a fatigued Central Coast should be a sell-out, while a big crowd is likely to turn out at Suncorp Stadium on Sunday afternoon for the showdown between table-toppers Brisbane Roar and Melbourne Victory.
Both the Mariners and Victory will be deflated by their midweek AFC Champions League results, but the reality is that all three Australian clubs at times performed impressively in this year’s competition.
Indeed, Victory were desperately unlucky not to qualify for the knock-out stage at the expense of South Korean side Jeonbuk, not least because Kosta Barbarouses should have been awarded a penalty in stoppage-time in Jeonju.
The Asian Football Confederation should not only scrutinise the poor refereeing decisions, which have blighted several Champions League fixtures this season, they should also throw the book at a Guizhou Renhe which utterly disgraced the competition by naming just three substitutes on the bench in Parramatta on Tuesday night.
At least our A-League representatives gave it a red-hot go.
So too did Frank Farina. He may have been a square peg in a round hole, but the Sydney FC board – not Farina – is responsible for that.