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It was announced last week that Ange Postecoglou would indeed be stepping down after the Socceroos’ 2018 World Cup campaign ends, whether that’s before the tournament proper, or after.
It was expected, really, that Postecoglou would see out his contract and turn towards new, exciting pastures. Postecoglou has taken Australia as far as they can go in Asia, winning the Asian Cup on home soil. If they qualify, an encouraging World Cup group stage effort in Russia might be a perfect send off.
Of course, with a crunch tie against Saudi Arabia throbbing in the forefront of the national sporting mind, it seems a little premature to be assessing candidates to replace Ange. But the end of his reign, recently made concrete, has nonetheless teased out musings of the sort, and of the options available, Tony Popovic might be the best.
Well, certainly he would have been the leading candidate a year ago. At that point, with the Wanderers cantering to second on the league table, he was by far the most experienced and successful Australian manager in the top three. He would go on to take his team to a grand final, and memories of his stunning 2014 Asian Champions League triumph hadn’t completely faded.
He was young, ambitious, and a keen tactician. He had been a stalwart of the national side himself, with 58 caps, even wringing out a rewarding final flex in his international career, involved in the golden 2006 qualification ties against Uruguay, as well as completing an injury-hit stint at the subsequent World Cup in Germany. He spent a decade playing club football overseas, in Japan, England and Qatar. The gravitas, the reputation, the success as a manager, both domestically and on the continent; it was all there.
Since then, however, Graham Arnold has masterminded one of the greatest A-League regular season campaigns in history, and his team looks set to roll through the finals. Memories of Arnold’s floundering year at the helm of the Socceroos, while not eclipsed totally by this season’s success – as well as his title with the Mariners – have at least been faded slightly.
This is especially as the eras that followed his – which might be best summed up as the ‘very poor man’s Guus’ years – also left a sour taste by their conclusions. If Sydney complete a bullocking premiership/championship double this season, Graham Arnold may well be the front-runner for the Socceroos gig.
But this would be to succumb to recency bias, and to be blind to the details; what has been most worthy of praise about Sydney and Arnold’s season, by and large, are the aspects intrinsic to league campaigns, not international tournaments. Primarily, the squad construction has been stellar, with Milos Ninkovic and Filip Holosko improving markedly on tough maiden seasons in 2015-16, as well as the key new additions; Josh Brillante, Michael Zullo, Bobo, Alex Wilkinson and Danny Vukovic.
This is something national team managers cannot rely on, to graze on transfers to fill holes; they must source only from a limited pool, and when players endure extended periods of poor form for the Socceroos, the pressure to drop them is much greater, especially if in the midst of a qualifying campaign. Arnold has made clear that, given the time and funds, he can use the transfer period to turn a callow, tepid squad into the league’s most impressive.
Popovic, almost consistently, has displayed an inability to do the same at the Wanderers, but this might actually boost his chances of succeeding at national level. Wild fluctuations in form and playing staff, a list of acutely disappointing marquees – Federico Piovaccari, anyone? – these are the things that Wanderers fans have to endure every season.
This season, a lack of goals afflicted the Wanderers like a plague, until Popovic sourced from within, belatedly giving Brendan Santalab a consistent run of starts, and promoting Lachlan Scott from the youth team. While a certain amount of deserved criticism has been loaded onto Popovic for the time it took to do this, his eventual resourcefulness and persistence is are assets that will be even more valuable at national level.
Popovic and the Wanderers admirably resisted the calls to sign some mystery marquee striker in January – as much as it would have been a pleasure to see Dimitar Berbatov in the league – and secured the last finals spot with time to spare.
In short, the most glaring of Popovic’s weaknesses as a club manager could be turned alchemically into his biggest strength as a national manager. This is not to say that Popovic doesn’t also possess strengths that would translate well too. National teams must, generally speaking, be more defensively solid than they are offensively capable.
The most recent Euros – and Portugal’s grind to the crown – was evidence of that, and expanded tournaments with more entrants will only promote this mindset, when advancement from the group stage might hypothetically be secured with more draws than wins.
Popovic, while his team were struggling in front of goal this season, kept them tight at the back, with only Sydney FC and the Melbourne Victory with a better goals-against tally. The Wanderers have, by some margin, drawn the most matches in the league this season, and have only conceded three or more goals on three occasions this season, the same amount as the Victory.
The Wanderers lost 3-2 to FC Seoul on Tuesday, and their ACL campaign looks likely to end with the group stage. A very soft penalty decision added insult to the injury of Lee Seok Hyun’s howitzer of an opener, and the Wanderers were never really allowed back into the game, in spite of their two consolation goals. It must also be noted that they have conceded more goals in this year’s ACL than any other team, a situation worlds away from their parsimonious trudge to the title three years ago.
Unless they can do something in the A-League finals that no team has ever done from sixth position, this season will likely peter out for Popovic, a thoroughly mediocre year. Next season might be a raucous success, or another disappointment; this is the eternal fog that never lifts for the Wanderers, obscuring the future.
The narrative may have changed by the time Ange walks away from the Roos. But as it stands, with the Wanderers struggling, and cast in the shadow of their neighbours, we mustn’t let it completely cloud Popovic’s credentials.