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Australian captain Mark Viduka (9) competes for the ball with Sotirios Kyrgiakos of Greece. AP Photo/Mark Baker
Stability. It’s what Mark Viduka, as captain, gave the unwieldy yellow submarine that was the Socceroos’ 2006 World Cup campaign. The team was built around him. The players looked up to him. He was the funnel through which every sortie, every sequence of attacking intent, would pass.
Instability. It’s what Mark Viduka, as castaway, is now giving the nuclear-armed U-Boat that is the Socceroos’ tilt at South Africa 2010.
The team is being asked to exist and function in isolation from him yet mindful that he could step in any minute and alter the chemistry that Pim Verbeek has worked so hard to create.
Viduka is now less a committed national-team footballer and more like a reluctant, avaricious Hollywood star distancing himself from a “project”.
And Verbeek is letting him call the shots.
No man should be above the national team. Harry Kewell used to be, but he pulled his head in and worked hard in establishing his credentials as a team man. Now Viduka is making the same mistake – and he will come to regret it, whether or not he so decides to out his hand up for Verbeek’s selection for the upcoming World Cup qualifiers.
Yes, he’s had a tough season. Yes, he’s just seen his team relegated from the English Premier League. Yes, he’s getting on in the tooth.
But so what?
Being a Socceroo shouldn’t be an arrangement of convenience. It should be a calling. A duty. A conjugal bond that never dies.
When I interviewed Dukes for a magazine story before the 2006 World Cup, I wrote fulsomely in support of him, apropos of the topic of his choosing to play for Australia over Croatia: “He’s pointedly and repeatedly declared his allegiance to Australia and backed up words with action. He’s refused to yield to his employers in club Vs country disputes. He’s one of the few Socceroos to have played at all levels for Australia: under-17, under-20, Olympic and senior level. Of others in the current first XI, his length of service has only been bettered by Mark Schwarzer and Tony Vidmar… in Viduka, Australia has a unique footballer – a player with the power and presence of a traditional striker but with the finesse and touch of a midfielder. A player who has never once misplaced his patriotism.”
Mark even told me: “I love Australia and I love playing with the boys for my country. When I was a young boy, my only goal was to play for Australia, and that was that. There was nothing else… Australia is perfect. You realise how lucky we are when you’re not there.”
So what’s changed?
Clearly he’s grown up. Clearly he’s over the travel. Clearly he wants to be with his wife and kids. Maybe, just maybe, he’s lost some of the love of playing that turned him on to football in the first place.
So why, then, do we need him?
Well, to put it bluntly, there’s no one else to replace him, even if he is disheartened and doesn’t have his mind completely on the job.
Verbeek won’t pick Richard Porta, so we won’t get to see how good he really is. The others – Bruce Djite, Scott McDonald and Josh Kennedy – all have their limitations or aren’t being played to their strengths.
But is a hesitant, uncommitted Viduka a good thing for the Socceroos?
My view is it is not and the constant will-he won’t-he tango that he’s playing with Verbeek is ultimately deleterious to the cause of qualifying for the World Cup, not least the fact that should he so choose to stump in South Africa he will take someone’s spot who put in for the cause when it mattered.
Good for team harmony? Not by a long shot. Good for our chances of success? We’ll have to wait and see.
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