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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.
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