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He has the ability to divide opinion like few in the game in Australia, but none have ever faulted Craig Foster’s love for the Socceroos.
Foster has never been shy of an opinion, and is paid to convey his thoughts by SBS.
But the former Socceroo, capped 29 times by his country, surely let passion stand in the way of reason in his remarkable attack on Pim Verbeek in the wake of the Socceroos’ 4-0 loss to Germany.
Crushing disappointment and incredulity greeted the result in Durban.
But for those in the know, the overriding emotion was more of anger than anything else.
You only had to witness Foster’s strong words to host Les Murray and pundit Craig Johnston to see that.
Foster believes the playing group has lost confidence in Verbeek, and there was plenty in the display against the Germans to suggest he might not be far from the truth.
But Foster’s suggestion that team selection be run past a national technical committee is well offside.
Foster believes a committee, compiled of former national team captains and other esteemed minds, would never have let Verbeek put his painfully defensive 4-6-0 out on the pitch.
“When that teamsheet came out, they would have walked in and said, ‘Mate, what’s happening?’,” Foster said.
“Australia could send some captains in and sit (Verbeek) down and say ‘You justify how you’re going to approach Ghana. What’s the approach and what’s the team. If we don’t like it, we’re going to change it. And if you don’t like that, you can walk’.”
A surprised Craig Johnston – between Foster and host Les Murray – immediately highlighted Foster’s “passion and tension”.
But Foster’s rant had already stirred memories of his infamous stoush with then-Young Socceroos coach Ange Postecoglou.
When the steam stopped leaking from his ears, surely Foster doesn’t truly believe such a committee would work?
No coach would work under such a system.
Managers are hired to make the big decisions. Their careers live and die by the consequences.
Verbeek – for the first time showing the strain of pressure – has a damning stubborn streak and appears to lack the sort of nous to test the world’s best.
Unlike his predecessor Guus Hiddink, he also seems incapable of getting the best out of his selected squad. The images of Verbeek talking to a stone-cold Mark Bresciano on Tuesday needed no deciphering.
But undermining Verbeek’s responsibilities – at this stage or any – would do further harm to the Socceroos’ cause. Sacking him is incomprehensible.
Verbeek was the man charged by Football Federation Australia to guide the country through qualifying and onto the grandest of stages.
He’ll be gone soon enough for the foreign soil of Morocco, but he is here for now.
While it would take a drastic reversal of form, the Socceroos can still save their World Cup campaign.
Further muddying the waters of doubt won’t help them a jot.
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