Gold Coast United club chairman Clive Palmer (right) and head coach Miron Bleiberg speak at a press conference at Skilled Park on the Gold Coast. AAP Image/Laine Clark
Watching the Adelaide Vs Newcastle game, it was interesting to hear Mark Bosnich say that Miron Bleiberg is a character and that we need him in the A-League. Do we really?
Gold Coast United woefully underperformed last year. In the lead up to the season, all the talk was about how good their squad was. By the end of the season, they staggered over the line, with the toys long gone from the pram.
The a-league’s self proclaimed glamour club failed in every aspect last year. The Wayne’s World 2 line of “if you book them, they will come” was ultimately found to be untrue. A team of champions is not a champion team, as real Madrid have been proving for the last decade. You simply cannot chuck a bunch of great players out on the pitch and hope for the best.
And the blame lies squarely at the feet of Miron Bleiberg.
He is both the Manager and Director of Football, meaning that not only was he responsible for the match day tactics and day-to-day training of the squad, but he was responsible for the recruitment and the management of the squad. For the side to struggle so badly reflects poorly on him two fold.
What the a-league really needs is quality coaches, who will bring technical expertise and be humble in nature. These are the people who will progress the game. Just because he shoots his mouth off, doesn’t make him a character. If this were the case, then Aurelio Vidmar and Branko Čulina have done a much better job of being “characters”.
Australians won’t – and never have – warm to people with a high opinion of themselves, especially when they don’t have the record to back it up. A quick flick through Miron Bleiberg’s CV shows that his record leaves a lot to be desired.
A good manager would have used the resources provided by geography and Clive Palmer to build a squad with enough depth to last a season, with flair and defensive prowess in equal measures, say the right things to the cameras and grow the club and the game.
The stadium at Robina is brand new and one of the best in the country, as well as a billionaire owner in a booming region. The Gold Coast is the fastest growing area in the country with a predominantly European migrant driven population.
Everything about Gold Coast United would suggest that it should be the strongest, most successful club in the A-League. It was given to Miron Bleiberg on a platter, and yet, he was overshadowed by Vítězslav Lavička, as well as the unfashionable Ernie Merrick and Ricki Herbert.
All Miron Bleiberg achieved last year, with his ridiculous tan, naff dress sense, love of the sound of his own voice and magnetic attraction to a TV camera, was to become the a-league’s Phil Brown.
And no football league in the world has a need for that.
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