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Melbourne Victory's Kevin Muscat is warned by the referee after a tackle in the A-League.
There is no denying the fact that Melbourne Victory captain Kevin Muscat’s tackle on Adrian Zahra was excessive; the player and club have admitted as much and have not argued strenuously against the lengthy eight-match ban handed out.
One issue that is of concern is the fact that the fallout from the tackle has been taken up as an opportunity to assault the very integrity and culture of Melbourne Victory as a whole from certain quarters.
One suspects that the length of the ban is conveniently timed to try and colour Muscat’s legacy, ensuring that his last A-League game is remembered as an act of “thuggish brutality” and by extension his entire A-League stint flavoured by a tinge of ignominy.
I, for one, hope that Muscat takes the field for the upcoming Asian Champions League campaign and gets the warm sending off he deserves.
There are times when perhaps Muscat has been over the top and treaded a fine line, but he has done the A-League a service by coming back to help launch the league from its inception, be a player opposition fans love to hate, and hence stimulate interest, and, of course, lead Melbourne Victory to two Championships and Premierships (one of the enduring images of Muscat will be holding aloft two Championship trophies).
The latest Muscat incident has given certain people the opportunity to “stick the boot in” to Melbourne Victory as a whole and give vent to festering resentment. Amongst some fan articles on The Roar, one example I can think of is the latest opinion piece by Jesse Fink, who urges that it is time for the A-League’s most successful coach to go. Fink is trying to rewrite history through some of his simplistic and ignorant assertions.
As a Victory fan, I have been frustrated by some of Merrick’s tactics at times, and in seasons one and three there was known to be a clamour for Merrick’s removal in the stands. But the truth of the matter is that Melbourne have played some of the competition’s most attractive football over the years – Alessandro, Fred, Hernandez et al have been good value for the league, they were never brought in to facilitate “long ball” football. Their cultured and classy brand of football is hardly an advertisement of Glasgow inspired football thuggery.
Speaking of “casualties of young players,” Melbourne Victory have given plenty of opportunities to youngsters since the club’s inception – some like Kristian Sarkies and Evan Berger have not quite made it, but going by Robbie Kruse’s excellent performance on Uzbekistan and the facilitation of Mitchell Langerak to Dortmund, Victory have played their part in ensuring there is hope for Australia’s future.
Adelaide’s much vaunted success under Aurelio Vidmar, while positive for the A-League, was built on a brand of defensive counter attacking football and 1-0 wins. That’s without going into the outburst of Ross Aloisi and other Adelaide players following their loss in the season two grand final, which hardly makes them the paragon that every A-League team should aspire to, as Fink tries to assert.
Similarly, the much lauded Vitislav Lavicka of the 2009/2010 season has been shown up as not being quite what certain media pundits thought he was.
One statistic they neglected to mention was that it was not until very late against Newcastle Jets in the Premiership winning season that Sydney actually managed a come-from-behind win. The significant number of one-goal victories hardly tells a story of Sydney systematically playing other teams off the park, despite being “streets ahead” in the tactical and technical sophistication.
Then of course there is the notion of the “fans” being just as bad. Similar to Muscat, there are certain notions of all the problems of the A-League off the park being attributed to the fact that Melbourne Victory have “bad and sinister” people following them.
This is simplistic and only creates further problems. As a Victory fan I’ll readily admit that the actions of some people who also follow the team have been completely inappropriate and have contributed to problems. It is also fair to say that fans of other clubs have been guilty of similar indiscretions, but the amount of bad publicity is of a differing degree and the notion of Melbourne fans as the team with the “reputation” who are to blame for all the fan trouble has been able to become perpetuated.
It needs to be remembered in certain quarters that without Victory’s success there would have been a much more pessimistic outlook for the A-League in general, with three high attendance grand finals at the Docklands Stadium covering up the A-League cracks.
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