Holger Osieck is bringing a smile to Australian football

Holding court as coach of a national football team, when every word and nuance is heavily scrutinised, isn’t easy in your native tongue, let alone a second language.

Holger Osieck is making a pretty fair fist of it and exhibiting linguistic flights of fancy that are bringing a smile even to the face of soccer hard heads.

Fourteen months have passed since the German was introduced as Pim Verbeek’s successor, when the first question on everyone’s lips was “Holger who?” and the second was “how do you pronounce his surname?”

Now “Ozi, Ozi, Ozi” has them chuckling, if not exactly rolling, in the aisles, with his homespun humour and wisdom.

And himself, too, for he is among his most appreciative audience.

Asked by journalists how he would cope with the absence of stars like Harry Kewell and Brett Emerton from this week’s World Cup qualifier against Oman, Osieck replied: “I can only dance with the girls that are in the room.”

It got a good laugh and an even bigger one when he trotted it out again at Football Federation Australia’s big awards night in Sydney.

Discussing the performances of Kewell and Emerton in their A-League season opener, he said their quality was plain for everyone to see and for him to comment would be like “carrying owls to Athens”, or wisdom to the home of the philosophers.

A bit like “coals to Newcastle”, but with a certain Teutonic bent.

Ahead of the warm-up match against Malaysia in Canberra, he said that what he told players and what was in their conscious minds was sometimes “two different pairs of shoes”.

A similar mental thread showed when asked about his hopes for the Oman match.

“What you hope for and what will happen,” he said, “are two different pairs of shoes.”

Asked by an Omani journalist to name his key players, he said he had 11 key players.

Asked if any selection surprises were likely, he replied: “To me there is never a surprise because I am always convinced of what I am doing.”
Appraising the 5-0 win over Malaysia: “When you play well, the opposition were weak. When you play poorly it was the coach. These are the two options, so what can I say?”

Osieck uses humour to advantage, but he is also a plain talker who knows when to be serious.

He is busy building a squad that can cope with setbacks and injuries to star players, a team that plays patiently out from defence.

He is looking for “football players”, meaning complete players who combine individual talent with tactical adaptability and the psychological strength to bounce back from adversity.

He has been a big promoter of the A-League, saying he couldn’t care where a player earns his living as long as he is good enough to play for Australia.

It’s a far cry from Pim Verbeek’s Aussie-phobia.

Osieck is firm in his own convictions and decisions but pragmatic and wise enough to know when to relent.

He could have, for example, insisted on Kewell and Emerton joining the squad to play Malaysia and Oman, in the process depriving the A-League of a blockbuster start.

Citing their lack of match fitness and preoccupation with settling back into their native land, he overlooked both.

Bigger occasions will arise when he really needs to press his point.

Osieck has made a bright start to his Socceroo career, with a healthy win-loss record, second place in the Asian Cup and moving well on the way to qualification for the 2014 World Cup.

He has done so by picking players on form, not reputation.

Thus Emerton was not chosen for the last Asian Cup final.

He was suspended out of a quarter-final and his replacement Matt McKay was playing too well to drop.

Similarly Tim Cahill was overlooked recently in the Middle East.

Telling big stars they’re not playing is never easy, but Osieck has adopted honesty as the best policy.

He takes players aside and explains his thinking, keeping them in the decision-making loop.

“The least I can do is show respect to the players in the way that I’m talking to them and giving them information,” Osieck explains.

“If somebody thinks that’s not appropriate, I don’t know, but there are a lot of colleagues of mine who are very different.

“They just write the names of the team on the wall on the whiteboard, then go home.

“The players who are ready to go into camp on the weekend … their name is not on the wall, they go home.

“Nobody tells them. That is disrespectful.”

Osieck knows only too well how unforgiving and ruthless football can be at the top and he maintains a sense of humour about that, too.

When a journalist fell out of a difficult-to-control, caster-wheeled chair at the start of a recent media conference at FFA headquarters, Osieck observed: “That’s a coach’s chair.”