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The weekend’s unedifying spat between Robbie Slater and Craig Foster around A-League coach Jim Magilton says much about football in Australia.
It says that we are still undecided about what constitutes a coach with good judement of a playing group to maximise their potential.
It says that some pundits see themselves as the defining voice of what can be loosely termed as ‘progressive football’.
It says that some people seem happy to not just open the wardrobe door a slither but to blow the door so wide open that we can’t see what was supposed to be revealed in the first place.
It says that there is sufficient critical mass of opinion for this to be one trail worth following, something that we should be thankful for as a byproduct of the ruckus.
But at the core of the Robbie Slater-Craig Foster bunfight is the contention that British coaches with little or no demonstrated track record at a high level, offer little to Australian football. As much as I listen (but don’t always agree) to Fozz, he can come across as painting with a broadstrioke, in that the interpretation of his comments incited accusations of racism at worst or football snobbery at best.
The thing with Foster though is that he does not see the footballing world through passports but through football ability. His omission of Pierre Littbarski is glaring, sure (and I add Lothar Matheus, a dominant playing figure but with a forgettable coaching record), but I think we can conclude that there are bad eggs in both ‘sides’ if you will, the sides being the stereotyped British (and antiquated according to some) style and the stereotyped possession and tactical based style of the rest. But these are stereotypes. While some have merit, others are plain wrong.
For every long ball merchant like Big Sam there exists a Terry Venables and Sir Bobby Robson, whose tenures at Camp Nou are not incidental in their outlooks.
At the opposite end of the coaching honour roll, I recall great frustration in attaining my Level 2 Vic badge in 1995 under predominantly British coaches only to learn far, far more under an Australian who did very well in Europe in the following years.
His disdain for the British way was palpable and I admit it has tainted my view of British coaches ever since. The “get the ball into the forwards’ feet now, like” approach was always furthest from my mind when coaching juniors, with possession and attacking using the core, well known principles of width and speed as first priorities.
It is a little rich though to claim that we should be accepting nothing less than the best on offer from the epicentre of football, especially with our distance in both playing and geographical terms and the youth of our national league.
The venn diagrams of those favouring British coaches and those favouring Latin/European ones do reveal a common area of just good coaches. While the approach of the proponents of both can be examined to death via titillating tabloid means, the debate has been started. Maybe that is all Foster intended, for he must have been aware of the depth of passion his piece would ignite.
As for Slater, his dark revelations of times in Tahiti, whatever they are, should be treated with the irrelevance they deserve. They were premeditated, unnecessary and of no benefit to this important debate.
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