Australia a melting pot of football cultures

Sorry but I cringe when I see on field players playing the ball with their hands that's not Football but a team game using hands.. You might want to have another go to find a name for it..

We are a melting pot alrights and this enhances/challenges many aspects of our society and culture. Football is not immune from this nor should it be. Great article - good point, well communicated.

Johnno -Space does not allow me to FULLY answer your questions for the history of football tactical development has been covered in many excellent publications &, so long & diverse is that trail of development, it takes a book to cover it in the proper manner. I will try briefly Firstly it has to be accepted that organised football as we know it today came out of England. With huge "demand" caused by the success of their industrial revolution ,businesses began to take their manufacturing processes to where the raw materials were sourced, & labour was plentiful & cheap.Hence we still have teams in Brazil called Newell's Old Boys, teams started by these same businesses to keep their "labour" happy. The "tactical revolution" was started by "thinkers" who, with the improving fitness of participants, began to analyse how the game could be improved by altering the nominal 1-2-3-5 formation used worldwide. Also in the late 20's & early 30's the study of workplaces & human movement in those workplaces was a comparatively new science (greatly accelerated by the demands of World War 2.) Combine these 2 factors and the name Hugo Meisl appears in Austria, where ,in conjunction with a "rebel" English coach called Hogan, they developed a new style for the game to be played over a number of years. Hogan always said the their style was based on the "on the ground,short passing game in triangles" as practised by the Scottish team of the mid 20's.Hogan moved on to Hungary to spread the "gospel" while Meisl managed the pre-war Austrian "Wunderteam". Meisl was also a student of human movement & developed a THEORY that if it were possible to get 10 players with exactly the same,mental,physical,& skill level he could cut a players work load by half. How you may ask? He theorised that if a "right back" carried the ball to the "right half position" before passing he should stay there and the team would simply "whirl" keeping the original team shape intact.This THEORY became known by various names,the" Meisl Wheel","the Viennese Whirl", & it is widely thought his brother Willy ,a noted post-war football journalist, may have described Dutch football development as the "Dutch Whirl" in the late 60's. But please note Hugo Meisl always said it was simply a THEORY for getting the 10 players with the required attributes was highly improbable,if not impossible. However there is a train of thought that behind all the coaching derivatives of the last 70 years Meisl's Theory is still referred to when deciding on a formation to best interpret and perform a coaches demands.All theories are actually based on how to convert defence into attack as quickly & efficiently as possible & vice versa so maybe yet we will see a team that can "whirl" . Hope this helps. Cheers jb

We did develop our own Australian Football style....in 1859. Have a league for it and everything. Sorry couldnt resist. Carry on. Mods feel free to delete.

And yet you'd hardly say NZ played beautiful football! The basic point is that coaches make the best use of the resources at their disposal. Most teams don't have a Xavi, Iniesta, so they have to fit the tactics and plan to what they have available. No-one doubts that trying to develp youngsters with good technique and tactical awareness is the right way forward, but lets get rid of the labels we try to stick on players and coaches - they are individuals and don't necessarily conform to what country they come from. Johnno, you rightly point out that Cassio and Fred have been great acquisitions for the A League, Flores too, but what about Cleberson, Jardel, George, Claudinho. All complete duds. You can't stick labels on people because of where they are born. It might have an impact, but equally it might not. Steve McClaren won more trophies in England than Luiz Felipe Scolari. Does that make Scolari a poor coach and McClaren great?

Jb the top sentence i meant you are one of the stronger contributors on the sport of football, i made grammar error in opening sentence , apologies.

well thats 2 popular examples of teams winning when they maybe shouldn't have. Well it happens, can't deny that. Who would try to. But in the end good football, maybe 'beautiful' has too much baggage gives you success and it creates the player that australia eventually want to have...So Italy won out of luck, and not because of some sophisticated, tactically-strong at the time, possession-based football, well thats new to me! French football is still strong, lyon and marseille are both still in ucl, and they still produce technically fantastic players.And with Verbeek you can't possibly start hating on the great dutch coaching methodologies due to Pimbo.

Thanks Jb I always value your compliments, and you are one of the stronger contributors to the sport of soccer than that comment on football. Your right about defence being a state of mind concept, very true and has to be promoted into junior footballers to develop as they will have to use that frame of mind in defence at senior level. Roy keane and Vinny Grella, were very good at doing what you said in midfield defending, otherwise known as pressing same thing. Grella got a lot of possession that way for the soccer's in world cup 2006. You have clear knowledge on the sport and it shows, knowledge is power and we see that here, a bit like the difference in coaching knowlege and power, with Hiddink in charge of the soccer's over Farina or Arnold when they had there turns as national head coach. Some good examples you use with team formations, they could of been watching any of those great teams, the Hungary team of 1954 is one of soccer great tradegies that they never won , what a complete team they had. Tell me if you have time a few quick questions. Is Barcelona's 2010 or 2012 team do they play similar to dutch total football or very different. And was the brazil team of 82 did they have weak defensive unit. Were they too obsessed in playing this so called beautiful football concept whatever that truly means. And do you think Australian in 2012 and beyond, need to utilise south american coaching and ideas in football more in Australia. I think South AMerican football tactics seem under valued here, but we use the S.american players a lot as imports in the A-league, : Fred, and Casssio. I loved Fred at the Victory, and that player who played for Adelaide who signed a big contract in China was good to the guy form Argentina. Only coach I can think of that was from south america in Australia was, former socceroos coach Raul Blanco. He coached the sydney 2000 Olympics team as well. He helped as an assistant to NZ All Whites in 2009 World cup qualification VS Bahrain, and by all reports helped Ricky Herbert a lot with tactics.

Johnno -"Defence" is not a line of players playing in an organised manner with the express purpose of stopping the other team scoring On the contrary "defence" is the opposite of "attack" and is actually a "frame of mind" that should be bred into players at a young age. To understand this it should be remembered attack cannot occur if the ball is not in the team's possession, so when a central striker is tackled and loses that possession, even in his front third, he must immediately start to think and act like a defender. That means he should pick the nearest opponent and get "ball side" of him, thereby cutting down the options for the opposition player who is now on the ball and is attempting to build an" attack". Some pundits don't refer to this as "defending" but prefer the word "pressing" but they are one and the same thing. Now to bring you up to date I would like to quote some newspaper reports and let you try and work out who they are talking about. "They were on the move all the time and we could hardly keep up with them" "They interchanged positions to the extent that the left winger would appear on the right and vice versa.I have never seen football played like that.It was a Chinese puzzle trying to follow the players from their "starting positions". They simply wandered all over the field, but strangely, never got in each others way" Who had they been watching???? ,Barcelona 2010, Ajax 1974, Real Madrid 1960, Brazil 1958 or Hungary 1954.????? No they had been playing against the touring Moscow Dynamo team that toured Britain undefeated in 1945.???? Makes you wonder doesn't it ?????. By the way, a good comment, keep up the good work . jb

Stephen smith Good points you make. To me all team sports, 99% of the defence is the basis of winning not attack in any sport or this beautiful game nonsense too. You need to have a fortress like defence to win in team sports, if you don't have your defence in order how can you attack, if your defence eis flaky or all over the place, like an economy that overspends beyonds it's means and risky investments and doesn't save. In all team sports i can just about think off defence was the platform for all wins not attack. The All blacks 2011 world cup win Australia 1991 99 world cup wins England rugby 2003 win The great german euro and world cup wins in soccer Italy as you said in 2006 and greece euro 2004, and all the other great Italian teams had ruthless fortress defence. Same in basetball teams have to rebound and defend(scott pippin, roman, micheal jordan all great defenders and rebounders) Great cricketers steve waugh, alan border. If your team does not have fortress like defence you can not get possession, hence this beautiful game nonsense it is mythical in my opinion. And Barcelona they can defend and they play i don't know if it is dutch total football, or catalyn football, or barcelona football but they can defend. Guss hiddinks soccer's were built on fortress like defence . Hiddink's teams don't score many but they don't concede many either (eg only concede 1 goal in 2legs vs chelsea 2009) Jose Morinho the special one he doesn't concede almost any goals in big matches. Brazil world cup win 58,62,70, i don't know how good there defence was. 82 team played beautiful football at all costs and as exciting and as inspiring as it was ended up short changed and lost the world cup 82 , to a ruthless Italy team who knocked them out. Uruguay teams have great defence too. Man united have had great defenders over the year in defence and midfield(roy keen, ferdidand, neville brothers, goalkeeper schmical)

Oh yeah? What about Greece winning Euros in 2004? What about Italy 2006 - did they play "beautiful" football to win the World Cup? There are different ways to win. At the moment, barca is in vogue, and rightly so, they are brilliant. But (as Foster constantly tells us) football evolves and teams will find a way to beat them. A few years ago, he was telling us that French football was the best thign ever. He's gone strangely quiet on that one. The same with the wonderful "Dutch coaching system' that made him look a complete arse when Verbeek played route one.

I'm sick to death about people bagging foz for wanting australia to be more iike spain. It's all just being idealistic!! We aren't going to become spain, we probably never could, but the important thing is to pull out the best elements of spain. The movement, the intelligence, the technique etc. Good brand/intelligent football creates better footballers- long ball/ simplistic football creatse technically inept and tactically niave players. Good football gets you results, over time it gets you success, Look at the teams over the last 5-6 years for example that have won anything (youth, world cup) its all about possession, tactics, sophisticated football. Being able to hold the ball, keep possession etc etc. Kossie talks of equipping players to choose, in the past we haven't really given them that choice.

I completely agree. When I was in local rep teams back in the 1990s, our regional Director of Coaching was a Scot, and he always said that you need to make the football your best mate - sleep with it beside your pillow, kick it around all the time, that sort of thing. He declared that in Scotland that was what he was told as a wee lad - the ball is your best friend, when everyone else lets you down, you still have a football, and you should cherish it and learn to use it properly. Now, if that's not a clear statement about learning technique and ball skills, I don't know what is. And he was Scottish. The trouble with Fozz is that he is a bit too simplistic in his arguments. I have known heaps of Poms and Scots and Irishmen for that matter, who had wonderful technique, loved nothing more than to put the ball on the deck and pass the opposition to pieces. Long balls? Only as a last resort. He does make some great points, and he does advocate a style of football that is highly technical and pleasing on the eye, but I think he needs to take a cold shower before he writes his articles about the wonders of Barcelona and "tiki taka" and the evils of "British" football. Maybe if he did that he might find that there are more ways to skin a cat than just the Catalan way.

I forgot to mention the A.C.Nations is on the Eurosport channel ,replays and live .

And why wouldn't you be? Their performance in that final was even more disgraceful than Argentina's in 1990!!!

Its called the "World Game" Fifa has 208 or so member nations. I doubt whether there are 208 different cultural styles of football. So I dont think we should get too hung up on cultural style,the Aussie way of playing the game & so on based on Spanish /Dutch/British or whatever style First & biggest priority for this country is to develop players who are comfortable with a ball at their feet. Can we honestly say that theres too many Australian players in the A-League who have that quality. Seems the foreigners far outweigh the Aussies(despite smaller numbers of players) in that respect. It has always been so & will remain so,no matter the tactics developed or the culture involved,the balance between that feel for the ball & physicality. Much of that feel for the ball comes from a different sporting culture admittedly,where football reigns supreme,so we can only replicate it by simulating those conditions. The insinuation that England has some sort of cultural wall blocking the development of players like Messi is nonsense. The knowledge surrounding the feel of the ball is as English as perverted politicians with an eye to spy. Take this story about Albert Quixall a player in the fifties . .http://www.kitcarsonfootball.com/news/lorem-ipsum-is-simply-dummy-text-of-the-printing Albert in the fifties states "make the ball your pal". Perhaps the FFA should adopt that in an Australian sense to "make the ball your mate" & advertise the game at Junior level accordingly. Thats where it starts. If you have players with these skills, tactics etc are easier followed. Pointless coaching about passing or running into space to receive etc if you cant control the ball. Not only control it but control without thinking so the mind is freed up to be creative. Of course it goes without saying that physicality,courage are also requirements. Albert apparently according to many pundits of the day "had no bottle" something Messi has in abundance. Not easy I know the combination of bottle & making the ball your mate,but at least you can make the latter the first priority & theres no culture involved.

Good article. We know who we are, and our diversity is only outmatched by our similarity.

JB----if we are to develop our own Australian Football style let's hope our Australian managers train and coach all of our goal-keepers to play out from the back as sweepers----instead of hoofing it up the guts like half of our keepers now do. I think that the Roar's keeper (Theo) is starting to look more like an European ball playing sweeper than a typical English goal-keeper hoofing up the guts. Love to see Miron start this now with GCU's young Jerrad Tyson.

John Good article and love the line: "Craig Foster I believe has a good understanding of the game however, he acts like a crazed zealot who preaches like an evangelical pastor on homosexuality. This is also tinged with a side of bitterness against anyone who dares question him. " My two bobs worth everyone is moving and has been moving towards a more technical style of play for years now.... The thing we lack the most is coaches in local park teams who know how to prepare and coach teams... its not for not knowing what they should be doing its because they and most at the club don't know how... When you have the number of teams we have at park level it is not an easy problem to solve... appreciation on how to coach and prepare teams is mainly in the hands of well meaning folk trying to do the right thing who have no idea ... Constant articles about the style of certain countries is so off target its not funny .... this is why having at least one FTA game per week I think is essential in the next media deal as park coaches and official's could start to be shown shape and touch... they want the knowledge but there is no simple / cheap way to do it...

Football in Australia is very much like the other football codes here, it is the big, physical kids that excel. I was at the SFC youth game the other day and there is a kid called Hagi Gligor who must be about 5ft3. His ball skills were phenomonal but he has also had to adapt to be able to hold off all the big boofy blokes who just try and knock him off the ball, he uses his body position and his low centre of gravity to hold them off and then beats them with some sweet skills, he also takes the puss out of them by continually stealing the ball off them in defence rather than forcefully disspossesing them. My point, Australian football will become a mix of that, physical and skillful. Nick Carle is another good example, some of the punishment he takes while still playing skillful football is awesome.