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As soon as the euphoria subsided, the analysis began. Which exhibition match better served Australian football – Manchester United v the A-League All Stars, or Liverpool v Melbourne Victory?
Such is the nature of football in this country that even in the off-season, fans have their thinking caps firmly on.
The answer, if some of the more recent commentary is to be believed, is the latter – Liverpool’s first ever game on Australian soil, in front of more than 95,000 fans at the MCG.
Despite the unprecedented swathe of publicity United’s visit brought along there was something special about that Wednesday night in Melbourne.
And, conversely, there was something missing on the Saturday night prior in Sydney.
What, exactly? Good question. There’s a few answers. Top of the agenda is, of course, You’ll Never Walk Alone, the song which left far more of an impression than anything the 90 minutes might have thrown up.
The hair-raising rendition of Liverpool’s anthem set the tone for a very special evening, one that the supporters on hand will never forget. Many of them treated their first up-close encounter with Liverpool like a religious experience.
Combine that virgin passion with the honour of gracing the MCG – a venue with far more character than the concrete monstrosity ANZ Stadium – and you can understand why it felt so different to what came before.
But that feeling didn’t last for long in Melbourne. Truth be told, as soon as YNWA finished up, the atmosphere wasn’t all that different to the one at Homebush.
There were probably as many Victory shirts at both venues.
It helped that Melbourne was far more cohesive than the slapdash, third-choice A-League All Stars who took on the English champions. But that’s to be expected from a club side, even if they were perhaps equally depleted.
That contrast in performances doesn’t take away from the All Stars concept. It’s one that should be persisted with, despite it copping a few pretty significant whacks from some of the game’s most important voices in Australia.
Nor did the All Stars detract from the United game. The reality is this – it doesn’t matter who the opposition is. It’s about the visitors, not the hosts.
Your correspondent is a Manchester United fan, so this is hard to say, but Liverpool is a far less ‘plastic’ football club, so to speak.
Years of painful (or glorious) mediocrity may have weeded out the bandwagon element, and those who remain – the types who turned the MCG into a southern hemisphere Anfield – are either truly devoted, or mad. I prefer to go with mad, but good luck to them.
The Manchester United match felt more like a broader celebration of the hugeness of football, in all its facets.
They’ve been here before, but not since Premier League fandom truly blew up in Australia, and certainly not since Australian football itself stepped out of the abyss.
It could have been Liverpool and the All Stars and United taking on Victory and it wouldn’t have made a lick of difference.
It shouldn’t be forgotten that these exhibition matches are purely marketing exercises.
If any of it felt plastic, that’s because everything about it is – the plastic in the millions in cash the FFA and the clubs earned, the plastic bottles melted down that made up the thousands of shirts that were moved, the plastic in the microphone Channel 7’s Jim Wilson was holding as he used every fibre of his being to avoid saying the word ‘football’.
In case it wasn’t clear enough when David Gallop openly described off-season friendlies as a “sugar hit”, it’s not exactly as if the title of Undisputed All-Time Best Club in the Entire World was on the line.
Trying to glean any kind of deeper meaning out of them is akin to churning out a 1500-word tactical analysis of a FIFA ’13 match, complete with diagrams. It’s just not there, no matter how hard you try to look for it.
At best we can hope for a showpiece that will sell the game and the A-League to the unconverted. It will be hard to measure which match delivered the goods in this department. Both may have.
But clubs are entitled to organise their own big-money friendlies, as Melbourne Victory did. The All Stars is the FFA’s toy, and they’re entitled to play with it for a little longer.
As the little girl in the Old El Paso ad so thoughtfully argues, why can’t we have both?
There are pros and cons to each type of fixture. The good things about the All Stars concept include that it’s different, it gives the media lots to talk about and it engages every A-League club – and, by extension, hopefully every fan.
There wouldn’t be a soul in Australia who wouldn’t readily admit the whole process needs some serious improvement.
Yet most critics have ignored its good elements. For instance, what a dream it would be to have Ono deep in midfield with Del Piero playing behind Heskey, for one night only.
We didn’t get that. But the MLS equivalent will be held later this week in Kansas City, where AS Roma will take on a selection that includes Thierry Henry, Landon Donavan, Robbie Keane and Marco Di Vaio.
Tim Cahill would be there if he wasn’t injured.
Now, excuse me if this is a heathen declaration, but that’s freaking incredible. Real life fantasy football. Why not? It ultimately doesn’t matter anyway, and we’ll never see it any other way.
It might just happen for us in 12 months – the FFA has shoved a new clause into the Standard Player Contract to ensure marquee men won’t so easily skip town the next time there is a high-profile opponent ready to go.
So it would be fair to reserve ultimate judgment until such time as a full-strength A-League All Stars runs out onto the pitch, in a week when the Socceroos aren’t involved in an international tournament.
It’s a nice idea. It’s not going to change the world, nor will it destroy it. It’s just nice. Can’t we have some nice, different things sometimes?
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