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Australia battled not just their opponents, but also the playing surface, when they played the United Arab Emirates in Sydney on Tuesday night.
It’s a familiar sight for devoted Socceroos fans, which means most of them stayed pretty quiet about it on social media. But for occasional passers-by it didn’t look good: clumps of grass torn out, a ball bobbling around, horrible first touches.
It would be fine if it was a one off. But, sadly, that’s not the case.
Since I came back from working as a football journalist for almost ten years in Europe, I can’t remember the last time that I saw the Aussies play at home where I have not raised an eyebrow at the playing surface.
I’m sure there have been some occasionally good pitches, but it is something that Socceroos coach Ange Postecoglou regularly complains about – mostly he is absolutely justified in doing so.
The guy is sweating buckets, trying to get his players ready for arguably the most important sporting show on earth, the World Cup, and most of the time his players have to perform on a pitch that would not be accepted in most European third divisions, just to get there.
I know, I know … I can hear the arguments roaring down Anzac Parade already.
The first one is ‘these modern-day soccer prima donnas are spoilt and they should be able to play in any conditions’.
Um, no they shouldn’t. They are trying to get ready for a premium tournament in two years where facilities – thanks to Russian big spending – will no doubt be near on perfect. So why shouldn’t they play on something similar to what they can expect there? Does Jason Day get ready to play at Augusta National by putting in his backyard?
The second argument is the classic. ‘In Australia we have so many sporting codes, which all need to be balanced. The two rugby codes also share that pitch, as does the A-League. Everyone needs a fair bite of the cherry’, or something like that.
Okay, but everyone does realise that the A-League, as well as Super Rugby and rugby league are nowhere near as important internationally as World Cup qualifiers, right? We’ve all realised – even begrudgingly – by now that football is the biggest sport in the world, measured both economically and level of profile.
Why wouldn’t you want to give your national team the best possible chance of shining on that stage? Why wouldn’t you clear the calendar properly ahead of an important World Cup qualifier if you needed to play the game in a multi-purpose stadium? I’m not talking weeks, I’m talking potentially months.
Thirdly, we’ve had bad weather in Sydney, so it was tough to get the pitch ready.
Football, to the chagrin of many fans of the sport, is played in some of the wettest, coldest, glummest countries on the planet. Think Belgium, Germany – even England in the winter. They are hardly sunny and beach-loving, but football teams are still playing on well-manicured, natural grass.
With heat-lamps, rollable pitches, and very strict usage programs, these guys measure the blades of grass on their pitches before each game.
Come match day, the pitches are generally ready to go.
The reason why it all gets to me so much, this topic? I think it actually affects our standard of play, in a really tangible way. Take a closer look at last night’s game, for instance.
The Socceroos two goals went in off corners, no chance for the pitch to get involved there, thank god. Two of our better chances went sailing over the crossbar, despite the players getting into good field position and having time to line up the shot.
Was it a little bobble of the ball on the pitch, or was it technique? We may never know – but I’ll always have my suspicions it was the former.
Football is a sport that relies heavily on the quality of grass underfoot, if being played at the top level. If you don’t provide that, it is going to affect the style that we play, in the short- and long-term.
If we want to get better as a nation in football, authorities and the sporting leaders need to get serious about providing exclusive soccer grounds in the major cities, that can do justice to important games like this.
Of course, if we don’t want to get better, then every four years we can just stand around drinking our flat whites, complaining about our “quality” when the Socceroos don’t do as well as we hope at the big tournaments.
But remember, the problem starts at ground level.
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