Thousands of cumulative hours are dedicated to the national conversation about the standard of footballer Australia is producing and how it compares to the standards of the products from other football-playing nations.
Petabytes of data have been committed to the cause of analysing where our players excel and fall short, what part of the country produces the most talented players and why and which skills should be emphasised and which habits to be pruned back.
A conversation about the standard of our local managers is just as relevant to Australia’s future footballing prospects, and yet it feels as though far less time and energy has been burnt up conducting it.
Seeing Aaron Mooy score twice for Huddersfield last weekend was a very welcome sight, a sudden and desperately needed burst of offensive incision for both the player and his team.
It did enough to wash down the acrid taste of the news that had come out a week or two earlier that Harry Kewell had been sacked by Notts County after just 14 games. As much as this wasn’t exactly surprising – by all accounts the team had been poor under Kewell, and I don’t think, of all our ex-Socceroos, anyone had Harry picked as the next great football mind – it was still disappointing.
So for the purposes of this discussion I’d like to bring up that acrid taste again, a reflux to inspect and inspire a larger discussion.
(Albert Perez/Getty Images)
Kewell had been the only Australian manager in the top three English leagues. It’s not really a surprise; Australian managers, certainly of late, do not travel well.
Just looking in Asia, the place that would seem a logical first step for an Australian looking to manage abroad, in the Japanese, Korean, Chinese, Thai, Indonesian, Hong Kong, Singaporean and Malaysian top flights there are two Australian managers working currently. Really, the shining light for Australian managers working at the elite level of their field is Joe Montemurro, head coach of Arsenal Women.
How many recent examples have there been of successful A-League managers heading abroad, to Europe or Asia, only to perform well below the standard they set back home?
Tony Popovic’s sojourn to Turkey was a disaster, albeit one in large part caused by Karabukspor’s own self-generated administrative chaos.
Graham Arnold’s short 2013 spell at Vegalta Sendai – the first Australian coach to manage in Japan’s top flight since Eddie Thomson in 2000 – ended in a very prompt dismissal after eight games.
Ange Postecoglou – probably our most ambitious, daring manager, maybe ever – is currently ending his first season at J1’s Yokohama F Marinos. With one league game remaining, he can achieve a finish as high as only 11th and as low as 16th – either position, or indeed anywhere in between, will be Yokohama’s worst league finish in 16 years, and anything below 13th would be the club’s worst league finish in their history. And yes, they are still playing kamikaze football, with the most goals scored and third-most conceded in the league.
(Masashi Hara/Getty Images)
These three managers have probably been the most successful A-League coaches of the last ten years. For players, the jump up in skill, physicality, speed, precision and competitiveness from the A-League to a European first division is astonishing; even the layman watching at home, wheezing and wearing a groove into the sofa, can see how much more difficult it is playing in the elite leagues. Is the jump similarly high for managers?
Obviously there a good and bad managers, but are our very best, those who have dominated the A-League, really that much worse than those already working in Japan, Turkey or in the English lower leagues?
Which Australian managers in the A-League right now have the best chance of success abroad? Let’s look at their bodies of work at A-League level.
As far as the data goes, Kevin Muscat is clearly the most winning Australian manager currently in the A-League who has more than one season under his belt (sorry, Steve), with a win percentage of 60.16 per cent racked up over the second-largest sample size.
There has always been this sense of mistrust trailing around behind Muscat, like a piece of toilet paper stuck to his shoe, urging us not to believe the hard-results data and attach all sorts of caveats to his achievements – his early-career success was simply the hangover from Ange Postecoglou, or he’s been buoyed somehow by marquees that have concealed his tactical shortcomings, or some other excuse.
I don’t think Muscat’s abilities as a tactician are all that great – his teams are often set up rudimentarily and certainly in the earlier years of his tenure he relied heavily on a ravenous work ethic and pointed sense of aggression to overwhelm teams early before settling back to defend. We are seeing Muscat experimenting this season with a bolder, less safe system, one he can populate with a staggering array of talent, and the system as yet is not totally convincing.
However, I don’t think it can be understated how good a man-manager Muscat is, how he can build a furious storm of positive energy within each of his charges, and how wisely he can deploy these pumped-up troops in timely situations. He has also shown a sharp ability to game-plan to frustrate teams, even if his in-game substitutions are still puzzling. If winning is the best argument, then Muscat is making it.
Popovic comes in with a win percentage of 54.86 per cent over a slightly larger sample size than Muscat. And, unlike Muscat – in fact you could say in absolute contrast to Muscat – Popovic’s argument for being the best manager in the league, Australian or foreign, improves when wins, losses and draws are left to sit fuzzily in the background.
The transformation Perth have undergone this season is striking, from a team exploding at both ends – the footballing equivalent of violent gastroenteritis – to a controlled, efficient, stylish team leading the league with the best goal difference.
His work with Western Sydney was also stellar, and almost as impressive as the astonishing 2014 Asian Champions League win was the way the expansion franchise entered the league with a purposeful and steady gait at a time when two teams had slingshotted out of the league in the two seasons prior. A lot of that stability can be attributed to Popovic, a rookie manager at the time.
Of course as the years went on, Popovic’s ability to sustain success season-on-season was rightly questioned, as the annual churn of the playing staff started doing more harm than good.
Ernie Merrick and Mike Mulvey come in next best for A-League win percentage, with 53.81 per cent and 53.27 per cent respectively. Both are dual nationals – Merrick was born in Scotland and Mulvey in England – but both men were to a large degree reared as managers in Australia. But in Merrick’s case – although he is a legend of the A-League and his work with Newcastle has been stellar – at 65 he is unlikely to go on to bolder things in his career.
Mulvey is a championship-winning coach with Brisbane, but one suspects his resume will not be enhanced after this season with Central Coast, already rooted to the bottom of the table. He has spent time abroad, taking technical director and head coaching roles in Malaysia and Thailand, but he lasted just four months as technical director of Malaysia’s Terengganu FC, and six months as coach of Thai first-division club Tero FC.
And then we come to John Aloisi, who has managed 137 games in the A-League with a league-worst winning percentage of 45.25 per cent. Aloisi’s prospects are hard to evaluate – he was sacked from Melbourne Heart after a run of 17 games without a win, but e was impossibly green back then, failing conspicuously to do what Popovic had made look so easy.
The turmoil Brisbane’s ownership caused for Aloisi was a few years ago and seems an irrelevant excuse for any underperformance now. His Roar teams finished third and made the semis in his first two seasons, but last year they were wholly underwhelming, scraping into and meekly exiting the finals. This season certainly looks more promising, but until he wins something in the A-League, there seems little chance he’ll be given an opportunity abroad.
(AAP Image/David Crosling)
There seems to be no discernible tactical traits common across Australian managers that would make them all similarly unsuited to life in other leagues; we have no set national approach to football that all our managers observe. Often paradigms of management are propelled or indeed overthrown by singular individuals whose ideas spread like wildfire across the football landscape. If any one manager’s impact on the A-League should have done that, it was Postecoglou’s, yet we aren’t seeing mini-Roarcelona’s popping up, are we – not even at the Roar itself.
Graham Arnold, whose winning percentage in the A-League is a dominant 65.55 per cent, had an iron grip on the division with his Sydney team playing in a manner wholly different to Ange’s Brisbane. Perhaps progress of this kind takes longer to imprint itself.
Football management can be a tough racket to break into. National enclaves form, meaning outsiders have to be truly exceptional before they’re allowed in. The industry also remains the domain of the ex-pro, not to mention is plagued by a raft of other biases, discriminatory practices and disproportionate participation levels.
The standard of manager Australia is producing is going up, and a more globalised world means it will only get easier to work internationally – to be recognised and plucked from our small, slightly obscured corner of the football universe. We are growing in might as a footballing nation, slowly rearing up to catch the light, but it’s both the level of player and the level of manager that we produce that will determine exactly how statuesque we become.
Andrew
Roar Guru
Was hoping that Aussie consortium was going take over at Charlton, if only so there was a sliver of hope that an Aussie coach/manager could give it a crack there, but then again that could also be seen as a Swansea move, where the Americans took over and installed Bob Bradley to much chagrin from the fans.
chris
Guest
JB of course you are right. How boring was it watching great teams like Spain with wonderful players, playing tika taka? Possession football purely because they could. And then those wonderful few passages of play where they'd penetrate with sublime touches and movements off the ball. Is this sustainable over 90 mins?
Lionheart
Roar Rookie
Ok, the dust has settled and I'm in late, but nonetheless I've thoroughly enjoyed the thread. Thanks to all. My two points, firstly as I understand it, Notts have a track record of sacking coaches of late and Harry Kewell was always going to be moved on, from the day he signed on. That's just what Notts does. Second point, when Dimi Petratos moved to the K league he got little game time. His coach was asked, post a ACL match in Brisbane, why wasn't he getting game time. The reply - he held the ball for too long.
jbinnie
Guest
Chris - Playing "possession football" at any cost is not what "playing out from the back" is all about, there is a subtle difference. As you say, possession can be maintained by back line players playing the ball back and forth across the field to each other ,or back to their goalkeeper, but what is totally absent from this practice is "penetration" which still has to be the aim of every team playing football matches. Tactically the game has moved on and while 4 or 5 "backline" players "play" with the ball, their opponents have been instructed to get "behind the ball" as quickly as possible, thereby presenting a much denser barrier in numbers when the "ball players" finally decide to go forward. That is the key ingredient to possession football.it has to be accompanied with a desire to go forward with the aim of scoring goals. Without this "desire" our game becomes a meaningless bore to anyone watching, whether as a attendee at games or a viewer on TV. cheers jb.
Sydneysideliner
Guest
The best managers for me are the ones that take on unfancied roles and can improve the whole culture of the club. What Lawrie McKinna and Arnie achieved for the Mariners is unthinkable today. Likewise Ernie Merrick took both the Phoenix and Jets up the ladder and into home finals where they had no right to be. Even Ange and Popa at the beginning took nobodies and turned them into the league standard for three seasons. For Muscat to be considered in this group, he needs to leave the comfort of the Victory and take a team like Phoenix back into the finals
Redondo
Roar Rookie
Hear hear! 10/10 to Evan and same goes for all the well-informed comments.
chris
Guest
Ben it's just a closed shop here with ex players(especially ex socceroos) basically running an ex player boys club. These guys are fast tracked through the coaching badges and have plum jobs waiting for them. No experience required.
jbinnie
Guest
Fadida - Good question.You mention Brendo saying most of our players lack the technical ability to play football as we see it played in the top echelons of football in Europe. Do you agree? I do, but after 13 years of full time professional football could I suggest we should be beginning to see a measurable improvement in technique. That takes us to coaching,the subject under discussion. When the FFA quietly began to push ex-Socceroos as coaches for our HAL teams they took a tremendous risk, for, as you well know, playing the game well on the field is no guarantee that the experience will school an individual in man management, tactical and teaching skills. The danger of course was that if you offered a coaching job to "John Smith" he wasn't really in a position to say no to football's bosses. We all know what happened when firstly Frank Farina was given the job with Graham Arnold doing youth teams, and Ange given the chance at both levels. We did qualify for more international tournaments but rarely improved the end result. Playing out from the back is probably the most misunderstood phrase in our football. It is a tactic based on "the shorter a pass to a team-mate the better the chance of accuracy" This has it's origins in the mind of a Russian coach who theorised that a strike at goal could be engineered in 5 passes starting with the goalkeeper. What was never stressed was the passes had to be made forward to team-mates who were constantly on the move,seeking space and thus,time. Now if you think about this and compare your observations with what is being served up in the HAL and lower overseas leagues you will start to understand what is "good " coaching (or dare I say education) in today's tactical games. Would teaching like that lift our standard? Cheers jb.
chris
Guest
Sideways and backwards passing means they keep the ball. It's like rope a dope in boxing. Tire the opponent out before attacking them. The problem is we don't yet have the outstanding technique required to break down defences in the top third. Not consistently enough at least.
chris
Guest
Good comments Fad. Ange has certainly lost the plot and English managers are not in demand in the EPL. When was the last English manager to manage a Champions league team let alone win the EPL?
kywong73
Guest
Agreed. It would be great to see many more analyses and conversations like this.
buddy
Guest
I confess I despair at the whole obsession of playing out from the back in the A League. My despair is that all too often I see teams and particular individuals trying things they are just not capable of and they quickly lose possession, even give away easy goals or scoring opportunities and it seems to come from an insistence that they play out. Last year when JG was at Wanderers, their ability to play out and up the field was almost non existent. The first pass was pressured, the ball went sideways, often to a player under pressure who then went wide to the other side to a player often put under pressure and the sequence was repeated time and time again, often the way out was back to the goalkeeper who would end up going long, or occasionally a pass through central midfield which often went astray or to another player under pressure. It was awful and embarrassing at times. I have seen that repeated at numerous clubs on numerous occasions...I don't see anything wrong with not playing to an obvious weakness and technical deficiency!
buddy
Guest
My memories of watching Watford racing through the divisions in the late 70's / early 80's was all about getting neck ache as we were constantly searching for the ball as it dropped out of the floodlights onto Ross Jenkins head and then George Reilly - who looked like an 8 foot tall pole that you trained your tomatoes or runner beans to grow up against. It was a breath of fresh air when John Barnes or Nigel Callaghan dribbled the ball but I visited Vicarage Road many times and needed a visit to the physio or chiropractor to get my neck sorted out all too often...not an enjoyable experience and Graham Taylor become instantly disliked of course, esp when he was appointed to the England job.
Kangas
Roar Rookie
Enjoyed the feedback Raise the ceiling for sure . I would even support rule changes at youth level to promote attacking third dynamics . Being skilful and precise under close pressure is an absolute must for professionals imo .
Kangas
Roar Rookie
Evans articles are excellent
Doc Disnick
Roar Guru
I wish I had more time of recent to join discussions like this. It's been a pleasure reading some of the comments by others today actually talking football, and its tactics, on the Football Forum. It's been a long time and I commend Evan for writing an article like this for us to engage in proper footballing chat.
Griffo
Roar Guru
This is a good point Ben. Saw a headline (FTBL website I think) on how Aussie coaches should leave Australia and take up roles in Asia ( due to lack of opportunities at home). Cynically it could be seen that this experience may not count as highly domestically as lower European or youth levels which doesn’t seem right. Apart from Rudan and Corica there has not been any new Aussie coaches in the A-League for what seems like a while. In part I think there is a high risk with rookie coaches but this doesn’t stop foreign coaches being employed sometimes with a handful of experience if any or with titles behind them.
Fadida
Guest
Some good points. The difficulty comes when opponents drop-off, rather than press, and the 6('s) insist on still dropping between the CB's. Generally in the A-league teams will drop off, making a deep 6 superfluous. Man City can adjust when teams drop off. We don't see it here. Teams tend to be more robotic and play the same way against a low or high block. Jets v Sydney was a classic. 2 deep lying 6's against a team that was conceding their front 3rd (and Jets were trailing)). When teams press higher here (eg Sydney v AU in the final) we tend to see the 6 giving away a lot of possession because of inadequate technical ability.
Griffo
Roar Guru
Agree with that. I think there was a reason Hoffman was recast as a fullback, and he had better games last season out wide with an attacking licence. Vujica is a surprise bench warmer so can only think he’s physically not up the list over Jackson - or possibly height differences - but with Georgevski out he may be in and replaced with Katroumbis. While I couldn’t see them releasing O’Donovan in that way I don’t think Martin Lee’s Trump embargo issues are helping. Merrick has indicated there is no need to recruit a striker in January already. This could be a reoccurring pattern at season’s end if O’Donovan remains at a cheaper price and Trump doesn’t stop stoking his ego. I hope O’Donovan fires some double figures quickly but there are a few worries before then. Another difference is Vargas: I think he is another that controls tempo but is a little more able to defend than Petratos. Good distributer but Jair is no Nabbout, or O’Donovan which preseason was in scoring form only to miss eight A-League games.
Hopper
Roar Rookie
Manchester City always build from the back. Their two central defenders top the short pass percentage in the EPL. When building usually the 6 drops in between the split central defenders. They like to circumnavigate the press with short horizontal passing around the back, encouraging an even higher press, thus creating working space for their 2 x 8's when receiving forward attacking passes. Arnold used this same principle vs Korea and Lebanon. In the 6 role, firstly Luongo then Amini dropped back between the central defenders to give the extra man and create space further up field. It didn't always work but what should be evident to our local coaches is that Arnold is still evolving as a coach as is Guardiola, though at present different trajectories and hemispheres. Australian coaches have to look deeper then the text book or playing career if they hope to become internationally recognized, the path both Arnold and Ange seem to be on. Both, I'd say, are entranced by Guardiola's innovative, intense genius. Sure they preach their own philosophies, trust their own instincts, control what they can control, but to even get a glimpse of the holy grail, they are looking to the coaching messiahs like Guardiola for that inspiration. Oh yes to finish, a top coach was once asked what does it take to become an elite coach, to which he honestly replied, elite players.