At the extreme level, you are right. Nothing the A-League do will be good enough for those who don’t want to be converted. But I’d argue there are plenty of uncommitted who are still ready to be convinced that the A-League has something to offer. I hear plenty of people say, “is the A-League any good? All I ever hear about is the trouble at matches.” These friendly matches provide the opportunity to show them the quality of the league and to show FTA execs that the league provides financial opportunities.

Wow! Sydney must have money to burn. The team that generates consistent multi-million dollar losses (despite major crowd growth and Del Piero’s arrival last year), and yet they can afford a three week tour of Italy – go figure!

Someone should tell Barlow that enhancing your brand in Europe does nothing unless there are long term financial commercial outcomes and there is no evidence of that happening. Those in Italy who have any idea about Sydney FC will soon forget once ADP has finished his swan song.

Sydney should be doing the hard yards in NSW enhancing their brand in the city and the State not swanning off an hour outside Venice.

A nice team on paper and a great development side. Will it win the Premiership/Championship this year – I doubt it. Back line ages are 18, 20, 19 and 23. Galloway/Geria/Ansell combined have 23 games A-league experience. Can it hold under pressure and perform consistently through the full season without a hardened CD – again, I doubt it.

Great mid-field. Creative. Good passers of the ball. No problem here.

Front line, Archie will score his usual 10 for the season. Milligan will get 6-8 goals including penalty kicks. Where are the other goals coming from? Pain/Nichols combined have 136 matches experience and 21 goals between them. Not a great strike rate and Nichols not a proven front man. Celeski/Finkler attacking from midfield have a combined 135 matches and 6 goals. Everyone will be looking to lay off to someone else to do the scoring.

Just my opinion.

All will be revealed in due course but I still think we are two experienced players short of a Championship winning team.

Fuss,

You are a passionate man when it comes to MV and the NT but your passion sometimes outweighs common sense. There is so way any of the players – Pain, Nabbout, Christaldo, O’Dea, Makarounas – will take Rojas’ spot. For starters, Pain played alongside Rojas in most of his (Pain’s) appearances last year so he can’t replace a player he was playing with. O’day is a midfielder with only 2 minor appearances in the middle of last year so let’s also rule him out as a replacement.

Christaldo is nominally a midfielder with attacking capabilities who made 3 appearances last year for 63 minutes, Makarounas made 6 appearances last year for 119 minutes. Neither of these showed enough in their time on the park to consider they can step in this year and replace a 15 goal forward. They might make the step up and become regular first team players (probably starting on the bench) but to suggest they have the capability of Rojas’ breakout year is fantasy (noting that Rojas also failed in his first year at MV with zero goals in 24 appearances)

Nabbout is the only one with the potential to really step up. He played 21 games last year, though he only started 7, so he should have a good feel for what it is all about. Unfortunately for my money he doesn’t have the engine to keep going for a full 90 minutes. In fact he starts to flag after 20-25 minutes and really doesn’t go looking for the ball much after that. This season will determine if he is going to be a solid first team player or just a squad player.

Finkler and Nichols will cover the loss of Flores with no problem but who is going to get on the end of their work? I’m with Adrian. MVFC need another goal scorer. You can hang your hopes on Nabbout but I’d rather cover my bases with the addition of a proven player that allows Pain, Christaldo, Nabbout and Makarounas to continue to develop.

Defence is a similar problem. MVFC leaked goals last year, and we leaked goals even when Traore was playing so having him back doesn’t cover the leaks. Your concession that central defence is troublesome is correct. As you said “If Leijer finds form …” it’s a big IF !!!! Leijer hasn’t had form since Muscat retired. I’d be looking for a defensive replacement for him ASAP because he is the weak link and he provides no leadership for what is a very youthful defence in the wide positions that has great potential but needs some steel and experience to guide it.

Cheers, Philip

Your on track here Mike.

Not only have Australia’s recent performances lacked skill and tactical vision, they look to me as if they lack energy and enthusiasm and a sense of pride in representing the country.

The players look, and sometimes sound, as if their mind set is “oh no, we’re under the pump from our own supporters”, when they should be thinking, “we’ve got 20 million urging us on and wanting us to succeed.” Player’s performance should lift 10-20% when they are surrounded by the eleven “best” in the country and wearing the green and gold … instead of this they look low on intensity and not even at their personal best, let alone lifting for the national team.

Sure Franjic, like every player, should go out there with huge pride in wearing the jersey and they are professionals and should know what’s required, but i also think they need to be inspired to the cause (revved up) each time they go out and I don’t think Holger has it in him.

It should be remembered that the old ‘ethnic’ clubs were not formed initially as football clubs. They were formed along ethnic/national lines as places to meet and go for members of their communities who had found themselves in a ‘foreign’ land. They were firstly social and support clubs and that was their reason for being. Football was NOT their reason for being, it was just the sporting outlet that they gravitated to. Over time these clubs formed leagues (ultimately we had the NSL) but the clubs remained predominately true to their roots as national ‘social’ clubs first and football clubs second. There was nothing wrong with that but it wasn’t the way for football to grow in this country.

The A-League changed the focus by saying let’s form a group of football teams. Football IS the only reason for being and these clubs can reach out to all and anybody.

Steven, I not sure what your point is. The cultural hegemony (predominant influence) of Australia is ‘white’, with a healthy sprinkling of many other colours. If the A-League is predominately ‘white’ but with 56 nationalities, I’d say it reflects the Australian situation pretty well and that was the point of the claim that football is the ‘face of Australia’.

Yes Joe, it is good to see how things have changed … and they have.

Sure the reality of clubs is slightly different to the perception and we can argue about perception or realty for a while, but I don’t think the media misreported the reality that In the old days clubs were characterized as Greek, Italian, Macedonia, Jewish, Dutch, Croatian, etc … the general public saw it that way and in the most part it was true – the power brokers at Heidelberg Alexander were all Greeks and so were the vast majority of supporters, the power brokers and supporters at Melb Knights were Croatian. The make up of players was slightly more mixed because ultimately the clubs wanted to win things. However, today no one talks in terms of nationality or ethnicity regarding A-League clubs … it’s Syd vs Adelaide, Victory vs Heart, Syd vs West Sydney.

The author has incorrectly confused being ethnic with being multicultural and uses these two terms as if they are the same thing – which they are not. Being part of an ethnic group is to be part of a group of people with a common trait be-it religion, nationality, language, culture. The old NSL clubs were, in the main, ethnic clubs – Juventus, Hellas, Croatia, Hakoah, etc. They celebrated their ethnicity which was (is) mono-cultural and excludes other nationalities either deliberately or by implication of not welcoming “others”.

The A-League correctly tried to break this mold and it is noticeable and significant, not so much that the A-League can boast players from 56 nationalities, but more importantly, that a club like MVFC can probably boast supporters from 56 nationalities. MVFC and other A-League clubs do not have a single ‘ethnic’ supporter base (and it’s not really hip to be ethnic), clubs have a multicultural supporter base and it’s hip to be part of a harmonious multi-culture.

A couple of topics raised in the article. Firstly, given the current economic climate, it’s impossible in the short term to see any government spending the $200M required for a new rectangular stadium in either Bris or Wellington. In the mean time the clubs need to be more inventive in either getting more fans to attend, corralling spectators into certain areas of the ground or doing more work with the existing active supporter groups to help them lift their profile and generate atmosphere. Who wouldn’t want to go and watch WSWanderers after Friday’s performance of the RBB in the stands. If only Bris and Well (and others) existing supporter numbers could replicate that!

On the subject of early kick-offs and playing under blazing sun, a quick look at the fixture for the balance of the year shows ten matches kicking off before 5pm due where there is a timing clashes with other games. Five of these are in Wellington which is not a problem as the temp there is mild and rarely over 25C max during the peak of the day. So there are five games in Australia with early kick-offs (lets assume ten games for the entire season). When these games are played in heat they tend to be slow, sluggish affairs. They are not good for live spectators who neither want to sit in the blazing sun, nor watch teams struggling, and they are not good for home viewers watching typically dour affairs. I think it’s about time that Foxtel and FFA took a punt and played these games at the optimum time for match conditions and accepted an occasional overlap of kick-off times. Fox could show one live and one on delay so there would be the same content on the box and for the “ten” matches during the season it would be nice to see teams and spectators put ahead of scheduling demands.

Calling Rado a Technical Director is an overblown title to soften the move away from coaching. The reality is he will not be providing technical direction, as the title suggests. The club will not be following a Rado ‘mantra’ or philosophy of football style or methodology. He didn’t have a philosophy when he was assistant to Farina and he didn’t have one when he was assistant to Ange. He followed his ‘bosses’ direction at that time.

In truth, he tried not to tinker too much with Ange’s style of play but whatever tinkering went on has certainly hurt the team’s performance to date.

So, the bottom line is that he is not a leader of the club or its fortunes and people are kidding themselves if they think he is.

Now his new role, according to the Brisbane Roar website, is to analyse the Hyundai A-League squad and work on developing a state wide academy program providing a pathway for talented young Queensland footballers where he will be “part of the process”.
The quotation part is Rado’s own words. He will be “part of the process”. Not leading, certainly not directing. But back to assisting, which is quite ok as we should all know our limits, and assisting is what Rado does best.

I wish him well. Better youth academies and pathways can only be a good thing and I hope he makes a sound contribution, but the club should leave the ‘Technical Director’ title for someone else.

Fuss, it’s a real cop-out to say only Holger has the facts, therefor only Holger can make the right decisions.

If you lost $3M in your business because of poor decision making I’m sure plenty of people in your organisation would make a ruckus about it from those below you to those above you – and rightly so. Holger’s poor selection against HK nearly ended in a draw which might well have put us out of contention in this tournament at some considerable financial cost to FFA (and much embarrassment to us Socceroo supporters). Plenty of people, including forumites, have every reason to question his decisions, even if it’s only based on 90% of the relevant information.

I’d be happier if Holger said, “I made the wrong selections against HK. We were lucky to get away with it, and thank god a major rejig of the team saved my bacon with the rout of Guam.”

John, please start to give proper credit where it is due. The Mariners didn’t win the ‘minor premiership’ because there is no such thing. They won the Premiership. It’s not a minor achievement.

You are right Jesse, it is all about motivation. You can do any job like it’s a chore or you can do it like it’s a passion and Bris are playing football like it’s a chore. The players are arguing with each other, arguing with the ref, looking for excuses, not putting in and in some cases just look like they don’t want to be there.

Rado is painting himself into a corner because the players do know their jobs, the training is the same, as Rado says, “everything is exactly the same apart from performances.” Well, not quite true Rado – everything is the same except the man in charge … and that is you!

Seems to me that the players started to believe their own hype. It was all good cheery fun when they were declaring Vidosic was ‘the man’ and ‘the brains’ behind their success. All too much pals talking and back slapping. Now they need a kick up the proverbial and it seems all Vidosic can do is bleat to the media but cant get the team fired up at all (maybe the players don’t even watch his press conferences).

There isn’t much difference between being first place and an also-ran in this league. Seems Vidosic doesn’t have the skills to get the players up that extra 5% required – and they don’t love him that much to want to do it on their own.

Long term contracts or not, Vidosic is stuck with the squad he has got and we all know that they can actually play football – we’ve seen it for two years. There are three options, change the mentality of the players (Vidosic’s job), shake up in the players on the park (he’s tried that a little but it’s a real problem with a limited squad), or a change of management. If options one and two don’t work in the coming weeks, watch out for option three.

Good one Roger 🙂

Remember Nov 3rd 2006 – CCM couldn’t beat a nine man Victory then and they wont tomorrow either (I hope!)

Fixing Ticketek wont make the match day experience better (apart from funding another beer) but it would improve our overall feeling about one aspect (the cost) of the game (to quote from The Castle, it’s the ‘vibe’). So here’s another ‘vibe’ offering … I’d feel better about the A-League if Gallop (after due time) could articulate a very clear strategy for expansion of the game. Even if its a 10-15 year plan, let’s actually say now we want teams in Woolongong, Canberra, Hobart, Cairns, etc (just for examples) by 2030. Articulate a clear strategy for how those teams will be designed, set-up, and what boxes must be ticked, etc. As a fan, knowing that the FFA is committed to growth, new teams are on the horizon, and there is clarity of purpose, that would make me feel even better about the state of the game.

There is no problem changing the laws for your domestic competition. The UK did it when they introduced 3 points for a win. The USA did it with several mods, i think including a crazy shootout rule to avoid draws. We have a post match review and suspension system for simulation (hmm, hmm, hardly every used though) which is relatively unique. As Ben says below, we could have a proper time keeping clock. Whatever we did, I don’t think Sepp (it’s not a bribe, it’s a commission payment) Blatter would even notice for a few decades.

Yes, this is another option. I thought the fourth official was supposed to be the timekeeper of sorts but it just doesn’t happen. Proper timekeeping where there is a clear ref signal, that everyone is aware of, to stop the clock and restart the clock would be a good solution.

There’s a lot of grumble about Ticketek fees and beer prices but quite frankly, I doubt that Gallop can do much about either of these.

I know it goes against the grain for many Roarers and traditionalists but I’d like to see a few changes to stop time wasting and interruptions to the game. The rule was brought in that if you kick the ball away from a stoppage you get a yellow card for time wasting – a good rule and no one complained. But what about the biggest time waster of all – injuries and feigned injuries.

If the ref sees a head clash or a serious foul with potential for injury the ref can blow up and stop the game, and that is fair enough. But if a player sits down behind play, gets cramp, stubs his toe, twists his ankle, etc, etc, I recon the fourth official should just let the trainer run on the field when the ball is out of the immediate area, and attend to the player without stopping play. Such a change would stop the majority of injury stoppages that we see in games and would eliminate all feigned injuries as there would be no advantage gained by trying to stop the flow of the match. That would improve my fan experience.

Was waiting to see if someone else would get even 30 seconds of game time, but not to be.

Really, really good to see Schwarzer get a game. Holger cant be sure yet if he is up to international standards after only 103 caps! It seems there is no need to try out our very good domestic league back-up goalies and give them some international experience. If I was a back up goalie I’d be asking the question like a Hollywood wannabe movie star, ‘who the hell do you have to sleep with to get a game around here?”

Fuss, I think you are the first one to touch on the all important point of the financials.

If an A-League club plays a foreign club that one A-League club gets the revenue (and the other 9 clubs get nothing). I’d much rather see and AllStar team, maybe played over three legs – Melb/Syd/Bris. The FFA can take the revenue (maybe they compensate each club a little for use of their players) and they spend the revenue on much needed promotion of the game for the following season or more money for future marquees or whatever. It’s a great opportunity to raise revenue for the benefit of everyone.

An exhibition against and AllStar or an A-League club doesn’t cheapen the game at all. People are discerning enough to accept it for what it is – promotional opportunity and maybe pre-season warm-up. Importantly, it generate continued interest and discussion about football in the non-football season.

There is not much difference between the three big games that Melb supporters usually talk about as rivalry matches but I would put the ‘Big Blue’ third on the list, albeit by a slim margin. Here’s how I see Melb’s top three rivalries:

Victory vs Heart – Heart are like a step-brother you only just got introduced to who wants to follow you around and be big like you, but they’re just a bloody nuisance with no real identity. You don’t wish them any harm but you just want them to piss off. You hate losing to them because in your mind they are insignificant and losing just defies all logic and common sense.

Victory vs Adelaide – Adelaide are the real little brother to Melb. Even though they are far away they always want to compete with you and show you how good they have become. You hate losing to them because no big brother wants to be beaten by little brother.

Victory vs Sydney – Sydney are the bling, bling cousin with plenty of money that they seem to loose hand-over-fist and definitely no class. You can’t help but feel that this cousin is secretly gay and that make losing to them a real bitch.

[all written tongue-in-cheek … dont get too feisty with your replies 🙂 ]