After the recent 1-0 home loss to Kuwait in an Asian Cup qualifier, former ambassador of the game, Les Murray, launched yet another tirade on the A-League. It was part of a three-pronged attack at the SBS run theworldgame.com.au website that included Murray's blog wedged between Philip Micallef's initial "report" on the game and Micallef's blog the day after Murray posted his.
Let's state several facts about the game.
Pim Verbeek has criticised various players and standard of the A-League in general, albeit in clumsy fashion. When preferring a player training for a German club to someone playing for an A-League club, he's referring specifically to a player like Joshua Kennedy against a replacement player from the A-League. The fact is that he does give preference to A-League players over the many overseas players simply training for overseas clubs or performing in moderate leagues. He's saying Kennedy in training is better than any local. The direct criticism that Verbeek applies, most famously the "absolutely hopeless" Archie Thompson, Thompson is still picked. If the players are so bad, he would not resort to entirely locals, or insist on better preparation. Amazing to think only a few short years ago the FFA mandated to always present the strongest possible team, now they tolerate a coach picking "absolutely hopeless" players. No one can say that they don't have 100% belief in the coach.
On preparation, the players had barely a few days in training, the squad was hit by injuries, and played an opposition that had been in camp preparing for 3 weeks, including preparation matches in New Zealand.
In team composition, Australia had 9 of the eleven players with a total of 13 caps between them. Compared to Kuwait, who brought their full-strength team that they'd used in World Cup qualifiers.
Verbeek knows all this up front. If he's deemed that this situation could still gain victory, that's his choice. During the game, they had all the hallmarks of the poorly experienced and poorly prepared team that they were. After the game, Verbeek admitted that he couldn't understand how the team had performed so poorly, and thought they'd be much better.
Instead of some objective analyse, including that of the disturbing trend emerging that Verbeek's teams are all suddenly lacking in attacking flare and creating chances, Murray and his TWG cohorts took the opportunity to again slam the A-League. Just some of the convenient lies:
http://theworldgame.sbs.com.au/a-league/mr-verbeek-we-have-a-problem-175957/
Australia were so poor and disjointed against a team ranked 98 places below them in the world that the majority of the biggest crowd to ever watch a football match in Canberra were left with the stark realisation that their favourite team was given a lesson in application, skill and flair.
The full overseas team gained that ranking, not the selection on the park. Not that the Fifa rankings mean much, as TWG and SBS will often tell us. They are flawed, and this website will only every quote them with asterix.
On this evidence, the Australian team has no chance of winning the Asian Cup in 2011 and it might have a fight on its hands to even qualify for the finals in Qatar after picking up a mere point from its first two matches.
This team will not be in the Asian Cup. That's a side issue. One that could conspire
against the performance.
The A-League, to be brutally honest, is not good enough. You've (Verbeek) told us so.
Verbeek actually said this: "I think the players can do much better and they have
shown me at training and during league
matches that they are much better. We have good and talented players that need a bigger
league and more international experience."
http://theworldgame.sbs.com.au/blogs/lesmurray/kuwait-and-an-inconvenient-truth-176736/
My suggestion is that it is the pathetic home loss to Kuwait that is used as a measure of where our football really is and not the 53,000 that showed-up at the A-League Grand Final.
Selectively pick the games. Why not the Grand Final? Why not the A-League crowds that are running 300% higher than the old NSL? Why not 2 years ago when an A-League team, under Graham Arnold, handled them 2-0? Oops, Arnold is an Australian coach, we don't want to spoil our other agenda railing against those.
As Verbeek assessed later, Australia was too slow and lacked movement, which to me defined a team which knew little of how it wanted to go about the business of turning ball possession into goals.
It defined a poorly prepared team.
So why is this so, that Australia, ranked 27th in the world by FIFA, can be so deservedly beaten at home by Kuwait, ranked 125th?
Let's selectively use those rankings again, when it suits the agenda.
That 27th ranking, even if accurate and credible, was earned through results by the Socceroos when they were at full strength, with our best and most experienced millionaire players on deck. It was foolhardy at best to expect an A-League selection to live up to that kind of ranking against Kuwait.
Correct. So why even mention it? Other than Fifa's "democratic" executive council, the Fifa rankings are the most foolhardy and useless object in the sport.
So here then is the brutal and inconvenient truth: the A-League, in its technical standard, is not the 27th best league in the world and nowhere near it. Maybe it's closer to being the 127th if the Canberra game is any guide, given that both teams drew their personnel in the main from their domestic competitions.
So here then is the convenient lie, all to fulfil an agenda. Didn't we just see Adelaide finish second in the ACL and beat Africa's champions and the CWC? Did we not see Sydney similarly perform well the year prior, pushing eventual ACL champions that year, Urawa, to 0-0 draw in Japan and 2-2 in Sydney? Did they not also perform similarly well at the CWC? Adelaide beat money-hungry Japanese, Korean, Chinese and Uzbeki teams on the way to the final, before collapsing, largely through defensive errors to Gamba. When facing Gamba at the CWC, it was much closer with a 1-0 loss.
We can say the A-League is better than all African leagues. Better than all Asian leagues other than Japan. Add all those tiny countries around the world with obviously inferior leagues, that leaves the A-League quite easily in the top 50. That's without even taking into account all the top-line foreigners loaded into many leagues, including the J-League and many others in Asia. Not that this matters. Because rubbishing the league is the agenda of the time.
Some, who wish things doggedly to be otherwise, disagree with this summation but in reality are only trying to paint over the cracks. Their assertion is that there is no way, surely, that the semi amateur Kuwaiti league is of a higher standard than the A-League.
Most don't. They realise the league is still developing and still requires gentle nurturing. It is only 4 years old and already considerably superior in every measure than the old NSL.
There are of course other theories on why Australia lost this game: insufficient preparation, shortage of international experience... reasonable and valid.
Many regard those as facts. Even the coach.
But I cannot hide or deny what I saw, and that was that our lot was out-matched in technique, speed of thought, off-ball movement and a unity of tactical purpose. And having those things right collectively is usually what wins football matches.
Of course not. That would kill the agenda.
http://theworldgame.sbs.com.au/blogs/philip-micallef/a-leagues-delusions-of-grandeur-176730
It's about time we stopped pretending that the A-League is the best thing to hit our
sport since Guus Hiddink.
An unequivocal disaster on the international stage might just be what the A-League needs
for change to take place.
That's just the introduction. You know something? The A-League is the best thing to hit our sport since Guus Hiddink, if not ever. For the first time, Australia has a viable national league to engage the public and develop the sport.
Kuwait showed us that our game is unappealing, unimaginative, pedestrian and predictable and some of our players lack the necessary skills to play representative football.
It showed that about this game. For many A-League and ACL matches, they've been great.
Remember China who gave the domestic Socceroos a football lesson in Sydney in their last match of the previous phase of World Cup qualifying?
Many overseas players were involved in that game - a dead rubber. Again, it came down to Verbeek's choosing and associated poor preparation. Personally, I was disgusted that the full strength team was not played, or the team selected received inadequate preparation, and our nation's proud record of no home losses in World Cup qualifiers since 1981 was destroyed.
Adelaide's run to the 2008 ACL final was a case in point. The Reds fought bravely against all odds, showing true Aussie grit and producing a magical half an hour in the semi-final against Bunyodkor that will go down in football folklore.
They matched teams really closely, as have most of the A-League teams in the ACL. Yet which are the leagues loaded with so many foreign players, especially from Brazil?
It took a double humiliation by Hungary (6-3 at Wembley and 7-1 in Budapest) in 1953 for the English to take a good look at themselves and realise that they were deluding themselves with their archaic ‘made in England' football. The Poms were forced to modernise their game. They did so, perhaps even reluctantly, but 13 years later they won the World Cup.
Australia are in the process of this. The call was the disastrous NSL. If you really want to compare Australia to England, England had 13 years. The A-League has only been going four.
http://theworldgame.sbs.com.au/asia/jets-mariners-on-the-money-178132/
Australian football is still smarting from Gamba Osaka’s 5-0 aggregate thrashing of Adelaide United in last season’s final.
No they aren't. They recognise the excellence of Gamba and recognise the league still has much work to do. The long-term aim of the FFA is to have the A-League on par of many European leagues - to the point that the standard and money is so high, that the bulk of the national team will be A-League players.
............
Why are TWG and SBS by association running this agenda? TV Rights. Jealousy and bitterness rule now that the domestic league is show exclusively on pay-TV's Fox Sports. It's in stark contrast to the NSL days when they were such vocal supporters that the late Johnny Warren even compared its quality to many games in the Brazillian league. If they had the A-League rights, guaranteed that there would be no such concerted attack.
The most galling aspect of this behaviour is the so-called arrogance of Australian teams not respecting Asia, yet here we are again with a media organisation that instead of praising Kuwait or any team that plays well and humbles us, looks to excuses and our deficiencies and anything we did wrong. Without raising any concerns before the game, SBS gave tacit approval for Verbeek's approach. Instead of criticising him, let's slam the A-League. Maybe Les Murray and his scurrilous crew were out hoping and supportive of a loss. It fits the agenda. It is their convenient lie.