Football News » Editorial
Editorial
Soccerphile Editorial - January 2012
Growing Divide in Australian Football
The heated clash between former Socceroos team-mates Craig Foster and Robbie Slater highlights the growing divide in Australian football.
Foster - a one-time midfielder under Terry Venables at Portsmouth and Crystal Palace - has become an outspoken critic of the way football is run in Australia since ending his professional playing career in 2003. He has used an increasingly expansive media profile to launch withering attacks on Football Federation Australia and those he believes poorly administer the sport.
His latest attack - a mid-January condemnation of Melbourne Victory's signing of Jim Magilton as coach - prompted an unprecedented response from Slater. Writing in his influential Sunday column for the Fairfax media group, Foster claimed Victory's decision to install Northern Irishman Magilton as a replacement for the sacked Mehmet Durakovic represented "a return to the direction of yesteryear."
"It hearks to both the historical reliance on Britons who built and quickly populated the coach education ranks in Australia and the beginnings of the A-League, when the immediate reaction of clubs was to import at a feverish rate from the mother country," wrote Foster - who is renowned for his dislike of British coaching methods.
The response from his former Australia team-mate Slater was as ferocious as it was unexpected. Launching his attack on Twitter, Slater claimed the column had made his British father cry, before labelling Foster a "racist" and exposing a long-hidden account of Foster's alleged arrest in Tahiti, which supposedly ended Foster's Socceroos career.
Slater was largely condemned for what was considered to be an over-the-top reaction, but his outburst proved how deeply tensions run within the Australian football community. And the divide appears to be growing between the anti-British camp and those who feel nationality is irrelevant in terms of coaching credentials.
The former camp is led by Foster, a vocal critic who uses his position as chief football analyst at television network SBS to preach his position. His most infamous outburst arguably came during the 2010 World Cup, when he called for Australia's Dutch coach Pim Verbeek to be sacked one game into the tournament whilst reading the nightly sports report on the news.
Critics argue SBS has been so outspoken in its attacks on the way Australian football is run because they missed out on the television broadcast rights for Australia's domestic competition, the A-League. Those rights are held by Fox Sports, for whom Slater is a commentator and long-term employee.
While Foster is renowned for suggesting Australia must employ tactical methods from Spain, Italy and Germany, he insists he holds no particular anti-British bias. Certainly Foster has taken aim at coaches from other backgrounds - Verbeek included - however it's his consistent verbal attacks against British coaching methods which has divided the football community.
For many, there is another unseemly element to Foster's constant carping - which grew more vehement following the death of another outspoken critic, Johnny Warren. A former Socceroos captain, Warren was a crusader for football at a time when the sport remained deeply unpopular with large swathes of the Australian population. His death from cancer in 2004 prompted an outpouring of grief, and some see Foster as having stepped into Warren's vacuum as a self-appointed defender of the game.
In the days after his column was published, Foster seemed taken aback by Slater's reaction but failed to amend his statements. "As to Rob, nothing has changed. I respect his career if not especially his views or comments, and let's get back to the football. Barca goal!", Foster wrote on Twitter. His final flourish - a nod to his love of the way Spanish giants Barcelona play - was no doubt an attempt at humour. But to many it represented how deeply Foster is out of touch with the A-League - where standards are light years away from the football currently being played in the Camp Nou.
If Magilton was even aware of the furore, he hasn't been drawn into commenting. That may change over time, if the reaction of ex-Sydney FC coach Terry Butcher is anything to go by. The former England international once wrote a sardonic open letter to the Sydney Morning Herald, demanding Foster take charge of training since he knew how to play "beautiful football."
Foster outlasted that fiasco and no doubt he'll shrug off this latest one too. But in the quest to raise A-League standards, he is also raising the hackles of former Socceroos team-mates. And the divide in the Australian football community grows ever wider, between Foster's trenchant SBS and a Fox Sports fraternity eager to protect their commercial investment in the A-League.
| Football Editorials 2007 | Football Editorials 2008 | Football Editorials 2009 | Football Editorials 2010 | Football Editorials 2011
|
|
|
