Balls Versus Bling

 

It seems like yesterday that I drove over to Homebush to watch the A-league All Stars take on the visiting Juventus in a pre-season friendly. I was awestruck by the quality of football displayed by the locally-based players, who had Juventus huffing and puffing throughout the game. The All Stars were in with a real chance of pulling off a convincing upset until the last five minutes.

 

Guiding them was the loveable and passionate Adelaide United manager, the bubbly Josep Gombau, Barcelona’s former youth academy coach. The tiki-taka exhibited by his Australia-based charges was at times breathtaking as they went for the jugular against the Turin giants. As I left the ground at the final whistle, I could not help but hope that Sydney FC might one day take on the Spaniard as their manager.

 

A pinch of sadness was also experienced during the friendly, when Del Piero was substituted to deafening applause. Everyone suspected that it was his last game as an A-league player, and I was straight onto my feet clapping for the little genius whose qualities are so widely appreciated.

 

The sadness was also tinged by a deep regret of what might have been. He had joined Sydney FC two years earlier amid great fanfare, which had left me hoping that the club had put a solid platform in place for pinturicchio’s  moments of sheer magic to be complemented by a winning side. For I had long given up on the Sky Blues getting anything right on the pitch, and not for the last time would they disappoint.

 

 

 

 

Del Piero’s move downunder had hardly been announced, than his long time mate and former Italian star striker Gianluca Vialli told the press that pinturicchio just had to go to Sydney because he would ‘discover a different world, I would say probably a better world’.

"Sydney FC a better world?!", I asked myself. "He’s clearly got no idea about Australian football to be saying that." Sure enough, Del Piero’s new side were to be managed by Ian Crook, a coach I’d never even heard of. It was clear that the Sydney FC hierarchy either knew something no one else did or still had their head straight up in the clouds. It was therefore no surprise when Crook resigned his post after six games due to ill health, and it’s simply unbelievable when you think that in Australia ‘being crook’ is another way of saying that you’re ill!

But Del Piero’s introduction to Australian football was to descend into further low farce. After four losses in six opening games it seemed that all Sydney FC had achieved by recruiting the Italian was to also show the rest of the world what a pile of useless crap they were. Despite having lost a yard of pace, Del Piero’s trickery was the only highlight of the season, but as defeat followed defeat I could not watch the unravelling train crash any longer.

Sydney FC truly are the masters of disaster. And before long they had announced Frank Farina as their manager and also signed up Lucas Neill in a desperate bid to shore up an awful central defence. It was not as if it had ever been a great backline, certainly not since the reliable Simon Colosimo had been inexplicably sold on to Melbourne Heart after Sydney FC had somehow managed to win the league in 2010.

 

 

 

Eventually even Del Piero’s skills could not fan my interest anymore, and people told me that Sydney FC did eventually string some results together before falling off the boil again. When Del Piero announced that he would stay another year (perhaps he found playing amongst such a pack of hapless losers refreshing, or maybe  good ‘depressurisation’ before heading into the final payday of Indian football), I thought: "Surely now they’ll put together a title-winning side for him".

Yet following a much-trumpeted pre-season tour of Europe (one really has to question what the point of this exercise was, when most European sides are trying to win new fans in Asia), Del Piero’s second season was another stop-start calamity, with the club barely creeping into the finals series by somehow placing fifth in the league. They subsequently crashed out of the knockouts, and by then Farina had already been fired after the hardcore hub of Sydney FC supporters known as ‘the Cove’ had turned on him.

At the end of the day there really wasn’t much to show for Sydney FC’s efforts over the previous two seasons except for Del Piero himself. And once again, the club really hadn’t done the sport any favours in a city that is fiercely contested by other more traditional ball sports.

So thank God then, for the creation of that club along the M2.

 

 

 

And we have Australia’s favourite ‘twerker’ Clive Palmer to thank for that, after the loopy mining magnate’s Gold Coast United were chucked out of the A-league following his endless stream of public rants at Football Federation Australia. Suddenly finding themselves a club short, the FFA were quick to seize on the long-bandied idea of starting up an A-league side in Western Sydney.

Ooooh yes, way out west. That spooky, forlorn territory, far away from the sea, choked with bogans and westies. A place where Sydney FC’s illustrious would not be seen dead, never for a moment giving real consideration to keeping their base at Parramatta stadium or Homebush. This snub did little to ease the divide between ‘the west’ and ‘the rest’. And when Sydney FC finally made it to Parramatta stadium for a couple of fixtures to garner some support from the westies, they were met with defiant and deafening chants which called for a new Sydney side to be created.

And with Palmer’s side thrown out, the FFA suddenly needed another side to be able to honour their tv contracts that required ten teams in the top division. So (with characteristic forward planning) they quickly pulled the western Sydney idea out of the back pocket, and shipped in Socceroo veteran Tony ‘Poppa’ Popovic from London with strict orders to create a team in six months.

With only six professional players signed up by the first training session, many doubted that this new team would do anything more than prop up the league table come the end of the year. Yet if ever proof was needed that football is the game of the people, the brand new Western Sydney Wanderers (WSW) were to be it.

 

 

 

After an opening draw and a couple of defeats (including a reverse to Sydney FC) their football started to come together, and from the first the people rallied behind them. Perhaps due to his previous involvement at Sydney FC, Poppa instantly instilled a grass roots philosophy, seeking a quality of person and not just player. He wanted men who could commit to a community and not just a football club, and fight until the finish.
 

And whilst Del Piero hung his head in his hands following yet another defeat, the swiftly boiling cauldron of Parramatta stadium roared on as WSW shot to the top of the league, breaking the Central Coast-Brisbane stranglehold and narrowly missed out on also winning the grand finals in their first year. It was a jaw-dropping fairy tale that sent ripples worldwide, and unbelievable as it was, the much-overlooked and derided population out west were the 12th man that eclipsed the Del Piero headlines.

 

Never has love of the game been transmitted so seamlessly from the supporters to the players. So often you hear of players being very ‘professional’ about their performances, engaging in a bit of neat passing and ‘doing a job’.

 

Not the Wanderers.

 

 

 

In a game that is increasingly technical, they have shown that the spirit is no less important. And whenever they step out on the pitch there is an excited spring to their step. Poppa never makes excuses for their rare reversals and nor should he need to.

For upon the field his Wanderers apparently know no pain or fear or weariness. Theirs is only joy, for no opponent is too great to take on, nor any yard too hard to cover, or any energy meant to be saved. Each game is played as if it’s their first and their last, and rarely has a side been more in the now than them.

They embody a living ecstasy, that of generations of immigrants whose long-shadowed passion for the beautiful game has erupted onto the pitch, rendering their players receptacles of delight. Australia finally has its first great club, a position so nearly claimed in deeds by Melbourne Victory / Brisbane Roar, and in words by Sydney FC’s hierarchy.

WSW are truly about all that renders Australia great, keeping it real at all times, and miles away from the faff and posturing of Sydney FC’s owners and their cronies, who constantly let down the Sky Blue supporters who deserve so much better.

Which fans must have looked on in envy at WSW’s maiden run in the Asian Champions League, a tournament in which Sydney FC never made it through the group stage at both times of asking. Not the Wanderers, who despite their limited resources left the likes of Marcello Lippi in a flap after knocking out his massive-spending Guangzhou Evergrande (who fielded the likes of Gilardino and Diamanti), prior to also knocking out Korean giants and AFC veterans FC Seoul in the semi-finals, and lining up a final against Saudi Arabia’s Al-Hilal.

 

 

 

And to rub salt into the wound, the Wanderers have done it all with a handful of Sydney FC rejects, which included Topor-Stanley, Beauchamp, Bridge, Cole and Santalab!

The delight following their glorious win against FC Seoul was so great that I suspect a hangover was still raging during the Wanderers’ first day 4-1 thrashing at the hands of Melbourne Victory. They will be scrambling to step up for tomorrow’s derby against Sydney FC, whilst on his part new Sky Blues manager Graham Arnold will hope that his side might claw something out of this game, what with three international players returning to the fold.

With the Wanderers having one eye on the Asian Champions League final next week, there has never been a better time to play them, with their defence seemingly over-reliant on Nikolai Topor-Stanley. The big question is whether the Wanderers will show up against Sydney FC, or save their shin-snapping lunges and last ditch tackles for the Saudis a few days later. Personally I have no doubt they'll give the derby as good a go as they can.

What’s certainly true is that the game dowunder has come a long way in such a short space of time, with all this talk about cross-town rivals, and derbies with record-breaking attendances. And this recent mention of 'continental distraction' and Champions League finals also leaves me shaking my head to remind myself that its Australian and not European football we’re talking about.

On the eve of the derby, I find there’s been few local games I’ve awaited with such genuine enthusiasm. And following the departure of Del Piero, this fixture only has any profile because of the incredible achievements of the men from out west.