To prepare for the technically superior, tactically crafty Serie A, Mark Bresciano was schooled in Australia’s National Soccer League.

He debuted aged 17 for a club that pulled around 2000 regulars to an AFL ground with a bumpy cricket wicket on the playing surface. Not the best apprenticeship to prepare you for the rigours of one of the world’s toughest leagues, you’d think.

“Beautiful memories,” recalls Bresciano, in a blue-collar Aussie accent tinged with a dash of Italiano. “One of the best periods of my life. I loved playing in the NSL. Being at home amongst your mates with some good boys at Carlton.

“They’re just beautiful memories that I’ll never forget... but I’m still spewing we didn’t win the grand final,” he adds of Carlton’s 2-1 loss to South Melbourne in 1998.

For Carlton, Croatian star Kresimir Marusic weaved his magic while teen Aussie starlets Bresciano, Simon Colosimo and Vince Grella did their senior apprenticeship – and played week-in-week-out.

Brought together by fashion-conscious former Socceroo Eddie Krncevic, Carlton was “a very competitive side”, Bresciano recalls of his two year stint.

That, however, was long ago in an Aussie football world far, far away...

Carlton, in its own ambitious words, aimed to be “The Manchester United of Asia”. Perhaps unsurprisingly, that didn’t materialise with the club’s spiralling debts in a struggling league ushering them into a financial black hole. They drowned.

However, 10 years later and after Bresciano’s nine successful seasons in Italy, that link with Manchester – the blue half anyway – has popped up on his radar again. But like Carlton, so far it also looks to have blown off course.

Instead of dialling FourFourTwo hours before Palermo’s 3-0 loss to Sampdoria in Genoa, Bresciano could easily have been ringing us from Manchester before a City vs United derby.

“With everything that happened in the window last August in the transfer period, I was very close to being transferred [to Manchester City] and in the last second it fell through,” a gloomy tone darkening Bresciano’s mood.

“I say I’m over it now... but it took me like half a season to get over. It took me a very long time. I found it very hard to come back. I was already there [in England].

I already had plans in my head that I was going to be there.

“It was hard to come back to somewhere you thought you’d left. So, I found it hard mentally to return and perform.”

Again he takes his time when asked whether the EPL would be the logical next step in his career. “It’s a tough question,” he responds diplomatically, “because I had the opportunity to go to England.

“I don’t know – I might think twice about going. Just to have a change, to try something different and yeah, have a new and different footballing experience.”

Early in 2008, Bresciano’s club set up base in Spain for a brief mid-season camp. Weeks earlier, the Aussie flew home for his Christmas break. A languid holiday in the stress-free Melbourne sun provided a desperately needed boost for the Socceroo. Well, almost.

“It wasn’t long enough,” he laughs of his hometown trip. “Once you’re there, you don’t want to leave. It was very good to see family and friends.

“I love the summer, I love the beach so it was perfect for me. I think the break over Christmas has helped me out, refreshing my mind so I can start all over again.”

Clearly we haven’t heard the last of transfer speculation although the former Empoli and Parma man is keen to point out he still has two-and-a-half years left on the contract he signed to play at Palermo’s Colosseum-like stadium Renzo Barbera.

Quizzed on whether he’s achieved everything he’d set out to in Italian football, Bresciano ponders for what seems like forever before explaining.

“No… Well, you see, my first goal was just to get over here and start playing. My second goal was to try and play in a Serie A team and try to cement a spot in a Serie A team.

“But now, it’s a big goal,” he adds. “If I can I’d like to play in one of the big teams and try to fight for either the Scudetto or the UEFA Champions League. And internationally the most important thing is to qualify for the World Cup.

“So, we’ll see what happens in the future. It’s very touchy here and you have to be very careful what you say. The fans here can get a bit nasty.”

That’s a bit of an understatement. The fan violence that has cursed the game in Italy still resonates with Bresciano.

“Yeah, those were the worst times I had,” he notes sombrely. “Sometimes experiences like that take away from the football.”

A policeman was clubbed to death during rioting in Sicily between rival Palermo and Catania fans. The Italian federation briefly put the season on hold and ordered some clubs to play in empty stadiums.

“It’s unbelievable how some people have to react in those ways or act in those kind of ways,” he says of the Palermo versus Catania derby last year. “I think they’re too proud of where they come from. Obviously that’s a rivalry for them and it’s probably the most important game of the season.”

He describes living in Palermo as “a bit chaotic” noting, “the fans are a bit more passionate down there. You kinda run to your car when you go out of the house,” he adds, tongue not quite in cheek.

So, has Italian football been able to live up to his expectations?

“Er, it has,” he says with another thoughtful pause. “To be fair, every club I’ve been to I’ve had a successful year so I can’t really name one best year. At Empoli [Bresciano’s first club in Serie A] I had some good seasons, at Parma I had some good seasons and here at Palermo last year was a good season.

“I believe that Italian football is the most difficult league to play in,” he adds.

“It’s not the most exciting or the most watched. And it’s hard for someone to come in and break into a side. It took me maybe three years to break in. So, it’s not easy.

“They work a lot on tactical stuff which maybe a lot of players find boring. If the team is set up well tactically on the park and knows its movements, these are the things that can win you games.”

Bresciano’s Palermo coach Francesco Guidolin is a typical example, working on “firstly, the formation of the opposition, where you should be positioned when they have the ball defensively, obviously when you have the ball, the runs you should make. Where the danger would be, where they may leave space for you to get into,” explains the Socceroo.

“Finding their weaknesses and nullifying their strengths. We go through that a lot during the week and working on building up our play from the back. I’ve got used to it. Some players might find it boring but I think it can give you some good knowledge and help you read the game better and prepare you for the games better.”

If Mark Bresicano wasn’t a footballer he’d have been a mechanical engineer. You can picture it too – his measured responses to questions; peculiarly long pauses as he ponders his thoughts and his enjoyment of the tactical side of football. Glib, cliched answers are not in his make-up. Oh, and he’s refreshingly frank.

“At the moment I’m not at my best physical condition,” he concedes. “I don’t know if it comes back to not having a good break and being in competition, but I think at the end of the day it could come bite me on the arse. I think most of the [Socceroo] players are probably feeling it.”

Feeling it or not, Bresciano still burns with a desire to show the Asian Football Confederation (AFC) what the Socceroos are really capable of after a disappointing quarter-final finish at last year’s Asian Cup – a tournament he says shows the strength of the AFC and shocked many Socceroos.

“It’s a great opportunity to show the quality we have,” he stresses. “I think a lot of people thought it would be easier than what it was playing against the Asians and in the Asian conditions. Everyone got a bit of a shock – especially some of us players.

“We haven’t played in conditions like that in a very long time. It’s probably going to be the biggest hurdle for us to get over. If we’re ever going to have games like that in those conditions those are the things that can hurt us the most.”

Therefore, argues Bresciano, it’s of “fundamental” importance to the Socceroos that they win their home games in this first round of World Cup qualifiers over the next five months, “because when we do go overseas, with the conditions we never know what we’re going to find.

“Actually the [Asian] teams are pretty good too,” the 27-year-old adds. “Going along all these years, these teams are getting better and better, creeping up and the difference between one and another is very minimal.”

So, given that Iraq won the Asian Cup, should they be considered favourites ahead of Australia?

“Oh, shit. I don’t know... because with China, Iraq and Qatar, you’d back yourselves and we should be quietly confident – but just keep it to ourselves. But it’s going to be tough. Very tough.”

Bresciano is great mates with ex-Carlton and now Torino man Vinnie Grella. Actually, they’re like brothers – “even more than brothers” Grella has said – as they’ve shared an incredible Serie A dream at Empoli and Parma and a World Cup adventure with the Socceroos.

So what did Bresciano make of his close buddy’s pointed comments last year after the 2007 Asian Cup when he claimed certain celebrations by Asian opponents were taking the piss out of the Aussies?

Bresciano takes another good long pause before reflecting: “To be fair, I don’t pay much attention to all that stuff. I’d seen what they’d done with the celebration and all that kind of stuff but to be honest, it doesn’t get to me. I really don’t have anything to say – they can do what they do, but once we get out on the park, that’s probably when you want to get them back.

“Playing AFC teams is totally different to the World Cup. No-one expected anything from us and we had nothing to lose at the World Cup. But this time around, everyone who plays against us wants to beat us. They all think we’re the team to beat, maybe the most dominant team.

“It’s different...” He pauses again and exhales air before adding, “...sometimes, because if we don’t get the results we get frustrated.”

Even down a phone line from Genoa, the quietly spoken Mark Bresciano’s pride in the Green and Gold shines through loud and clear. But that pride comes at a hefty physical price.

The 2005 Confederations Cup; 2006 World Cup; 2007 Asian Cup… It’s been a hectic three years with little respite. And for Bresciano, sandwiched between those Green and Gold campaigns has been the demanding spotlight of Serie A.

In 2008, the Socceroos face a host of 2010 World Cup qualifiers in wildly varying climatic conditions across Asia and Australia. It’s not impossible – but hardly a smooth ride for Australia’s first campaign through the AFC.

This schedule sees a group-deciding quartet of fixtures in June: Iraq home and away – at a neutral venue – China at home and a trip to sweltering Doha against the Qataris.

“Any athlete needs his time off. Time off his feet, just to recharge the batteries – but we haven’t had a chance yet,” he notes without a hint of bitterness.

“I don’t know if we’ll have it this year because I think there are also a couple of games in June for the World Cup...”

Two games? Er, actually Mark, it’s four. “Four?” he replies, the alarm rising in his voice. “Faaark,” he muses quietly after a few seconds. “I thought there was only two...”

But don’t mistake for lack of commitment. Despite the physical toll his relentless footballing schedule has had on him, Bresciano is ready to go.

“At the end of this World Cup campaign, if we don’t qualify you’d be thinking, ‘Shit I could’ve helped out the team.’ That’d be hard. I think all the European Socceroos are going to be up for it.

“I don’t want any regrets, you know?”