Johnstone, leading the charge of Australian players into Europe. Johnstone, leading the charge of Australian players into Europe. Image: Getty Images

Finish this line from a popular UK pop song: “Well I came to England looking for fame / So come on Kenny man, give us a game / ‘Cause I’m sat on the bench paying my dues and my fees / I’m very big Down Under … ” 

“But my wife disagrees.” [Laughs] They used to have these Cup final songs, and they were dreadful. So I’m sitting with my room-mate Bruce [Grobbelaar] and saying the music is crap when someone approached us and asked if we’d do this Liverpool song, like a marching band. Rap music was just starting out and I loved Run DMC and guys like them, and I said, “I’m going to write a rap.” Rap is about inner city gangs singing about their posse and we had a posse at Liverpool and they all had a foreign language or accent, along with the two Scousers, McMahon and Aldridge. It was a silly idea but it went to number three on the charts. Not bad given Madonna was number one!

So outside of your football you’ve had the songs, the Predator boot, Supa Skills football clinics, a “butler” application for hotel mini-bars that counted drinks … Are you always dreaming big?

Yeah – and doing big. I’ve always had interesting ideas. I’ve got a creative, fertile mind. And I’m a bit of a romanticist, I guess. I think of funny things, especially after a beer. I have great ideas and dreams – fantasies if you like – and they come back at me. It’s the “how” that fascinates me as much as the dream. I appear to shoot from the hip, but process and procedure is my thing. The thing I think I’ll be remembered for used to be called Supa Skills – it’s now called the Johnston Academy. It’s a blueprint for whoever wants to listen. At the moment FFA is not listening because they’ve never listened to me.

What is it?

It’s how Aussie kids get better on a daily basis at playing soccer. Everyone goes on about the Brazilian system, the Dutch system, Spanish, English. But there’s an Australian system that everyone’s missed. What I’m proposing is my ultimate dream in life: to bring the World Cup to Australia and for us to win it by playing better, cleverer football than the opposition, be they Brazilian, Dutch, whoever. Doing it the Australian way, because we have our own culture, identity, process and procedure, and our own sense of pride and getting things done. Why are we copying other people? There are more world champions per capita in this country than anywhere. Why aren’t the Dutch employing us to tell them how to get things done? What I’ve actually created takes the best of the Dutch, Brazilian systems and Aussie cricket, league, AFL – all sports I consulted ad nauseum. It takes the best of school teaching, best cultural influences. It’s not so much a coaching method as a scientific way of having fun on a daily basis and proving at night, when you get a scorecard, that you are better than you were this morning because you worked at your weaknesses. It’s very clever.