Governance – tell me when it’s over

There is nothing more boring for me than governance. It’s one of those things that I hardly know what’s going on because it’s like reading about state politics.

It’s like it’s injecting me with an anaesthetic.

But at the same time It feels like that we are on the verge of something else. Our football has developed in periods. Before this period we had the National Soccer League.

It feels like the Golden Generation and the Lowy period – it feels like we are going to shed that skin.

People want to push the past away and say what’s next?

Whatever it is let’s just embrace it. If it’s promotion and relegations so be it. Let’s do it , that injects a little bit of excitement into the situation let’s do that. I feel that excitement.

I’m not invested in the game enough. You know what? I’ve been asked, ‘Do you want to be a shareholder in the club? Do you want to join the board? Do you want to join his committee?’

I’m so much of a football fan that I don’t want the issue of governance to get in the way of my passion for the game. So in a way I like to stay away from the detail.

I don’t want it to get in the way of what I’ve always loved about Australian football.

That’s it’s tough, beautiful, it’s tragic, it’s lucky, it’s funny, it has great personalities and I just look forward to the next phase.

We have qualified for four straight World Cups in a row, that is no mean feat. That’s really hard.

We’ve got players at an international level that I reckon are going to get better and better.

I think the next phase is going to be pretty good I feel hopeful about it, I really do.

The Way Forward

Here is the hard part. I think our main problem in this country is how quickly that ideas from people that we disagree with get shot down. I hate it.

I’m not on Twitter or Facebook or anything like that but I guarantee you that if I say anything at all and I could make it up, that the first 50 responses would be, 'Who is this f*cking idiot? What the fck are you saying?'

There is so much negativity. Everybody feels that they have personally got the right idea about how the problems are solved and I’m telling you it’s a complicated thing.

Even we disagree about the best way of going forward we have to listen to each other. There is too much shutting down and there is too much tribalism in terms of going forward.

There is no one way forward and if there was one way forward, someone would have found it. All thoughts are very, very constructive even if they are not right.

It’s a very passionate game. We have very passionate supporters and we have very passionate administrators, we have very passionate players so it’s pretty much everywhere.

When people here robust discussion on sports panels they feel my opinion is just as valid as Fozz’s (Craig Foster) or Robbie Slater’s or Bozza’s (Mark Bosnich) or whoever so I’ll be just as forthcoming.

They are quite right to do that. Everybody has got a right to an opinion but I don’t think everybody has got a right to shoot down another person’s opinion just because it overlaps.

I know it sounds like I’m saying there should be peace in the world. It’s easy to say that, but it’s how you go about it.

Over the last 10 or 20 years I like to listen to everybody’s point of view and I don’t like to hear people say, ‘No, that’s f*cked, that’s not good.’

Because I feel, ‘Hang on, that idea might be good, it might not be good now or just one part of it is good.’ That’s my big bugbear. I don’t like the way people get shot down no matter what their thoughts are.

I don’t like compartmentalising people’s theories and then throwing them out because you may think, ‘I know him, he thinks this way and therefore everything he says is useless.’

It happens everywhere, in journalism, politics.

You could go to AAMI Park and listen to Melbourne Victory fans talk about problems with the Australian team and I guarantee you even with a bunch of mates they are disagreeing.

Which is fine we like that healthy debate, that is good, but unhealthy discarding of anybody’s views is not helpful, especially if it’s a complex problem.

Player development.

How can we create something like happened in our Golden Generation? What was it? Was it that there were more ethnic clubs that were in the NSL?

Back then we could identify players. We’d say, ‘Look at that kid called Mark Viduka! Look at him, he’s 15, he’s scoring goals like a 20 year-old. I reckon this kid go far in our team. So we could sell him overseas or we could put him straight into the Melbourne Knights first team.’

Back then they grabbed guys like that and they said, ‘You know what? We are going to roll the dice on these guys.’

It feels like there is a different way up for the players coming through now.

It’s interesting that Daniel Arzani hasn’t gone through the same way as all the other players and he’s got something different. 

I don’t know whether it’s true that he grew up playing on the streets but there is a kid that looks to me that he wants to score a goal.

That’s why it’s beautiful to see Arzani play because he is unfettered. All he wants to do is run, score and assist. He just wants to go forward. I reckon that is the big take away about all this.

Where is our next striker coming from? I want to see where the kids are that all they want to do is put the ball into the back of the net.

I don’t mean guys who want to put the ball in the back of the net from over 15 metres.

I’m old enough to remember Italian World Cup striker Paolo Rossi – he could only put the ball in the back of the net from about six yards. But all he wanted to do was score a goal, score a goal.

The way we are playing in Australia feels like our basics are becoming pretty good. We know how to knock the ball around and stuff like that.

But I just want someone to grab a kid who is hungry but has a whole lot of faults and say, ‘I’m going to Iive with all you faults, your technique problems, even the psychological problems that you’ve got – but what I want to see is that desire in you that you want to score a goal all the time.'

That’s going to win us a World Cup. We can’t sit around and play solidly and be disciplined when you’ve got no-one up front who’s going to score a goal.

That’s where I think our next big challenge is.

As told to Con Stamocostas