The World Cup is a reminder that history's most talented Socceroo has Australia's most complicated legacy

This is an extract from the incredible new Australian football book The Immortals of Australian Soccer, which recounts an unparalleled history of Australian football through its greatest moments and players. The book is available now through all good bookstores or online here.

Fifteen minutes remained of the wildest 90 minutes in Australian football history and it was turning into a bloodbath. The Socceroos either had to score or board the next flight to Sydney, and if they missed emerging whispers of a ‘golden generation’ would remain just that: an aide- memoire of what might have been. Croatian fans packed into Gottlieb-Daimler-Stadion screeched relentlessly, filling the air with a noxious white noise whenever Australia had the ball. A blurring display of yellow and red cards amplified the jeering: this match was so uncontrollable its referee retired in humiliation.

Ordinarily, introducing Harry Kewell to this dogfight would be like bringing a Maserati to the Dakar Rally, but on this night the fragile Liverpool magician was Australia’s prodigal son. For 70 minutes Kewell had been devastating: firing howitzers, setting combinations, hacking legs and shoving opponents. The clock ticked over the 79th minute, and Kewell drifted to the very edge of the opposite touchline and slowed almost to a standstill until his marker, Dario Srnja, lost him entirely. There he waited patiently until Mark Bresciano received the ball on the right side.

Only the Socceroos recognised what happened next: Kewell’s patented shift to the left, the in-step foreshadowing one of his curvaceous crosses. It took two crucial seconds for Srnja to realise that Kewell was suddenly sprinting behind him, but by then it was too late. John Aloisi’s head flicked the cross straight onto the most accomplished left foot in Australian history, Kewell instantly lifted the ball to stomach height and in a split second volleyed it with his right. It was in the back of the net before the goalkeeper could raise his hands.

‘When it’s gone past the keeper you just know,’ Kewell told FIFA. ‘I was already off without the ball going in the back of the net. The euphoria that comes over you is phenomenal; it goes down in Australian history as the goal that got us through to the last 16.’ The Socceroos were in the knockout stages of the World Cup and the most talented yet maligned footballer Australia has ever produced was finally the hero. 

‘It had to be Harry,’ Simon Hill famously bellowed to 6.5 million Australians watching back home. But from this day forward it rarely was Harry again.

Kewell was just 15 when he left Australia, bought by Leeds United for a $2,600 compensation payment to Soccer New South Wales. Kewell even played his Leeds trial matches under the false name of ‘Lawrence Davies’ due to the fact that his age and nationality made the move illegal.  He had the same balance of traits that almost all prodigious athletes possess: he was popular yet independent, and confident yet painstaking.

There was also a touch of luck, because while his Marconi teammate Brett Emerton was also signed only Kewell could make the move due to his father’s English heritage. Kewell even played his Leeds trial matches under the false name of ‘Lawrence Davies’ due to the fact that his age and nationality made the move illegal. New South Wales coach David Lee trained Kewell from 11 years of age to his departure, and said the winger’s attitude was all that mattered: ‘At that stage it’s not so much talent, but more their approach to the game,’ he told FTBL. ‘Harry always accepted things as they were. His left foot wasn’t bad, but the rest of his game was pretty ordinary. However, he applied himself to everything we gave him and he picked things up quickly due to his drive to get to the top.’

Kewell developed into a typical English footballer for the period: he spoke with a northerner’s accent complete with a rough around the edges Geordie dialect. He married young, to a British soap actress in Las Vegas, and while always shy in front of a camera he began to morph into a heavily marketed role model. He and his wife soon became a favourite of the British tabloids and his face became a fixture on Sky Sports commercials, and a defining relationship with controversial cigar-puffing agent Bernie Mandic began.

At the same time, Kewell’s football was flourishing at a rate Australia has never witnessed before or since. His decision to join Leeds was crucial, as the team was secure in mid-table and becoming a sensational development club, with Kewell their star asset. He played in a wide variety of positions in the Leeds academy, scoring 17 goals in one season as a left back. By the age of 17 he’d broken into the Leeds first team in time for the club’s greatest period under manager David O’Leary: they finished in the Premier League’s top five each season and made the semi-finals of the Champions League. Behind the scenes a battle was emerging for Kewell’s international allegiance.

On the word of English mates, then– Socceroos boss Eddie Thomson sequestered the 17 year old and sent him 10,000 kilometres from Leeds to the Chilean port city of Antofagasta, where he became the third youngest Socceroos debutant in a 3-0 drubbing from the Chileans. ‘The pressure on Harry not to play for Australia was huge,’ Mandic told FTBL. ‘Eddie snuck in under everybody’s guard.’

Kewell joined Leeds and the Socceroos at the perfect time. Australia embarked on their longest ever winning streak that year – 14 matches straight – before offering Kewell the ultimate chance to endear himself to the nation. Kewell made just his third Socceroos appearance in the first of a two- legged qualifier for the 1998 World Cup. Two months after his 19th birthday he walked out to a Tehran ‘colosseum’ in front of a crowd of 128,000 Iranian men hurtling abuse, bottles and even dead chickens at the Australians. He was ready for it, he said later: ‘It never really affected me.’ In these conditions it only took him 19 minutes to score his first Socceroos goal, which was identical to the one he scored eight years later to send Australia past Croatia: a flick onto his boot, a sumptuous touch and a scorching volley with the opposite foot. The Socceroos escaped Tehran with a 1-1 draw back to the Melbourne Cricket Ground, where in front of 85,000 Australian fans they were expected to reach their first World Cup in 24 years.

Kewell’s next appearance was the most devastating day in Australian football history, but it began like any other dream scenario. The flopsy-haired teenager commanded Australia’s front line, setting the play before converting a thumping back- post cross to put the Socceroos 1-0 up. He created Australia’s second goal as well, but after a lunatic spectator disrupted play Australia conceded two late strikes and a golden generation disappeared on away goals. Just a month later Kewell starred as the Socceroos beat Mexico and drew against Brazil to make the 1997 Confederations Cup semi-final.

That was Kewell’s last Socceroos match for two years. He left West Yorkshire an English lad and returned a hardened Australian veteran; he had been baptised in two cauldrons, shouldering the responsibility of an entire nation. It had taught him that his success depended on himself, not his country.

‘He said to me, “Bernie, let me tell you something about football. Mate, you can go beat your wife, beat your kids, root prostitutes, rob a bank or even commit murder – but if you score the winning goal on the weekend, it doesn’t fuckin’ matter,”’ Mandic told The Sydney Morning Herald. ‘When he said that, I thought, “Fuck me, how cynical can a bloke of 19 be?” But the scary thing was he was right.’ Still just 19 years of age, Kewell made 35 appearances for Leeds in 1997/98 in addition to visiting four countries for six Socceroos caps. Next season he made a whopping 49 Leeds appearances and missed every one of Australia’s nine matches.

In his fifth season at Leeds, aged just 21, he made an incredible 53 appearances in a single season plus two Australia friendlies. Kewell averaged a football match every four days for 36 weeks straight, but what made the feat superhuman was that every appearance was a burning intensity of bullet-like speed and implausible dynamism. He was named in the Professional Footballers Association (PFA) Team of the Year and won the PFA Young Player of the Year award, to this date arguably the loftiest individual honour won by an Australian footballer abroad. ‘He was one of the reasons I joined Leeds,’ Premier League great Rio Ferdinand said. ‘He was the star player. His left foot was a wonder at times. He was a bit of a maverick. He scored some unbelievable goals.’ Fellow teammate Ian Harte went even further, calling him the ‘best left-winger that probably played in England for a long, long time’. Kewell was nominated for the Ballon d’Or and scored 17 goals that season, forming a prolific partnership with Michael Bridges. ‘He could drop the shoulder and be past a player in a flash,’ Bridges told The Guardian. ‘He had that quickness, that skill. I’ve never had that communication with another striker.’

It culminated in a £25 million offer for Kewell from Italian giants Inter Milan, which Leeds rejected. In just six years the windswept blond teen who kicked a ball around for Marconi Stallions in Fairfield had grown from a $2,600 flutter to the most valuable player in the world.

Had Kewell moved to Internazionale that year he would have broken the world transfer record, which in an unbelievable twist of fate had been set by a fellow Marconi Stallions product, Christian Vieri, the previous year. Kewell had created Aussie mania in the Premier League and Leeds rushed to snap up every Australian they could sign; by 2002 he was one of seven Australians at the club and he combined with Mark Viduka for 38 goals that
season alone. The next year Kewell destroyed the English national team, as the Socceroos smashed them 3-1 in front of 30,000 fans in London.

At this point the story seems clear – Kewell was a born immortal and Australia was a force majeure – but today these facts are mere trivia. The Socceroos sank to 82nd in the world and five of the seven Aussies at Leeds left within a year. The Australian didn’t break the transfer world record; in fact, three years later Leeds collected just £3 million from selling him to Liverpool. Kewell’s ticking time bomb had blown. In 2001 he missed 150 days with Achilles tendon problems and, after that, played just one more full season. Bridges hints that century-culminating 2000 season may have been the beginning of the end for Kewell and Leeds’ young stars, as the club’s utter reliance on the teenagers had placed overwhelming pressure on the young men’s bodies: ‘Were we told to play as many games, do as many weights as possible?’ Bridges asked rhetorically. ‘I look back at that team and wonder where it all went wrong. Was it something in our training? We all had success at Leeds, but after that everyone seemed to deteriorate.’

‘It’s about the mileage that players play,’ Kewell’s physio, Les Gelis, told FTBL during Kewell’s career. ‘If you look at the English Premiership in particular, it takes a massive toll on the athlete. If you are a good player, you get played all the time. Harry will never dodge hard work, he is one of the hardest trainers on the pitch . . . his way would be to train all day, every day.’

‘An [Achilles] injury stopped him in his tracks,’ Ferdinand said. ‘He could have gone on to do some magic things.’

There were larger storm clouds on the horizon for Leeds than their treatment of players. Club chairman Peter Risdale had borrowed over $100 million in 2001 against the club’s future Champions League revenue. When O’Leary’s side narrowly failed to qualify for two consecutive Champions Leagues, Leeds began selling players to finance their debts. After two volatile seasons and with rapid turnover sinking the club to the bottom of the league, Leeds was finally relegated at the end of the 2003/04 season.

Kewell remained with the club until the end, and it’s here that the Socceroos’ colourful agent Bernie Mandic came into focus. Mandic first struck a relationship with Kewell while he was a Sydney teenager and assisted negotiations for his first Leeds contract. Kewell had grown up a Liverpool fan in Sydney’s west, and when Leeds was relegated he rejected bigger-money offers from Barcelona, Real Madrid and Manchester United to play at Anfield. Leeds attempted to block the transfer, but Kewell threatened to sit out his contract and leave for free the following season. Beneath the veil of boyhood dreams, his move reportedly pocketed Mandic nearly as much as Leeds through a private payment, with Liverpool also passing the savings from the low offer onto Kewell’s salary. An ensuing war of words played out in the British press, and the resulting controversy followed Kewell for the rest of his Premier League career. It then followed him home, because when an Australian agent issued a complaint over Mandic’s transfer Kewell threatened to quit the Socceroos. He may have been able to handle 128,000 Iranians, but playing for one of the world’s biggest clubs amid intense media pressure severely rattled him.

Liverpool had huge expectations of Kewell, with manager Gérard Houllier famously passing up the chance to sign Cristiano Ronaldo by saying ‘We had Harry Kewell.’ His first Liverpool season was very solid, but he wasn’t Ronaldo and Liverpool weren’t title challengers. Then the injuries began: knee, ankle, gout, Achilles, groin, abductor and inguinal hernias, all in addition to autoimmune hepatitis. There were 14 operations, 150 missed club games and 60 missed Socceroos games. ‘The bottom of the world is when you are sitting on the edge of the bed crying and wondering “Am I ever going to play the game again?”’ he said after winning the Alex Tobin medal. ‘You are sitting there going, “What’s wrong with me? Every time I am kicking I am ripping a muscle, every time I am turning I am breaking down.”’

Injuries didn’t destroy Kewell’s Liverpool career, but they cast a shadow so dark that the winger’s flashes of brilliance could never escape it. An inconspicuous groin injury that didn’t even make the match reports ended up defining his Premier League career. New manager Rafa Benitez didn’t understand Kewell’s injuries and publicly appeared to doubt the Australian, saying his injury ‘changes each day’ and that ‘one day Harry is okay, and the next he says he is unfit’. It’s a particularly cruel irony that Kewell’s desperation to return to action convinced both his manager and his fans that he wasn’t committed to playing. He rushed back for the 2005 League Cup final but further exacerbated his injury and was withdrawn, before what should have been the greatest moment in his club career – Liverpool’s timeless Champions League comeback against AC Milan – became the most ignominious.

Benitez shocked fans by starting Kewell in the final, then forcibly withdrew him after just 23 minutes when Kewell’s ‘groin snapped’.

It was later revealed he had acquired a difficult to diagnose groin deformity called Gilmore’s groin and he’d been exacerbating it for months. Even worse, however, were the Liverpool fans themselves: 1-0 down and believing Kewell was copping out of the contest, they booed him off the pitch. Consoled by John Arne Riise as he walked off the ground, Kewell stared at the pitch and did his best to keep a straight face, but he admits now it was a ‘nightmare’. While his teammates celebrated one of the greatest wins in the club’s history he returned to his hotel room, to ‘nothing’. The 2006 FA Cup final was the same story, with him starting the match only to be forced off in the 48th minute with an abdominal strain to watch another stunning Liverpool comeback from the sidelines.

The dichotomy of Kewell’s career is a metaphor for Australian football history, so it was fitting that immediately after Kewell’s lowest ebb he entrenched himself into Socceroos immortality. His injury lay-offs for Liverpool had been well publicised, but less clear is how many Socceroos matches he missed due to injury and how many he missed for his club career. The entire time he had been mired in transfer spats and injury crises the Socceroos had continued to slowly build around him and without him. He missed Australia’s nail-biting 2001 Confederations Cup campaign and nearly went three years without playing a Socceroos match outside of England. When the Socceroos played England in London in 2003 he reminded Australians what they were missing, single-handedly destroying the Three Lions in a 3-1 win.

At the same time, the Australian pathway Kewell had paved into the Premier League had finally been successfully travailed by most of the Socceroos squad. Australia had never had a squad this prominent in Europe before, but when the Kewell- less Socceroos slumped out of the 2005 Confederations Cup with three straight losses there wasn’t anything to suggest this team was any more a golden generation than the 1997 team that preceded it.

By the time the Socceroos swept through Oceania qualifying for their  perennial South American World Cup play-off, Australia’s greatest player had only played in nine of a possible 60 Socceroos matches since 1997, but Australia was still shocked when Guus Hiddink benched Kewell for the pivotal final play-off in Sydney against Uruguay. Their surprise was short lived, as Hiddink introduced Kewell after just 37 minutes. He set up Bresciano’s equaliser, then scored the crucial first spot kick as Australia became the first nation to qualify for a World Cup via a penalty shoot-out. His World Cup performances were electric, building to that defining goal against Croatia, although the promise of his potential to generations of fans was embittered by three decades of near misses.

Australia had thrashed expectations by progressing, but septic arthritis sidelined Kewell for the knockout loss against Italy. Although the injury turned out to be serious his loss was devastating, and criticism of his dedication again bubbled to the surface.

He responded as Australia’s sole highlight from a nightmarish 2007 Asian Cup campaign, and as his Liverpool career fizzled his Socceroos’ career ignited. He played for Australia just four times between 1998 and 2005 but had won a whopping 45 caps by the end of 2009. His bit part in Liverpool’s 2007 Champions League final loss was his final disappointment before joining Turkish giants Galatasaray, where he was greeted as a hero and soon became one. He scored 20 seconds into his debut to win the Turkish Super Cup, which despite becoming his only trophy in Istanbul signposted three prolific seasons for club and country.