SBS: Handjobs on the House

Jesse Fink SBS’s resident hatchet man likes doing two things: telling Craig Foster how good he’s hair looks and bagging anyone involved with the national team who is not a foreigner. This article is perhaps one of the best he’s ever written. Who would have ever predicted that it was Graham Arnold secretly hiding behind the scenes like an Emperor Palpatine figure, wearing a monocle and yelling “You’ll pay for this Murray, if it’s the last thing I ever do…………”

If you're like Half-Time Orange, there are some moments in life you just want to go back and relive. Getting married. Riding an elephant through an Indian forest. Drinking that bottle of Grange your dad bought for your 21st birthday. Then there are those moments you are glad to see the back of and will pay good money to your friends never to be reminded of again. That stripper at your buck's night. Eating "Rocky Mountain oysters". Watching the Socceroos in Singapore on Saturday night.

I'll concede it was the proverbial "gluepot" of a pitch, but really that would do a disservice to the Singaporeans, who managed to create some genuinely tense moments for the Diet Socceroos.
When a 38-year-old Bosnian canoeist called Aleksandar Duric is running rings around Michael Beauchamp, supposedly the future of our national-team defence, you know not everything is going to plan ahead of the World Cup qualifier in Kunming.

With Australia's three main strikers now absent from the WCQ against China, can someone explain to me why James Troisi, who was lively in Singapore and looked the most likely to score for the Australians all night, is not going to Yunnan yet Archie Thompson, who is more a danger to defenders with his moustache than his right foot, unaccountably is? (Yeah, two words fuck off. Archie proven goal scorer for Australia and Victory. A League top goal scorer. Fucking bullshit Sydney bias from SBS yet again)

My TWG colleague Les Murray wrote in his blog on Monday: "Slowly but surely the penny is dropping. Australia's golden generation, that which powered into the World Cup finals of 2006, and then into its knockout phase, is coming to an end. And, worse, the replenishing tier is not up to it… there is no depth."

With respect to Les, I'm not sure that's entirely the case. The main problem with the development of the national team seems to be that blokes like Thompson just won't move along (what the fuck is this? Why is Archie Thompson enemy number one? This was the guy who Guus believed was good enough to play for PSV (although granted he only played 15 minutes) and now he should retire. What did he do to deserve this? Probably bagged that stupid pointer they use for their highlights show). It's not Thompson's fault, of course. Someone picks him. The same someone who picks guys like Jacob Burns and Ryan Griffiths when they're never going to be World Cup material.

Why does it happen? Why are bolters for South Africa ignored (guys like Troisi, David Williams, Nicky Carle) and middle-of-the-road plodders put on such a pedestal (Brett Holman, Luke Wilkshire, Michael Beauchamp)? (Here’s a hint fuck stick, all three of the bolters are attacking players, specifically strikers or attacking midfielders while two of the plodders are defensive players. What formation were you planning on playing Jesse? 2-5-3?)

Les is right (there’s a phrase you have to get used to when working at SBS) to apportion blame at the FFA for failing to rebuild the Socceroos properly after the departure of Guus Hiddink in June 2006, but Graham Arnold (dan dern dern, insert evil music) is equally culpable for that vacuum by having turned his appointment to Hiddink's vacated job into a Mexican soap opera.
Should he stay on after the Asian Cup? Is he good enough? When will the FFA give Aussies a go? How can he be a bad choice if so many players support him? (No need for the rhetorical questions jizz mopper we already knew that SBS had made up their mind on Arnold before he even started)

Blahdy blahdy blah.

Arnold embedded himself so deeply into the furniture at the FFA that when it got down to a choice between Verbeek and Philippe Troussier, Verbeek was the only viable choice because he was the only one of the two who was prepared to accept the condition that he work with Arnold.
Verbeek did so, he told me, because he had been assured by Hiddink that "Arnie" was a good man and a good operator.

Which he undoubtedly is.

The problem remains, however, and we saw it during the telecast of the Singapore game, that it is Arnold and not Verbeek that is still barking orders from the sideline. (Which is hardly surprising: he knows these players much more than Verbeek and is a valuable, trusted intermediary between his boss and the playing group.) (So even Verbeek is in charge it’s still Arnold’s fault. When will SBS’s fucking blame game end. John Howard lost the federal election because of Graham Arnold? Global Warming caused by Graham Arnold? Premature greying of Craig Foster’s hair caused by Graham Arnold?)

Certainly no-one could deny the role played by Arnold in such decisions as the continued faith put in Holman and Kisnorbo (just to name two beneficiaries of his patronage) but the freezing out of Carle, arguably the finest creative talent we have. (Have you watched a Bristol game this season? He aint that good. So calm yourself down from that hard on that you’re getting)
It is harnessing the right creative resources, not gathering cattle, that will be Verbeek's great challenge as he tries to get Australia to the 2010 World Cup.

What's Australia got for show-and-tell in Kunming?

In truth, not a lot.
Viduka: out. McDonald: out. Kennedy: out. Emerton: out. Sterjovski: out. Cahill: out. No Troisi. No Carle.

So where is the attacking impetus going to come?
Kewell, Bresciano, Holman and Carney.

Yet "K" is hardly 100 per cent, Bresh tires too quickly (even at sea level), and Holman blows hot and cold. Only Carney has been consistently threatening for the Socceroos of late.

Holman, to my mind, is the key. But what Holman we get to see is anyone's guess.
Given his man-of-the-match effort the last time Australian played China, he will most likely start. The guy had a blinder in Guangzhou. But that was a year ago. He's been largely ineffective since. Can he rediscover his mojo?

Obviating against a runaway win to the Aussies, too, is that fact that China coach Vladimir Petrovic will have closely analysed tapes of that encounter, which finished 2-0 to Australia, and surmised that the Socceroos are comfortable in attack but at sixes and sevens in defence. (wait but I thought the point of this article is that we don’t have enough attacking players. Maybe we can get Nicky Carle to play at centre back? You haven’t proposed even one defensive alternative)

When I wrote about that game last year for Fox Sports what struck me then was it very much a tale of two halves.

China made the mistake in that first half of allowing the Aussies to come to them, save for the occasional long ball, but then changed tack in the second 45 and assiduously maintained possession, working out from the back.

Arnold kept the same formation for the full 90 and China proceeded to cut shreds off Shane Steffanuto and Jade North down the right flank.

From recent history and choice of venue, expect Petrovic's strategy to be looking to hold the Aussies scoreless for the first half then stepping up the pressure in the second half when they've succumbed to the effects of altitude.

By the same token, though, the wily Verbeek (yet incredibly weak willed) will have watched the same tapes and be determined not to show his opposite number the same hand twice.
It's shaping up as one hell of a poker game (dickhead, your not even talking about the right sport now).

And that's what World Cup football is all about. Let's just pray our guy's holding all his cards (but we know he isn’t because Graham Arnold is holding them all for him).

The worst thing about this article is all the comments made on the TWG boards about it telling Jesse how right he is. Well Jesse, you’re a fucking bitter, bitter cunt and keep flying that Sydney SBS editorial line and telling yourself how much better you are than everyone else.