Branko, Bleiberg and the Bling – bring it on!

Till now two major factors have excited my senses when looking ahead to the new A-League season. Over the last few days that list has grown to three.

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Let’s start with that last one first – the appointment of Branko Culina as head coach at the Newcastle Jets.

Now I have no problem admitting that I have been a bit of a cheerleader for Culina in the past. And I make no apologies.

My primary reason for supporting him and judging him to be a good coach goes back to 1997, when the Sydney United he then coached played quite the best, most intelligent and most entertaining football in the NSL’s entire 27 year span. Indeed I am yet to see an A-League team play football of such high quality. And I place no blame on Branko for the fact that, after breezing through the minor premiership that season, some of the key players choked in the Grand Final against the Brisbane Strikers.

It is a nonsense, in my view, that a coach of such calibre, at an age of 51, should be unemployed in the A-League, whatever the reason and considering some of the manifest non-achievers who are.

It has been argued here before that Culina may have been prematurely done over when fired by Sydney FC after nine games in the 2007-08 season. His results were not flash, to be sure, but that was only a diversionary excuse: the then new chairman, who came in after the Culina appointment, simply wanted his own choice, John Kosmina, at the helm and as soon as possible.

That said, Culina needs a good think about how and why he furnished the excuse to be sacked, as I am sure he will. One senior player reported to me after the sacking that Branko was a good coach, even a likeable man, but he had ‘lost the dressing room’.

How that happened and why, if indeed it did, is what Culina needs to ponder and get right at Newcastle.

Football dressing rooms, and the players who occupy them, are notorious for their capacity to abandon unity and to surrender the team ethic at the drop of a piddling ill-timed remark by the coach, even if it’s done in confidence.

Culina fell victim to this when, ill-advisedly, he told some backroom staff that the squad was ageing, that it needed refreshing and that some of its creaky-kneed members needed replacing if long term rebuilding was to be enabled.

Quislings in the ranks repeated this to some of the senior players, who then turned on the coach and, in a flash, Culina was gone.

Culina, I suspect, will not be so trusting this time. I suspect that he, having learnt the lesson, will re-fashion the Jets to be a formidable playing force by keeping his cards close to his chest without reference to anyone but himself. At least I hope he does.

In any case, we can be sure that under him, the Jets will play the kind of cultured, passing football in which Culina believes, as Van Egmond did, maybe taking them back to the heights they achieved in the 2007-08 season. I am excited by his appointment.

The other two reasons I am eagerly looking forward to the new season are poised to provide stiff opposition to Culina’s ambitions: Gold Coast United and Sydney FC.

Both appear to be in splendid pre-season form, each promising an element of glitz and entertainment which were missing from the league in the past couple of seasons.

United, with its Bleiberg factor, its Jason Culina, its Brazilians, its naked ambition, its billionaire owner and its jet set deportment will be a great source of curiosity. They are already a marketer’s delight.

Sydney, under a new, imported coach, hailing from the reputable academy of central Europe, some good recruiting and some exciting youth, appears ready to finally attain the technical substance and playing stability it has never had, not even in its championship winning first season.

You can ignore the protestations the club has been making about wanting to shed its ‘bling’ tag. Sydney FC is stuck with that identity and always will be, if only because it represents the country’s biggest, most cosmopolitan and most demanding city. And there’s nothing its managers and marketing strategists can do about it.

Neither should they try. Such a tag has serious brand value which would be extremely silly to ignore and not cultivate.

And the league is better for it. The A-League, like any league, will always need its perceived tall poppies and glamour clubs, the ones the others would most dearly love to knock off, and Sydney, whether it likes it or not, is one of them.

The test of course is to succeed in living up to that brand. But it’s time Sydney FC actually tried.

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