Wasting Hiddink’s legacy

Ivica Osim was a wonderful player in the 1960s and ‘70s, a tall, elegant number nine, his body swaying like a willow in the breeze on the run at his obstructors, with a penchant and gift for the dribble and a tang for goals.

A Bosnian, he played for FC Zeljeznicar in his native Sarajevo and then three clubs in France, as well as 16 times for Yugoslavia, getting a runners-up medal in the 1968 European Championship.

As a coach, he was at the helm of the famous Last Yugoslav Football Team, as depicted in a brilliant documentary shown on SBS some time ago, coaching them to the World Cup quarter finals in 1990 and in to Euro 92, from whence they were ejected because of the war in Bosnia.

As a club coach he guided Partizan Belgrade to a Cup title, Zeljeznicar to second place in the league and the semi-finals of the UEFA Cup, Yugoslavia to an Olympic bronze medal, Panathinaikos to two Greek Cups, and Sturm Graz to two Austrian titles and one Cup.

This is the man, and his experience and guile, that Graham Arnold and his technical advisors are up against when Australia faces Japan in the Asian Cup quarter-finals. With the greatest respect to Arnie, who is 23 years younger and still learning, it’s a formidable task to put it mildly.

Even more, Osim is not just more learned but luckier.

Luckier because the Japan he coaches is an Asian team with an Asian culture, which Australia is not.

Forget all the hype about doubtful tactics, curious selections, lack of motivation and sapping weather. The primary cause for Australia’s insipid start to the Asian Cup has been its astonishing lack of respect for Asian football, its complacency and blatant arrogance.

No attention, apparently, has been paid to this in Australia’s otherwise meticulous preparations, a thing that is beyond belief.

Someone should have pulled the playing and coaching staff aside weeks ago and told them to pull their heads in, to respect their hosts and remind them that only the meek and the humble shall inherit the earth.

Instead what we got was a chorus line of chest beating and blabberings of haughtiness and conceit. We were number one in Asia blah blah blah (as opposed to actually being number three according to the FIFA rankings) and that nothing less than making the final, Arnold’s pledge, would qualify as success.

Arnold said that in order to placate the Australian press, whereas he should have thought more of how such words might impact on the Asians and his team’s nervously looming opponents.

What was done was lighting a spark of motivation among the gathering enemy, hence the kangaroo hop antics of the Iraqis and hence the case of all three, Oman, Iraq and Thailand, lifting their ambitions when playing Australia.

And this then compounded to double trouble. The complacency and arrogance spawned the inevitable indiscipline. The team, full of itself as inevitable conquerors of Asia, given their Germany 06 CV, saw the task as a walkover.

Distractive personal needs among the players, including vanity, took luxurious precedence over the respect for the opposition and the collective challenge.

Oman and Iraq moved swiftly to cash in and, with better luck, Thailand may have also have debunked the big-headed Australians.

Japan does not have this problem. Osim, in all probability, knows that there is massive respect for opponents in Japanese culture, and that the mores of the collective good above that of the individual, so normal in Asia, will be an advantage to him.

He has no worries about players tripping out on their egotism and derailing his team.

It is true, Japan has a worry about Australia, even though it has a good record of beating the Australians, including the heaviest defeat ever suffered by the Socceroos in Asia, a three-nil defeat in 2001.

But the spectre of Kaiserslautern and the late flurry in last year’s World Cup will weigh heavily on their minds.

However, that is where the coincidence ends. This is not the same Australian team, the coach and strategist is not Guus Hiddink, and this is the Asian Cup not the World Cup.

What must be remembered is that here there is no historic equality between Australia and Japan.

In the World Cup they were both strugglers, third world teams of an equal ambition and need. But here Japan is the holder of the trophy, twice running, a king, while Australia is the usurper.

Arnold, prior to the Thailand game, spoke of Australia as some kind of underdog, a curious thing, given Thailand’s modest status and ranking compared to Australia’s.

But against Japan the suggestion of inferiority is, actually, quite realistic, especially if one considers how the Aussies played so far.

The slick movement, the tactical organisation, the cohesion and understanding of the Japanese does suggest Australia a modest opponent.

As an Australian, I am a big admirer of the qualities of Australian sportsmen and this team, chiefly among them their indomitable spirit and competitiveness. And I saw none of that missing from their first three games.

Their problems were not in a lack of commitment, as some have suggested, but in their complacency and arrogance. I am with Mark Viduka and disagree with the thesis that some of the players ‘didn’t want to be here’.

But there is one flaw that seems to afflict all Australian sportsmen: their capacity to whinge when criticised by the media, even when they are crap.

The Australian players, just about in unison, admitted openly that they played rubbish in the games against Oman and Iraq. Yet after they beat Thailand it was a case of ‘we showed the critics and the cowards who dared to slag us in the press’.

Someone should remind them that the 4-0 against Thailand didn’t mean they won the World Cup. They only beat Thailand, ranked 122nd in the world and 17th in Asia, and against whom Australia won 4-0 with its semi-pros back in 1982.

The win against Thailand was indeed a source of relief for Australia but it showed the doubting press, and the fans, exactly what?

In reality it was just a step back in time, to the good old days to 20 or 30 years ago, when Australian teams would go to Asia and win by out-muscling opponents less physically advantaged. It was a crude, less than pretty, rather fortunate one-off win centred on muscle and spirit.

The method, system and tactical principles instilled by Hiddink, and continued by Arnold, were missing. It was sheer expediency, an abandonment of previous beliefs in order to overcome a crisis, and it paid off.

We might rejoice at a result now but such an approach has no long term future.

Ultimately a team has to play well in order to keep winning. And Australia didn’t play well against Thailand, its four goals notwithstanding.

Australia has to return to its beliefs, to the legacies of the Hiddink school, with which it began this tournament. Abandoning those will put to waste the glorious wonders of the past two years.

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