BEAUTIFUL CHAOS: The Socceroos and the 2014 World Cup Read online

  A more definitive example soon follows, made emphatically, typically, by the other elder statesman, if you can label the bundle of energy that is Tim Cahill ‘old’. On 35 minutes Chile tries to play out from defence, but before Vargas can get his foot on the ball on the left flank, Ivan Franjic has sprinted forward from his own defensive position on halfway to steal possession with a perfectly timed sliding tackle.

  Matthew Leckie then plays a 1-2 with Franjic, who five years earlier was a part-time footballer, full-time carpenter before he got a chance with Brisbane Roar. That point is irrelevant now though, as he looks up and spots Cahill in the box. Only one thing to do … float it in there and leave the rest to the aerial genius.

  Thirty-one of Tim Cahill’s 56 goals in the English Premier League, where the most aerially proficient defenders roam menacingly, were scored with his head. So as the Franjic cross floats in from the right, Cahill’s only issue is Chilean defender Gary Medel, all 5 foot 7 of him. It’s like a hungry seal competing with a penguin for a fish thrown by a zookeeper.

  2-1.

  Every Chilean player looks at the ground as the ball goes in, as if to say, ‘Far out, knew that would happen’. Anyone who watches or plays in a game involving Cahill knows what the tactic will be. Stopping it is an entirely different proposition, and Chile fail miserably.

  Not just Australia, Cahill is in the game and good luck keeping him out of it. Sixty seconds after the goal he’s in again, across the ground this time, though his powerful shot from a Leckie pass is safely guarded by Chilean keeper Claudio Bravo.

  Desperate times call for desperate, distasteful measures. Nearing half-time, the Chileans meddle in mischief to try to rid themselves of the Cahill conundrum. Gonzalo Jara and Cahill bump into each other 15 metres off the ball, on the edge of the Chilean box. Jara falls to the ground clutching his face as if he’s been lathered in pepper spray. As he rolls around looking for attention and sympathy, Cahill is irate, and calls Jara a cheat.

  Jara responds with, ‘Yep, I’m a cheat, so what?’

  Cahill is now volcanic, pointing and pushing for another crack at Jara, so to calm the situation referee Noumandiez Doue issues the Australian a yellow card for creating a ruckus. It’s not fair, but what started disastrously ends hopefully. The Chileans are away from their threatening tactics with ball at feet, dipping into the dark arts.

  The longest 45 minutes anyone can remember is over. Postecoglou, so thoughtful with his words pre-tournament, now has to make another impact, though what he was going to say had changed four times since kick-off. For him, the chance to relay a positive message is much easier.

  ‘It ended up being the best 45 minutes we could have hoped for because we clawed our way back into the game and the players didn’t take a backward step. At half-time, I was so bullish about our prospects, we’d done so much analysis and the one thing that came through was just what a disciplined, committed team to their style of play, how compact they were. Even just before we scored, Timmy had a great chance, I saw them unravel a little bit, their shape wasn’t as compact, the players started to argue a little bit with each other, the game got spread and once the game got spread it suited us, because man on man they couldn’t compete with Timmy or Lecks. Once I saw that, my message was we can win this game.’

  Sitting in the rooms listening after his first 45 minutes as a World Cup footballer, Mat Ryan is thinking the same thing, because after he picked the ball out for the second goal, many forgot he was out there. The outer shell of the game had been removed. All the nerves, the reputation of others, the searing atmosphere vanished, exposing what lies at the centre: a normal game of football. Ryan listens to his coach reinforce belief and one comment sticks out: ‘We’re obviously in that team for a reason, so just do what enabled you to be in it.’

  They were all listening.

  Both sides terrorise each other in the second half and despite the early loss of Franjic, carried off with a tournament-ending hamstring injury, the Socceroos give more than they get. It all starts at the back. Ryan is everywhere, supporting his defence like an extra outfield player, sweeping up and re-distributing the ball with pinpoint accuracy off either foot. When he does need to catch the ball, he goes into bomb-disposal mode, rushing to rid himself of it so damage can be done further afield.

  Cahill nearly blows the game apart in the 50th minute, his new least favourite friend Jara gets away with a shirt tug in the area, the ref at an angle that made it impossible to see. Three minutes later, the ball is in the back of the net from the head of Cahill, though nothing more than his shirt collar is offside. Correctly and agonisingly, it’s no goal.

  Then another cross is lobbed into enemy territory from the left, and Cahill is manhandled, thrown to the ground like the countless times of his childhood playing rugby league in the backyard with his brothers and cousins. Again, the referee ignores, though this time the ball falls to Bresciano who unleashes a snap shot with his left foot, sending Bravo scrambling low to his left to save.

  It’s a matter of when, not if. The Chilean wall of noise has dissipated. James Postecoglou, Ange’s son, later reports bowel control is a concern at this point with those in red. They are shitting themselves. Their dream for their golden team is being threatened by a bunch of no names.

  Chile coach Jorge Sampaoli, the bald bundle of energy squeezed into a polo shirt two sizes too small and with a nationalistic sweatband around his left wrist for show, looks on the verge of a nervous breakdown. Seat on the bench redundant, he paces around the technical area in small, hyper-charged steps. The ball goes out for a throw which he claims, a claim denied. He stops and violently stares at the fourth official. His eyes balloon with rage, jaw clenched. If looks could kill, he is a mass murderer. All over a throw-in.

  His side do have a moment on the hour mark, as Ryan rushes out to cover a shot from Vargas, who has drifted onto a supremely weighted pass from Alexis, his side’s lone ranger. Vargas chips Ryan, but Alex Wilkinson, at 30 years of age but in just his fourth game for Australia, strains everything to clear off the line.

  Throughout, Australia ask questions, and it’s a quietly-spoken 23 year old who does much of the talking. Matthew Leckie, out of a second division club in Germany, has his own autobahn to operate down the right flank and he makes good use of it with his raw power. Time and time again he speeds away, like a late-model Merc, the Chileans like VW Combies, no hope. One 70-metre burst is about to result in a shot, after he zigs and zags at the end of his sprint. His raw power isn’t quite refined, and the moment is taken away by a desperate tackle.

  The pace of the game is unrelenting, everyone pushed to their physical limits, drenched in sweat, lungs in overdrive to process the thick, humid air. Same goes for the players.

  As Bravo prepares for a goal kick, there is time for a quick daydream. Imagine if there were more time to work with these players on this new way. Imagine if they had more experience in the rarefied air of international football. The daydream is snapped by the sight of Bresciano and his creaky back coming off. The Socceroos are poorer for it, the fast, direct method wanes and it all gets a little loose. The impetus is gone. Hope isn’t too far from joining it.

  As the game enters injury time, Ryan has just his second important duty of the half, as Sanchez – who else – slips a perfect ball through to substitute Mauricio Pinilla. The keeper saves with his knee, but the ball goes straight to another Chilean sub, Jean Beausejour, just outside the box. Operating on instinct, Ryan has a beat of time to backtrack and get into a good position, but can’t contend with Beausejour’s rasping low drive which travels a narrow path between the keeper’s outstretched left hand and the post. Oh no. Again.

  ‘GOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO!’

  Game over.

  ‘BANG, BANG, BANG … BANG!’ Fireworks, not little bungers, fireworks go off around the stadium to accompany the explosion of joy and relief from Chile. To the Australians, they feel like additional bullets to an already shot heart. Ryan is incandescent, t
rudging over to goalkeeper coach Tony Franken, mind blown at what he’d just lived. ‘Holy shit, Tony, this level … this level is just ridiculous.’

  Postecoglou can only shake his head and think of what if. Everyone in gold does the same, then gives an ovation rarely given, if ever, to a team beaten 3-1.

  Did that really happen? Did we really go to a place so removed from our sense of normal and witness a game of football one step removed from what was thought possible? Australia get nothing from the game, but everything from the occasion. There’s more, just days away.

  4.

  PORTO ALEGRE PANDEMONIUM

  Death, taxes, joy and despair. Four of life’s certainties. Every day they affect our being, every day they threaten or enhance our existence. It’s one of the reasons why the love of sport exists. All four are present in a wonderfully warped form of escapism. The death of success, in a big game or championship match invariably occurs for our team. Life goes on. Financial obligations for tickets and colours are not frowned upon like usual taxes: they’re a necessity to satisfy the emotional attachment, to feel a part of a tribe through sight and sound. Joy is in abundance in the good times, despair lurks then ravages in the bad. In our sporting lives, life’s certainties occur regularly and are at their best or worst when unexpected.

  Imagine, then, all of this happening at once. In the deep south of Brazil, one recent Wednesday afternoon it happened to thousands of Australians who won’t forget for as long as the most dramatic of real life’s certainties sends them six feet under.

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  The cold air, the sharp edge of the wind that cuts right to the core of the soul, only heightens the sense of inevitability – Australia will be obliterated. Our opponents for the second game of the World Cup, the Netherlands, have just stunned the world and its champions, Spain. Hours before Australia went at Chile in the searing atmosphere of Cuiabá, the Dutch dismantled legendary status 5-1. Spain, winners of the last World Cup. Spain, winners of the last two European Championships. Spain, kings of how the game should be played. Spain, destroyed 5-1. Undone by the adroit tactics of Louis van Gaal, the acrobatics of Robin van Persie and the scorching pace of Arjen Robben.

  So as the chilly wind whips off Lake Guaiba, an expanse of water so vast it was a river before locals realised it was too big to be that, Australian fans are unsure. If they can do that to the best in the world, what are they going to do to us? A sea of green and gold is led from a pre-game watering hole by a Samba band in jumpers, the sight strange, the sound familiar as the rhythmic percussion gives jangling nerves something to dance to. How the hell are our no names going to compete with their big names? En route there are more signs the World Cup in Brazil is not finished, but ready. The fans march along a freshly-laid road fit for a Formula One race, past a large dirt patch, surrounded by temporary fencing. Unless authorities were aiming to build the world’s biggest meerkat enclosure, it’s another failure. Robben, Robin. Arjen, van Persie. What chance is there? It’s what’s at the end of the road that counts: an impressive football cathedral for 40,000. Originally built in the 1960s for local club Internacional, Estádio Beira-Rio was renovated for the World Cup. What’s most incredible is how it was built – on an artificial embankment of the river turned lake. We’re not up shit creek without a paddle. We’re in it. Not that the players know it. Despite the exertions and disappointment of the game against Chile, the bubble they live in hasn’t burst. It is still impregnable. The pre-tournament sermon of belief from coach Ange Postecoglou was tailor-made for a situation such as this and he followed through. The Netherlands had smashed the world champs. There was now the chance to get the world to notice Australian football.

  The Dutch can be arrogant, but surely a master like van Gaal and his brains trust wouldn’t conspire to ambush themselves? Surely after five games under the new boss, they would realise the Socceroos now like to ask questions, not just sit back and try to find miraculous answers against the run of play.

  ‘He might he might have thought, “It’s Australia, we’ve just won 5-1, any team in their right mind would park the bus”,’ recalls Socceroo defender Matthew Spiranovic. ‘We surprised them.’

  That Spiranovic would mark the Netherlands’ main man Robin van Persie is no surprise, because if there was a present-day Socceroo groomed for this stage, it is the graceful central defender. Spiranovic grew up in Geelong, Victoria, but from the age of 10, his father Michael was making the two-hour round-trip a few times a week so his talented son could train and develop in Melbourne. Better teammates, better opposition, big picture. Each step through his teenage years was the right one, playing at every junior level for Australia: under 17s, under 20s, Olympics. In a time of uncertainty about football in Australia, with the abolition of the National Soccer League and the formation of the A-League, Spiranovic had about the best apprenticeship of any. He went to Germany and at 18, when most kids are worrying about pimples and P Plates, featured in Nuremburg’s German Cup triumph in front of 74,000 in Berlin’s Olympic Stadium. All sounds very easy. Most earmarked him to have a long and decorated career for Australia and one of the world’s big clubs. Postecoglou, who first met him as his under 17s coach, knew he had the ability to be one of our greatest.

  A young Matthew Spiranovic, destined for big things. Destiny took a while longer than expected (photo courtesy Kevin Airs).

  If only impressive junior careers and ability counted for everything. It took Spiranovic eight long years from that night in Berlin to play in a World Cup, a period beset by injury and frustration. Playing overseas sounds glamorous and can be when the coach wants you there. But the moment he gets the sack and the new guy comes in, a foreign land can quickly become a lonely place. Out of favour in Germany, Spiranovic went to Japan, then Qatar, as he battled for relevance to his own aspirations. That his age, 24, was greater than the number of times he had played for Australia just didn’t make sense. Finally, he returned home to the Western Sydney Wanderers, the club that burst to life from nowhere and saved his career.

  And now, on this Wednesday afternoon where Socceroos fans are fearful of what could happen, Spiranovic has to mark van Persie, scorer of over 200 goals for clubs like Feyenoord, Arsenal and Manchester United. Oh, and fresh off a Man of the Match performance against Spain. Match the two resumés and it is no contest. Match all the resumés, across the park, and the balance is heavily in favour of a second straight Dutch demolition.

  The short lead-up is punctuated by intense messages from Postecoglou. No backward steps. Reputations are irrelevant. That you are here is proof you’ve jumped your biggest hurdle. The style of play would not change. Attack. Take it to them, don’t sit back. And play the game, not the occasion. Sure, a horrid cliché, but an imperative, simple thought for someone about to take part in what he dreamed of during those countless road trips from Geelong to Melbourne.

  ‘You prepare for that day your whole life, that’s what you train for. You keep telling yourself that, so it’s about going out there and enjoying it,’ said Spiranovic. ‘You’ve worked so hard to get there, so make the most of it, and that’s what Ange drilled into us. This could be the highlight of your career, so don’t let that opportunity slip. It was no secret, people expected us to get smashed, but we walked out of those change rooms with a great sense of belief that we could take it to these teams.’

  The early stages gave small indications of what would follow. Matt McKay, in the team for the hamstrung Mark Milligan, has a rare moment of indecision, allowing Arjen Robben to run through before he produces his own rare moment of uncertainty, the threat gone with a poor touch that rolls harmlessly to Mat Ryan.

  The Dutch are careful, and play at a pace that allows them to be. They have gone with the same line-up and formation as the Spain game – three central defenders, five midfielders, with van Persie and Robben tearing around up front. They start like a team who expects total respect, verging on fear. Wrong is an understatement. Where they expect time, there is no time. Where they don
’t expect contact, there is contact. Where they expect a bus to be parked, there is no bus. They have taken one tactic in – mark Matt Leckie closely, a job assigned to Bruno Martins Indi, a big brute of a defender who sticks so close to the speedy winger it’s as if he’s constantly trying to tell him a secret. Leckie is able to shrug him off on 15 minutes, embarrass him, really, scooting past a wild swing of an attempted tackle to advance to the box, where his cut-back finds Mark Bresciano, whose shot is blocked.

  The certainty of defeat begins to leave the minds of the Australians in the crowd. The result starts to become a consequence, not a fear, as belief replaces anxiety. Postecoglou notices uneasiness on the Dutch bench. All of which is superfluous on 19 minutes. A willingness to move the ball quickly sees Bresciano make an unusual error in judgement – a floated pass that doesn’t reach the intended destination of Ryan McGowan. Daley Blind cuts the ball out with a header which bounces into the path of Robben on halfway. Alex Wilkinson rushes to challenge, but can’t stop Robben, who with greater appreciation of where the ball is going skips around a desperate lunge and hurtles towards the Australian goal. Like a greyhound released from a cramped kennel, Robben sprints into open space. Where the Dutch thought Australia would park the bus is just green grass and good times for one of the world’s best counter-attackers.

  Spiranovic is the only man who can do something and he has about three seconds to do it.

  ‘I know I have van Persie on my left and I can’t sprint across too early because he would just slide van Persie in. So I try to delay him as long as I can until a teammate catches up.’

  Robben is now in the box so Spiranovic is out of time.

  ‘As I make my way across I see him line it up, but knowing him, if I go to ground he would just chop [stop and wait for him to fly by] so I try to stay up as long as I can.’