Another local sport identity Graham Cornes attacks Australia performance at the World cup

IS that all there is? Australia's 2010 World Cup campaign has been the biggest anti-climax since Halley's Comet appeared in 1986, not as a spectacular cosmic display but an insignificant smudge in the north-eastern sky.
Like the much-heralded comet, our soccer team fizzled.

When they should have built to a finely tuned pitch for the opportunity of a life-time, too many of them seemed happy just to be there.

Perhaps that moment of a life-time happened four years ago in Germany, and that satisfied their World Cup ambitions.

The coach, certainly, seemed happy just to be there. That, and his continued disregard of our A-League, have not endeared him to the Australian sporting public.

It's a pity we haven't seen the real Pim Verbeek, because to meet he is personable and engaging; his eyes even twinkle with a disguised sense of humour, but we never got to see that.

To be fair to the Dutchman, he completed his brief, which was to get us to South Africa, but where is the legacy? Where are the young players who have been blooded for the next campaign? Pim disappears off to Morocco to take up a junior coaching role and we are left to find a real coach. Please could he be Australian, with a passion and an enthusiasm for our country.

The Australian World Cup campaign produced only one memorable moment, and that was the stunning, swerving 25m goal from midfielder Brett Holman in the last match against Serbia.

It was a right-footed cracker and should have silenced the critics of the much-maligned New South Welshman. Holman has played 34 times for the Socceroos but still has to deal with idiots like those who started the Facebook site calling for his removal from the Socceroos team.

Perhaps he was favoured by Verbeek because he has played so much in Holland, but he was the one real positive to come out of the Australian wreckage in South Africa.

This South African World Cup has been a disappointment. To grasp the full meaning and spirit of a World Cup tournament, the host country has to have a history of the game, and interweave its own culture with that history. The South Africans have failed to do that, just as the Americans did in 1994.

There can be no comparison to the tournaments that are held in the countries with deep-seated soccer traditions.

We all wanted to be in Germany in 2006. How many of us wanted to be in South Africa in 2010?

So now what? In 2006, the Socceroos kept us breathless with anticipation and while they ultimately failed in that tournament, they ignited our love affair with the round ball game. There are more soccer pitches than football grounds in our suburban schools these days.

We follow Adelaide United, sometimes passionately, sometimes from afar, but there is unprecedented interest in our South Australian team. Yet, it seems the game cannot sustain itself in Australia.

Verbeek's denigration of our national competition has not helped and is belied by the gritty performance of the New Zealanders in the World Cup, whose best players live in Australia and perform in the A-League.

Would you have really believed that the Kiwis could finish above the reigning champions, Italy, after their group matches?

Australian Soccer may have blown its chance to steal the mantle of the nation's premier football code with its failures in South Africa.

What it simply must do now is invest in its local infrastructure and develop the local heroes, because those who live overseas invariably disappoint and abandon us.

Still, it's our own fault.

We dared to dream and we trusted that our national coach and players would play with their hearts and their souls and carry us to places we hadn't been before.

We should have known better. Next time the World Cup should be seen for what it really is: an expensive sideshow and a benefit for the seven countries who have only ever won the tournament.



"We all wanted to be in Germany in 2006. How many of us wanted to be in South Africa in 2010?

http://www.adelaidenow.com.au/news/opinion/where-to-now-after-world-cups-anti-climax/story-e6freakl-1225884549110

Graham Cornes is inaugural Adelaide Crows coach and father of Chad and Kane Cornes (Port Adelaide Power).
He takes every opportunity to attack football and in my opinion is the guy who gives football bad name whenever possible.

Edited by krijoz: 26/6/2010 04:17:11 PM