Djite, Burns – pawns in a grubby game

Divide and rule is not a new tactic. In fact it’s the oldest trick in the book.

The Romans did it in Palestine, the British in India, the French in Africa, and the Americans are currently trying it in Iraq.

Now this sleazy practice has crept into our small football world.

It works like this: One journalist or commentator criticizes the national coach’s selections. Then another journalist – who probably has an agenda to discredit the original journalist – asks the coach for a response to the criticism, maybe loading his question with the suggestion that there is a campaign against the coach from a certain media quarter.

The coach then comes back, slamming the original critic and, bingo, you have a juicy headline and a schism between the coach and his critic.

Divide and rule, get it?

Graham Arnold claims that certain people (i.e. critics in the media) are trying to put a wedge between him and Pim Verbeek.

Wrong. Certain journos, with a penchant for limp-wristed acquiescence, are trying to put a wedge between Arnold and other journos.

Consider this extract from an article, by John Taylor, in the July 9 issue of the Sydney Daily Telegraph:

‘Arnold has come under fire since announcing his 18-man squad, including three over-age players, to face Serbia, Argentina and Ivory Coast at the Olympics, starting on August 7.

Arnold claims most of the criticism directed at him has come from SBS commentators.

"Who cares what they think," he said. "They did it to Thommo (the late Eddie Thomson), Terry Venables and Frank Farina. They didn't get a chance to do it to Guus (Hiddink)."’

There are a couple of things that stick in the gut about this.

One is that, according to Arnold, he never mentioned SBS in the interview and only referred to ‘other media’. So Taylor, if Arnold is accurate, made up the quote.

But worse is the grubby attempt by one journalist to wind up the national Olympic coach against a group of fellow professionals. It stands out like a sore tooth and stinks to the highest heavens.

And it is not a first. Often in the past a small crowd of people in the football media, who obviously have little else to do, have taken it upon themselves to rev up hostility between a criticised coach and his critics.

In 2004, during the Athens Olympics, I wrote a column for this website essentially saying that the Australian team was weak in quality and was manifest evidence for our poor player development program.

On his return to Sydney, then Olyroos coach Frank Farina was cornered by a brown noser on a television network (you can probably guess who and which) and asked what he thought of SBS’ criticisms and its conspired ‘campaign’ against him.

Farina, horns pointed at the red rag, let fly at SBS as only he knows, and loves, how.

This must be the only country in the world where this kind of garbage goes on.

In other countries, particularly in Europe, brutally frank criticism of the national football coach by the media is central to the culture. Often that criticism is vicious, unjustified and personal.

But the practice of one journo turning the coach against another is unheard of. The scruffy scribe from the Daily Mail never asks Fabio Capello what he thinks of what the scruffy scribe from the Daily Mirror wrote about him. It’s some kind of honour among scruffy scribes.

Here the coach, provided he’s a nice chap and has never been convicted of child rape, is some kind of sacred cow and just about untouchable. Only a World Cup loss to Kiribati might raise the odd eyebrow. But heaven help the dark conspirators in the media who dare to question and criticise, even when a loss to Kiribati is blatantly imminent.

In any case in this instance there was no criticism of Arnold, so much as there was about the system of which he is part.

Craig Foster, Jesse Fink and David Basheer all had a go at the non-selection of Djite and Burns, as was their right. Joe, my newsagent, raised the same question when he handed me the Daily Telegraph the morning after the squad announcement.

What they went on about was the shock of seeing Djite and Burns omitted from the under 23s when, days or weeks earlier, they were playing for the Socceroos in World Cup qualifiers and friendlies. What is going on, they asked. Are we building a national team of the future, or are we fart-arsing about?

It was not about Arnold’s selections as it was about Pim’s. It was about the broad selection strategy, as applied vertically down the line at the FFA. About whether or not the Olyroos were a developmental component of the strategy to realise the World Cup dream, or some kind of independent sidetrack, a stand-alone distraction from the big aim.

The critics merely contended that the big aim was the main game, that Arnold should have been made aware of it, and that he should have chosen his squad according to a grander blueprint. The fact that there is no such blueprint was not Arnold’s fault and nobody claimed that it was.

In all honesty, one has to question whether those in the media who like to cosy up to national coaches with this kind of divisive brown nosing, actually understand plain English.

But the bottom line, surely, is that the media has a right, at times a even a duty, to comment, question and criticise.

And they, including those that write for an SBS website, don’t necessarily have an agenda (beyond maybe wanting what is, in their view, the best for football).

Indeed it is more likely that the ones with the agenda are those who never criticise the national coach, but instead use him, and the players he selects or doesn’t select, as pawns in a dishonest game.

FOOTNOTE: A correction to an item that appeared in a Sydney newspaper last Sunday, and which alleges that I sent the following text message to Graham Arnold: ‘We have every right to criticise you, but you have no right to criticise us.’

For the record, I sent no such text message to anyone, at any time, and the story is a total fabrication. Indeed the suggestion that I would is an outrage.