Australia Praying for “A Little Miracle”
Guus Hiddink must be a glutton for punishment. Having taken two nations to the World Cup semi-finals already and now in charge of Dutch Champions PSV, the club he won the European Cup with in 1988, you would think he might not want another job.
But when Football Federation Australia called time on Frank Farina’s six-year reign at the end of June, a call went out to the man who set Seoul and the rest of DominoqqSouth Korea on fire in 2002.
Although he had little more than four months’ preparation before their do-or-die World Cup play-off against the fifth-placed South American side, and about as many chances to watch his men play in that time period, Hiddink was happy to oblige.
Australia are the big fish in the small Oceania pond whose dreams of World Cup glory rest realistically on only two matches every four years. No other country in the FIFA world must undergo so many meaningless games in between
“Those games are not really serious,” Hiddink confirmed. They win all those games and then all of a sudden they have to play a powerhouse from South America. Now they are in Asia it is better for their development.”
Soccerphile was one of only three media outlets who made the effort to engage perhaps the world’s greatest coach at Australia’s recent training session in London, where he explained just why he took on this new challenge:
“I had two other options but I did two World Cups in France or Korea,” Hiddink told us, “and they were nice experiences for play bazaar me so when the Australian Federation asked me if I could help them out for the qualification I said yes.” One of those options we must assume was from South Korea again, where the Dutchman achieved near God-like status three years ago.
When Wales tried to take Brian Clough on part-time all those years ago his club put their foot down and said no, though Clough disagreed and Hiddink too thinks it is possible to manage a club and a country at the same time:
“Being a club manager I am at the club all the time except on the FIFA dates when all the international players are abroad so we can manage it rather well.”
When asked by Soccerphile to compare his phenomenal experience coaching South Korea, whom he took unexpectedly to the World Cup semi-final, with that of Australia, he replied,
“None of these guys has the experience of a World Cup but the Australians are ahead at this stage because they are mainly playing in England or Western Europe which gives them an advantage, but on the other hand in Korea I could work with the players as a club coach and be there full time. I had them more or less for sixteen months and that was necessary as they were rather innocent in the world of international football. I could work with them every day. With this group their starting level is higher. The only problem is injuries and the strategic problem – how to be even more clever against very clever South American teams.”
The South American foe to conquer is Uruguay again and the Aussies’ three-game losing streak at this Summer’s Confederations Cup, where they conceded ten goals, will not have frightened their opponents, a fact acknowledged by Middlesboro goalkeeper Mark Schwarzer, when he spoke to Soccerphile after their 2-0 defeat to Tunisia:
play bazaar result 