Tko je tu lud?

Tko je tu lud?

I recently had a conversation with a prominent Victorian football identity about where our club is at with our junior system and how it operates. He was basically asking why we aren’t producing talent of the quality we used to. Whilst we still track as exceptional when it comes to giving our talent a go at the top level, it’s not to the quality of what it once was.

Our club has always been blessed with an abundance of junior talent. The club just needed to take the pick of the bunch of their own, which they did most of the time. Naturally we could have done better especially in that first generation of juniors that came through in the late 70s and 80s. We had Istuk, Batinovic and others that were in the first team, but such was our quality over the park that not enough of our youth got a real fair crack at it - At one stage of the State team’s first eleven, seven were Essendon Croatia players. This is back when the National League had just started with four Victorian teams in it.

Back to the point, my mind wandered to the oft mentioned metrics that determine how and why a club produces or uncovers talent. Lately the arguments have been for better coaches, better facilities, professionalism and pathways. And you know what conclusion I came to? All of these things have been used as a tool for the general punter (who is usually of a low mental capacity) to disguise what’s really going on in the game. There’s been consensus that all of these four things have been a boon for the game and its future. I’d argue the opposite.

Firstly, let me paint you a picture. A large community of fanatics, in the sporting and cultural sense form  a club. The offspring of the founders begin to play as juniors.  My uncle once told me that watching Croatia in the early 70’s before we were kicked out (stara Croatija argument anyone?) was literally like watching the national team play, regardless of who was actually out on the park.

We usually had fanatical fathers, uncles and various strikos that took on the coaching of teams and instilled something special within these guys that kicked on, and the ones that didn’t - nearly all became lifelong fans of the club.

These days it’s pretty much universally accepted that we all want better coaches. So they make a licencing program that shuts out those most passionate and knowledgeable about the game. The barrier to entry is twofold, it costs a shitload to listen to tutors reading from a textbook and the second is a psychological one – ko ce meni pripovijedat kako se igra nogomet -Who’s going to preach to me how to play soccer?

So the punters wanted better coaches (how do you even quantify that?) and the FFA, as always, perverted that goal to serve their interest whilst giving the impression that it’s serving the original aim.

Then there’s the question of better facilities. This is a really personal point for me. We were forced, sometimes kicking and screaming by Soccer Australia to upgrade our ground constantly. If it wasn’t this it was that. If the TV tower needed to be 20Sqm this year, it was 25sqM next year after it was built by their plans. So yeah, we have a relic of a facility that we built and developed on a big fat lie. That lie is if you do the right thing, play by the rules and contribute to the sport you’ll always be respected and given an opportunity. Jesmo se najeli teska govna sve za nasu Croatiju.

Conversely, it’s quite stupid how the system works in the council-club dichotomy. Club X wants the council to upgrade the club’s facility that it plays out of. The club’s volunteers spend a year or more preparing all the documentation, plans and so forth to prove to the council that the project is worthwhile. Who is the idiot in this situation? The club of course. Volunteers doing to council’s job who are then forced to beg the councils to invest in their own infrastructure that they have use of – usually not exclusively either. It’s fucked.

Professionalism. We love it. The A-league players deserve more money.
Give me a break. The house of cards professionalism that exists in this country is the single-most contributing factor limiting our ability to uncover and produce players.

Before, players could float from the State League and National League without too many issues. This allowed the pool of players to be continually regenerated and any new talent that deserved its shot at the right time usually locked out the older hangers on and so it went.

These days, our club doesn’t get to blood young juniors at that level – so the best we can hope for is every once in a while we’ll blood someone who is better than the league we play in and he ‘might’ get to the A-league. Now apply the same logic to playing in the top league, every once in a while you’ll be able to find a player better than the league you play in and you’ll flog him off overseas. This helps the pool of potential Socceroos who are almost exclusively made up of overseas based players. We need to get this out of our head that we can develop world class juniors in Australia. It ain’t gonna happen.

The last point is pathways. Another punter-driven, FFA deviant buzzword with healthy intentions  (not that I agree with them) that has the opposite effect. It used to be that players played for a junior club, or more than one with the aim to make the senior team and kick on in a better senior team somewhere down the track, whether they were Provisional league, State league or National league. The cream always rises to the top.

What these pathways have done is give a false impression of entitlement that these anointed little shits running around in them are basically in the system and they’ll get their turn at an A-league contract when the time comes. Oh how much joy I have when that doesn’t eventuate which is 90% of the time.

These days the FFA (and other assorted sycophants) think we can supplant the cream by creating in a laboratory. Oh how they fail. But then again, they can always blame the clubs.

Basically, what I’m saying is that everything is fucked. It’s fucked because we have a governing body that is clinging onto power with all of its might. It’s a governing body that does not care about you, me, our club, history, legacy but most importantly our collective future – because we aren’t in that future. Either we fight, and fight hard – or give up.

But then again, what’s the point?

PS – I used to get upset reading Zavicaj’s comments on the blog, but at least you care – and lately I’ve been getting into the nihilistic outlook.