Giving back: Mark Viduka coaching members of a Melbourne Knights youth team. Credit:Maciej Nadstaszik Since 2009, the enigmatic former English Premier League star and Socceroos captain has avoided the spotlight. He rarely comments on the A-League or the Socceroos. He didn't even bother to announce his retirement from the game. But in the Croatian community, Viduka is comfortable and gregarious. Throughout his career, he'd send postcards home to Mirko 'Rus' Rastocic, Knights' legendary and long-serving kitman. To this day Viduka calls 'Rus' a "father figure". In the Croatian club in Footscray, it takes us 15 minutes to wade through the crowd as he stops and chats to old friends, teammates and fans, all the while agreeing to every autograph and photograph request. "It's all changed," he says. "We used to be at the highest level, and now it's the way it is." He says the A-League is "good for the game", although Melbourne Knights and other former National Soccer League clubs "have been a little bit left in the lurch". Viduka remembers a small but solid football family. A multicultural game with Aussies, Greeks, Scots and Croats. As a kid he would go with his father to home games, away games, everything. He would stand behind the goals, in awe of Knights legends Peter Blasby, Josip Biskic, Tommy Cumming, Theo Selemidis and especially their Scottish import George Hannah. When Viduka transferred to Glasgow Celtic in 1998, he made sure to get in touch with Hannah.

"I can tell you something," he says. "When I look at a player who is not Croatian, and I think of him playing for my club, I probably loved him more than I did the Croatian ones." The long boom of the A-League's first decade has bled the clubs of Viduka's youth dry. "We have had people that have loved the game for many years," he says. "A lot of time it sort of feels a little bit like all of a sudden these people have discovered football 10 years ago." The robbery of ambition has been supplemented by the robbery of players. There's no system of promotion to the top flight and the maximum training compensation that a National Premier League club can earn from one of their players moving to the A-League is capped at $10,000, although until recently that cap was just $3000. If that player moves abroad, it's the A-League middle man that benefits most from the labour of the lower league producer. "You can put this in the papers," he says firmly. "The compensation, they [A-League clubs] have to pay more or they have to say we'll give you 'x' and 'x' player, but if you sell him overseas, we need to have a chunk of that. It's fair." Viduka knows because it happened to him. Cash is what Melbourne Knights got from producing one of our greatest ever Socceroos. Pride, of course, but ultimately cash to reinvest into the community and the club.

Joe Simunic, one of Viduka's old teammates at the Knights, was one of the few Australians of Croatian heritage who chose to play for Croatia. That 'Aussie Joe' ended up marking Viduka in the 2006 World Cup was illustrative of the Croatian community's enormous contribution to the game. "I never thought as a kid growing up in Australia in St Albans, kicking a ball against a wall and one day hoping to play for Melbourne Croatia, that I'd be standing in the World Cup captaining Australia, which is my country, playing against Croatia, which is a free country," says Viduka. "It was a big moment." Yet that goodwill, he says, is being sorely tested by the lack of reinvestment and opportunity for clubs like Melbourne Knights. "What incentive do these clubs have to produce players any more for our country? What's going to happen is, and you can write this down, you're going to get Melbourne Knights being affiliated with overseas clubs. The Joe Simunic situation is going to happen, where they play for Croatia or they go and play for Greece, or they go and play for Turkey, or they go and play for someone else." Viduka is evasive about his own future. "Maybe later on, but maybe not," he says simply when asked if he has plans to become a professional coach. "Not when my kids are young."

One thing is for certain – Viduka will always return to the roots. His children are part of the Knights family, and they recently attended their first senior match together against Knights' old rivals South Melbourne in the FFA Cup. The kids wore his old Melbourne Croatia and Croatia Zagreb scarves, and like Viduka did at their age, came away with new heroes, memories and a collection of swear words. "Where am I gonna go?" says Viduka, smiling. "This is embedded in me. I can go away, but it's embedded. It's embedded."