Bert van Marwijk is a pragmatic choice as Socceroos coach, although the announcement seemed timed to overshadow Bonita Mersiades’ tell-all book.

Kudos to Football Federation Australia, who by all accounts got their man without paying over the odds to do so.

Van Marwijk might be the safe choice to take charge of the Socceroos on a short-term basis, but five months out from the World Cup, that’s not necessarily a bad thing.

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Much has already been written about what van Marwijk will bring to the table as Australia’s new coach – defensive stability, a no-nonsense approach to tactics and player selection, and a Dutch haughtiness bordering on hostility when dealing with the media.

Van Marwijk might have enjoyed some success with Feyenoord – and Brett Emerton – in his homeland, but he failed to make much of an impact at two of Germany’s biggest clubs, Borussia Dortmund and Hamburger SV.

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But it’s for his recently acquired knowledge of Asian football – and by extension Australian football – that van Marwijk has really been hired.

He was, of course, in charge of Saudi Arabia as they pipped Australia to the post for an automatic World Cup place, only for a squabble over his living arrangements to put paid to any hopes he had of leading the Green Falcons in Russia.

Instead he’ll take charge of the Socceroos, and we can anticipate a 4-2-3-1 formation with a couple of ball-winning midfielders to be the hallmark of his Australian team.



It’s a safe option for a side that has only a few months to iron out the kinks, however it’s not exactly a continuation of Ange Postecoglou’s all-out attacking ethos.

But then, Postecoglou arguably forfeited the right to care about that by choosing Yokohama F. Marinos over leading the Socceroos in Russia anyway.

FFA should be applauded, at least, for not caving in to the high-salaried demands of either Roberto Mancini or Louis van Gaal, or looking to appease the football hipsters by plumping for a Marcelo Bielsa who speaks next-to-no English.

With current Sydney FC coach Graham Arnold widely expected to take over after the World Cup, it hardly makes sense to break the bank for an interim coach.

But the timing of FFA’s announcement should have raised a few eyebrows.

Last December they declared that a ‘panel of experts’ featuring several former Socceroos would advise the FFA on appointment of a new coach, with the announcement expected to occur sometime in February.

What changed? Maybe the fact former FFA employee Mersiades launched an explosive new book called Whatever It Takes about Australia’s doomed World Cup bid on the same day.

What better way to deflect the media attention Mersiades’ book deservedly warrants than by hurriedly announcing the new Socceroos coach on the same morning?



There’s no point pretending it’s all a big conspiracy theory. This has been FFA’s modus operandi for years.

And they’d better get cracking on fixing their image problem sooner rather than later.

It’s great that A-League boss Greg O’Rourke is set to fly to Brisbane next week to discuss Brisbane Roar’s shambolic midweek exit from the AFC Champions League, as Marco Monteverde reported in the Courier Mail, but why has it taken so long?

It took a perfectly worded open letter from the Roar Supporters Federation to sum up in about two minutes the feelings that every Brisbane Roar supporter has been banging on about for at least the past two years.

On the one hand you have a handful of FFA executives reputedly earning eye-watering salaries, and on the other a club whose numbers are literally falling off their jerseys right before our very eyes.

Something doesn’t add up. That’s presumably the conclusion Mersiades has come to in her book.

Still, it was fantastic to see Matildas star Sam Kerr named the Young Australian of the Year.

Swings and roundabouts. It was ever thus in the tumultuous world of Australian football.

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