Tuesday, July 15, 2008 ESPNsoccernet: July; 16, 2:08 PM UK
Foster: Australian for football
Jason Dasey
May 1997, Sydney's Brighton-le-Sands: a lone figure jogs along the windswept shores of Botany Bay followed by the lens of a TV camera.
Foster: The voice of Aussie footie (SBS-TV/Soccernet)
On a chilly autumn day, we were filming a late-blooming midfielder by the name of Craig Foster after I'd flown back to my home-town of Sydney for a BBC World TV feature on the Socceroos under the coaching of Terry Venables.
It was my first meeting with the then Marconi Stallions player and I was immediately struck by his eloquence and confidence in our interview. I remember thinking: 'When it comes to the media, this guy really gets it.'
Eleven years - and a head of grey hair - later, it doesn't surprise me that Foster has become Australian football's leading pundit - and, since February, a TV sports newsreader for national network, SBS-TV.
Following the footsteps of fellow ex-players like former England captain Gary Lineker and Tottenham legend Garth Crooks, the 39-year-old is excelling as a host, broadcaster and commentator. But unlike 'Mr. Nice Guy' Lineker, Fozzie is outspoken, controversial and, occasionally, brutal, in his analysis, including a cross-examination of guests that belies his former days as a law student.
He hates British 'long ball' football - favouring the technical style championed by the Brazilians and the French - and has had high-profile run-ins with ex-Sydney FC coach Terry Butcher and former Socceroo teammate Robbie Slater.
After he repeatedly criticised Butcher's apparently negative tactics, the former England defender wrote an open letter in the Sydney Morning Herald newspaper in October 2006, belittling Foster's playing career and inviting him to share his wisdom at a Sydney FC training session. Four months later, Butcher was sacked after Sydney's early exit from the A-League finals.
In another well-known incident - broadcast live on SBS-TV in November 2006 - Foster demanded the resignation of then Australian under-20 coach Ange Postecoglou in a two-way interview after the Young Socceroos failed to qualify for the World Youth Championships.
Not everyone is a Foster fan - he has been accused of overkill, promoting an unrealistic brand of 'SBS football' and being negative - but he is usually passionate, perceptive and entertaining.
Few football fans will forget his excited reaction to John Aloisi's decisive penalty ('Come on, Australia!') against Uruguay in Sydney that helped send the Socceroos to the 2006 World Cup after a gap of 32 years.
As a player, Foster was capped 29 times by Australia and came excruciatingly close to appearing at a World Cup himself. Under Venables, he played in the ill-fated play-off, second-leg, against Iran in November 1997 when Australia led 3-1 on aggregate until Iran scored twice in the last 20 minutes to advance to France '98 on the away-goals rule.
It was collective heartbreak for a squad and a nation which made Foster's commentary joy at the Uruguay game all the more enjoyable.
Seven months later, I bumped into Foster and his SBS colleague Les Murray deep in the bowels of the Fritz Walter Stadion in Kaiserslautern when I was covering the 2006 World Cup for ESPN just minutes after a disputed Italy penalty had knocked Australia out: Socceroo heartbreak all over again.
Foster's European career didn't get off the ground until he was a 28-year-old: the Venables' connection helping open doors at Portsmouth and Crystal Palace where he played 60 games over three seasons, scoring eight goals.
But more significant was his role, post-retirement, when he quickly became a powerful voice for football. There were many more accomplished ex-Socceroos but few who could make their point in such a fearless and engaging manner. His penchant for outrageously thick neckties failed to detract from a message that cared little for whose toes it stepped on.
His foundations as a broadcaster may have been laid while playing for Singapore in the old Malaysia Cup in 1991. Hidden somewhere in his Bondi home are rare VHS cassettes, showing a 22-year-old Foster during a stint as a TV sports newsreader for one of the island's English-language stations.
After Terry Butcher was sacked, Foster wrote in his weekly column in the Sun Herald newspaper in 2007: 'His performance should once and for all put to rest the outdated policy of importing British coaches.' Some found his stance hypocritical given his strong support a decade earlier for London-born Venables.
But Australian-born Graham Arnold, a former teammate, came off no better later that year after his unsuccessful stint as national head coach with an opinion piece, headlined: "He's Not Worthy of the Socceroos'. More recently, Foster slammed Arnold's conservative selection for the Australian squad for the Beijing Olympics.
Foster had an all-Aussie background, growing up in Lismore on the far north coast of New South Wales between Sydney and Brisbane, and playing schoolboy cricket with the older brothers of Australian wicketkeeper Adam Gilchrist as a sometime prolific batsman.
Today he's a keen golfer and, despite dodgy knees, is still a weekend warrior in a recreational football league in Sydney's eastern suburbs: the kind of well-rounded interest in sports that he brings to the anchor desk, Sunday to Thursday on SBS-TV's World News Australia.
But it was his unambiguous opinions on football in Australia that formed the backbone of our interview for ESPNsoccernet.
Q: Craig, how would you have reacted if I told you over a decade ago when we first met that today you would be a news presenter and leading football TV pundit?A: Punditry was probably a logical progression for someone with strong views and a passion to delve into how football functions on field and off, and as a player, media commitments came fairly naturally.
I was fortunate to be approached and trained by the two masters of Australian football broadcasting in Les Murray and Johnny Warren, and also to work in the formative first few years alongside highly respected professionals in Kyle Patterson and Andrew Orsatti, all of whom stressed in words and deed the importance of research, attention to detail, respect for the game and above all, informed opinion.
Reading the sports news was more of a departure, and a risk, but after six years I needed a fresh professional challenge, and also recognized an opportunity for a football 'identity' to hold a prominent media role.
You are passionate and informed with your views but you've made some enemies in the process. Why is it so important to you to speak your mind in the way that you do?
Enemy is too strong a term but I concede I have many ideological opponents. But in many cases this is simply because the truth hurts, and self-interest plays a part as the change I advocate means many will be left behind as we grow and prosper.
Above all, I believe in discourse about issues relating to this beautiful game, and whilst I claim the right to speak openly or critically, so do I also recognize the right of others to do likewise, including to the point of criticizing me, however strongly.
Provided such debate is always restricted to the football issues at hand, good robust disagreement is a vital part of expressing our passion for football and an important part of an inquisitive football culture.
Your public stoushes have occasionally captivated the football community, but painted you as anti-British. What would you say about your feuds with Terry Butcher and Robbie Slater?
Six years ago I began to point out the simple reality that British coaching culture and methodology is behind the best, that tactically British football is in the dark ages save for the few foreign dominated EPL clubs, that youth development in Britain lags well behind the best of Europe let alone South America, that technique is neither valued nor systematically trained, that the English coaching licenses are outdated, and that La Liga is technically the best league by some margin.
The reaction in Australia was extremely strong, both positive and negative, principally because our football is historically based on the British game.
But this is not an anti stance, simply a pro-Australian football one. While some may wish to argue the point, England to their credit have already accepted their shortcomings and are changing. Fabio Capello's appointment as national coach is the ultimate acknowledgement of such.
As for Terry and Rob, both have an understanding of the game limited to the British Isles, and as such, I fully understand their emotional reactions to my views which can be very confronting to people with a narrow football belief system.
Nothing personal, but Terry is precisely the type of old school English coach we need to avoid to progress, and as for Rob's insight into football, well, the less said the better.
Through your pundit's eyes, how would you rate yourself as a footballer?
Whether as a player, analyst, columnist or presenter, this is always a matter for others.
What were your career highlights and lowlights for club and country?
Highlight - To play in my first international was exceptional, as a country boy from Lismore, NSW, I would say it undoubtedly meant more than for most, and 13 years later, the memory is still an emotional one.
Low - Injuries were an annoyance. Two cruciate ligament reconstructions, the first at 15 years of age which tied the knee permanently at a semi-bent angle, could have been done without.
What's the one most pressing issue that Australian football needs to address to accelerate its growth?
From a technical standpoint, and looking at Australia winning the FIFA World Cup as the end game, most pressing is the way we play football, or a cultural change in appreciation of what quality football means, both aesthetically and practically speaking.
This is why Spain's Euro 2008 win is so important to a country like ours, because all of our sport is traditionally built on athleticism and effort, and Australia needs to recognise that Spain won by excelling at football, not athletics, and moreover that in modern football every country, every team, can give maximal effort. The difference is only technical, tactical and mental.
Australia has the single greatest sporting winning mentality, considering our success per capita, so this same quality which carried Germany so far at Euro 2008 is assured.
What we require is to re-engineer our football completely on the technical level and this is much easier than to create a sporting mentality.
Technique can be bought and adopted from the best teachers through youth development processes, a cultural pre-disposition for excelling at sport cannot.
Thus when we revolutionise our football system, watch out.
But this must start with a vision of the game which necessitates high technical and tactical aptitude, reasons why our measured and intelligent football under Guus Hiddink, and that of Spain at Euro 2008, provide a different view of the game and, ultimately, a better blueprint from which to work.
With the passing of your former SBS-TV colleague Johnny Warren a few years ago, how do you view your role as a passionate voice for Australian football?
Johnny was a visionary, a genius, and was a man for his times. His knowledge is unquestioned, but his courage is what I respect above all. He fought a battle for Australian football through some dark, dark decades of malpractice which, at times, was a painful and lonely one which cost him greatly, and that took a special character.
I am purely a former player fortunate to be covering the beautiful game. Nothing more, nothing less.
* Sydney-born Jason Dasey ( www.jasondasey.com ) is a host for Soccernet SportsCenter and SportsCenter. He covered the 2006 World Cup and 2007 Asian Cup for ESPN.
