Nick Bendel
If Kosmina was a joke, Lavicka may be the perfect punch line
February 2nd 2009 05:08
Despite possessing a reasonable amount of experience, the former Newcastle Breakers, Brisbane Strikers and Adelaide United mentor lacked the nous to be able to turn a squad of talented individuals into a cohesive unit.
Yet at one stage, things looked as though they would turn out very differently. When Kosmina replaced Branko Culina halfway through last season, he inherited a team that was bereft of confidence and ideas. The players looked clueless; uncertain what they should be doing or how they should be doing it, they typically found themselves caught in two minds, as they became infected by that most deadly of sporting sicknesses- tentativeness. The result was a series of floundering displays, in which a collection of gifted footballers did neither one thing nor the other, confusedly running around for 90 minutes until the referee’s whistle told them that they should stop.
When Kosmina arrived, he was exactly what Sydney needed, for the simple reason that he was not Culina. When tentativeness becomes embedded in a team’s consciousness, it is almost impossible to eradicate- and Culina, for whatever reason, had come to be associated by his charges with tentativeness. Thus, with the arrival of a new man, the players had the opportunity to banish from their minds all that crippling self-doubt. It was no coincidence that performances and results immediately improved, to the extent that the FC came very close to snatching the minor premiership (and therefore the championship itself).
Given the impressive off-season recruitment drive and a full pre-season to work with his team, many pundits thought that Kosmina would be celebrating a grand final victory come season’s end. Those predictions gained force over the first five rounds as Sydney, despite the absence of marquee John Aloisi and several others, went undefeated, producing some impressive passing football along the way.
But having begun the season with a few confident strides forward, most of the remainder was spent in inexplicable retreat. A slick unit deteriorated with alarming rapidity into a disjointed rabble, which lost games not through a lack of effort, but due to an obvious lack of ideas. The players were prepared to run all day- they were just unsure where they should be running, or why. Ironically, Kosmina’s team began to look more and more like Culina’s.
It would be fair to say that Aloisi was at the heart of the Sky Blues’ miserable season. However, contrary to what many have been saying, he was a symptom of all that ailed Sydney, not its cause. After making his debut off the bench in round three, it was not until round nine that the $1.4 million striker opened his account. His second and final goal came from the penalty spot in round 15, before he was savagely booed for missing a couple of sitters in the round 16 loss at home to Perth. Between round three, which marked the peak of his popularity, and round 16, which marked its painful nadir, Aloisi could have- and should have- scored several more. But the important thing to note is that while a footballer of his pedigree should have had more to show for his efforts, the shots that were failing to hit the target were half-chances. Not until the Perth game could it be said that he had failed to convert gilt-edged opportunities- and by then, his confidence had taken a battering due to all the unenlightened criticism, and Sydney’s season was all but over.
So if Aloisi was only partly responsible for his poor scoring record, how could he be at the heart of the Sky Blues’ miserable season? The answer is that he symbolised all that went wrong. If the ball kept reaching Aloisi in good positions and he kept failing to put it away, it would be reasonable to saddle him with the blame, but when one recognises that the ball only rarely reached him in good positions, it becomes clear that Sydney’s problems lay elsewhere. It was not the case that the team failed to fire because Aloisi failed to fire; it was the case that Aloisi failed to fire because the team failed to fire. That is not to say that he played well- he did not- but rather that he was not so much a cause of failure as its symbol.
In fact, the real culprit was Kosmina. If his men had played the final 16 rounds as they did the opening five, Aloisi may have finished with the golden boot. After all, it wasn’t that long ago that he was scoring goals in the Primera Liga, which is an infinitely more challenging competition. But because Kosmina was unable to condition his men to play passing football- in other words, to make space for one another, to create triangles and to patiently work the ball around- the star striker seldom received quality possession. Typically, the ball would either be hoofed to him, or he would have to drop deep or wide to receive it. All too infrequently did Aloisi receive the ball at his feet when he was facing goal and in and around the box.
Yet if there is one thing that damned Kosmina more than his team’s play, it would have been his press conferences. Time and time again, he uttered remarks that bordered on the delusional. Losses were never blamed on the fact that the Sydney players were manifestly confused about their roles. Instead, they were blamed on injuries, on referees, on opposition gamesmanship, on bad luck- and finally, most shamefully, on Aloisi. Kosmina would defiantly insist that the FC had had the better of proceedings, that the FC had enjoyed the majority of possession, that the FC had done everything but win; that everything would come good next game; and that anybody who couldn’t see what he was seeing was stupid. Each time he did so, it became that little bit clearer that he didn’t understand why Sydney was in such a mess- and if he didn’t understand why Sydney was in such a mess, how could he be expected to clean it up? Presumably, that is why Kosmina lost the dressing room and why he has just been sacked by the new owners.
Branko Culina believes that the dismissal of his successor was an inappropriate response to the woeful season. What was really needed, he claims, was stability. “All you have to do is look at the teams that are on top consistently year in and year out, and that’s Melbourne and Central Coast,” he argued. “They’ve had stability across the board and they’ve reaped the benefits. Adelaide have had changes but two in five years isn’t too bad. Every club will have changes here and there but not as many as Sydney FC.” Culina, though, misses the point- what his old club needs in the coaching department is not stability, but wisdom. Stability for the sake of stability makes no sense if the captain you’ve hired to steer the ship keeps running it aground. In that case, a dose of instability can’t happen soon enough.
So, it’s out with Kossie and in with Vitezslav Lavicka. Given that nobody in Australia seems to know who he is, it is difficult to assess his appointment. However, at least on paper, it looks to be a promising one. As the recent manager of Czech powerhouse Sparta Prague, the 2006 and 2007 coach of the year and the boss of his country’s under 21 team, he immediately becomes the A-League’s most experienced and accomplished mentor. Furthermore, the fact that he was entrusted with the Czech Republic’s juniors is a very good sign. As anybody who has watched their senior team would know, the Czechs produce the sort of attractive and technical football that Australia’s domestic and national teams should be striving to emulate. If the Football Association of the Czech Republic believed him to be sufficiently competent to take charge of its precious under 21s, in all likelihood he is more than qualified to guide Sydney FC. And so if firing John Kosmina was a good way for Sydney’s new owners to begin their reign, hiring Vitezslav Lavicka may prove to be an even better one.
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