Nick Bendel
How I love to hate you
December 14th 2008 04:31
Given that Sydney is generally disliked by other teams’ supporters (and, indeed, by some of its own), it might seem illogical and fanciful to suggest that rival clubs and their fans should get behind Ramsay and Traktovenko. But if statistics are anything to go by, something of the sort has already been occurring throughout the competition’s brief history. When the FC rolls into town, more bums appear on seats and more income flows into the home side’s coffers. That is because Sydney stirs people’s interest in a way that Wellington or the Central Coast could never hope to do.
From the A-League’s inception, the self-proclaimed “Manchester United of Australian football” has carried itself with a pronounced swagger. Thanks to the big names it’s had in the boardroom, the big names it’s had on the sidelines and the big names it’s had on the field, ‘Bling FC’ has let the other teams know that it considers itself their superior. This attitude has been a promoter’s dream, making it far easier to convince the public to attend a match involving the uppity Sky Blues than, for instance, the unprepossessing Phoenix or Mariners.
What would be wonderful for the A-League is if the FC became so reviled that opposing clubs and their supporters could not, in spite of themselves, stop talking about the hated Sydneysiders. A virtuous circle would thereby be established, in which the Sydney mystique would help to promote the competition, and more people would thus begin to despise- and talk about- the club. If Sydney really could become the local version of Manchester United- or, more relevantly, a footballing version of Collingwood or Manly- it would help the league and all its members to grow.
But there is one big problem in all of this: so far, the Sydney mystique has been more myth than reality. Halfway into the A-League’s fourth season, the club’s results have been inconsistent and its play erratic. People have been hating the Sky Blues not because they have been sweeping all before them, but because their instinct tells them that it’s the right thing to do. Sydney might talk like a Manchester United, but up until now it hasn’t been able to walk like one. If and when that happens, people will really have a reason to despise the club. That can only be good for the league.
And that is where Paul Ramsay and David Traktovenko come in. In a revealing article in the Sydney Morning Herald, Scott Barlow, the duo’s spokesman, revealed the big plans that they have for Sydney. By focussing on the grassroots, devoting greater resources to marketing and recruiting astutely from abroad, they intend to have the team consistently challenging for the title.
That, however, is just the beginning. For it turns out that Barlow’s masters- much like Clive Palmer at Gold Coast United- are concentrating as much on the Asian Champions League as they are the A-League. “[We] are going to be measuring our success not only in terms of the A-League, but also the ACL. We want to make Sydney FC an internationally recognised brand, and one of the premier clubs in Asia-Pacific. To do that, we must be consistently competing at that level.”
While it remains to be seen whether the deeds of Ramsay and Traktovenko match their rhetoric, one can only applaud their sentiments. Clearly, the pair has recognised a truth that not enough Australians have been willing or able to accept- namely, that our future lies in Asia. No less than 46 countries and four billion people are aligned with the Asian Football Confederation, which means that the region is a source of great potential benefit for Australia, a footballing minnow of little more than 20 million people. Asia can provide coaches and players to help us raise our standards; Asia can provide consumers to watch our league and buy its merchandise; Asia can provide sponsors to invest in our game. There are a great many geopolitical analysts willing to predict that just as the 20th century was the American century, so the 21st will be the Asian century; in other words, one can expect the continent’s wealth and influence to exponentially increase over the coming decades. For Australian football to become more deeply involved in Asia is therefore nothing more than the commonest of common sense.
Hopefully, that is something that the new owners of Sydney FC will be able to achieve. It would be a good start if some of the foreigners they’ve talked about recruiting hailed from Asia. In the A-League’s history, a bafflingly low number of imports have been sourced from there, despite the fact that the success of the likes of Hyuk-Su Seo, Jin-Hyung Song and Shengqing Qu has meant that the Asians have generally been more successful than the Europeans. Another obvious move would be to develop an affiliation with an Asian club, akin to the relationship that Perth Glory has with Shanghai Shenhua. It would also be pleasing if Sydney could find some Asian business partners, a task made easier by the fact that the team is based in the country’s commercial capital.
As a participant in the world game and a representative of one of the world’s most famous and cosmopolitan cities, it is logical for Sydney FC to possess grand ambitions. The Central Coast has been a valuable inclusion in the local competition- and, as Sport: The Australian Disease has argued, so has Wellington- but clubs of that stature can never realistically hope to become “one of the premier clubs in Asia-Pacific”. The FC, though, has at least a theoretical chance of achieving such eminence.
If Sydney FC was to regularly do well in the A-League, and if Sydney FC was to regularly challenge in the Asian Champions League, it would create a happy situation in which success begat success. Increasing local influence would lead to deepening regional involvement, which in turn would help the club to maintain its local dominance. And while most Australian football fans would be as instinctively repelled by the thought of Sydney succeeding as most English football fans would be of Manchester United succeeding, secretly they should wish for nothing more. For the more despised the club becomes, the better the A-League will be doing.
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