Second coming’s a shot at redemption
A DECADE AFTER HIS FIRST CRACK, GRAHAM ARNOLD IS BACK AT THE HELM OF THE SOCCEROOS. HE SITS DOWN WITH TOM SMITHIES
IT WAS on a sunny December day just over a decade ago that Graham Arnold learnt he had ceded control of the Socceroos after his ill-fated stint as “interim” coach.
Arnold was sitting in a cafe in Darlinghurst when Football Federation Australia announced the appointment of Pim Verbeek as the longterm successor to Guus Hiddink.
The prospect of Arnold returning to the job looked remote.
The memory of that was part of Arnold’s pride yesterday when the open secret of his appointment from July was made official. The challenge of defending the Asian Cup, and qualifying for the next World Cup, is now his.
The cliche is “unfinished business”, but now the man who was thrown into coaching the national team almost straight from his playing days takes the senior job on his own terms – and for all the right reasons.
“It feels like I’ve never left,” Arnold joked yesterday.
“Walking into the building, my office used to be down the corridor and it’s still there. I know what the job is about – it’s tough, but I know I’ll do a good job.”
The self-declared “proud Australian” was deeply hurt by the chaos around the Asian Cup campaign in 2007, with an ambivalent playing group learning the hard way how good some Asian opponents were.
“You learn from mistakes as a coach and obviously I made plenty, but I am a person that learns,” he said yesterday. “My strengths (now) are man management and attention to detail. I learnt a helluva lot from my mistakes in 2007. You can’t hide from that, but I know I’m a completely different person today, 10 years on.
“I learnt so much in the last 10 years and I have such good mentors around me.
“You look back on things that weren’t right and you learn lessons from them — if you don’t learn lessons from them then there’s a problem.”
Arnold paid tribute to Ange Postecoglou’s “legacy” and he has cause to be grateful that he will inherit a squad of players many of whom will have played at two World Cups by the time he is their head coach later this year.
He knows many of them well and it was the lure of coaching them again at the top of their game that drew him back for another go at what can be a brutally unforgiving role in the public eye. “I’m big on Australian talent,” Arnold said.
“I’ve worked with a lot of those players.”