Date: June 24th 2010
Author: Ben Somerford
From: Four Four Two Australia

MELBOURNE Heart goalkeeper Clint Bolton is striving for instant success with the A-League's newest club claiming he won't accept simply being competitive in season one.

The 34-year-old shot-stopper, who won the A-League double with Sydney FC last season, is ambitious about the Heart and hopes to encourage the squad to aim high.

"Personally I expect big things from myself and my teammates around me," Bolton told Fox Sports.

"I am trying to drum that into players, that it's no good just competing for the first year, we've got to aim to achieve high success and hopefully we can do something like that."

Bolton stopped short of Clive Palmer-esque claims about going undefeated and winning the league straight up, but with a squad boasting the likes of Simon Colosimo, Josip Skoko, Michael Beauchamp and Gerald Sibon, there's plenty of reason to believe they can succeed.

Melbourne Heart will meet their first A-League opposition on Friday when they face Brisbane Roar in a pre-season game in Toowoomba.

Striker John Aloisi is hoping the trial match will provide the team with a good understanding of the standard expected in the A-League.

"In pre-season it's important to play a couple of A-League sides just to see what the competition is going to be like," he said.

"We can't take too much into it, because we know once the season's under way it's completely different but it's a good test for both sides."

Heart coach John van 't Schip added the team are still some way off being ready for their debut season.

"Everybody is well mixed with each other and you can see that there is something is growing," the Dutchman said.

"That's the most important thing because if we had to start tomorrow we would not be ready at all and we know that. But we still have six weeks to go."

http://au.fourfourtwo.com/news/169953,instant-heart-success-is-achievable-bolton.aspx

Date: June 22nd 2010
Author: Not Specified
From: Four Four Two Australia

INDIAN international Gouramangi Singh has touched down in Australia for the start of a two-week trial with Melbourne Heart FC.

Singh will link up with the squad as it embarks on a pre-season trip to the Gold Coast, which will see the Heart spend a week in camp before taking on the Brisbane Roar in Toowoomba on June 25.

A central defender, Singh played a pivotal role in India's victorious 2008 AFC Challenge Cup campaign, helping the unfancied side secure direct qualification to next year's Asian Cup in Qatar where they have been grouped with the Qantas Socceroos.

Earning 21 caps at international level to date, the 24-year-old is highly regarded by the Indian football fraternity, clinching the ‘Best Defender' award as he helped lead Churchill Brothers SC to the 2008/09 I-League crown and qualification for the preliminary phase of the 2010 AFC Champions League.

Head Coach John van ‘t Schip said Gouramangi's stint with the Club will provide the coaching staff with an opportunity to assess his capacity to adapt to the rigours of Australian football.

"Despite his age, Gouramangi is very experienced at international level, which is a credit to his maturity and ability to rise to a challenge," he said.

"While Indian football is very much unknown outside of the sub-continent, we are hopeful Gouramangi will be able to make an impression.

"However, the Hyundai A-League is a very unique competition, requiring a certain set of qualities to succeed, while as a Club, we look for players who are adaptable and possess strong technical ability."

http://au.fourfourtwo.com/news/169647,gouramangi-arrives-for-heart-trial.aspx

Date: June 17th 2010
Author: Roy Hay
From: The Geelong Advertiser

COACH John van't Schip has a nearly a full squad of players to pick from when the A-League newcomers Melbourne Heart take to the pitch for the first time tonight.

The Heart wraps up their three-day visit to Geelong for the Community Football Festival by taking on the Wimmera South Coast Eagles at North Geelong's home ground - Elcho Park - with former Socceroos' Clint Bolton and Simon Colosimo expected to headline their team.

Dutch signings Gerald Sibon and Rutger Worm will also lineup for the Heart, who will be missing the likes of topline players in Geelong's Josip Skoko, Michael Beauchamp and John Aloisi.

Worm, 24, is a Dutch Youth international who can play as a conventional winger or in a central striking role and has been playing in the Dutch First Division with NEC Nijmegen.

Sibon is another exciting Dutch striker who banged in 15 goals in 27 games for Heerenveen in the Dutch league and the Europa League.

The opposition will be provided by a select team of the best local players including several of North Geelong's promising youngsters in keeper Tom Dunn, Robert Zadworny, Matthew Demo, Daniel Dragicevic and Adam Zilic.

The Heart are well into their preparation for the new A-League season and the build-up to a match against English powerhouse, Everton, in less than a month's time.

Skoko is due to arrive back in Melbourne in the first week in July, just in time for the Everton game on July 14.

Heart will give an opportunity to a couple of trialists during tonight's game including Lawrence Thomas, a very promising keeper who has been at the Australian Institute of Sport, and Green Gully youngster Nick Kalmar.

It will also be a chance for all the Geelong boys to show that they are worthy of consideration for a higher level of football.

Hearts' head of football operations John Didulica said recently that Heart will integrate its youth league squad with the senior team.

"We see the youth league as being entirely aligned with the senior side," Didulica said. "Some A-League clubs in the past have treated their youth league side as being a completely separate entity.

"Our intention is to integrate those players within the senior squad as much as possible because by European standards they are at the age where they should be knocking on the first team door."

http://www.geelongadvertiser.com.au/article/2010/06/17/183211_geelong_sports.html

Date: June 4th 2010
Author: Not Specified
From: Four Four Two Australia

BRISBANE Roar will take on A-League new boys Melbourne Heart in a pre-season clash at Toowoomba's Clive Berghofer Stadium later this month.

Taking place on June 25, the match will pit Ange Postecoglou's revamped squad against Melbourne's much anticipated second club.

Travelling to Toowoomba for the announcement, Postecoglou said the match was a great opportunity to give something back to a hotbed of football talent.

"Taking football to the regional communities is an important part of our focus," Postecoglou said.

"Some of Australia's best footballers have come from regional areas and this is a great opportunity to expose young players in the region to quality football."

Football South West Queensland President Alan Sothmann hailed the match as a triumph for regional football on the Darling Downs.

"This game is a fantastic coup for Toowoomba and for all football fans in the south west region," Sothmann said.

"To win the right to host a Hyundai A-league game is a real privilege and shows Brisbane Roar's commitment to fostering football in regional areas.

"I know many people will be ecstatic with this news, especially the young local players who will get a chance to see a top quality game right here in their own town."

And with the game coinciding with the FIFA World Cup in South Africa, regional football fans are expected to flock to the Clive Berghofer Stadium.

"This is going to be a very good game to watch so I'm betting on a large and enthusiastic crowd," Sothmann said.

Entry is $15 for an adult and $5 for under 15 years.

Tickets are available online at www.empiretheatre.com.au, by phone 1300 655 299 or from the Empire Theatre box office in Neil Street.

Tickets will also be sold at the gate on match day.

Gates open at 5pm. A player signing and photo session will be held until 6.15pm before kick-off at 7.15pm.

http://au.fourfourtwo.com/news/167928,roar-to-face-heart-exam.aspx

Date: June 1st 2010
Author: Chris Paraskevas
From: Goal.com

Kamal Ibrahim, Eli Babalj, Brendan Hamill and Kliment Taseski are probably the least well known of all of the Melbourne Heart’s recruits for its inaugural A-League season, yet they represent the future of a club that enters the competition in its sixth season without a National Youth League outfit to foster their talents.

Described by Football Operations Manager John Didulica as the “nucleus of the Australian U-20s side” over the next 18 months, with the acquisition of the likes of John Aloisi, Michael Beauchamp and Josip Skoko – two of those players representing a totally different generation of Australian footballers – it remains to be seen whether the promise that the young quartet will be playing a role in the club’s inaugural season will be fulfilled.

The presence of Dutch manager John van’t Schip at the club is encouraging for Ibrahim and co. Having spent most of his 13 year coaching career at Ajax in various capacities, the former Netherlands international has coached Wesley Sneijder and Rafael Van der Vaart as youth players.

Van’t Schips appointment can on the surface be viewed as one that signals the club’s immediate desire to attract fans with a continental, attractive brand of football, as well as an attempt to distinguish itself from the Melbourne’s resident A-League powerhouse, the Victory.

“Establishing our point of difference was our biggest challenge,” Didulica tells Goal.com. “I certainly think we’ve engaged a different coach for starters.

“We can’t replicate what Melbourne Victory have done so we’ve got to try and do something different.”

Indeed, the slightly more fashionable van’t Schip is a stark contrast to the stoic Ernie Merrick, who has built a two-time champion outfit on a physical and disciplined counter-attacking style.

Yet to reduce van’t Schip’s appointment to a stylistic choice would be to ignore his importance as a founding member of a club that enters a competitive sporting market at a time where the interest in domestic football has somewhat plateaued.

Within such an environment the margins for error are thin as the Heart looks to establish itself in the country’s AFL heartland, whilst the financial restraints placed upon clubs by the league’s governing body has made recruitment a fine art, rather than a calculated risk.

“I think you need to be ultra careful and prudent in being foreign players into the league... they will occupy a large chunk of your salary cap budget,” Didulica says.

“If you have three or four players who are taking up 40% of your disposable spend, all of a sudden you’ve got a pretty muted team and I think a couple of sides in the A-League last season had foreign players who didn’t live up to expectations and as a result they struggled significantly.

“We’ve been really careful that any foreigners we do bring and any player who’s going to be on a solid wage, we’re entirely comfortable to bring; there’s no guess work when you’re building a team for the first time.

“We certainly wouldn’t sign anybody just from a DVD. We firstly went and worked through where we felt international players were most needed in our squad.

“With someone like Rutger Worm it was a little bit easier because Head Coach John van’t Schip had tracked his career in the Netherlands over a number of years, having seen him come through as a youngster.

“With Alex Terra it was a bit more difficult; we always said we wanted to have a bit of a mix throughout the squad, we didn’t want just four Europeans, three Dutchmen or four South Americans.

“We wanted to integrate different aspects to the playing squad and I think that improves the quality of your football because you tend to be a bit less predictable and you get different characters in the dressing room as well, which is a good thing.

“We looked at bringing in a South American, Central American or even an African. We explored our networks and John van’t Schip went to South America for three weeks in March and was able to speak to a lot of people in South America that we both knew. From that Alex Terra emerged.”

Crucial to this process has been the “network” built up by van’t Schip during a 25 year playing and coaching career; the same can be said of Didulica and his 15 years in football.

“Rather than doing it on speculation we’re able to say that we know these people and value their opinion. Just like in any business you build up these relationships and are able to ask for some objective advice.

“It doesn’t just go for football but for business generally; that corporate knowledge that must be retained. That’s why it’s so important to have that structure when you’re setting up a football club.

“The coach isn’t a messiah who rules with an iron fist, with decisions made on his whim. You go about picking the right coach for your club because your club wants to be transparent, informed and knowledgeable.

“You don’t put all of your eggs in one basket but you expand your knowledge throughout the coaching team, carrying forward all the knowledge you’re accruing.

“I think a club like Lyon is the perfect example of that: they won seven straight championships and did it under four coaches, which speaks volumes for the way they structure their club to identify the best talent and develop the best talent.

“The identification of John van’t Schip is an example of that, where we said as a club we do want to bring a continental coach who can show us the practices, policies and technical qualities of the best clubs in Europe.

“Hopefully he can work with the other people in the club who have got strong sports administration pedigrees to built systems. Then you bring in people under him like Ante Milicic who have got expertise in their own right.

“They’re the building blocks and hopefully know we can bring many great players through our club to spread the knowledge through those guys.”

This Lyon-style corporate knowledge theory will be put to the test within an unstable coaching environment: Melbourne Victory and the Central Coast Mariners have been the exception to the rule in terms of keeping faith with a single manager during the league’s formative years.

Add to that the financial pressures of running an A-League club – it’s no secret that virtually all are running at a loss – and the need to build a fan-base with results and it seems unlikely that the Heart will be able to strictly adhere to their proposed model without some administrative or coaching changes eventually.

Didulica hopes that the strength to persevere through potentially difficult times will be drawn from a playing group that has been assembled with technique and style the main criteria for recruitment.

“We’re not expecting to click on day-one. It’s very difficult to commit to playing attractive football, particularly so when results don’t go your way because people start doubting the system, start doubting the philosophy.

“It’s very important that we’ve brought players in who believe intuitively in playing good football.

“Firstly we identified players who we felt could do it intuitively, that their nature is to be technical, skilful and play football the right way. Secondly it’s something we’ll need to keep re-enforcing through the club, the coaching staff and the administration.”

Didulia lists goalkeeper Clint Bolton, defenders Simon Colosimo and Dean Heffernan and midfielder Wayne Shroj as examples of that process, while proposing a far more integrated youth team – which will begin operation during the Heart’s second season – than has been seen in the competition’s short history.

“We see the youth league as being entirely aligned with the senior side. Some A-League clubs in the past have treated their youth league side as being a completely separate entity.

“Our intention is to integrate those players within the senior squad as much as possible because by European standards they are at the age where they should be knocking on the first team door.”

There can be no doubting the Heart’s commitment to a continental club structure and playing style. In theory, it will be a breath of fresh air for the competition. The real question though is whether the people who run the club have the perseverance and patience to allow individuals to work within such a structure, regardless of results, in a competition that has thus far rewarded pragmatism rather than idealism.

http://www.goal.com/en/news/808/australia/2010/06/01/1952471/exclusive-john-didulica-on-building-the-melbourne-heart