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