Quinton Fortune of England's Manchester United team fights for the ball against Goren Lozanovski of Australia's South Melbourne team during a game of the First FIFA World Club Championship at the Maracana stadium in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil Tuesday Jan. 11, 2000. (AP Photo/Dario Lopez-Mills)

Within five years of their Club World Cup appearance, South Melbourne FC had fallen on hard times, slipped into administration and did not even apply to join the new A-League, Australia’s premier division, set-up after the demise of the National Soccer League.

This month, South Melbourne FC took a welcome step towards something of a rebirth, as their home ground, Lakeside Stadium, reopened following a major renovation. The Age newspaper expounded that “Like Lazarus, the old South Melbourne football ground in Albert Park has risen from near-dereliction . . . And a pretty splendid vision it is, too.”

Indeed, it is. Designed by H20 Architects, the 14,000 capacity stadium is part of an AUS$60 million development on the lake in Albert Park. The photos below show the transformation of the venue:

The stadium is not perfect, by any means. There is, obviously, a strikingly blue running track encircling the pitch, as the stadium doubles-up as a track and field venue. Indeed, its refurbishment made it the premier athletics stadium in Victoria state, following the demolition of Olympic Park Stadium in Melbourne – a central reason for the state funding behind the development.

Yet in terms of the quality of the pitch for the game of soccer itself, Lakeside Stadium does have something going for it that many other Australian stadia do not: it doesn’t double up for rugby or Aussie rules. “We don’t have to share this ground with any of the other football codes, which means the surface doesn’t get damaged by rival codes and with no scheduling problems around other codes,” Melbourne South President Leo Athanasakis told Four Four Two Australia.

The club itself is hopeful the new stadium will kickstart a revival. Their storied past includes management spells by Ferenc Puskás and Tommy Docherty, and they once tried to purchase Denis Law and Bobby Charlton.

Hellas

South Melbourne FC was founded in 1959 through a merger of two clubs, Hellenic and Yarra Park, and became known as South Melbourne Hellas. The club found immediate success, winning the Victorian Metropolitan Division 1 North championship in 1960.

As the name indicates, Hellas were – like most Australian teams of the time – ethnically based, in this case in the Greek community. A number of Hellas’ players arrived from Greece in the 1960s, including John Margaritis, Savvas Salapasidis, Takis Mantarakis and Takis Xanthopoulos, according to the club’s official history. But not all of Hellas’ greats were Greek: former Manchester United trainee Ernie Ackerley became one of the club’s leading goalscorers in the 1960s. Hellas played at Olympic Park – Lakeside Stadium (originally known as Bob Jane Stadium) was not built until 1995 – and attracted crowds exceeding 10,000, including over 14,000 for an Australian Cup clash in 1962 with Juventus – the Sydney version. That year, 1962, saw Hellas win the Victorian State Championship for the first time.

But the connection to Greece was undoubtedly the club’s selling point. Also in 1962, Hellas played the Greek Air Force in what The Age trumpeted was “the most ambitious venture undertaken by an Australian soccer club”. The Greek Air Force’s appeal was that due to the country’s National Service, it featured some of the leading national team players on tour, and the series of friendlies in Australia was an expensive affair.

The club’s chairman, Thesues Marmaras, became a key player in Australian soccer, appointed as president of the Victorian Soccer Federation, this giving the club considerable power nationwide (in 1964, he was accused of collusion with a referee in a dispute with Fiorentina Soccer Club). Crowds continued to grow, reaching 20,000 for a clash between Hellas and Juventus in April 1966. That was in part due to the shrewd acquisition in 1965 of player-coach Kostas Nestoridis, a well-known Greek international. Hellas won the state championship in 1965, 1966 and 1967.

But by the end of the decade, the expense of acquiring native Greek talent became too much of a drain for the club, with results on the pitch far from reaching expectations: they finished fourth in 1967, third in 1968 and a poor seventh of 12 clubs in 1969, though they did win their first cup in the latter year.

In the early 1970s, the club’s identity shifted slightly – on the field at least – from Greek-domination. A number of English players were imported, alongside an infusion of local talent, such as striker Jim Armstrong.

Hellas finished fifth in 1971, but claimed the runners-up spot in 1971 and then won the state championship for the fifth time in 1972. In 1973, Hellas made an audacious bid to sign both Denis Law and Bobby Charlton, offering AUS$170,000 to sign the pair from Manchester United. Though neither arrived in Melbourne, further state titles followed in 1974 and 1976.

The National Soccer League

That run of success was timed perfectly for Hellas’ bid to become inaugural members of the National Soccer League in 1976. South Melbourne (as they eventually became known), though, were not ready for the big time of national competition. With competition for players increasing, South lost several of their leading stars, finishing 11th of 14 teams in 1976, a respectable third in 1978, but a dismal 14th of 14 in 1979. That year, South Melbourne was stricken low when three points were deducted for playing defender Tony Turner before he had received international clearance. The club’s official history calls it “the lowest point in the club’s NSL history and arguably in its entire history,” and says that “There were real fears that South would not be re-admitted into the League the following season.” Instead, Sydney Olympic were relegated.

From that low point, South Melbourne – now nicknamed the “Gunners”  - consolidated their NSL position in the early 1980s, with the emergence of talent such as Alan Davidson. They finished third in 1980 and second in 1981.

In 1982, that smooth progress was interrupted by a curious period for the club: after a poor run of results, coach John Margaritis was replaced by former Manchester United boss Tommy Docherty. Margaritis’ last days were miserable: The Sydney Morning Herald reported in May 1982 – after a defeat for the Gunners against the Marconi Leopards – that “Speculation has been rife that South Melbourne FC are ready to dump coach John Margaritis in favour of Docherty. . .Margaritis, knowing his job is on the line, was a lonely, dejected figure after yesterday’s match. He sat by himself in a corner of the dressing room, his drawn face and sad eyes telling the story.”

Docherty himself only lasted a few months at South Melbourne, a bright start under his rein petering out and the club finishing in sixth place. Docherty soon left, taking over at Sydney Olympic, where he had coached previously.

Yet the curious episode presaged a revamp in South Melbourne’s recruitment, and a glorious period for the club: fourth place in 1983 was followed by their first national championship in 1984, beating Sydney Olympic 4-2 over two legs. Crowds again regularly exceeded 10,000.

But South could not consolidate their success, and in the remainder of the decade, finished no higher than third place.

The solution to a return to glory, it seemed to South Melbourne FC’s management in 1989, was Ferenc Puskás. The Hungarian great was, of course, best known for his playing days, but he was also something of a legend in Greek circles, having guided Panathinaikos to two Greek championships and the 1971 European Cup final (they lost there to Cruyff’s Ajax). The 1980s, though, had been  rough for Puskás, who had achieved little recent success in an increasingly itinerant coaching career.

Puskás did not arrive a moment too soon. The club’s mediocrity in the latter part of the 1980s had seen crowds dwindle, and the club in debt to the tune of AUS$300,000.

By early 1990, Hellas president George Vassilopoulos was crediting Puskás with having turned the club around almost immediately. ”As far as the financial situation goes, he has created excellent publicity for the club and the money is now rolling in,” Vassilopoulos told the Melbourne Sunday Herald. “We had a debt of $300,000 at the end of the last NSL season and we have already cut this in half.”

With a fine midfield combination of Mike Peterson and Steve Tassios around whom to build the team, Puskás’ team improved immediately. They finished second in the regular season in 1990, though fell in the first leg of the playoffs, losing in a penalty shoot-out to Melbourne Croatia.

In the Grand Final, South Melbourne again took on local rivals Melbourne Croatia in a thrilling game. Despite being outplayed throughout the game, South Melbourne stole an equaliser with just a minute remaining in the game, sending it to extra-time and ultimately penalties.

Here’s the last part of the game’s normal time – skip to the 6:40 mark to see the equaliser, and some impressively wild celebrations from the fans:

And here is the decisive penalty shoot-out, won by South Melbourne to seal their second National Soccer League title:

The 1991-92 season that followed was Puskas’ last in charge, with South Melbourne finishing third and failing to make the Grand Final. Former South player Jim Pyrgolios took over, and while the club fared very well in the regular season, the playoffs were an utter disaster: South lost all three of their games, including a humiliating 7-0 defeat to Marconi.

The next couple of years saw little excitement, bar an eventful playoff game that saw South Melbourne miss the chance of a Grand Final appearance with defeat to Sydney Croatia at Parramatta Stadium, a game that hit the evening news as crowd trouble broke out:

In 1995-6, following the closure of Middle Park, South moved into Bob Jane Stadium. Yet the club’s identity was threatened as the Australian governing body insisted on new identities for its NSL clubs, in an attempt to give them generic glamour and remove them from their ethnic roots: South Melbourne suddenly became the the “Lakers”, with a hideous new crest to boot (along with a threatened lawsuit from the Los Angeles Lakers):

The 1997-8 season was a great success, with South Melbourne –  the “Lakers” identity having been quickly consigned to the dustbin of history – ending the regular season as champions, fired by John Anastasiadis’ 12 goals – the Greek forward had recently arrived from PAOK. 14,850 spectators packed out Lakeside Stadium for a win over that sent them to the Grand Final. There they faced Carlton, and Con Boutsianis gave South Melbourne the win and their third title with a late goal in a 2-1 win, scoring with a smashing strike:

The next season cemented South Melbourne’s place as the nation’s premier club, successfully defending their title. A watertight defense marshalled by goalkeeper Michael Petkovic saw them concede only 29 goals in 31 games, and go unbeaten at Lakeside Stadium.  That sent South Melbourne to the Oceania Club Championship, which they won in handy fashion to advance to the FIFA Club World Championship. There, South Melbourne lost each of their three group games by two goals, but they did get to do what not many can say they have done: play Manchester United at the Maracanã in Rio de Janeiro.

Yet their intercontinental exertions overstrained what was still a semi-professional outfit, as South Melbourne slipped to tenth in the league. That perhaps spurred the club’s decision to turn fully professional for the 2001-02 season, and they returned to form, finishing second in the regular season. They advanced to the Grand Final, with 2,000 South fans making the trek to New South Wales as they took on Wollongong. But a 2-1 loss meant South forfeited their perfect record in Grand Finals.

Mediocrity was an unfitting end to South’s National Soccer League tenure with mid-table finishes the next three seasons, one abruptly cut-off by the disbanding of the NSL at the conclusion of the 2003-04 season. Since then, until the opening of the renewed Lakeside Stadium, there has been little to brag about for South fans. But with Lakeside Stadium now gleaming, whispering of a move up to the A-League has begun, and perhaps new glory days are to come.

Big Story

It’s a good idea for fans of young leagues in countries where soccer is not the number one sport to keep an eye on each other’s progress and ideas. Perhaps more than aping long-established leagues where soccer is a sunk in part of a country’s culture, those like myself who want Major League Soccer to grow could do worse than look at the developments in Australia’s A-League, for example: at both its successes and its failures.

The A-League launched in 2005 with a rule MLS would soon introduce under a different name as the Designated Player rule: in Australia, each club was allowed to sign one “Marquee Player” outside the salary cap.

Now, like MLS this year, the A-League is expanding the number of Marquee Players a club is allowed, though with an interesting twist: the second Marquee Player slot for each team is designated for an Australian player. Football Federation Australia CEO Ben Buckley said:

“There is a wealth of Australian talent overseas with over 140 players currently playing in 15 of the top leagues in world football. Australian players are competing at a high level in Europe, Asia and America and what we have created is a viable option for these players to return to the Hyundai A-League and compete in what is becoming a very strong and competitive league.”

It would allow a club like Sydney FC to keep hold of Marquee Player Robbie Fowler while also signing a homegrown talent like Nicky Carle back from Britain, as has been the hot rumour for some time.

It’s also intended to increase the signing of high-profile foreigners as Marquee players, with some Australians currently designated as such moving to the local Marquee spot.

Reaction has been a little mixed, as the Sydney Morning Herald reports:

However, not all clubs will be thrilled about the new changes, given that several are struggling to stay afloat and cope with the rising financial pressures of competing in the competition.

The FFA will argue that the changes will create a surge of new interest, particularly if clubs are able to sign a player who enjoyed a prominent role at the World Cup.

The news comes as a timely shot in the arm for the A-League after a season of waning attendances – a period FFA chairman Frank Lowy described last year as a ”plateau” after four consecutive years of growth. Subsequent news of trouble at Gold Coast United and North Queensland Fury has shown how tough some clubs are finding the marketplace.

Rules on “guest players” have also been clarified, another change MLS might consider looking at: clubs can now sign a guest player for up to 10 matches, and significantly, these players are now eligible to play in the A-League finals, an issue that reportedly stopped Luis Figo signing on with the league last year.

Are these rules worth consideration for MLS to both assist clubs in retaining top domestic talent, whilst also allowing short term infusions of foreign buzz into the league? (Discuss, students!)

Quick Hits

• Liverpool fans wonder if their plans were taken into consideration this week with UEFA’s decisions on games going ahead in the Europa League:  “We (fans) are always the forgotten people in this but it’s nothing new,” said Garreth Cummins, a Liverpool fan and international officer at the Football Supporters Federation.  “I can’t remember a single time when UEFA have made a decision and thought about the fans or at least overtly made some consideration to them,” he told Reuters.
• Portsmouth might be riding high on the field to the FA Cup Final, but off the field, Soccernet says their financial situation is (somehow) even worse than feared, with the club in debt to the tune of “£119 million owed to various creditors – including astonishing amounts to agents.”

The Sweeper appears daily. For more rambling and links throughout the day every day, follow your editor Tom Dunmore @pitchinvasion on Twitter.

The Cincinnati Riverhawks were an A-League team from 1998-2003. I like the fact the patch emphasises that they were an outdoor team.

Photo credit: Cincinnati Sports History on Flickr, via the Pitch Invasion Photo Pool.

Australia’s A-League’s newest expansion team now has a name and a logo: Melbourne Heart FC. The name was the suggestion of a fan in a name-the-team contest.

The team will play at Melbourne Rectangular Stadium, the brilliantly named venue we featured here recently.

The Heart already face a challenge from the Lord Mayor’s Charitable Foundation of Melbourne, who are claiming the name and logo infringes their trademark rights.

Personally, I think the logo strikes just the right note: the angular cut of the heart and the M inside gives it the feel of a traditional shield, toughening up the identity a touch whilst still being a bold choice. The red and white colours match the flag of Melbourne.

I am, though, no graphic design expert, nor an authority on logos and team identity: so what do you think of the Melbourne Heart and their new logo?

A bullying, selfish FIFA Confederation President pursuing his own agenda to the detriment of the development of the beautiful game?  No, not Jack Warner, but AFC boss Mohamed Bin Hammam.

That, at least, is the perspective of much of New Zealand’s soccer media this week, following the AFC’s ultimatum to New Zealand’s Wellington Phoenix, who play in Australia’s A-League: become a lot more Australian, or else.

The AFC has said that if Wellington don’t severely limit the number of non-Australian players in their team, the A-League will lose its two AFC Champions League spots from 2012 on (after the expiration of the A-League’s current participation deal with the AFC). This would classify players from New Zealand as foreigners on a team based in New Zealand.

The following demands were reportedly sent by the AFC to Football Federation Australia (FFA):

• Wellington Phoenix FC should be officially registered as a commercial entity in Australia under local law.
• To comply with the provisions of the Regulations, the number of foreign players (non-Australian) in Wellington Phoenix FC should be the same as in other clubs participating in the A-League. In case Wellington Phoenix qualifiy for the ACL, the 3+1 system should be implemented by the club according to the ACL Regulations.
• Otherwise, Wellington Phoenix FC should belong to the second division of the A-League, which should be newly created by the FFA.

The 3+1 rule was instituted by the AFC earlier this year, limiting teams in the AFC Champions League to a maximum of four foreign players in a game, with at least one player from an AFC member association, and the AFC are pushing its leagues to adopt it domestically. The ACL regulations mentioned limit A-League teams to a maximum of five foreign players, but for Wellington, players from New Zealand (pretty logically) are currently classified as domestic.

In a post typical of the reaction, Michael Brown of the New Zealand Herald says Bin Hammam is “bullying” Phoenix.

Despite the uproar and outcry, it’s hard not to see that the AFC have a point. After all, Wellington play in Australia’s A-League, which is a little incongruous not only because Wellington isn’t in Australia, but because New Zealand and Australia aren’t even in the same FIFA Confederation, following the latter’s move from Oceania to the AFC in 2005.

But the AFC have handled the dispute abysmally, with the news report from the Confederation on the issue removed from their website a day after publication, with no explanation provided.

A severe limitation on the number of Kiwis on Wellington, or their departure from the A-League, would be a serious blow to the development of the sport in New Zealand. Ricki Herbert is the manager of both the Wellington Phoenix and the New Zealand national team, with many core members of the team playing for him at both club and country. Perhaps a little generously, the Sydney Morning Herald calls Wellington the best-run club in the A-League:

No Phoenix, no World Cup qualification. This is the pathway that was missing in 1981, the pathway that could take football across the Tasman to places it could only have dreamt of before property developer Terry Serepisos had his famous epiphany in a barber’s chair in early 2007 and bought a licence no one else wanted.

Serepisos is the best owner in the A-League, but now his $10 million investment is under threat. The A-League operates under the umbrella of the Asian Football Confederation, and AFC boss Mohamed Bin Hammam has never liked having a team from another confederation in his midst. For the past 18 months, he’s been white-anting the Phoenix, and now he’s finally made his move. Sooner or later, this had to come to a head.

The paper also points out that the competing World Cup bids of Australia and Qatar for 2022 could be at play here, in terms of the considerable pressure on the Australian federation to make nice with the AFC. Australia will need the support of their confederation for their bid; and many point out that a competing World Cup bid is, coincidentally or not, from Bin Hammam’s Qatar.  But the fact remains that there is a legitimate issue to resolve with Wellington the only club in the world to play in the top flight of a confederation their own country is not part of.

The FFA and Wellington ought to be able to find a work-around for this, but it may require the involvement of FIFA to solve a dispute between confederations, meaning the politics will only get an awful lot messier.

Clive Palmer, owner of Gold Coast United

Gold Coast United, an expansion team in Australia’s premier A-League, have already generated negative headlines it takes some teams decades to generate: “A-League may hit rock bottom thanks to the Coast,” says Adrian Musolino in today’s Roar, which also features another piece titled “Gold Coast “United” – How to lose fans and alienate people”.

The club is owned by local billionaire Clive Palmer, who when the expansion team was announced last year made some grand proclamations, stating that “We want to make this the soccer capital of Australia.”  He spoke of the club winning the league in their first season, and the “great community support” they would tap into. Well, just weeks into their first season, and Palmer’s club has already managed to alienate that community support.

In a move that alienated and angered fans, Palmer limited the capacity at United’s stadium Skilled Park at the  last game to just 5,000 in order to save on operating costs for the visit of North Queensland Fury and their glamour A-League attraction, Robbie Fowler (7,526 had shown up for the same match-up previously).

The response? Only 2,616 showed up, the lowest crowd in A-League history, and many of those that did protested against Palmer, Jim Morton reported:

The Coast’s most hardy fans, ‘The Beach’, protested the mining magnate’s plan to save himself $100,000 throughout a scoreless first half in an eery atmosphere.

Brandishing banners which read “Scrap the Cap”, “Fans Not Dollars”, “Cap is Crap” and “Want fans? Ask us how”, the supporters group, decked out in yellow lifesavers caps and shirts, also chanted “stop the cap” and pointed at Palmer’s private box.

The governing body, Football Federation Australia, also expressed concern over Palmer’s decision. The billionaire justified the decision because at a capacity of 5,000, the club only had to pay AUS $40,000 instead of $140,000 in rent for the use of Skilled Park.

But as Musolino wrote in the Roar, it seems awfully foolish of Palmer to alienate fans for his own poor business planning. He criticises the club for failing to engage with the local community Palmer had boasted so proudly of when the expansion team was announced.

Supporter bases are built through community engagement. And the Gold Coast has failed, badly, in this regard. The damage, sadly, may be too severe to repair.

Gold Coast’s approach seems to be an exaggerated example of the line taken by the FFA marketers regarding the A-League’s engagement with the public.

The “build it and they will come” mantra doesn’t work, not for domestic football in this country. Gold Coast has proven that it takes more than stars and results to build a franchise.

Other new franchises need to learn from these differing approaches regarding engaging with their communities. And the FFA needs to act on this disaster before the league hits rock bottom as a result of Gold Coast’s impertinence.

Palmer has a long and rambling defense of his decisions in an official release on the Gold Coast United site. He concludes by saying “the club needs support of, the media, FFA, State Government, Local Government, and most importantly, the fans.”  He’s not doing well in earning that support.