Media

The other week I listed ten reasons why it is brilliant to be a Brisbane Roar fan right now. Here's another one: the media about our team is endless, and pretty much all flattering. Here's just a few of the headlines from the last few days:

Possession statistics compare A-League's Brisbane Roar to La Liga and European champions Barcelona

Brisbane, That Was Football Porn

Who Can Stop Brisbane Roar

The Roar Effect

Brisbane Roar are a Gift for the A-League

That really is only a few, and they're not by Roar partisans. I admit I chose them for their sexy headlines.

You can only imagine, with Brisbane's team causing the waves that it is, undefeated now for 32 games, breaking records every week, and most recently stunning the League by trouncing one of the favourite teams 7:1... You can only imagine how Brisbane's own flagship newspaper The Courier Mail, not known for its lack of sport coverage, or jingoism for that matter, must have gone bonkers with this story. With the Rugby and AFL seasons over, here is NEWS! Great news, of Brisbane showing up all the bigwig southern teams and looking like clear favourites for the comp. You can only imagine!

Well, three stories came out of the Courier Mail actually. One of course was about the game. Apparently it was on page 6 of the sport pages. I don't even know what came in front of it as I haven't managed to get a hard copy.

The second story came out yesterday. In the Courier Mail's soccer feed the headline is, "Japanese Giants Want Roar Boss", but upon going to the page it is more carefully titled, Japanese heavyweights Urawa Red Diamonds rumoured to have sights set on Brisbane Roar coach Ange Postecoglou. It was written by Marco Monteverde and Val Migliaccio. I'm going to analyse it a bit, and then tell the story of how it continued and grew as the rest of the media got hold of it, so I'll quote it in full here first so it's easy to reference:

STRUGGLING Japanese heavyweights Urawa Red Diamonds want an Australian coach next season, with Brisbane Roar master mentor Ange Postecoglou rumoured to be at the top of their wish list.
Despite being contracted to the Roar until 2013, Postecoglou is one of two A-League coaches tipped to be chased by J-League outfit Urawa, the other being Central Coast Mariners boss Graham Arnold.
Urawa, the home of Australian defender Matthew Spiranovic and formerly coached by current Socceroos mentor Holger Osieck, are hovering just about the relegation zone and fired manager Zeljko Petrovic on October 20,
Petrovic was replaced by former player Takafumi Hori, but Japanese sources close to the Asian Football Confederation's most popular club have told The Courier-Mail Urawa are chasing an Australian coach next year.
Reigning A-League coach of the year Postecoglou yesterday said he had not heard from Urawa officials, but confirmed previous interest from Asian clubs.
"If they did make me an offer, I'd think about it then," Postecoglou said.
"I've never made plans too far in the future with coaching because things are always changing.
"All I'm focused on is being successful as I can with Brisbane, and keep building what we've started."
Under Postecoglou, the Roar lost just once in 33 matches last season to clinch the A-League premiership-championship double.
Currently on a 32-game record A-League unbeaten streak, Brisbane continued their perfect start to the defence of their title with a 7-1 thrashing of Adelaide United at Suncorp Stadium last Friday night.
But Postecoglou, a former Australian under-17 and under-20 coach, isn't only chasing further domestic success.
He is also aiming for glory with the Roar in the 2012 Asian Football Confederation Champions League.
"Our goal is to match it with the best teams in Asia," Postecoglou said.
"Our players have already been recognised, and if that (Champions League success) happens, I'm sure our coaches will as well."
Arnold's Mariners side are the A-League's other representatives in next year's AFC Champions League courtesy of their effort to reach last season's grand final.
It's the second time within days Arnold has been linked with a move abroad.
Currently negotiating a contract extension with the Mariners, Arnold last week denied claims he was on the verge of taking over at Scottish Premier League club St Johnstone.
But sources close to Arnold - who played in the J-League with Hiroshima Sanfrecce - said he would consider offers from Japan.

Now this was a scoop! It was all over the Australian mediascape within half an hour. So all those stories we may have read, on The World Game, The ABC, the Fairfax papers, Fox, the other Murdoch papers and any number of amateur sites and blogs - came from Marco Monteverde and Val Migliaccio of the Courier Mail.

The first point of interest here is that the journalists - crucial to the story - are completely left out. Not one media outlet reported, "Marco Monteverde and Val Migliaccio of the Courier Mail allege that they have sources close to the Urawa Reds..." Instead it is just repeated endlessly, "Ange linked to Urawa Reds." One might think, given the reputation News Limited, and the Courier Mail, has for antagonism and ignorance toward soccer, that someone might have thought to include this reference to the source. It would just be good journalism in any case.

Now via a Facebook friend who is Japanese and happens to be a Reds fan, I have confirmed that Ange Postecoglou is indeed on a list of coaches that the Reds have compiled. No Japanese media have taken it up though apparently. It's a list. As for being "rumoured to be at the top of their wish list", it's a fair question where such information comes from.

Wading through the fill of factoids gleaned from Wikipedia, we find that the source is, "Japanese sources close to (The Urawa Reds)". Interesting they didn't tell the Japanese media, or any other of Australia's dedicated football media. The Urawa Reds are well known to many of them through the Asian Champions League (which the CM has virtually ignored so far). The Courier Mail? Anyway, moving on...

It's hard to disect. We assume that this source is the one mentioning Ange's name, and I do independently know of a list with his name on it, but apparently the source told the Courier Mail that "Urawa are chasing an Australian coach next year." An Australian coach.

Now, Ange has proved himself perhaps, or he is in the process of doing so, but there is a reason the past few Socceroos coaches have been from overseas and a reason most A-League coaches are foreigners. Right or wrong, it's because Australian coaches are considered crap. They do not have any reputation at all overseas. Urawa Reds are one of Asia's biggest clubs and they're in trouble. And we are asked to believe that this unknown source says that they are after an Australian coach. Ange, maybe. But an Australian - I don't believe it.

The other coach on the list, apparently (and I haven't had confirmed from Japan either way), is Graham Arnold. I don't believe this, at all. I think the Urawa Reds have ambition, and Arnold hasn't won anything or proved himself especially. Reaching the finals in the A-League is not that great on the international stage.

Before I get to the interview with Ange - a real source at least - in passing I'll note that the Courier Mail confirmed, not that there had been any communication whatsoever with Arnold, but that "sources close to Arnold" said he would "consider offers from Japan." According to the journalists though, "It's the second time within days Arnold has been linked with a move abroad." It is these journalists who made the link that they are now reporting on. At this point, with Arnold, they have completely fabricated a link and then 'reported on it'.

Then there is the call to Ange of course, getting his response. That's only fair after all.

What's not recorded are the questions. Did the journalist ask, after Ange told them that, No, the Reds had not been in touch and this is the first he'd heard of it, "Well, if they did ask you tomorrow, would you consider it?" or "Would you ever coach in Asia do you think?"?

It makes an enormous difference to what Ange was getting at when he said, "I've never made plans too far in the future with coaching because things are always changing. All I'm focused on is being successful as I can with Brisbane, and keep building what we've started." The latter part - the commitment to the Roar and seeing out the vision that he has articulated - remains unambiguous.

Since then other media outlets have also clearly talked to Ange, and he has said nothing different.

Anyway, my suspicion was, and still is, that the Courier Mail made this story up in order to cash in on the Roar's success. They succeeded.

By Twitter I asked the two journalists, "Did you guys make up the story about Urawa seeking Ange as coach? No reports in Japan. You scooped that? Ha!"

Val Migliaccio tweeted back, with what I can only interpret as contempt, "here. Ｊリーグ１部（Ｊ１）の浦和は来季の新監督候補にＡリーグのブリスベン・ロアーを率いるアンジェ・ポステコグルー監督を挙げているようだ。浦和に近い日本人関係者の話として、ポステコグルー"

Um...

I tweeted back, "That quote is a vague as yours and is not a source. Are you being funny now?", but only after using Google Translate to come up with, "The J-League 1 (J1) Urawa coach seems to raise the groupco-led by Poste Angeles Lower Brisbane A-League next seasonProposed new coach. Japanese officials as saying that close toUrawa, Posutekoguru".

For all I know it could be from a report some Japanese press discovered through their Australian connections.

Today, I note The Herald Sun has added the word, "heavily", presumably because so many news outlets have repeated the story. So now Ange is "heavily linked" with the Uwara Reds. Even though he's never heard of such a link and he has clearly restated his commitment to The Roar and finishing what he has several times outlined as his mission.

Sorry that one took so long to go through. As I said, there is a third story that came out in the Courier Mail yesterday. But it is in the Rugby League pages (far more prominent even though the off season has just got going). It is titled, "NRL scheduling blunder leaves Brisbane Broncos without home for opening round of 2012", and included the following curious passage:

There should be 50,000 league fans packing the stadium on Friday night, March 2, to celebrate the new rugby league season.

But the NRL's late decision to push their season forward a week means there will instead be 10,000 Roar diehards watching their side taking on Melbourne Heart.

(Same game last year got 20,000 incidentally, and last game (fourth of the season) got 11,500.)

It's a non-story by the way, with a happy ending. It seems the NRL made a boo boo and didn't tell Suncorp about a change in plans, so the opening NRL game will not be in Brisbane but in Sydney instead. By the end we know that the NRL is happy, seeing the positives in fact, Suncorp is happy. Everyone is happy. The complaint, clearly antagonistic to the Roar, comes from the Courier Mail alone. This is on the very day when the entire sporting world is ogling over Brisbane's own champion team.

Now, there are no doubt many reasons that the Roar struggles with crowd numbers. One reason is probably that Brisbane folk are slack, or stupid, or broke. But the local media is not helping us out.

Nb. Of course News Limited would never be so sloppy when it came to news about politics or the economy. From those matters their commercial interests are properly and professionally divorced. :)

Football hope in The Age

Here's some great stuff from The Age today. Two stories which well illustrate the way football can change our society for the better. Just scouting around The Age's website, it seems the Fairfax press is giving soccer a decent go. Better than Murdoch's Courier Mail that's for sure. I'll find some time to have a better look at their blog, Balls Up, later on. I've added it to my links.

Re: The second story, I'll try to catch Offside as soon as I can, and will review it for Football Down Under. As time goes on, when I get hard-up for things to write about, I will get around to belated reviews of Goal! and Bend it Like Beckham as well. I know I keep revealing my ignorance all over the place, but if anyone can tell me of other good football movies, I'd appreciate it.

Cheers.

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Soccer lends a helping hand to the homeless
Clare Nullis, Cape Town
September 26, 2006

NEARLY 500 drug addicts, alcoholics, orphans and vagrants have kicked off the Homeless World Cup soccer tournament in Cape Town, celebrating an annual event designed to help society's most marginalised make a new start in life.

South African President Thabo Mbeki and thousands of spectators saluted the flag-waving teams from 48 nations as diverse as Afghanistan, Australia, Scotland, Sweden, the US, Liberia and Zimbabwe as they paraded through Cape Town.

"We really can help change the world, end poverty and homelessness," said organiser Mel Young. "All we have to do is take a little round ball and start kicking it around."

The idea for the street soccer tournament was born in Cape Town in 2001 after an international meeting of editors of street newspapers such as The Big Issue, which is sold by the homeless in Britain, Australia, Namibia and South Africa.

Melbourne will host the event in 2008 at Federation Square, with State Government funding of $500,000.

The rationale behind the event is to instil a sense of pride — and discipline — in the players through being part of a team and help them overcome problems in their lives.

Research published by the organisers said one year after the last Homeless World Cup, in the Scottish capital Edinburgh, 94 per cent of players had new motivation for life, 62 per cent were coping better with alcohol and drug dependency, 40 per cent had improved their housing situation, 38 per cent had regular employment and 28 per cent had opted for more education.

Tracey Ford, a 34-year-old Australian, was homeless for four years after losing her house as a result of drug addiction. She then started as a street paper vendor, trained with Street Socceroos in Melbourne and took part in the 2005 contest.

"I was literally in the gutter and felt depressed, suicidal and at the end of my life," she said. "The Homeless World Cup made me ecstatic, proud. I wanted to tell everyone, tell the whole world. My old life doesn't exist any more because of this."

Ms Ford recently moved into a small home, has reconciled with her children and started part-time work in a laundrette and nearly finished her drug rehabilitation program.

The tournament was endorsed by big names such as former Beatle Ringo Star, Manchester United boss Sir Alex Ferguson and Portuguese soccer great Luis Figo. It was kicked off by Eusebio, a Mozambican-born Portuguese soccer legend.

But despite the big names, it was the little people who were set to take centre stage at the tournament.

People such as Sada Uzumakunda, who lost her home and her family in the 1994 genocide in Rwanda and ended up as an alcoholic street girl. Or Tula Pilar Ferreira, a Brazilian mother of three who outplayed many men to qualify for the Brazilian squad. And Daniel Martinez, whose world fell apart when his father died and who found his new "home" by qualifying for the US squad.

"The atmosphere is brilliant. Everything is brilliant," declared Nicky Meta. "It's like a dream come true."

"It's a great experience. There's nothing like it," beamed Adam Banda, who is recovering from substance abuse.

Each team is sponsored by organisations and companies in their country and some teams have links with soccer teams.

AP

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A mirror under the veil - and inside the stadium
By Jake Wilson
September 26, 2006

"I didn't realise I was making a comedy," says the director Jafar Panahi of his new film, set around a football match between Iran and Bahrain during the lead-up to the 2006 World Cup.

Still, as Panahi went about developing the script of Offside, it became hard to ignore the absurdity of the predicament faced by his central characters, a group of Iranian women who have traded their veils for caps and boys' shirts in the hope of being admitted to the all-male event.

Eventually these unlikely rebels, each drawn to the game for her own reasons, find themselves stuck in a holding pen outside the stadium, where a guard explains that women are not permitted to enter in case they are harmed by the foul language of the crowd. "We promise not to listen," one of them responds.

Later, another of the women begs to be escorted inside so she can go to the toilet, but permission is granted only after she agrees to mask herself by attaching a poster of star player Ali Karimi to her face.

Though barely glimpsed on screen, the football match provides a model for the film's narrative: a clear time limit, a struggle between opposing teams, and unpredictable action that spills in all directions around a single central location.

The tension between documentary immediacy and a set of strictly defined formal parameters is a hallmark of Panahi's cinema. So, too, is an overtly expressed anger at the restrictions that Iranian society imposes particularly, but not exclusively, on women.

I spoke to Panahi, a grave yet lively man in his mid-40s, during his brief visit to Australia for this year's Melbourne Film Festival. Answering questions through an interpreter, he stressed the social purpose behind his films - his desire "to go to the streets and portray the events of the day" using "real issues, real people, real locations".

With this in mind, I asked Panahi about his early film The Mirror (1998), an apparently realistic story about a young girl walking through Tehran that takes a surprising turn halfway through, when the lead actress announces that she's tired of her role and sets off home for real.

On a first viewing, The Mirror appeared to be a parable about the deceptive nature of cinema, demonstrating that even the most innocent-looking film story is a carefully constructed illusion.

But surprisingly, Panahi turned this interpretation on its head. Rather than underlining the distinction between art and reality, he intended to suggest that "reality and the imagination are intertwined, they are very similar" and that Iranian cinema itself is like a mirror. "When I see my picture, the picture resembles me."

Panahi's frankness about oppression has made it impossible for him to screen his films in Iran, but even so he is the first to admit that the reflection of society in his work is less than complete. If the battles he shows are fought exclusively out of doors, in the public space of the city, this isn't entirely by choice.

"I have vowed not to tell lies to myself at least," he said. "In Iran you cannot show a woman without the veil, and if you show inside a house where women are living, or even in bed, you have to show in the film as if they have veils, and this is a lie."

Though the ending of Offside depends on the unscripted outcome of the Iran-Bahrain match itself, Panahi said that this project had been germinating in his mind for many years - since 1998, when the Iranian football team returned home in triumph after a match against Australia.

Fans were told to assemble at the football stadium to greet their heroes, and when Panahi and his family went to the stadium to experience the mood of the nation, they were told that 5000 women had forced themselves inside.

"This was reported by the print media, and of course the question was posed why women are not allowed to watch the game," he said. "After the World Cup, the issue died down and no report of that appeared again."

A few years later, however, Panahi's mind returned to the subject after an incident that may have inspired the film's optimistic ending. In 2002, Iran was once again preparing for the World Cup.

"Right away I wanted to go and watch the practice game, and my 11-year-old daughter said that she would like to come with me," said Panahi. "At the stadium entrance, I insisted on bringing my daughter with me, but they didn't allow me.

"And I was there, and 10 minutes later she was there. I said 'How did you come in?' And she said 'Ultimately, a way can be found.' "

Offside opens on Thursday.