FIFA World Cup 2018: How Croatian community is helping Australia football

Fortunes of the green and gold have long depended on a healthy smattering of red and white. The Croat-Australian community has accounted for over fifty national team players and overseas exports. Unsurprisingly then, relegating the proud sporting community to the backwaters of Australia’s football landscape hasn’t worked out for anyone.

The symbiotic relationship began in the 1950s, when the first Croatian migrants left the communist Yugoslavia and stepped ashore in Australia. Largely unfamiliar with the overtly indigenous sports like rugby (league or union) and Australian Rules Football, the Croats, along with other European migrants, took to the kind of football they knew: soccer.

The Croatian churches and eateries were growing in the suburbs, but it was the soccer clubs which provided the most sense of community. The mushrooming saw Croatian clubs being formed on the docks at Port Hedland in Western Australia and among the orchards in Tasmania. The most significant ones were in the populous cities of Melbourne and Sydney. The clubs had Croatia suffixed to their names, played in red, white and blue and had a white chequered emblem.

“After leaving the country for various political, socio-economic reasons, Croatian people saw each club as equivalent of a national team,” says George Dragovic, second-generation Croat and president of the Croatian Soccer Association of Australia (CSAA). “And since then, no other ethnic group has helped grow football as the Croatians. We have a smaller presence in number than the Greeks, Anglos or Italians. But it is the strong work ethic, the pride in ancestry and love for football, as well as some innate genetic skills that caused this trend.” CSAA looks after approximately 30 clubs and has organised a tournament since 1974 which has grown from six teams to over 50; the country’s oldest competition and an event rooted in ethnic identity, the kind which drove Viduka and others to the game.

An aside from journalist Joe Gorman’s ‘The Death and Life of Australian Soccer’ brings out the connection of an adolescent Viduka to the club Melbourne Croatia.

“We were a football family,” Viduka, cousin of Croatia midfielder and Real Madrid star Luka Modric, recalled. “We were Europeans. It was natural for us to play football, that was what our parents showed us first — that was their game, a European game. Aussie kids who were born here with an Australian background, usually they went to play cricket or footy or something else.”

An aspect of the Croatian-Australian drive was the desire to see a sovereign Croatia. And when the country gained independence in 1991, the fervour diminished a little. The dilution of migrant culture from one generation to the next added to the assimilation.

“This is the second, third generation of Croatian players. The drive from the kids is not as sharp as it used to be. Earlier, playing football was something you wanted to do. Now there are PlayStations and tablets,” said Dragovic. “But for Australia’s children, soccer is still the biggest sport. We have close to 5,000 juniors. But youth development is not the priority anymore, so kids turn to Aussie rules, cricket, rugby, or the resurgent basketball.”

The unbreakable glass ceiling that Football Federation of Australia (FFA) has placed above the traditional talent nurseries doesn’t help either.

Marketing a narrative of ‘old soccer, new football’, FFA disbanded the previous top-tier competition National Soccer League in 2003, and launched the A-League in 2005, leaving several more-than-half-a-century-old clubs in the wilderness. The league went for a ‘no promotion, no relegation’ format with playoffs and focussed on importing retired international stars to grab eyeballs, rather than developing exciting local talent. Sounds familiar? “That is the same thing that India is facing with its professional league (Indian Super League) as well. Powers-that-be want it to be marketable, so they’ll bring these 35, 36-year-old retirees,” said Dragovic.

“These are all privately-owned franchies, with no history or connection with the cities. The model was made famous by the onset of competitions like Big Bash and IPL. But trying to hurriedly put together clubs in soccer has caused a divide. They’ve drawn a line in the sand, to not recognise the traditional clubs.”

The shift started way before the A-League, when a report in the early 90s suggested that soccer clubs were failing to go mainstream because of their ethnic roots. The clubs were barred from using any ethnic, national, political, racial or religious connotations in the names or logos. As a result, Sydney Croatia became Sydney United 58 and Melbourne Croatia became Melbourne Knights (allegedly a cheeky acronym for ‘Klub Nogometa i Gdje Hrvati Takmice Srcem’, or ‘football club and where Croatians battle with their heart’).

“From the marketing perspective I understand the move,” said Dragovic. “But for a government body to say that you cannot call your club this, wear this, is absurd in a first world democratic country. It’s like the Spanish federation telling Barcelona to drop Catalan references. Or for AC Milan to not refer to its English expat founders. This is very much the cleansing of soccer in Australia.”
The sanitised A-League meanwhile is struggling to draw the numbers in the stadiums or on television. Last December, a Women’s Big Bash League game outscored the showpiece Sydney derby in peak audience: 469,000 to 55,000.

In terms of top-tier European talent, the current squad includes Premier League players in keeper Mathew Ryan (Brighton) and midfielder Aaron Mooy (Huddersfield), and a Bundesliga striker in Mathew Leckie (Hertha BSC). The 2006 line-up featured eight Premier League and two Serie A players .
Stopgap coach Bert van Marwijk has already declared that advancing from Group C — featuring Paul Pogba’s France and Christian Eriksen’s Denmark — is going to be an achievement. Dragovic isn’t giving the team much of a chance either.

“I don’t think they’re advancing. The team qualifies for the World Cup because it has the easiest route through Asia. We haven’t qualified for the U-20 or U-17 events since 2007,” said Dragovic. “It’s embarrassing and disappointing that we need to borrow a player from Croatia, when we have a lot of young talent that is going to waste in the lower leagues.”