On Saturday Jan 18, 1997, another new era begins in Australian soccer. While most of the country will plonk themselves down in front of the box to watch (hopefully) Australia take on the West Indies or Pakistan in the first cricket final in Sydney, the nations soccer fans will be glued to procedings at Melbourne's Bob Jane Stadium where Terry Venables will lead an Australian squad into battle for the first time. The composition of that squad will be the most scrutinised in recent history, with everyone eager to discover just what influence TV will have when it comes to Euro-based player availability.

Perhaps, he will have none. Both Venables and Raul Blanco appear content to contest the Optus World Soccer Series' with a 22 man squad of predominantly domestic-based players, while the Euroroos and Japaroos will come under consideration for the expected friendlies in Europe in March. On that basis, the OWSS will be little more than a revenue-raiser for SocAus, with the actual games being little or no guide to the likely squad for the final WC qualifiers next year. Ditto the playing formation. Venables has proven he is far from rigid when it comes to his preferred 'Christmas Tree' system, and while it is expected Australia will continue to use a sweeper, nothing else can be taken for granted. Don't be surprised to see Australia use a variety of formations and players will be expected to become far more flexible than they were under Eddie Thomson.

So, does this make the OWSS a pointless exercise? No, far from it. SocAus will get an early indication of just how important Venables will be in their attempts to drag soccer into the mainstream of Australian sport, as the commercial television networks will be climbing over each other in their efforts to 'scoop' the opposition. Just as important will be Venables' appeal to the hundreds of thousands of English migrants who may be curious enough to attend future internationals. If he can achieve that, then the people whinging about his supposedly high salary will have to find something else to whine about.

In fact the only real disappointment with the whole Venables deal has been the widespread negative reaction. There is no point waffling on about individuals here (there is plenty of that throughout this issue) but it's about time some of the 'old guard' both in administration and media just gave it away.
You don't need to have been intimately involved in the sport to have a valid opinion, and just because you've been a national league coach or television pundit for fifteen years doesn't mean you're always right.

While it is perfectly understandable (in a patriotic sense) that some people insist the national coach should be Australian, or learnt his soccer in Australia, or at least based in Australia, the Thomson era should have proved to those people that such a situation is no longer possible. ET himself will tell you that. Critics also claim that Venables will also impose an English style of our players. Why? Terry is too smart to try and change players' habits within ten months. He knows that if he can get our strongest possible team on the park then we will have a side capable of defeating many other countries, including the 'fourth-ranked' Asian nation.

Which brings us to our major reservation. Other than a trip to China in May (which may yet prove to be extremely useful), Venables' experience with Asian football is limited. On that basis you would think that he would be keen to get to the Asian Cup Finals. Wrong. Terry seems happy enough to work off videos, and that is enough for us to be extremely worried. We would have thought that he would have been in Doha making copious quantities of notes on all the teams and players. After all, many of those countries will be looking for friendlies over the next six months and there's nothing like meeting the coaches to discuss the future. If Raul Blanco doesn't make it to the UAE, SocAus will have some serious explaining to do.