Post by marinermick on May 5, 2006 10:34:01 GMT 10
Seric happy to be duel international
Email Print Normal font Large font May 5, 2006
Australian-born Croatian Ante Seric is preparing to face a familiar opposition, writes Aaron Timms.
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AdvertisementIN THE minutes before the Socceroos take on Croatia in Stuttgart on June 22, there will be a lot of interest in lips. More specifically, there will be a lot of interest in the lips of three of the players in the Croatian line-up - and the way they react when Advance Australia Fair strikes up. Will they mouth the words? Will they tremble? Will they form themselves into a sneer?
It's tempting to suggest that for Ante Seric, Josip Simunic and Joey Didulica, it will be a moment of supreme equivocation - a moment where they finally come face to face with the decision they made to turn their backs on the country of their birth and represent the country of their ancestors.
But for Seric, it will also be a moment of pride. "I'll be there representing Croatia and I'll be there representing Australia," he says. "I'll be there for both countries. [And] even if I don't sing the Australian anthem, I'll definitely hum it. I will hum at least."
A man who will mumble his way through the national anthem and freely admits to having trouble with the words to the second verse? Surely it doesn't get more Australian than that.
But in the years since he made the fateful, frantic decision to choose Croatia over Australia, Seric has become an expert in the vocabulary of treachery. He's been called a traitor, a defector, a weasel, a grub.
They say we are living in the global age - the age of dissipating tribalism, disappearing borders, the hour of the cosmopolitan. But in sport, it seems, the beast of identity has proved much harder to slay.
Few are better placed to understand this than Seric. Ten days before the last match Australia played against Croatia, in June, 1998, the then 19-year-old midfielder was infamously picked for both sides.
Seric was given just seven days to make his decision - which he describes, not surprisingly, as the hardest of his life. "My father and brother flew over [to Croatia, where Seric was one year into a two-year spell with Hajduk Split] immediately, and we spent the whole time trying to work out what to do," he says.
The agony was intense, played out over a week of international phone calls and pointed discussions that went long into the night.
On the one hand, he felt an enormous love for Australia. It was the country of his birth, the country he'd grown up in, the country whose taxpayers had funded his scholarship at the AIS. Australia was home. "Growing up, my dream was always to play for Australia," he says.
On the other hand, football in Australia was in a mess - still reeling from the shock of Iran and hamstrung by an incompetent, faction-riven administration. The dream of qualifying for the World Cup seemed as distant as ever. The Croatian national team, in the middle of a golden age that was to yield third place at France '98, presented a far more attractive option.
"We were just coming out of a war," Seric adds. "The country was broken. That played a big part as well."
The prospect of playing at a World Cup alongside Suker, Prosinecki and Boksic; the shambolic state of the game in Australia; the desire to do something, however small, to alleviate the suffering of the Croatian people: in the end, the combination proved too much for the Australian Ante. The die was cast. He chose Croatia.
The way Seric tells the story, the torrent of abuse that followed would have been enough to destroy a small village in the Yugoslavian civil war. But he has no regrets.
"I can't hide the fact that I'm Australian, but I can't hide the fact that I'm Croatian as well," he says. "If I went back and the circumstances were different, I may have made a different decision. But I decided the way I did and I stand behind that. If the circumstances were exactly the same, I would make exactly the same decision. I can't regret it because it's given me so much."
It was Ron Smith, technical manager of football at the AIS, who was responsible for recruiting Seric to the Canberra-based program in 1996. He doesn't deny that he was disappointed when Seric and fellow graduate Simunic chose Croatia, but remains admirably practical about the incident.
"Absolutely ," he says. "They're quality players and they're players that we could do with right now. A lot of players have not had the choice [of playing for another country] put in front of them, so it's difficult for them to judge. It's just one of those unfortunate things - and it's more likely to happen to Australia because we are a country of immigrants. … I don't have any animosity towards the boys on a personal level at all."
The more interesting question is whether Australian football, in light of the many, much-trumpeted advances it has made over the past two years - getting a viable domestic league up, joining the Asian confederation and qualifying for the World Cup - will now be better placed to resist Seric-style raids from countries like Croatia.
"I think players will always have the temptation to be called by other countries," says Seric. "But I can feel that things are changing for Australian football. They're obviously doing something right if they qualified for the World Cup."
Smith agrees: "If a player feels like he isn't wanted by the national team, he will move. It's very much a case by case thing. But I'm sure the lure of playing for the Socceroos will be greater now than it has been in the past."
For the moment, Seric is content simply to focus on the World Cup. He sketches an ideal scenario: Croatia finishes top of the group, Australia grabs second spot, they battle their respective ways through the knockout stages, then meet in the final. Hopelessly idealistic, perhaps, but a reflection of the sincerity of Seric's attachment to the country of his birth.
"I will go back and live in Australia when I've finished playing football," he says. "I'd [even] like to come down and play in the A-League. I've played in all the big stadiums of Europe but there's one stadium I want to play in - the Sydney Football Stadium. … [And] I want to give back to the game. I owe the AIS. I owe the people who were there and who helped me because I think it was the pivotal moment of my career. I will help anyone who needs help in Australian football."
Seric's only concern, is that the Australian football community will put the "not welcome" sign out when he makes it back. Smith lays that concern to rest.
"Absolutely he'll be welcome back," he says. "Look at Craig Johnston. It's disappointing … when a player chooses to play for another country but that's as far as it goes. I don't think anyone would hold any grudges against a player for doing that."
Listening to Smith, there's a sense that the game in this country is now too mature to prolong the bitterness that accompanied the defections of Seric, Simunic and Didulica. In its own way, it's as much of an achievement as qualifying for the World Cup: after decades of pettiness and pointscoring, football has finally grown up.
Hum it from the rooftops.
Email Print Normal font Large font May 5, 2006
Australian-born Croatian Ante Seric is preparing to face a familiar opposition, writes Aaron Timms.
Advertisement
AdvertisementIN THE minutes before the Socceroos take on Croatia in Stuttgart on June 22, there will be a lot of interest in lips. More specifically, there will be a lot of interest in the lips of three of the players in the Croatian line-up - and the way they react when Advance Australia Fair strikes up. Will they mouth the words? Will they tremble? Will they form themselves into a sneer?
It's tempting to suggest that for Ante Seric, Josip Simunic and Joey Didulica, it will be a moment of supreme equivocation - a moment where they finally come face to face with the decision they made to turn their backs on the country of their birth and represent the country of their ancestors.
But for Seric, it will also be a moment of pride. "I'll be there representing Croatia and I'll be there representing Australia," he says. "I'll be there for both countries. [And] even if I don't sing the Australian anthem, I'll definitely hum it. I will hum at least."
A man who will mumble his way through the national anthem and freely admits to having trouble with the words to the second verse? Surely it doesn't get more Australian than that.
But in the years since he made the fateful, frantic decision to choose Croatia over Australia, Seric has become an expert in the vocabulary of treachery. He's been called a traitor, a defector, a weasel, a grub.
They say we are living in the global age - the age of dissipating tribalism, disappearing borders, the hour of the cosmopolitan. But in sport, it seems, the beast of identity has proved much harder to slay.
Few are better placed to understand this than Seric. Ten days before the last match Australia played against Croatia, in June, 1998, the then 19-year-old midfielder was infamously picked for both sides.
Seric was given just seven days to make his decision - which he describes, not surprisingly, as the hardest of his life. "My father and brother flew over [to Croatia, where Seric was one year into a two-year spell with Hajduk Split] immediately, and we spent the whole time trying to work out what to do," he says.
The agony was intense, played out over a week of international phone calls and pointed discussions that went long into the night.
On the one hand, he felt an enormous love for Australia. It was the country of his birth, the country he'd grown up in, the country whose taxpayers had funded his scholarship at the AIS. Australia was home. "Growing up, my dream was always to play for Australia," he says.
On the other hand, football in Australia was in a mess - still reeling from the shock of Iran and hamstrung by an incompetent, faction-riven administration. The dream of qualifying for the World Cup seemed as distant as ever. The Croatian national team, in the middle of a golden age that was to yield third place at France '98, presented a far more attractive option.
"We were just coming out of a war," Seric adds. "The country was broken. That played a big part as well."
The prospect of playing at a World Cup alongside Suker, Prosinecki and Boksic; the shambolic state of the game in Australia; the desire to do something, however small, to alleviate the suffering of the Croatian people: in the end, the combination proved too much for the Australian Ante. The die was cast. He chose Croatia.
The way Seric tells the story, the torrent of abuse that followed would have been enough to destroy a small village in the Yugoslavian civil war. But he has no regrets.
"I can't hide the fact that I'm Australian, but I can't hide the fact that I'm Croatian as well," he says. "If I went back and the circumstances were different, I may have made a different decision. But I decided the way I did and I stand behind that. If the circumstances were exactly the same, I would make exactly the same decision. I can't regret it because it's given me so much."
It was Ron Smith, technical manager of football at the AIS, who was responsible for recruiting Seric to the Canberra-based program in 1996. He doesn't deny that he was disappointed when Seric and fellow graduate Simunic chose Croatia, but remains admirably practical about the incident.
"Absolutely ," he says. "They're quality players and they're players that we could do with right now. A lot of players have not had the choice [of playing for another country] put in front of them, so it's difficult for them to judge. It's just one of those unfortunate things - and it's more likely to happen to Australia because we are a country of immigrants. … I don't have any animosity towards the boys on a personal level at all."
The more interesting question is whether Australian football, in light of the many, much-trumpeted advances it has made over the past two years - getting a viable domestic league up, joining the Asian confederation and qualifying for the World Cup - will now be better placed to resist Seric-style raids from countries like Croatia.
"I think players will always have the temptation to be called by other countries," says Seric. "But I can feel that things are changing for Australian football. They're obviously doing something right if they qualified for the World Cup."
Smith agrees: "If a player feels like he isn't wanted by the national team, he will move. It's very much a case by case thing. But I'm sure the lure of playing for the Socceroos will be greater now than it has been in the past."
For the moment, Seric is content simply to focus on the World Cup. He sketches an ideal scenario: Croatia finishes top of the group, Australia grabs second spot, they battle their respective ways through the knockout stages, then meet in the final. Hopelessly idealistic, perhaps, but a reflection of the sincerity of Seric's attachment to the country of his birth.
"I will go back and live in Australia when I've finished playing football," he says. "I'd [even] like to come down and play in the A-League. I've played in all the big stadiums of Europe but there's one stadium I want to play in - the Sydney Football Stadium. … [And] I want to give back to the game. I owe the AIS. I owe the people who were there and who helped me because I think it was the pivotal moment of my career. I will help anyone who needs help in Australian football."
Seric's only concern, is that the Australian football community will put the "not welcome" sign out when he makes it back. Smith lays that concern to rest.
"Absolutely he'll be welcome back," he says. "Look at Craig Johnston. It's disappointing … when a player chooses to play for another country but that's as far as it goes. I don't think anyone would hold any grudges against a player for doing that."
Listening to Smith, there's a sense that the game in this country is now too mature to prolong the bitterness that accompanied the defections of Seric, Simunic and Didulica. In its own way, it's as much of an achievement as qualifying for the World Cup: after decades of pettiness and pointscoring, football has finally grown up.
Hum it from the rooftops.