Arnold Off To Holland?

June 14th, 2006 | By: Matt | 7 Comments »

The latest news surrounding the Australian coaching positions, is that assistant coach Graham Arnold has been offered the job of taking over Dutch club NAC Breda. The same club Tony Vidmar is at.
Arnold has put talk of the job behind him until after the World Cup, and is believed to be happy in Australia, perhaps after the top role here. With Lowy and the FFA adamant on bringing in a big name coach, leading Australia doesn’t seem likely for Arnold.

Tags: Australia, Coaches

Australia World Cup RSS Feed

Comments

By LiverpoolFC | June 14th, 2006 at 2:40 pm

Thats terrible what is frank lowy doing srsly? I hope he’s got some plan where he brings back guss,arnold and co just in time for the 2010 qualfiers and is planning to save some money in between. Hopefully Russia will stuff up their changing structure plan and guss will comeback for another round. But yea it seems a strange decision on part of the FFA.

Posted from Australia

By Martin | June 14th, 2006 at 3:59 pm

To let both Arnonld and Neeskins go is just plain ludicrus. Especially when they both want to stay on and coach the national team. Didn’t Arnold play there during his playing career or was it another Dutch club?

Whoever comes in next must be as good or better than Guus and quite frankly, I don’t see many coaches available with that credibility.

Posted from United States

By matilda | June 14th, 2006 at 4:17 pm

The thing is, it seems like Hiddink was pushing for both Arnold and Neeskens to stay so that he could return to Oz if Russia wasn’t going well or he didn’t enjoy it. Hiddink only has a 2 year contract with Russia, with an option for 2.5 more years.

Does anyone else find it disturbing that one man has the final say? I know Lowy holds the purse strings but the FFA has a board for God’s sake and some people there really wanted to keep Neeskens & Arnold.

Posted from Australia

By matilda | June 14th, 2006 at 4:19 pm

p.s yes Arnold played for NAC Breda during his career. He has strong ties to Holland.

Posted from Australia

By Matt | June 14th, 2006 at 5:02 pm

I would have liked to see the current assistant coaches retain their positions but I guess it just wasn’t ment to be. They definitely deserve some of the credit for getting our team to where it is, rather than just Hiddink. The three of them seem to work really well together and hold good relationships so it is a pity all three are splitting up.

I do agree with the comment however, that whoever takes over the national job has big, big shoes to fill, and will come under close scrutiny especially by the fans.

Posted from Australia

By Amanda | June 14th, 2006 at 11:42 pm

I really worry about this. Houllier was too expensive and we could only afford St Guus because the contract was so short. Who is this big name Lowy is after? A good showing in the WC will make us more attractive and kick some cash into the kitty but … what “big name” can we afford for four years? Apart from the last 10 mins the best part of the Japan game was seeing Johan Neeskens singing the national anthem. I reckon that sort of committment from a foreign coach is something we should grab with both hands. And where possible we should be giving local coaches a chance, as long as they have the techical nous and experience. The Neeskens-Arnie combo in some form seems a viable compromise.

We’ve burnt our bridges with the current staff and don’t seem to have a Plan B.

Lowy has been great for the game in Oz in many ways but one bloke shouldn’t have all that power.

Posted from Australia

By LiverpoolFC | June 15th, 2006 at 9:11 am

Houllier is an idiot. Look at what he did for Liverpool. Nothing. He rated our chances of qualifying at 30% and thought we would end up bottom of the group at Germany. That’s a great thing to say for a future national coach isn’t it? Neeskens and Arnie should have been kept unless their planning to get some experience before they come back to Australia or something.

Posted from Australia

Comments are closed