Infamous evening at the MCG defined Terry Venables’ Socceroos stint

Photograph: Getty Images

It’s a sequence of coaching roles that when written almost feels like a mistake. From Barcelona, Tottenham Hotspur and England … to the Socceroos. From La Liga and FA Cup titles, European Cup finals and the semi-finals of the European Championships … to Oceania World Cup qualification. But that was the coaching journey Terry Venables, who died overnight aged 80, trod between 1984 and 1998.

It wasn’t the Socceroos of today that he took over, either, not a team coming off the back of an appearance in the round of 16 in their fifth-straight appearance on football’s biggest stage. In 1996 Australia’s men had only been to a single World Cup in their history, which was more than 20 years before the time of Venables’ arrival, with the Socceroos’ place in the global and domestic pecking order hovering between derisive dismissal and complete anonymity.

“There are people in England who have been lampooning us as a sort of soccer banana republic,” then Soccer Australia spokesperson Steve Speziale said at the time.

But as tributes flow around the world for Venables, it’s inevitable that one fateful evening at the MCG, 26 years ago to the day this Wednesday, is being revisited in Australia as the defining moment of his tenure. Venables took charge of the Socceroos for 23 games but such is the nature of trauma, he’s more often than not remembered for just one.

On that fateful evening in 1997, he was in the dugout as the Socceroos took the field in an all-or-nothing intercontinental playoff with Iran. A week prior the two sides had played out a 1-1 draw in front of more than 100,000 at the Azadi Stadium in the first leg in Tehran – 19-year-old Harry Kewell put Australia ahead in that game before Khodadad Azizi ensured the spoils would be shared.

Terry Venables walks past a dejected Ned Zelic after Iran defeated Australia in World Cup qualifying in 1997. Photograph: Getty Images

Australia just needed to get the job done in the return leg and they would be going to their first World Cup since 1974. And things were going so well. Kewell scored in the 32nd minute to make it 1-0, and then Aurelio Vidmar made it two in the 48th. But then Peter Hore ran on to the field and pulled the goal nets down, allowing Iran to regroup, and Karim Bagheri halved the deficit before Azizi tied things up.

At full-time, it was 3-3 on aggregate and Iran advanced on away goals. Venables wouldn’t escape criticism following that game; his inability to shut up shop, the high line he insisted on, and the non-deployment of the likes of John Aloisi and Milan Ivanović.

But the enduring legacy of the game is one of mourning. I was at the stadium that night, too young to remember much of the game , except for the tears streaming down my face as I departed the ground. Johnny Warren, the avatar of Australian football, openly wept on air. Venables would call it “one of the saddest sporting moments of my life”.

But while this game has, with good reason, come to dominate Venables’ place in Australian sporting folklore (few talk of Australia’s run to the 1997 Confederations Cup final a month later, an almost tortuous tease of what could have been accomplished in France), hindsight speaks to how his arrival in Australia was emblematic of the game’s evolution in the country.

His initial appointment, in a way, was a statement – one that reportedly cost 10% of Soccer Australia’s budget – about where Australian football wanted to go, one that would be repeated seven years on when it turned to Guus Hiddink and finally secured World Cup qualification.

For all the derision and disrespect, both from abroad and at home (Venables had to be sure to call it soccer as to not upset the native codes that lay claim to football) this was a team that had been building. Four years prior it had downed Canada in one intercontinental playoff, only to fall at the final hurdle against Argentina and the genius of Diego Maradona.

Its ranks were filled with European performers such as Robbie Slater and Mark Bosnich, supplemented by a rising generation highlighted by Kewell and Mark Viduka that would go on to be called golden. After six years of effective but pragmatic football under Eddie Thomson, the attacking styling of Venables, with his glitz, glamour and raffish charm was a needed change and players increasingly being recognised as elite responded to an elite coach and man manager.

Just as qualification for Germany 2006 under Hiddink served to completely change the face of Australian football and helped establish the burgeoning A-League, Australia’s near-miss under Venables is one of Australian football’s great sliding doors moments – El Tel coming within 15 minutes of giving that golden generation a seven-year headstart on changing Australia.