Tony Vidmar: “The expectation is always to win”

Tonight, the Olyroos play against Iraq for a place in the quarterfinals. Australia are currently second in Group D on three points after a win against Thailand and a loss to China.

In club football, expectations are often set by the owner. At national level, who decides where the benchmark is before international tournaments?

“The expectation from all [national teams] is always to win, and that’s an expectation from the coaching staff—and the players are similar—so we want to go out there and give our best performance and win the tournament,” says Vidmar.

“We also want to play a really great, fun brand of football to watch.

“We want to be on the front foot, we want to be playing aggressive … having an intention to score goals and to defend and stop goals, working hard and things like that—we want to have that whole package.

“I’m big on having a high-performance mentality,” he continues. “What we’ve created with this group … is that their mentality, their resilience is going through the roof in a great way.

Vidmar was also quick to pay tribute to his staff, saying “the culture that they’ve created is one of the best that I’ve been in for a long time”.

However, the coach believes that expectations should be tempered if player availability becomes an issue.

“If you don’t have your best players, then I think the expectation should definitely change,” he explains.

“If I go back to two years ago, when we had our previous Asian cup qualifiers with the Olympic team, we weren’t allowed to get seven to eight European-based players because it was outside of the [international] window.

“We also then had two to three of our starters injured, so there’s 11 of your best players who are missing.

“So, you can have always have that high expectation, but then you’ve also got to look at the realistic part of it as well.”

(Author’s note: a reminder that these comments were made before the tournament and are not a response to results.)

A national team coach is different to club management, mostly due to the scant time physically spent with the players. Vidmar reveals that much of his time is spent monitoring the development of Olyroos players and occasionally giving them career advice.

“You have you have many, many discussions with players,” he shares. “Everyone would have a different situation, and questions like [perhaps changing clubs] would come up, in particular if they’re not playing—but that wouldn’t stop me from selecting them if they’re not.

“If they’re not playing [and] if they’ve been with us [in camp], we kind of have an idea of them—we know how they play, how they’ve performed with us.

“But if we do feel, and the player feels, that maybe it’s another option to move somewhere else, that’s a discussion we have.

“That continued dialogue with the players is important and I enjoy it—I like to hear the feedback from the players and the players like to hear from us. That’s an important part of [the job], especially when you don’t get to have access to the players daily or consistently.”

After decades in football—his professional debut coming in 1989 for Adelaide City—has he ever come close to losing his passion for the sport?

“Never, never,” he repeats, “I love the game too much—been involved for close to … 40 years as a player and now as a coach.

“I feel that I owe a lot to the players; I want to give back everything that I had as a player, but also what I’m learning as a coach.

“I feel that that’s my duty, that I’ve got to pass the baton on—I want them all to have fantastic careers in football, and sometimes that doesn’t happen, but [my goal is] that they become great people, whether it’s sports or in business and other forms of life.

“So, I will never get sick or tired of this game. As I said, there’s so much that you still learn—I still learn today from players.”

The majority of Vidmar’s coaching career has been at national level, with stints also at Adelaide United’s Youth Academy and as an assistant at Melbourne City.

“Definitely, yep, I think so,” he responds when asked if a move to club management interests him.

“At some point I would definitely have to look at being involved in the running of a club, [which is] totally different … I think that’s probably something that I would like to do at some point.

“I kind of already know how I would make things work, make things happen.

“[I’d be applying] everything that [I’ve] learned over that time to a club, which I think can be exciting. So yeah, 100 per cent, I think at some point I need to jump into that.”