World Cup Group F Croatia 2 Australia 2 Oh Guus. Oh Guus. Oh Guus. So nearly cooked. So nearly stuffed. Sometimes the price of genius is a tendency towards meddling.
Guus Hiddink steered Australia into the second round of the World Cup in Stuttgart last night but it took one wild, wonderful, hellacious, rollercoaster of a match for him to get them there. And had they failed? There's not a kangaroo court down under that wouldn't have convicted Hiddink.
Having seen Mark Schwarzer perform satisfactorily through two games Hiddink opted for a change of goalie last night. He had only to wait 90 seconds to see Zelijko Kalac beaten. Not long afterwards Kalac almost dropped a harmless free into his own net. Finally, in the second half, with the game on a knife edge at 1-1, an error from Kalac gave Croatia a scantily deserved lead. The camera zoned in on Hiddink. Impassive.
What a night this was though. You knew it was going to be thunderous and bloody when you walked out into the Stuttgart Stadium and the whole place was bouncing along to Country Roads, singing and pointing as if it was an anthem written in the blood of martyrs. The game had scarcely settled when Mark Viduka pulled down Niko Kovac some 30 yards from the Australian goal. Darijo Srna stood over the ball, briefly contemplative, and then thumped it almost casually to the top corner of the Aussie net. Among the chequered hordes there was mayhem. Flares glowed. Fists were clenched. Croatia, so long sterile in front of goal, were in bloom. For the neutral it was the ideal start, forcing Australia to throw the sink at their Croatian cousins. They did.
Poor Viduka! Having given away that early free he was to be given nothing by English referee Graham Poll, whom it is fair to say had the sort of night which could rule him out of refereeing the final. Viduka was man-handled to the ground by his friend Josip Simunic after 10 minutes. Poll was unmoved. Simunic would later receive two yellow cards but no red from Poll. Finally in injury-time a third yellow card saw him off!
As for Viduka his muscularity seems to embody the Australian virtue of robustness. And refs are wary. He got nothing all night long from the referee but from his midfield at least the service was better. Forced into attack they drove on and on. Shots pinged and slammed off Croatian bodies, bone-crushing tackles made grown men wince in the stands, in the area the ball careered around merrily. Viduka, Jason Culina, Harry Kewell and Cahill all had chances.
A Cahill header, a Kewell drive and another Viduka half chance brought the crowd to their feet. Culina, massive all night, had a good shot swerve away at the last minute. And when the breakthrough came it seemed to stem from trivia. A high ball came floating across the Croatian box. Cahill got jammed between two defenders, one of whom, Stepjan Tomas, handled the ball with his outstretched arm. Poll would miss an almost identical offence by the same player in the second half but by then things had turned crazy. Anyway Craig Moore stepped up, put the goalkeeper the wrong way and it was one all.
The second half brought more thunder. Australia started in a frenzy but after 11 minutes got caught badly when Nico Kovac latched onto a ball at midfield, carried it forward to just outside the box and saw his relatively harmless shot bobble out of Kalac's hands over his body and into the net.
The stricken Aussies threw another forward on in the shape of John Aloisi, leaving them with Viduka, Kewell, Aloisi and Cahill up front. After a while those four were joined by the giant, Josh Kennedy and the creative Marco Bresciano.
It grew chaotic. Stipe Pletikosa, the Croatian goalie, somehow held a ball on the line as half the Aussie team rucked down on top of him. Poll missed an obvious penalty when Tomas handled again. Second yellow cards for Simic and for Brett Emerton reduced the sides to 10 men. And somewhere in between that Australia scored. It was Bresciano on the right who picked out a nice cross. The ball floated over a thicket of flying players and fell to Kewell at the far post five yards out. Kewell got the ball onto his right foot and deposited it in the net. Stuttgart was too loud for 10 minutes afterwards. There were complaints of noise from Switzerland. It all ended with a disallowed Viduka goal, a little more confusion and then some delirium. The socceroos roll on. Advance Australia fair!
SUBSTITUTIONS
CROATIA: Klasnic for Tomas (84 mins), Jerko Leko for Kranjcar (65 mins), Modric for Olic (73 mins). Subs not used: Balaban, Bosnjak, Butina, Didulica, Ivan Leko, Seric, Tokic, Vranjes. Booked: Simic, Tudor, Simunic, Pletikosa.
AUSTRALIA: Kennedy for Chipperfield (75 mins), Aloisi for Grella (63 mins), Bresciano for Sterjovski (71 mins). Subs not used: Beauchamp, Covic, Lazaridis, Milligan, Popovic, Schwarzer, Skoko, Thompson, Wilkshire. Booked: Emerton.
Referee: Graham Poll (England).
Croatia ... 2 Srna 3, Kovac 56 Sent off: Simic 85, Simunic 90 Australia ... 2 Moore 38 pen, Kewell 79 Sent off: Emerton 87 Attendance: 52,000
