Graham Arnold’s reign ends feebly but Socceroos’ World Cup run in Qatar will never be forgotten

Goodbyes are never easy, especially when the parties involved have been as intertwined as Graham Arnold and the Socceroos over the past 39 years. It is remarkable that for nearly half a century, the one-time Gwawley Bay junior and the men’s national team have been almost inextricably linked. But following Friday’s announcement of Arnold’s immediate resignation as coach, it appears this bond has finally ended.

Arnold’s journey began on 23 October 1985, scoring the first of what would be 19 international goals in a 7-0 win over Taiwan. In the years that followed he would forge a celebrated playing career across Australia, Europe, and Japan and play a further 56 times in green and gold, but an elusive World Cup berth would consistently evade him. Cruelly, his final game in the shirt he loved so dearly was marked by tears: he introduced as a desperate late substitute by Terry Venables on an infamous night in Melbourne in 1997, when Iran came back from two goals down to secure a draw that denied Australia a place at the 1998 World Cup.

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It took a move into coaching to bring the taste of football’s grandest stage that he yearned for. He arrived in the national setup in 2000 before serving as an assistant to Guus Hiddink during the Socceroos’ drought-breaking appearance at the 2006 World Cup and, after a short, ill-fated stint as interim, supporting Pim Verbeek at the 2010 tournament. Some of the most dominant stints in domestic football with Central Coast and Sydney followed, but it was the 2022 World Cup in Qatar where he left his mark.

However Arnold’s legacy ends up, the run to the last 16 in Doha will likely serve as the centrepiece of any veneration. He departs with the record for most games coached and won, and with Olympic appearances both as a player and coach, but it is those weeks in the Middle East that represent arguably the apogee of Arnold. Under his command, a tight-knit group of players were ready to run themselves into the ground for each other, relishing in their roles as underdogs and getting the opportunity to prove doubters wrong. 12,000km away, Melbourne’s Federation Square became a cathedral of concrete and pyro as Australia became enraptured; the explosion of limbs, noise and light that greeted Mat Leckie’s goal against Denmark created a crowning moment that can never be taken away from the 61-year-old.

And in a way, it is fitting that this served as the peak of the “Arnieball” years, as the very factors that made it possible were also at the heart of the challenges he faced throughout his second, six-year stint in charge of the Socceroos.

It is the alpha and omega of Arnold’s tenure; the strengths that allowed his sides to stun the world and damn the doubters turned against him on the smaller stage of Asian competition, when expectations shifted and his side was seen as Goliath, not David. Just over a year after coming within an Emilio Martínez armpit of taking Argentina to extra-time at the World Cup, Arnold and the Socceroos were back in Doha, struggling to find a way to goal against the likes of Uzbekistan and Syria at the Asian Cup when the impetus was on them to break down embedded defences. Tellingly, their best performance came in an almost-valiant rearguard against Korea in the quarter-finals, where Hwang Hee-Chan and Son Heung-min consigned Arnold to what was his third exit in the tournament’s last eight.

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The song was the same throughout the third phase of the preceding World Cup qualification campaign, and has been reprised at the same stage in 2024, when his team were held goalless in a loss and draw against Bahrain and Indonesia. He said he had had a lot of thinking to do following the latter result and, as Football Australia chief executive James Johnson said on Friday, it seemed he had simply “run out of gas”.

In hindsight, the right time for Arnold to leave was probably after the 2022 World Cup or, failing that, the Asian Cup held earlier this year. The Socceroos aren’t unique in their challenges in possession but, at the same time, Arnold’s decades of service to and influence on the Australian game is such that he has had a significant impact on how it is seen and assessed on a broader, systemic level. He has often spoke of “Aussie DNA” and, if you look at how teams around the country play, it seems as though Arnieball is a big part of that.

With time, Arnold will deservedly be remembered as a great servant of the game, one who loved the Socceroos more than anything outside of his family. But at the same time, there can be little dispute that, as Johnson said, “it’s a good time to freshen up the team”.