The Socceroos’ godfather

Zvonimir Rale Rasic talks to Neos Kosmos about the 1974 Socceroos, once South Melbourne junior Ange Postecoglou, and the country he adores so much - Brazil.


On his first meeting with his players, after just being appointed coach of Australia’s national football team, Rale Rasic made it clear to the chef of the hotel where they were eating how he wanted the meat to be cooked.

Socceroos were first professional unit in Australian sporting history, when pride and honour for the country and national flag meant ‘Amen’. And they were thought by wog. Mr Wog.

“I organised the biggest piece of beef, and each player had to cut his piece of beef to put on the plate. I organised it to be fairly rare, not well done, a bit bloody.”

Once dinner was finished, the players commented that the steak had a bit too much blood.

“Eh eh eh,” Rasic said, “that’s exactly what I want from you in the next four years.”

That’s how it started – Zvonimir Rale Rasic’s first meeting with the Socceroos. He gave them one page of written rules.

“I said on the first day, ‘So you have any suggestions? We can incorporate them, and then you sign. Each one of you has to sign’. They asked why. I said ‘So I can punish you, so you can be answerable to me for whatever goes wrong’. So for four years that was one of the rules. Only if the discipline was breached in a serious sense were they punished,” Mr Rasic tells Neos Kosmos.

It was clear to all present that the strict disciplinarian, a tough street boy from a Belgrade orphanage was there to make a change and to succeed, not to be liked.

All his predecessors were referred to as ‘Uncles’, but not him. He was The Boss, Mr Wog, who made sure he was no ‘Uncle’ to anybody.

He enjoyed the ultimate respect of a team of which some players were older than their 34-year-old coach. Until today, he remains the youngest ever World Cup coach of a national football team – he was 38.

Yet, Rale Rasic was the first ever coach to take the Australian national football team to one of world sport’s Holy Grails – the World Cup finals in 1974.
He is still the one and only football coach featured in the Sport Australia Hall of Fame. After Rasic, it took the Socceroos another 32 years to make it to the World Cup again.

An orphan’s dream

Rale Rasic is a war orphan. He lost his parents during WWII, and grew up in an orphanage in Zrenjanin, Belgrade. He remembers his orphanage years with love and pride.

“It was one of the most memorable places, full of pride, honour, emotion, from the poverty to having everything that one human would need except the love of your parents. The teacher in the orphanage house gave everything in this world but I never had love, never someone to give you a hug – that was the only thing missing in the orphanage house.”

In the orphanage, there was discipline all the way.
You had to make your bed like a box of matches, everything to perfection. Once the rules were made they had to be applied. And that is exactly what characterised Rasic’s four years with the Socceroos.

“We played a lot of sport. If you didn’t play football they regarded you as if something was wrong with you. We played with 20-30 players and one ball – irrespective of what it was made of,” Mr Rasic remembers today.

From the orphanage he made it to the Yugoslav national youth team that competed in two European championships, ’53 and ’54. It was a sensation, to hear that an orphanage kid would wear a country’s jersey.
From the orphanage, still a boy, Rasic put on the boots of one of the leading Yugoslav clubs, Vojvodina. Soon after he was playing in Grenoble, France, where an Australian agent spotted him, and invited him to Melbourne.

“‘To come to Australia for what?’ I ask him.

“Football is not a guarantee for success – it’s an opportunity for you to establish yourself, how you take it is up to you. I took that opportunity, and went to Footscray. The team was called JUST meaning Jugoslav United Soccer Team. They had great tradition. But when you come from a professional environment and someone asks you to go to a factory to work, it’s a big difference.”

After a spell back in Yugoslavia to complete his national service and a university degree, Rasic returned to Australia in 1966 and started coaching at JUST. He had seven players older than himself in the team. But age does not equal maturity, he says.

Success with JUST led him to become state coach of Victoria. Only two years later, in 1970 and at 34 years of age, Rale Rasic was the Socceroos’ coach. An immigrant, an orphan boy, was sitting on the bench of Australia’s national team.

“I structured the plan the way I wanted to succeed. Ninety-eight per cent of my success relates to the orphanage house – it was a beautiful heaven for people who had a desire to succeed, who knew what discipline meant and those who appreciated challenges. There was no stone that I was not able to overturn.

“I had a secret weapon; in my bag I had a four-year plan, which no coach had ever, ever produced in Australia. I had a step-by-step plan of what I wanted, what I needed.”

The new Socceroos coach went as far as checking hotels where the team was staying, checking which rooms, checking who the chef was and how clean the kitchen was. He couldn’t care less about the attributes he was often given – like that of a ‘tough bastard’ – due to his attitude.

It was this ‘tough bastard’ that led the team of amateurs towards remarkable sporting success for Australian football – to the World Cup, and to becoming champions in Asia and the Middle East. And it wasn’t that hard.

“When you can be 13 years old and woken up at 5.30 in the morning, pitch black, and the teacher says we need to exercise for 30 minutes; then they take you to the river Begej, break the ice and say ‘now wash yourselves’ – what is coaching one national team compared to that?

“When you learned football in the street and the orphanage house, you had to be street smart. I had all these qualities in me – education, upbringing, discipline, and nothing in the world could stop me doing what I wanted.”

Despite the expenses involved, Rasic was even backed to take a squad on an overseas tour, in 1970. In seven weeks around Asia, Europe and South America, he assessed the qualities of the men as men rather than as football players.

“My first principle was selection of the men. The second principle – selection of the players. I could always complement a man who had a desire to succeed, then add football skills. But you can not teach someone to be a man. And he can be as talented as he wants – you can never rely on him.”
The national team that Rale Rasic took to the World Cup in West Germany, in June 1974, was comprised of six different nations – Hungarian, Yugoslav, English, Scottish, Australian and German. The question was – could these nations be combined into one unit, to provide the formula for the success of Australian football that was, in those days, purely amateurish.

“If you are ashamed of where you come from, you are not good enough for me to be proud of Australia,” Rasic used to say to his players.
The World Cup finals in West Germany saw 16 teams compete. After two defeats, to East Germany and West Germany, and a draw with Chile, Australia finished 13th in the world, securing its place on the football world map.
Rale Rasic had it his way for four years. Among his players, he created a passion and love for the country they played for. He required their full time professional mind and commitment to Australia.

But in the process of doing things your way, you create enemies. And there is no doubt that Rale Rasic created an enemy in Sir Arthur George – Greek Australian born Athanasios Tzortzatos.

“I created enemies with the President of the Soccer Federation when we played Uruguay in Melbourne. Bob Hawke was President of Unions. He came into the dressing room with the President of the Federation Sir Arthur George, who wanted the list of the 22 players who were going to the World Cup – and that was two months before the Cup. I didn’t want to release it, so I said ‘you can have 27, you are not getting 22’. I took him out of the dressing room in front of Bob Hawke, later Prime Minister. That carried a bit of weight over who is the boss.”

When George didn’t continue Rasic’s contract, the stubborn Yugoslav didn’t mourn.

“I didn’t feel sorry because in four years I set out what I wanted to do. I wanted to create a professional and family atmosphere in the team, I taught some of the players how to sing their national anthem. One of the greatest players, the well known Johnny Warren was a very nervous person. I said to him: ‘You owe to your people, to your country, 40 seconds of your time without your fist open and closed; you owe to stand still to your country’. I pride myself on it.
“The Socceroos were the first professional unit in Australian sporting history, when pride and honour for the country and national flag meant ‘Amen’. And they were taught by a wog. Mr Wog.”

An important part of Australian football history was created by an orphan boy – Oliver Twist, as he calls himself. He introduced sports psychology in Australia, and was one of the five people who created the Institute of Sport in Canberra. He made the Socceroos champions of Asia and Oceania and the Middle East in 1973.

He received the Order of Australia, a sport medal from the Queen, he was torch bearer at the Olympic Games in Sydney. But nothing compares to the Sport Australia Hall of Fame.

“That, for me, sort of summarises the appreciation of your teammates who elected you.”

Not bad for Oliver Twist.

In the hands of a South Melbourne junior

On the 40th anniversary of the Socceroos first ever World Cup, this year the Australian team will be lead to Brazil by Ange Postecoglou. And, to the joy of Rale Rasic, they will be wearing a replica of the jersey from the 1974 World Cup.

With the Socceroos’ new coach, Rasic has a special bond, dating from his time with South Melbourne Hellas in the National Soccer League in 1983, where young Ange was coming through the youth ranks.

“When I was at South Melbourne, Ange was a South Melbourne junior. And today the same kid is the national coach.

“A great thing about him is that he never forgot where he came from. That’s the greatest quality he has.

“Of course, you live by results and you die by them. That’s an unfortunate part of it. It’s not the easiest task when you take the national team six months before the World Cup. It’s not easy to be your own man. You can’t implement your own style of football that quickly.”

The World Cup is an elite competition, and only elite nations can make it. In Rasic’s opinion, Australia is at the crossroads. One generation – that golden generation – is lost.

“To replace Bresciano the way he was, to replace the old Cahill, Mark Schwartzer – an absolute diamond of Australian football – it’s not easy to replace one generation.

“The World Cup is about being able to compete. Every kick of the ball matters; you are representing your country. And for that you need experience. You can have one inexperienced player amongst 11 others to groom him. But you can’t have 10 inexperienced and one Cahill to groom the rest. That is the difficulty.

“Ange is young, eloquent, a good speaker and communicator, he played and coached at the high level. Now it’s his call.”
Sport of the poor

When I ask him to compare the football of today with when he coached Australia, Rasic answers in one sentence.

“You ask me to compare then and now – but you are comparing hundreds of thousands of dollars that Cahill, Bresciano, Bosnic and others were demanding from foreign clubs with the bricklayers, carpenters, milkmen, policemen, draftsmen of the 1974 team.”

That said, he is worried about this year’s host, the country he adores so much and that he visited on numerous occasions. Brazil has been facing chaos as its residents protest against World Cup spending.

“Football is a working class sport. That’s how it began. Unfortunately it’s heading towards only rich – poor people playing, rich people paying. That’s what I feel sympathetic about.

“Football was born in the backyards of the poverty stricken houses – in Yugoslavia, Hungary, Holland, everywhere. In South American countries, 99.9 per cent of players come from these families. What worries me is that the people who love the game can’t afford tickets. Not only in Brazil, but worldwide.
“Ordinary people made this game. Remember Greece, when they won the European Championship in 2004, remember their economic situation. Football gave them some sort of hope for survival. Brazil is no exception.

“The World Cup was held in South Africa, in front of trillions of hungry people. To me that doesn’t make sense. We glorify ourselves in winning the games but we disgrace ourselves at the expense of the poor people!” he says passionately.