Alen Stajcic has just been sacked – but his OAM days later say a lot more

Resilience is something Stajcic has always tried to teach his players – and there have been many of them over two and a half decades. From his National Teams (Matildas, Young Matildas, Philippines) and Clubs (Sydney FC Women, Central Coast Mariners Men, Perth Glory Men, Wanderers Men) and right off the bat the NSWIS Women’s Football Program through which he nurtured the golden generation of Matildas.

Resilience is also a muscle he’s been forced to flex in some of those tough times – namely his Matilda sacking and all the miscues that go with it – it’s confusing to an outsider who hasn’t completely given up coaching and started up again as a landscaper or diving instructor or literally anything else that’s not football-related.

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“I don’t know, I just love the game,” he explains. “It’s the only thing I can thank my parents for, and especially my dad who sacrificed everything for me to play the game and follow my dreams. They came to Australia as immigrants from Yugoslavia without a word of English or a penny to their names and gave me and my brother everything they could. Football was one of the things they gave us.

“We’re lucky that this country gives you the opportunity to come through the ranks. As a first-generation Australian, to go from penniless immigrant parents to coaching a country to coaching a country. And the little things like being the first Australian-born coach to win a World Cup match – and having three World Cup wins – make it special to follow your dreams to achieve more recognition.

“So this is probably more recognition for my family than it is for me. My mother and father, my wife and my children, who have sacrificed the most of all.”

Careful, because this is not a hymn. Only 52, Stajcic is still very much a coach, albeit one without a job (“I’m just hanging in there,” he laughs). But it’s the past that has earned him this rare honor bestowed upon only a handful of Australian coaches.

“Especially in women’s football,” she says. “I started out when everyone thought it wasn’t cool — the poor cousin of the poor cousin. Being overlooked and discriminated against and pretty much everyone in the administration didn’t think about me or care about me. They warned me to go down, but I didn’t really mind. I just loved the game, and anyone who loved the game I was happy to share my time with.

“To think about the things we’ve had to go through at the NSW Institute of Sport just to get a training ground and gear and women’s size clothing and revenue and resources for the team. It’s been a pretty amazing ride. And to think about the talent ID – finding those players from all over NSW and Australia and how the group has grown together and become the golden generation, and that probably gives me the most joy, how we see all the players and vote. and from virtually nothing it became – for me – probably the best team at the world.”

In 2017, the Matildas reached a record high FIFA ranking of No.4, behind No.3 England, No.2 Germany and long-time leaders the United States. It was in July of that year that Australia beat the USA for the first time – a major milestone in Seattle after 26 failed attempts. Sam Kerr, Steph Catley and their contemporaries of World Cup 2023 glory were all in their early 20s.

They almost repeated their 1-0 Tournament of Nations triumph in 2018 (which saw 15-year-old Mary Fowler make her senior international debut against Brazil), but for an injury-time equalizer in Connecticut. Still, Megan Rapinoe shook Stajcic’s hand after that game and in an informal chat gave her former Sydney FC coach the impression that her all-conquering US team was wary of Australia leading the 2019 World Cup.

That evidence, on the back of a runner-up finish at the Asian Cup in Jordan in April, was enough for Stajcic to believe his Matildas are genuine World Cup contenders. Seven months later he was at the center of one of the most controversial sackings in Australian football history.

“It hurt my soul,” he recalls. Then he repeats it. “It hurt my soul.

The personal trauma was compounded, he says, by knowing he had been offered the highly lucrative head coaching job in England (China also came up), but turned it down.

“For four or five times the money, all sources, they told me they would host. [2022] Euros, everything,” he says. “I knocked it back and then Phil Neville took it from me. I wanted to stay in Australia [2019] The World Cup… and 12 months later I was sacked. I always said I’d never be that loyal again, but then I’ll do it again. And again.”

Maybe that kind of loyalty is part of why he is now OAM? “I don’t know for sure, to be honest,” is his reply, but he knows he had “a willingness to fight and fight back.”

Three months later he was hired as interim coach of Central Coast, then permanent coach, and at the start of 2021 he oversaw the men’s first back-to-back wins in the A-League Mariners since December 2017. The mockery of the competition turned into table toppers. Then-Western United coach Mark Rudan called him “a magician as far as I’m concerned”. “There is no magic,” Stajcic said pragmatically. “Magic is hard work.

The foundations were laid for back-to-back championships and AFC premierships at the end of 2021 when he was named head coach of the Philippines – the nation qualified for the first Women’s World Cup and made their tournament debut in 2023 with a win over co-hosts New Zealand – and handed the reins to assistant and club great Nick Montgomery.

“Six or seven of those guys are playing now. [for the] The Socceroos – from a team that won one game in 21 when I took over in 2019 – and now they’re fighting for this next World Cup,” says Stajcic.

“It was a really huge highlight for me – I knew I could do it in men’s football and I could do so much. It was really unknown. I also coached elite boys from 12 to 18 for 10 years. But coaching a professional men’s team? That was something I had to learn.”

“But the longer I went on, the more I realized, especially as society has evolved, and I think the genders have come together. And especially the younger generation that grew up with phones and social media and all that stuff. So the issues they face and the dilemmas they have are more closely intertwined.”

This interview is not about the ins and outs of Australian rules football; it’s about a person and their achievements. But in reality, it is almost impossible to talk about one without the other. Stajcic has lived and breathed the domestic game since he was born in the footballing heartland of Western Sydney in 1973, about a week before Jimmy Mackay scored his wonder to qualify the Socceroos for the 1974 World Cup.

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His coaching style is perhaps best described as authoritarian, authentic and deeply caring, much like Ange Postecoglou (the pair ended up coaching the Australian national team at the same time). Stajcic is also similar to Postecoglou in being an unapologetic defender of football, almost in the missionary way with which he carries responsibility. It’s a mentality that sparked his post-derby rant “Let’s talk about the spectacle” and has been cemented at NSWIS working with elite athletes from Australian Olympic gold medal sports such as basketball, water polo and hockey.

“If you live in the football world and talk to people in the football world, just qualifying for the World Cup was an achievement,” he says. “But for them it was always about winning medals and podiums and that kind of language. It really struck me that we don’t have that vocabulary in football and we never have and the 10 years I spent at the Institute of Sport were really great for that side of the psyche.”