There have been many to choose other nations over Australia, but for Socceroos fans this one hurts. One of the country’s best young players formally changed his footballing allegiance to Croatia at the weekend, reopening the debate about how the Socceroos can keep hold of the country’s brightest talents.
Adrian Segečić, a talented attacking midfielder with an eye for goal, has impressed in England for Championship side Portsmouth this season, after winning the A-League Men’s golden boot last year. He had played for junior Australian national teams at under-17, under-20 and under-23 levels, and had been called up to Socceroos camp by Tony Popovic but was yet to make his full international debut.
“It wasn’t easy to make this decision because I grew up in Australia, which I represented at youth levels, so I would like to express my gratitude to the coaches and teammates with whom I shared the dressing room,” Segečić said on the Croatian Football Federation website. “However, my family is from Croatia and I feel a connection to the Croatian people. I felt the desire to represent Croatia as my homeland.”
The 21-year-old was born in Sydney, and was a likely inclusion in the Socceroos’ World Cup squad for this year’s tournament in North America. But he is a long shot to break into a Croatia squad captained by Luka Modrić, given he is younger than every midfielder and attacker in the current team.
His focus, instead, appears to be the European Under-21 Championships next year in Serbia and Albania, where one of his coaches will be former Portsmouth and Croatia player Niko Kranjčar. “I thank the Croatian Football Federation for their dedication during this process – I clearly felt the desire from people in the federation for me to become part of the Croatian football family,” Segečić said.
There have been many who could have played for the Socceroos but didn’t. Italian Christian Vieri spent many of his school years in Sydney, even if his talent and return to Italy as a teenager meant the green and gold was never a realistic possibility, despite an offer from former Socceroos coach Eddie Thomson in the mid-1990s. Former Greece international Georgios Samaras also qualified for the Socceroos thanks to his Melbourne-born father, but again, his early European success precluded an Australian call-up.
Others have been ones who got away. Craig Johnston never played for Australia despite his success at Liverpool in the 1980s, largely due to the onerous travel required. At around the same time, Melbourne-born defender Tony Dorigo was also discouraged by his club manager for the same reason, and he went on to play 15 times for England – a country to which he migrated without heritage. “What I say to my English friends today is that ‘you lot were so bad you needed an Aussie to come and play for you!’,” he told FourFourTwo in 2011.
But these absences were nothing compared to the great Croatian exodus. Alongside full-back Anthony Šerić and central defender Josip Šimunić, goalkeeper Joey Didulica was one of a group of Croatian-Australians to look beyond the Socceroos around the turn of the millennium. All three were in the Croatia squad for the famous night in Stuttgart in 2006 when the Socceroos qualified for the World Cup round of 16 at their opponents’ expense.
Now 48 and living back in Geelong where he runs the Western Heights College football program, Didulica said he appreciates the factors in Segečić’s decision, especially with next year’s Uefa under-21 tournament acting as one of football’s major shop windows.
“The beauty is the Croatian delegation and coaches, they’re connected all around Europe, from Modrić to wherever, so if you’re a good player, he’ll call Real Madrid, and say ‘I’ve got a good one for you, Segečić is his name’ and bam, they place you there,” he said.
The basic uplift in a player’s value due to being capped for Croatia – currently ranked 11 in the world – compared to Australia might also be tenfold, Didulica estimated. “It’s become a business, it’s become not about loyalty or what you are, it’s about where can I get the best opportunity, unfortunately.”
The former Ajax goalkeeper himself was partly drawn to Croatia given the state of Australian football at the time – with no A-League and limited competition in Oceania, the long travel on international trips, as well as the calibre of Australian goalkeeping stock at the time, which included Mark Bosnich, Mark Schwarzer and Zeljko Kalac.
In this way, Didulica understands the right of players to make the decision that is best for them, and he warned Popovic should not be ignorant of reality. The Socceroos coach has said he doesn’t want to be “selling the shirt”, even as others are prepared to make promises for potential defectors. “We don’t do that in Australia, we’re too ‘correct’, if that makes sense. We’re too nice.”
Didulica also believes the nature of football’s allegiance rules don’t properly reflect people like him, who might have a deep connection to more than one country. His brother John has led the Australian players union, Professional Footballers Australia, and Didulica himself describes Geelong as “the best place in the world”.
“We all did grow up playing for Croatian clubs, we all spoke Croatian in the home, we went to Croatian school, Croatian dances. We grew up in the era where there was the war in Croatia, so we’re going to demonstrations, so our culture was Croatian, living in Australia.”
“I felt like I was Croatian when it came to football, but when I was there [with the national team]I felt like I wasn’t actually like them. And that’s where I started reflecting and thinking of where I actually sit on the spectrum.
“I was a little bit different, so I think I sit in the middle somewhere. I’m an Australian Croatian.”
In an ever-shrinking world, and with Socceroos prospects Cristian Volpato and Alex Robertson still to decide on their footballing allegiance, eligibility offers a dilemma that won’t soon go away. Didulica’s son Luka is a promising teenage defender who moved to Japan’s Urawa Red Diamonds in the off-season, and has Dutch, Croatian and Australian passports. Of his son’s intentions, Didulica said simply: “He’s Australian at the moment.”
