Australia, it seems, can’t quite let go of Tim Cahill. The grand old man of the Socceroos will be 39 at the end of the year. The last time he started a game of any description was in November. Since then he’s made 13 appearances off the bench for Melbourne City, Millwall and Australia: 134 minutes of football in a little over eight months.
And yet, you won’t have to look that far to find voices back home suggesting that he should start their second World Cup game against Denmark on Wednesday. This is, to a point, the hold Cahill still has over Australian football, the eternal hope that Timmy could just save them when they need it most.
You can’t blame them, for he has done it enough times before. Should Cahill get on the pitch and score, he’ll become just the fifth man in history to find the net at four different World Cups. The others are Uwe Seeler, Miroslav Klose, Cristiano Ronaldo and Pele. Decent company.
Logically, Cahill doesn’t deserve a place in the Australian squad, never mind the team. He didn’t score a single domestic goal in the 2017/18 season, although he was a little unlucky to rejoin Millwall when he did: they were chasing the play-offs, and playing brilliantly while doing so. Manager Neil Harris simply couldn’t justify giving him much playing time.
But still, he’s not the force of old. So why do Australia still believe he can show up for them? Basically, because he always has: you can bet that if they hadn’t taken him, and they found themselves needing a goal with 20 minutes to go, there would be a sense of dread akin to someone slowly realising they’ve left their keys on the bus.
Socceroos coach Bert van Marwijk called Cahill a “special case” when he named his squad, and his predecessor Ange Postecoglou recently described Cahill as his “break glass if needed” option. This week former Australian international Stan Laziridis argued that Cahill should even start, the logic being it’s better to “have a fresh Timmy for one hour that can go and win us a game rather than chase a game.”
Which is all fine in theory, but it’s based on the idea that Cahill is still capable of scoring goals at international level. And simply, he’s been semi-active for so long that nobody actually knows whether he is anymore. Really all Australia have are memories of what Cahill was once capable of, rather than what they know him to be capable of now.
These days, Cahill performs the role of dressing room sage, the wise head who has seen it all and done most of it too, someone youngsters come to for advice. He advised 19-year-old striker Daniel Arzani against singing ‘Man’s Not Hot’ for his initiation ceremony (“Don’t make a fool of yourself,” he said), opting for the more manageable ‘Wonderwall’ instead. He’s been an older brother figure for James Meredith, his teammate at Millwall.
But Cahill didn’t travel to Russia to be a glorified counsellor. Reports indicate that he was furious at being left out entirely against France, and if things don’t start well in what is probably a must-win game against Denmark, then Australians around the world will start getting twitchy.
Ahead of the game Van Marwijk was in classic form, making ‘saying absolutely nothing’ an artform. “You can ask me these questions 100 times…” he said in response to one fairly innocuous query. “I will not talk about changes,” was his response to another. “No,” he quipped, when one journalist politely enquired if he wouldn’t mind expanding on another pithy answer.
By that standard, his answer when asked if there’s a chance Cahill would play against Denmark was positively florid. “There is always a chance,” he said, before adding: “For all the players.”
But, there is good reason to suggest he might be included, because in big games it’s what Australia do. The last game he started was the intercontinental play-off to reach Russia. Before that, he scored twice in the Asian play-off against Syria to get them there. Australia can’t quite let go of Tim Cahill, and they’ve got a good reason for that.
