I could not help but smile when Frank Farina jumped on his keyboard and became a warrior last night.
Fed up with the abuse he is receiving on social media, the under siege coach of Sydney FC lamented on the termites “who mostly hide behind fake names or no name – who hurl mistruths, abuse and personal insults.”
The problem for Frank and any other non-performing football coach out there, I am looking at you John Aloisi, is that the abuse will continue. This is how it works. Lose more games, expect more abuse. Win some games, expect abuse but less of it.
The abuse and criticism Frank Farina cops is but a pimple on a baby’s bum compared to the pus filled football Arsene Wenger receives. I wonder how Frank would cope if an uber-celebrity fan like Piers Morgan was concertedly trolling him. Now that Arsenal is top of the table and winning matches, Piers has put the dummy back in. Of course he is claiming that it’s Arsene that has changed, not him.
He might come across as a twat, but he’s still a fan, right or wrong, with an opinion. The big difference is that Piers Morgan has over 3.7 million twitter followers. With a social media swing there is always a roundabout and good old Piers ends up getting trolled to an eye-watering extent.
I had a cursory look at the #FarinaOut hashtag on Twitter and the most prominent advocates were not hiding behind false names. They just look like fed up passionate Sydney FC fans expressing an opinion.
“A real football fan follows their team through thick and thin. A real football fan, when faced with 1 win & 3 losses for the start of the season, is asking what they can do to help get the team on track. A real football fan doesn’t write an expletive laden message about not going to the game on the weekend, but realises this is the time more than ever that they’re needed at home against their biggest traditional rival.” Frank writes.
The problem for Frank is that a lot of the current criticism is actually emanating from the real fans of Sydney FC. The fans care about this delusional biggest non-biggest club so much they have taken to social media to vent their frustration, despair, disappointment.
They are pissed off.
They expect more, they expect better and now they are suffering as they look out west to their new red and black noisy neighbours.
The problem for Frank is that the real fans will be at the game. They are also the ones that make the sacrifice to travel away. They will still be supporting the club after he is long gone, be it next week or next year. It is the not-so-real fans Frank has to convince to turn up to the game against Victory and help pay Del Piero’s mega-wage bill; it is the tens of thousands enigmatic not-so-real fans the biggest non-biggest club supposedly have.
A relatively small blowtorch has been applied to Frank Farina. He should consider himself lucky that he is coaching in a country where protests come in 140 characters on Twitter, not in 140 characters turning up to training to protest and where the local football press goes after him like a poodle rather than alike a rottweiler.
On November 15, Melbourne Heart host Sydney FC.
With Heart coach, John Aloisi, also in the dog house with the club’s fans, I would not envy being in the shoes of the losing coach after this match.
Maybe Frank will find the time to write the book on “Social Media Etiquette for Football Fans” after the match.
Frank and the internet have been around long enough. He should know better. Clearly feeling the pressure