DVD Review: Tom Meets Zizou

See if you can guess the country of origin, the country of destination and the name of the player in the following scenario:

A young footballer grows up in a ‘blue blood’ football nation where the game is a national obsession and where success for the national team, despite the fact it has not won any major trophies for a while, is not so much expected as demanded. By the time he has reached the age of twenty, he is being touted as the hungry nation’s next big hope, having progressed to its top tier of domestic football and taken the competition by storm. A call-up to the full national team in the near future seems a formality. The youngster is feted by the nation’s tabloid print media and TV sports and chat shows.

But while all seems sunshine and optimism, there are a few storm clouds on the player’s horizon. He candidly admits to being interested in such things as literature, philosophy and classical music. This, when allied to the fact that on the field he exhibits a style of play quite unlike most of his countrymen, marks him as being “different” to other footballers.

Then injury temporarily halts his rise and a coaching change at his club brings in a stern, disciplinarian gaffer who does not warm to “different” personalities. The player spends more time on the bench than on the field and becomes
frustrated. His momentum is halted and soon the nation is wondering “what’s happening with so-and-so?” The
coach of the country’s under-age squad sees things differently to the player's club coach and selects his player for an international that he totally dominates to confirm that his talent still burns brightly. But he can get no change from his club coach. His career stalls.

The player, in desperation, eventually transfers to a second tier club and once again displays his prodigious talent, playing a key role in getting the club promoted to the top tier. Once more his star is on the rise. By this stage, however, the player is in his mid-twenties and his off-field interests are blossoming. He has a latent yearning to travel and experience life in another country and he is starting to question whether football should be the all-consuming beast in his life that being a professional footballer in a win-at-all-costs league demands it must be. He is tiring of living in a goldfish bowl in which his every move is analysed and sceptical about the instability caused by
a football culture in which the relentless pressure to win brings about a coaching change every six months, requiring him to prove himself again and again.

In short, he is no longer sure that he wants the life of a professional footballer in his country. Another change of club is followed by a full-blown depression and he feels he cannot continue.

Into this void steps a man he has never met – a football coach from a developing football nation on the other side of the world who is rebuilding his own squad and sees the footballer as someone who can provide the creative spark that his squad needs. He offers the player the opportunity to join his team. Despite the prospect of a sharp drop in
earnings, the opportunity to have a fresh start and to realise his ambition to travel proves too much to resist. The player accepts the offer and boards a plane to arrive in a country that knows nothing about his past and in which he can walk the streets largely unrecognised. He enjoys his football again, plays superbly, and helps the team to win its first-ever championship in the new nation’s top tier.

Have you worked it out yet? Yes, the new nation is Australia - that was probably predictable enough, given the subject matter of the blog site you are visiting. And from that you can tell that one thing is for sure – the player does not hail from England because, if he had, there is no way he could have arrived on our shores unheralded and at a price the A-League could afford. No, the player’s country of origin is Germany – and his name is Thomas Broich. The club he came to play for is, of course, Brisbane Roar and his new coach is Ange Postecoglou.

All of the above is nothing more than a quick and wholly inadequate summary of what can be learned from the documentary “Tom Meets Zizou”, which has recently been released on DVD. The title is a reference to the adolescent Broich’s email address, which in turn is a reference to his desire to one day meet Zinedine Zidane, the footballer he
idolised because he felt that watching Zidane play football was like watching an artist at work – a metaphor for how Broich himself saw and appreciated the game he loved. Not a stereotypically German point of view, you might say.

Director Aljoscha Pause has clearly had extensive access to Broich for almost the last decade of his life – from that point in time when Broich first emerged on the German sporting landscape as their ‘next big thing’ right up until the A-League Grand Final in March 2011. And Pause has used that access well.

The match footage used in the documentary spans Broich’s career to date – from his emergence in the German second division, through stints with Borussia Monchengladbach in the Bundesliga, FC Cologne, FC Nuremberg, and then Brisbane Roar. There is also footage of Broich playing for his national age teams. And let me tell you that the footage leaves you in no doubt as to the player’s immense natural ability on the football field. It suffices to say that, Postecoglou aside, we in Australia had no appreciation whatsoever of just how good a player was about to grace the A-League in 2011. That tells you more about Australia than it does about Germany.

But, as fascinating and revealing as the football footage is, the documentary’s real appeal, and what sets it apart from many others and recommends it to an audience broader that those who simply want a football highlights package, is how it tracks the emergence of a young man with a mind and personality that simply could not fit within the sometimes stifling confines of the profession that he chose to pursue. It shows how, when confronted with the
difficulty of assimilating someone who is ‘different’, the culture of modern football within Germany (and, one suspects, most other major European football powers) tends to either grind him down or squeeze him out. Had it not been for Postecoglou’s willingness to drive for a round trip of twenty hours just for the opportunity to meet with
Broich for one hour over a coffee in an attempt to lure him to Brisbane, it probably would have ground him down.

Insights into how this sad situation can come about are gleaned from interviews with Broich himself, his coaches (including those with whom he fell out of favour - Dick Advocaat and Christoph Daum), and sundry
others outside of football including his former girlfriend, university mates and parents. Through the interviews with
Broich himself, spanning the decade, we can track his journey from aspiring professional footballer with dreams of stardom, to a somewhat reluctant, bemused and uncertain celebrity, to a rebellious and stubbornly non-conformist footballer,to party animal, to confused and angry young man, to a lost, depressed and presumably “at risk” soul and, eventually, to an older and wiser character capable of looking back at his former self and admitting to being vain,
egotistical and “unstable”. What we get is a startlingly original and honest insight into a young man on a journey of
self discovery that seems yet to be completed.

Oh, and if you are at all curious as to how Brisbane and surrounding areas such as the Gold Coast scrub up on film in which the cinematography is of a high quality, and how our football is portrayed to the predominantly German audience that can be expected to see this documentary, then this is for you! I got the strong impression that what we see of Broich’s new surroundings, and the football that is played here, will look extremely enticing back home. Shots of Broich and a German friend enjoying time out in mid-summer in southeast Queensland (oddly enough, at a time when much of the state was under water) can be expected to do more for tourism among Germans than any marketing campaign could dream of doing. And the highlights we see of the A-League and of the Grand Final (which Broich describes as “the essence of football”) will do no harm whatsoever in terms of promoting Australian football to any further want-away German footballers.

“Tom Meets Zizou” is well worth your investment. At 135 minutes it is quite long, but it scarcely misses a beat. It is compelling and fascinating stuff.

As Molly Meldrum once said (just about every week)....”Do
yourself a favour”!