Brosque hatches plot to please Pim and Sky Blues
Sydney Morning Herald
Saturday December 26, 2009
ALEX BROSQUE has a plan to help Sydney FC win the A-League title and make it into Pim Verbeek's Socceroos squad for the World Cup: hold out for the end of the season and then take up a foreign loan option in March.Most local players with World Cup aspirations are eager to move when the global market opens up in January but the in-form striker says he's working on a club-sanctioned compromise that would allow him to play the finals before signing on for a three-month stint abroad.While the transfer window in the major European leagues closes at the end of January, certain windows in non-elite leagues and in other parts of the world will remain open.The English Championship has a loan window that remains open until March 23, and pre-season windows remain open in Norway, Sweden and the US. However, Brosque's most likely option is Asia, where the end of the A-League coincides with the start of many top Asian leagues.The idea was briefly flagged by Sydney FC vice chairman Scott Barlow during the week as an alternative to letting Brosque and Simon Colosimo leave in January."I understand why the club has taken that stance and they're my exact thoughts as well," Brosque told the Herald yesterday. "There's a lot of different clubs who you can go on loan to after the A-League season has finished and there's no guarantee that if I went on loan in January that I'd be able to pick wherever I wanted to go."What would be the point of me going on loan then sitting on the bench somewhere when I could be playing in a finals series here before going overseas in the final months before the World Cup?"Brosque has spoken to Verbeek and while the two may have differing views, the striker is hoping to string together a sparkling six months that will elevate him into the final 23-man squad."Pim has always said that because our competition finishes in March, you're not playing football for a few months and that's not ideal," Brosque said. "But I think that if you're in line for a call-up and you're in the finals, you must be playing well ... and the club said they'd help me in every way possible to loan out the boys in our squad that have a chance of making it."
© 2009 Sydney Morning Herald