Socceroos captain Mat Ryan, dropped at FC Copenhagen, speaks out as Qatar 2022 World Cup looms
Socceroos captain Mat Ryan opens up to ADAM PEACOCK after being drawn into a frosty relationship with a rival goalkeeper and getting benched as the World Cup nears.
Football
Don't miss out on the headlines from Football. Followed categories will be added to My News.
Maty Ryan has reason to let loose. Get angry. Unleash frustration. Break stuff.
With a World Cup a little over a month away, Ryan’s playing time at new club FC Copenhagen is less certain than a day at the beach in La Nina.
His teammate, young Polish keeper Kamil Grabara, has got his spot for big games. Hasn’t been nice about it, either.
In July, Grabara had his face smashed after a collision with an opposition player’s head. Broken jaw, cheekbone and eye socket.
Copenhagen went to market and found Ryan, who got to work and played 10 tidy games. Grabara returned to full fitness then publicly demanded his spot back.
“I don‘t see any competition for the goalkeeper position,” Grabara told Danish publication Tipsbladet a fortnight ago.
“I have every reason to believe that I am the first goalkeeper at FC Copenhagen.”
The words worked. Ryan was dropped. Grabara was reinstated. Between the two, winter has set in.
“He’s made it pretty clear he’s not making much of an effort with me, so I’m not making much of an effort in return,” Ryan tells CODE Sports.
For Ryan, appearances at a third World Cup at stake, it’s a test. A massive test. Graham Arnold, the Socceroos coach, has implored his candidates to be in the best shape of their lives.
“Before arriving in Copenhagen, [it was] like I’d seen it all before but this is a completely new experience,” Ryan says.
“But it’s life. It happens.”
*****
Ryan imagined Copenhagen would be a perfect fit and he’s taken to life in the picturesque southern hub of Scandinavia.
More than half of Copenhagers ride to work. Ryan is one of them, cycling through the breeze to training each day.
And he’s quickly grown fond of the big club that represents the city, FC Copenhagen, and the people that fill it. Well, apart from Grabara.
Ryan, ever the professional, is at pains to point out the two don’t hate each other. Nothing sinister, nor is behaviour detrimental in any way.
Still, the temperature of the relationship leans toward snow and ice, rather than sun and nice.
Goalkeepers’ existence is unique in that they train separately from the rest of the team in all sessions, for most of the time. With it comes a professional peace and understanding.
“In all my experiences in dealing with other ‘keepers, this is as frosty as it’s been, but in saying that there’s nothing cringe-worthy,” Ryan says.
“We steer clear of each other but say hello, have a conversation or two on the training pitch and compliment each other when someone makes a good save. But it doesn’t really extend much from there.”
Not normal, but no dramas, Ryan reiterates.
The predicament Ryan finds himself in is not foreign to football, a team sport full of individuals and cutthroat to its core.
Ryan left Australia in 2013 as a quiet, competitive 21-year-old kid from western Sydney and immediately became a hero in Belgium with Club Brugge.
He was sold for $10 million to Valencia. It didn’t work out in Spain, so he lobbed at Brighton, freshly promoted to the Premier League in 2017, and Ryan played more than 100 games over three seasons. Going beautifully, the ride in the south of England ground to a sudden halt in December 2020.
Brighton’s then-manager Graham Potter called him into his office after a bad loss at Leicester. Ryan expected to be dropped. Instead, he was cancelled.
Potter started the conversation by thanking Ryan for his time. Dumbfounded, Ryan stopped him mid-sentence to ask, ‘What?’
“I think it’s best for you and the club if you find a good offer in January,” Potter continued.
Ryan walked out the door to Arsenal and knuckled down at the London giants, rewarded with a few opportunities. He went searching for more in the Basque sunshine at Real Sociedad and again played well, yet through circumstance, found first-team chances fleeting.
The next move, in the European summer just past, had to provide a chance to be first choice.
PSV Eindhoven were very interested in June. Ryan had the Peru playoff with the Socceroos to deal with but once that was done, PSV had already moved to another option.
Copenhagen popped up, with their No.1 from a successful previous season, Grabara, out for an extended period with his busted face.
“(Copenhagen) made it clear to me they had a keeper in Grabara they really liked,” Ryan says. “But I was told he’d be out until at least January.”
Always keen to back himself, Ryan did just that. He started well and was a big reason why the Danes got past Turkish side Trabzonspor in a Champions League qualifier for the lucrative group stage. With five clean sheets in 10 games, he felt his form was career-best in a team struggling to recapture the previous campaign’s lustre.
But all along, Ryan sensed Grabara’s shadow looming large.
“As soon as I arrived, I saw (Grabara) was back training with the goalkeeper coach and I could tell he was going to be back sooner than January.”
Manager Jess Thorup was sacked, with his assistant Jacob Neestrup elevated.
And when a fit-again Grabara aired his grievances with Tipsbladet in early October, Ryan’s sixth sense was proven correct and he was dropped.
All Ryan can do is do what he’s always done. Not complain and work himself to the bone.
“In a perfect world, I’d love to be the starting ’keeper at a club, but life doesn’t always work out the way you want it to,” he says.
“Worrying about things, you’re wasting time.”
And early Thursday morning, Australian time, there was crystal clear evidence of truth in his claim. Ryan got a rare start in the Danish Cup and backed up a promise to himself, being the difference maker, coming up with the decisive save in a penalty shootout and sparing FC Copenhagen’s blushes against second division side Hobro.
Neestrup has tried to ease tension by regularly stating the team has two No.1 keepers, both as valuable to the club as each other. He’s right, going on Ryan’s performance in the Cup.
It’s expected that Grabara will get his spot back for the forthcoming league games and Champions League next week. Ryan shrugs at the thought. He’ll just keep applying pressure with actions, not words.
“There’s a lot of things we are left to work out in life, but the key is to make the most of every situation and be ready.”
*****
Challenges have been thrown Maty Ryan’s way ever since he swapped home in western Sydney to drive an hour north for a professional opportunity with Central Coast.
Quiet, humble, but with an inner volcano of competitiveness.
“There’s no better feeling than being on the pitch and contributing to a success. That’s what I crave.”
By 21, Ryan was Australia’s No.1 goalkeeper and lined up at the 2014 World Cup, where opposition strikers read like a who’s who at the time: Robin van Persie, Arjen Robben (Netherlands), Alexis Sanchez (Chile), plus David Villa and Fernando Torres (Spain).
Ryan looks back knowing it all went a bit quick, as a young Socceroos side lost all three games.
“In hindsight, I went in with the wrong mindset, by doing something different to what I had done to get myself into that scenario,” he says.
“I was thinking I had to become a superhero to stop those players. It was a false sense of immortality they have and I was caught up in that with the lack of experience I had. Should have just stuck to my foundations.
“If I approached those games with more self-belief and confidence, performances would have matched what I wanted to do. Lesson learnt.”
Wiser, older, more experienced, Ryan fears no opponent, which is handy given Kylian Mbappe and recently crowned Ballon d’Or winner Karim Benzema await in Qatar.
“Now I’ve got confidence in myself, even when not playing regularly, I can deliver when needed,” Ryan says.
“I’ve found it’s better to lose yourself in the competitiveness of the battle and almost not give the opposition team and players an identity of being great or not.
“This helps a lot with treating everyone with the right amount of respect and helps us play to our potential.”
*****
If there was a streak of entitlement about Ryan, Socceroos fans would have been well aware of it four months ago.
The Peru game, won with the Peru penalty shootout plan: Mat Ryan off, Andrew Redmayne on.
“I had no idea whatsoever and preferred it that way to be honest,” Ryan admits about the moment he was subbed. “It could have easily been a distraction if I knew.”
The plan was concocted by Socceroos goalkeeper coach John Crawley, who has known both Ryan and Redmayne since they were 14. It was ratified by head coach Graham Arnold, who made the final, ballsy call in the 119th minute.
Had it backfired, bile would still be flowing Arnold’s way.
Ryan, who won a penalty shootout for the Socceroos at the 2019 Asian Cup, recalls the key moment clearly.
“I remember the game stopping for a sub and chatting to the defenders in front of me, then someone yelled my name. And there’s Redders and Arnie waving me over,” Ryan recalls.
“I was a bit shocked. Went to grab my bottle, turned again as if to say are you sure?!”
Very sure. Ryan ran off without a hint of dissent and slapped hands with Redmayne, adding “good luck”, with thoughts kept inside.
“It was a bit of a kick in the guts to not have that opportunity, the Schwarzer opportunity,” Ryan says.
“But the culture we set is no one is bigger than the team.
“I have to respect Arnie and what he’s done for my career and understand the physiological impact on the Peruvians, putting on this big lurch of a keeper.”
Once Redmayne, Ryan and the rest of the Socceroos finished celebrating, all minds switched to November.
Ryan found Copenhagen, played some games, got verbally knifed by Grabara and, rightly or wrongly, suddenly finds himself battling for minutes as his third World Cup approaches.
The Socceroos have depth for the ‘keeper position. Mitch Langerak is performing well for the fifth year in a row in Japan. Redmayne started recently against New Zealand when Ryan was rested.
Presuming all three ’keepers make it, there will be competitiveness between them in Qatar, yet far, far removed from the frost of Copenhagen.
“It’s all always been very well managed with the Socceroos,” Ryan says.
“Always worked well with the other keepers, not one moment I can think of it’s been otherwise.
“The team always comes first. We really have that camaraderie, no big egos.”
Ryan knows he doesn’t have a mortgage on a starting spot in Qatar, a position he’s kept despite sparse playing time at club level in the past two years.
“My focus is staying sharp for the World Cup. Unfortunately it’s been a scenario I’m used to in recent times, but I’ve got confidence that when not playing regularly, I’ve still played at a high level for the national team.”
*****
As leaves tumble and winter nears, Ryan rides through the brisk streets of Copenhagen each day, parks his bicycle and shunts his mind to a place where he can get the best out of every nanosecond on the training pitch.
“I try to manipulate each session into a match type scenario,” Ryan says.
“Putting in as hard as I’ve been anywhere. The mentality is you train to win. Hurts just as much conceding a goal in training as a match situation.”
It’s not happening in games and the cool relationship with Grabara is not a factor.
“I take peace in the fact I can look myself in the mirror and have no regrets, knowing I give everything to contribute the best I can to the teams I’m representing,” he says, squarely focused on himself.
“Whatever will be, will be.”
Originally published as Socceroos captain Mat Ryan, dropped at FC Copenhagen, speaks out as Qatar 2022 World Cup looms
Hapless Matildas pay dearly for defensive howlers
The Matildas are staring at a heavy loss against Japan after conceding twice in a horror first-half performance. FOLLOW LIVE
Shock change to Matildas, Socceroos kits
A move to reinterpret the long tradition of national teams wearing green and gold uniforms has landed with two bold new kits for the Matildas and Socceroos.