Quiet Mooy ready to lead from the front

The Asian Game’s coverage of the FIFA World Cup Qatar 2022 is proudly sponsored by SMC.

As we continue our build up to the FIFA World Cup Qatar 2022, The Asian Game will highlight the Stars to Watch from each of the six AFC nations competing at this year’s tournament. We start with Australian midfielder Aaron Mooy.

Socceroos boss Graham Arnold must have breathed a massive sigh of relief when he received the news that his star midfielder, Aaron Mooy, had signed for reigning Scottish champions Celtic.

That he was working with Arnold’s predecessor – well, sort of, if you forget about the brief tenure of Bert van Marwijk, and really there is nothing memorable about the Dutchman’s time in charge of the Socceroos – in Ange Postecoglou, a manager who knows Mooy, both his game and his personality, inside out would’ve been the icing on the cake.

Mooy’s club future had been the subject of much speculation in Australia, especially in the wake of Australia’s thrilling, but unexpected, World Cup playoff victory against Peru. Without football for almost four months ahead of that do-or-die week in Doha, Mooy shone bright in Australia’s midfield, highlighting his importance to the Socceroos’ set up.

But it was abundantly clear, despite his herculean efforts against the UAE and Peru, that he needed to orchestrate a way out of his Shanghai Port contract. He needed to be playing football.

While the Chinese Super League has since resumed in a format that closely resembles something approaching normality, albeit one still disrupted by COVID, given the exodus of talent from the league, playing there wasn’t the same proposition it was a few years ago when he signed.

A return to the A-League Men’s was floated, but with the league not resuming until October, he’d be better off playing in China than running laps in Australia. A return to Huddersfield was also mooted, but the option of Celtic was like Nirvana.

A Championship-winning club playing UEFA Champions League football with a manager he knows intimately. It ticked all the boxes, even if some Celtic fans were somewhat underwhelmed by his arrival at Lennoxtown.

You’d think after the previous 12 months they would have learned to trust their manager, because, as Postecoglou did last season, they’re being made to eat their words again.

While he may be being restricted to a role off the bench at the moment, when the fixture congestion kicks in with Champions League commitments, there is no doubt more opportunities will present to get himself in the starting eleven.

Particularly if he continues to demonstrate the same form he has through the first few games of the season, with his vision and range of passing as good as they’ve ever been throughout his career.

‘Packing Points’ are a recent development in statistical analysis, developed by former Bundesliga defensive midfielders Stefan Reinartz and Jens Hegeler, and essentially measures how effective a player is at making passes that bypass opposition players, thus measuring how effective players and teams are at progressing the ball forward.

In Celtic’s recent 9-0 demolition of Dundee United, in which Mooy came off the bench for the final 28 minutes, he amassed a Packing Points tally of 92, an incredible number in such a short space of time.

For context, the next best were Reo Hatate (71), Cameron Carter-Vickers (66), Callum McGregor (56) and Liel Abada (50).

He also registered four secondary assists, none better than his pass to Daizen Maeda that took out at least six Dundee United players – thus earning a stack of ‘Packing Points’ – and allowed Maeda to lay the ball on a platter for Abada to complete his hattrick.

One can imagine Arnold watching on, sitting on his comfy sofa, perhaps with a drink in hand, with a huge smile on his face. It was a match that showcased everything Mooy offers and just why he remains such a critical element of the Socceroos squad.

Not that this form would be unfamiliar to Arnold, but you rather got the sense he knew this was coming as soon as he signed on the dotted line.

“We all know that Ange will get the best out of Aaron, and get him fit and ready,” Arnold told Australian media back in July after Mooy’s Celtic unveiling.

“It’s just great that he’s going to a club where they’re playing in the Champions League, and he’s going to get plenty of match minutes up there. Obviously they’re a good team, Celtic, and he’ll have his work cut out to get him in the starting XI, of course.

“Instead of a new player walking into a new club with a new coach who doesn’t really know his mindset and his character and qualities that well – it can take time for that new coach to get to know him. But he’s walking in on the other side of it, where the coach is very familiar with him, knows exactly what he’s getting.

“But the fact that he’s going to be playing a lot of football before the World Cup is a relief for myself and, no doubt, all the Socceroo fans back here in Australia to know that Aaron’s got his club future sorted out.”

“With better fitness, with more match rhythm, and under Ange, I expect that when he walks into Qatar he’ll be the leader that we need on the field.”

It may be the Mooy Australia needs in Qatar, and now likely the one it will get, but it’s one they were at risk of not having.

RISK…AND NO REWARD

After five seasons fluctuating between the English Premier League and the Championship, Aaron Mooy’s surprise move to Chinese Super League heavyweights Shanghai Port always had an element of risk about it.

Joining a side that boasted stars like Oscar and Hulk, it represented not only a chance to fill his pockets – reportedly to the tune of $100,000-per-week –  but also play a leading role for a team that had ambitions of conquering Asia and adding to it’s 2018 Chinese Super League success.

While the CSL hype was starting to wane, it was still a league full of quality internationals and Mooy only added to that.

In many ways it made sense and could be justified given Shanghai Port’s presence and status within Asian football; they had made the knockout rounds of the AFC Champions League for each of the previous four years, including the semi-final in 2017 where they fell narrowly to eventual champions Urawa Reds.

They were an emerging power club that looked set for a sustained period of success, both domestically and continentally.

“I decided to leave England because I wanted to try something new,” Mooy told the Sydney Morning Herald in late 2020.

“I am 30 years old and you don’t get to play football forever. I feel lucky to be given this opportunity by Shanghai as it is a big club in Asia.

“The football is different to England but it is a very high level in China. The Chinese league is growing all the time, the owners of the teams invest a lot of care, they want to win and this makes the league very competitive.”

But no sooner had he arrived in Shanghai that things took a turn for the worse. Not just for Mooy, but the entire world; COVID-19 struck.

With China being ground zero for the outbreak, harsh and immediate restrictions were put in place and sport, or any outdoor activities soon ceased to exist.

In the previous five seasons in England with Huddersfield and Brighton & Hove Albion, Mooy had played a total of 145 league games at an average of 29 games per season.

In two seasons with Shanghai he played a total of 23 games. His career all but ground to a halt as he went months on end without any competitive football as the world came to grips with how to deal with a life impacted by COVID-19.

As Australia prepared for sudden-death matches against the UAE and then Peru in June of this year, the physical state of Mooy commanded plenty of discussion and column inches.

Here was one of Australia’s most important players, one that Graham Arnold had built his team around, that had barely played for the best part of five months. Holed up in Scotland, where his wife continued to live while he was in China, Mooy refused Shanghai Port’s calls to return to the club fearing he would get caught in a quarantine quagmire from which he couldn’t escape.

Instead he worked with Australia’s fitness guru Andrew Clark to maintain his fitness.

But general fitness is one thing, match fitness and sharpness is another. You can only get that from playing and playing regularly.

Mooy’s performances in those matches against the UAE and Peru were heroic.

On the back of barely any football, Mooy lasted not only the full 90 minutes against the Emirates, but the full 120 minutes against Peru – and still stepped up in the shootout that sent Australia to a fifth consecutive FIFA World Cup.

“What that kid did is just amazing, his performance in Qatar, for a guy that hadn’t played for two months,” Arnold said in the aftermath. 

“He worked individually to keep fit with Andrew Clark over in Scotland.

“The fact he could go into a friendly game, play 45 minutes, then a massive qualifier against the UAE, play 90 and then play 120 and step up for the penalty shootout just shows where he was at mentally, and how driven he was for us to qualify.”

It defied all logic, but as Arnold said it spoke to how driven Mooy was to succeed.

Looks can be deceiving, because to see Aaron Mooy in a public setting, one wouldn’t think he is an elite professional footballer. Even on the football field his movement can look slow and laborious, but that masks the talent held within his boots.

Of course he is in great physical shape, but Aaron Mooy the public figure is exceedingly reserved. He rarely does media and when he does he is extremely quietly spoken and rarely mumbles more than a few words.

He is not the highly media trained football star oozing charisma and personality we are used to seeing churned out by the modern football machine.

But to reach that conclusion would be a miscalculation, because beneath the public persona is a footballer that is deeply determined and has an inner fire to succeed that runs deep.

Mooy is the archetypal player who does their talking on the pitch, and only once he steps over that white line is he truly able to express himself.

With his club career back on track and the World Cup only two months away you get the sense Mooy is ready to do some talking.

PHOTO: twitter/Socceroos

Listen to Episode 91 of The Asian Game Podcast