Tim Cahill

With the 2022 FIFA World Cup in full swing, we salute arguably the greatest Socceroo of all time. In this edited extract from his latest book, author Lucas Radbourne takes a look at the life and times of the legend Australian football may never be able to replace…

THE CAHILL FILE
BORN: December 6, 1979
PLACE OF BIRTH: Sydney, NSW
MAJOR TEAMS: Australia, Millwall, Everton, New York Red Bulls, Melbourne City
POSITION: Forward, winger, midfielder

He shot a quick left jab to the stem, a jolting right cross and another left then clutched both fists to his forehead. Chin locked to chest, he powered through the one-two-one before a swift duck and weave and a thumping right hook. The corner flag hit the deck harder than a heavyweight slams the canvas.
The immortal celebration’s apt for Australian football’s greatest fighter. At a quarter to five in the afternoon in Kaiserslautern a looping throw-in sends yellow and blue shirts scrambling, and in the midst of it all Tim Cahill floats like a butterfly and stings like a bee. His flawless (read: freakish) positional sense stems from the coolest head on the pitch. However, when he hit that winner against the Japanese and as he wagged his fingers at his teammates and the world’s cameras focused on his face, there’s a fraction of a second when Cahill had to fight back the tears. For the briefest moment his eyes squeezed shut and his mouth trembled as he realised the momentous nature of what he’d achieved: it’s a rare glimpse behind the bullish façade into the true heart of the Socceroos’ greatest player. By the time his Socceroos teammates piled around him he was already shouting and swearing – testosterone pumping out of every pore – as Australia lived to fight another day.

When Cahill knocked out the flag in the 2006 World Cup, Australian football found its talisman. He scored the Socceroos’ first and second World Cup goal on 12 June 2006, and after that the records kept tumbling: he eventually set nearly every Australian milestone and changed the sport forever. He was a legendary figure for English clubs Millwall and Everton, but from this moment until the day he retired he was the face of Australian football across the world. He’s Australia’s all-time leading male goalscorer.

He scored five World Cup goals across four World Cups, an Australian record. He was the first Australian man to score at an Asian Cup and also Australia’s highest goal scorer at that tournament. A Ballon d’Or and Puskás Award nominee, Cahill was named Oceania Footballer of the Year just months after his Socceroos debut and Professional Footballers Association (PFA) Player of the Year four years later in 2009, won the Asian Cup seven years after that and became Australia’s oldest ever goal scorer another two years later. His 108 Socceroos caps are a record for an outfielder, while his exactly 600 professional league matches and 150 league goals are the tidy bow on the gift that kept giving.

Timothy Filiga Cahill was born in Balmain, Sydney to a proud, sprawling Samoan family that would regularly return to the Polynesian archipelago to visit the remote village where his grandfather was chief. “We would wake up at five in the morning and go to get the hot bread and then go back home to eat it with butter, maybe with eggs if they were available,” he told the Daily Mail. “Then we went to the shower, which was the watering hole across the road. Life was very simple.” There are no less than nine family members who’ve played either league or union professionally. “Basically, if you give me a rugby ball I can juggle it,” he says.

In contrast to the Samoan heritage he has inked around his arm, his father, Tim Cahill senior, was an oil rigger and trawler from Dagenham. He travelled the world as a merchant seaman, occasionally training with South American clubs in the 1960s. He was infatuated with football, so when he suffered a work injury during Cahill’s youth he focused on training his three sons, taking them to local parks and forcing them to play without right boots to develop their left feet: training that would eventually create one of the World Cup’s greatest goals 30 years later. “As a boy, I used to see the lights flickering in the hallway in the early hours and know my dad was watching the football on TV,” Cahill told The Father Hood. “I’d sneak out of my bedroom and hide behind the settee to watch too. Dad would let me watch for a while; Serie A or Premier League highlights. Then he’d send me back to bed.”

Cahill attended four different schools and played for three different football clubs around the Sydney area before playing in the youth teams for National Soccer League (NSL) clubs Sydney Olympic and Sydney United between 1995 and 1997. The clubs were sceptical of Cahill’s ability: he was a short and slight child who was repeatedly told he could never amount to being a professional footballer. “I was told I was too small. I was told I wasn’t fast enough,” Cahill told The Sydney Morning Herald (SMH). “It was probably the best thing that ever happened to me, being told I would never be a professional football player.”

NATIONAL CAREER
Years	Appearances	Goals
2004–2018	108	50

While he now credits his doubters with entrenching his determination, Australia’s scepticism nearly cost the Socceroos’ Cahill altogether. Both he and his older brother Sean represented Samoa at youth level, and his younger brother Chris went on to captain the Samoan national team. The Samoan Football Federation invited 14-year-old Cahill to join Sean at a national U/20 training camp and was amazed at the boy’s ability. Five years younger than anyone else on the park, he played for Samoa’s U/20 side in two official FIFA matches against New Zealand and Vanuatu in 1994. For Cahill, the tournament was merely a chance to visit his sick grandmother on the Samoan federation’s expense. Unbeknown to him, it made him ineligible to play for Australia.

By 1997 at the age of 16, Cahill was adamant he could skip the NSL altogether and go directly to Europe. His father had an old contact at Millwall that would give him a trial, but his parents had to take out a $30,000 loan to send him to England on a family exchange program. His father’s unrequited football love encouraged him to take a huge risk on his second born but this also impacted the future careers of Cahill’s brothers, who had to begin working to finance the family’s debt. “I used to cry on the phone all the time,” Cahill told the SMH. “I was living in digs with a family I’d never met before – a kid on the other side of the world; lights off and you’re alone – that’s the reality.”

Cahill’s family’s belief paid off where Australia’s hadn’t, as he quickly earned a youth contract with Millwall and never looked back. The determination he’d fostered to survive abroad enabled him to survive the fans and dressing room at England’s toughest club. He excelled for the next seven seasons, but his familial ties kept him grounded. “I was signing my first contract at Millwall and I wanted to buy myself a nice new car,” he told The Father Hood. “You can’t live in a car,” his father responded. “After talking it over, instead I invested that signing-on fee with my family. We all saved up – my parents, my brother and myself. Together we bought our first home in Horningsea Park, in the outer west of Sydney.”

Cahill made his Millwall debut aged 18 in 1998 and was catapulted into their first team the next season for one of the proudest periods in Millwall’s history. They made the Football League Trophy Final in 1999, losing to Wigan Athletic, then went on to win the Second Division in 2000/01 with a club record of 93 points. Cahill then anchored Millwall’s midfield – scoring three goals, including the winner in the semi-final at Sunderland – as the Lions made the FA Cup final in 2004 against Manchester United at Wembley and qualified for the UEFA Cup.

At first glance Cahill was a solid all-rounder at The Den without technical excellence or physical superiority, yet beneath the surface was a ferocious and intelligent box-to-box midfielder with tactical nous and a work ethic to match. He had a unique array of what football coaches call “one-per centers” that enabled him to become a unique world-class footballer and a knack for reading attacking play and finding the perfect position in the goal mouth, which made him a surprisingly prolific goal scorer. However, his ultimate defiant characteristic, directed squarely at the naysayers who called him too small, was the greatest vertical leap the world has ever seen.

Cahill’s two English nicknames, ‘Tiny Tim’ and the ‘Blue Kangaroo’, tell the story. For his entire career he was the greatest header of the ball per inch in the world, scoring 31 of his 56 career Premier League goals with his head. “Before every game, my analysis was important,” he told the Premier League. “You never saw me go near post, because it would more than likely go over my head. I wanted to know who the weakest centre-back was, and who could turn off his left shoulder better than his right.”

CLUB CAREER
Years	Team	Appearances	Goals
1997–2004	Millwall	250	57
2004–2012	Everton	278	68
2012–2014	New York Red Bulls	72	16
2015	Shanghai Shenhua	28	11
2016	Hangzhou Greentown	17	4
2016–2018	Melbourne City	34	13
2017–2018	Millwall	10	0
2018–2019	Jamshedpur	12	2

Cahill developed his world-leading attacking expertise by playing 250 professional games and scoring a whopping 57 goals by the time he was 25. He scored 12 goals in 45 league matches in his second Millwall season, then 13 in 43 matches in 2001/02. It was enough to grab the attention of both the Irish (through his father’s heritage) and Australian national teams but Cahill, who “couldn’t care less about playing” for Samoa, was cap tied and ineligible for either. Staring down an anonymous Oceanian future, he threatened to sue FIFA for the right to change his eligibility. Luckily for him the organisation changed its rules the following year, allowing him to represent another nation. Australia wasn’t about to make the same mistake twice: after he scored three times in four Olyroos appearances in 2004 he was thrown straight into the Socceroos’ line-up.

This was the beginning of an epic year for the Australian icon. It began with a £1.5 million move to Everton – later labelled one of the bargains of the century – and ended with Cahill scoring six times as the Socceroos won the 2004 Oceania Football Confederation Nations Cup, finishing the year with seven goals in his first five Australian caps. He married his childhood sweetheart and his first son Kyah was born that year.
Then just 24 years of age, Cahill called it a shock: Kyah had non-stop colic for the first year “so we didn’t get much sleep”. Most distressingly, his older brother Sean, whom Cahill had followed into football, partially blinded a man in a street brawl in London and fled to Sydney for two years before being extradited and jailed in 2006.

Cahill’s chaotic personal life was exacerbated by a huge increase in pressure, as he’d been thrown from the sodden pitches of England’s second tier to the glitz and glamour of the Premier League, which was rapidly becoming the richest league in the world. He was brought into a bloated and ageing Everton squad under David Moyes, who was focusing on a long-term transition towards developing younger talent. It proved the perfect move for Cahill, who later said he had to be an “eight or nine” in every training session while his teammates only had to be “sixes”. He excelled against the odds, winning Everton’s golden boot with 11 goals in 33 appearances in his debut season. It would prove to be the Toffees legend’s most prolific campaign: he won Oceania Footballer of the Year, PFA Team of the Year, Everton Player of the Year and Players’ Player of the Season honours that season. By 25 Cahill had finally arrived, and he was making up for lost time.

He became a Socceroos regular at the 2005 Confederations Cup, then endeared himself to Guus Hiddink by playing sensationally in Sydney as Australia beat Uruguay on penalties to qualify for the 2006 World Cup. He wrote his name into Australian sporting folklore at that tournament against Japan, playing every subsequent match. The Socceroos played their debut Asian Cup campaign in Thailand the following year. Cahill was recovering from an injury, and an over-confident and underprepared squad was one minute away from an embarrassing opening loss to Oman before he came off the bench to once again score Australia’s first goal at a major tournament, rescuing his country when they needed him most.

He affirmed his big-game reputation for Everton, becoming their first player since the 1930s to score in three Merseyside Derbies. To this day he’s Everton’s highest goal scorer against Liverpool since World War Two. He first captained Everton in 2009, leading the side to his second FA Cup final, and scored his 50th Toffees goal by 2010. He played 278 matches for Everton, scoring 68 goals in all competitions despite injuries hampering the most prolific period of his career: between 2006 and 2008. It was obvious to many that Cahill could be an incredible striker, however, it took until the twilight years of his career before a coach eventually used him to devastating goal-scoring effect.

Cahill’s phenomenal Socceroos performances in World Cup and Asian Cup qualifiers entrenched his reputation as a national saving grace. By 2010 he’d scored 21 goals in 35 Socceroos games, leading Rale Rasic to say to The Australian: “Without a doubt, [he is] the best Australian footballer I have seen. He is the complete footballer. He has presence, poise and the ability to read the game. He is great in the air, his heading is exceptional. He is an extraordinary goal-scorer and he just knows where to be at the right time. You can’t coach that in a player. You are born with it. It’s pure natural ability.”

After his heroics in 2006, Cahill’s 2010 World Cup campaign was nearly over before it began. He was sent off in Australia’s first match for a tackle on German midfielder Bastian Schweinsteiger, who was so insistent the red card was undeserved that he signed a document calling for leniency. Cahill was then suspended for Australia’s second game but wouldn’t be denied a dying World Cup impact nonetheless, returning in Australia’s final match to score a perfect glancing header against Serbia to ensure the Socceroos departed with a win.

While Harry Kewell and Mark Viduka failed to fulfil their momentous Socceroos expectations, Cahill’s surprise prolificacy for club and country gave him superstar status, which he relished after leaving Everton in 2012. By then 32 years of age, he moved to Major League Soccer (MLS) to sign for New York Red Bulls, an Australian teaching the Americans how to play a European game. After a slow start he exploded in his second season, scoring 11 goals in 27 appearances and winning the Bulls’ most valued player and golden boot awards, plus MLS XI selection the following year. He even set the MLS record for the league’s fastest ever goal, striking a long-range effort against Houston just seven seconds after kick-off.

By the 2014 World Cup the rest of the golden generation had retired, cementing Cahill as not only Australian football’s unrivalled poster boy but it’s only attacking weapon. A reborn striker at 34, he scored at his third successive World Cup in Australia’s first match against Chile. In their second game against the Dutch he made every newsreel and back page around the world, scoring a blinding, first-touch, left-footed volley from a 30-metre long ball. The greatest World Cup goal scorer of all time, Ronaldo, told FIFA: “It was the best goal of the World Cup and it’s going to go down in history as one of the most beautiful World Cup goals.”

When he was 35 Cahill scored three goals at the 2015 Asian Cup, including a bicycle-cum-scissor kick against China in the semi-final, to lead Australia to their first major international trophy. He scored a ridiculous 19 goals in 28 Socceroos caps from the ages of 34 to 36. He’d cashed in on his evergreen status in 2014, signing a $10 million deal with Chinese club Shanghai Shenhua, but insinuated later that the weight of his pay packet and superstar status put too much pressure on his goal tally. He was a player who was always better flying under the radar, which would never be possible again.

In 1997 Cahill escaped a dissolving, semi-professional wilderness with few fans and fewer prospects as a shy, written-off teenager. He returned 20 years later as arguably the most famous Australian athlete of all time and joined a Melbourne club with owners worth trillions of dollars, to score a 40-metre volley against Melbourne Victory in front of 50,000 packed fans in one of the highest-profile sporting leagues in Asia. Nobody has transformed the Australian sporting landscape more than he has, achieving so much for so many from so little. He played in his fifth World Cup campaign in 2018 before making his 108th and final Socceroos appearance against Lebanon, waving goodbye to a capacity Australian home crowd.

Cahill is only one year younger than the man voted “Australia’s Greatest Ever Footballer”, Harry Kewell, but had to wait eight years longer to make his Australian debut, yet he still made 50 more appearances and scored 33 more goals in green and gold. He exceeded his potential by so much it overshadowed two generations of Australians who didn’t. What’s most remarkable is that his achievements for the Socceroos were embraced by the entire world and continue to resonate on the world stage to this day.

“Think about it,” the now-analyst and coach told Red Bull. “You can have an impact on the park. You can score those goals, you can create amazing moments, but you think people will forget you. You don’t realise . . . Then I go back to England and I’m sitting on the panel of Sky Sports and Match of the Day, and then you’re like, “I’ve been away for eight years, and still now I’m getting stopped.” You then realise what an impact you actually made to the game. It’s the best feeling ever.”

HONOURS
Oceania Football Confederation Nations Cup	2004
Professional Footballers Association First Division Team of the Year	2004
Oceania Footballer of the Year	2004
Everton Golden Boot	2004
FA Cup runner-up	2004, 2009
Everton Player of the Season	2005
Everton Players’ Player of the Season	2005
Ballon d’Or nominee	2006
Professional Footballers Association Player of the Year	2009
Australia’s Greatest Team	2012
Major League Soccer Supporters’ Shield	2013
New York Red Bulls Golden Boot	2013
Major League Soccer Best XI	2013
New York Red Bulls Most Valuable Player	2013
Asian Football Hall of Fame	2014
Puskás Award nominee	2014
Asian Cup	2015
Asian Cup Team and Goal of Tournament	2015
Football Federation Australia Cup	2016
Asian Football Confederation Asian Icon	2017
Asian Football Confederation All-Time World Cup XI	2020
Order of Australia	2021

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

Lucas Radbourne thinks he could have gone pro if it hadn’t been for his bad knee. Instead, he settled for being an editor for FourFourTwo Australia, FTBL, The Women’s Game and Beat Magazine. These days he’s planning to spend most of his money on booze, birds and fast cars. He heard once that the rest you just squander.

The Immortals of Australian Soccer by Lucas Radbourne (published by Gelding Street Press, rrp$39.99) is available at all good book stores or online at geldingstreetpress.com

For the full article grab the December 2022 issue of MAXIM Australia from newsagents and convenience locations. Subscribe here.