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Like Tim Cahill, and Harry Kewell, he may have had his fair share of frustrating injuries this last year, but Mark Viduka is the final missing piece of the jigsaw that has seen the Socceroos struggle to perfect a World Class picture since Germany 2006.
Everyone knows that a great football team is more than the sum of its parts, and whilst Mark Viduka is historically not known for his international goal tally, his absence up the front has made the Socceroos look like a car with one tyre missing.
What Mark Viduka is historically known for is his leadership; that uncanny ability to walk onto the park and put others at ease in high pressured games.
Craig Moore has it, and to lesser degrees Harry and Lucas, too.
But the diplomacy and general inspirational value that Viduka brings to the players, and his country, is worth all the goals he hasn’t yet netted.
The football landscape is somewhat different since the last World Cup qualifying campaign.
Many other established and experienced players, such as Scott Chipperfield, Tim Cahill, Lucas Neill, Harry Kewell and Craig Moore, have stepped out of the team for personal reasons and forced injuries. The long absence has seemingly served them all well, personally and professionally.
It has also given selection headaches for the incumbent Australian coaches.
For the last year or so, Pim Verbeek has had his hand forced to redesign the team, and perhaps had some fun unearthing and formulating a new look team and squad.
With the guiding hands of Graham Arnold, and to a lesser extent Rob Baan, Pim has plugged the gaps (some better than others), got results, and on some occasions, got lucky.
However, with the return of Kewell, Cahill, Chipperfield and Moore, is Pim’s honeymoon period of autonomy and creativity going to be challenged by the ghost of Hiddink?
Finally, with the imminent return of Viduka to the national frame, how will this impact the selections for the final third for Verbeek?
Scott MacDonald springs to mind. Is he expendable?
A case could be made, that Scott like Mark, is only one club transfer away from being truly world class. So is Scott one for the future, an essential squad member and plausible benchy?
Brett Holman, is he expendable?
Should the harassing striker (getting token amounts of game time in the Erevidise) step aside and allow Harry, or someone else, to harass the opponent’s fullbacks? I feel more confident that Harry, for example, would make more of any scoring opportunities in these sorts of situations.
What about Josh Kennedy? With Dukes back, do we need the blessed one rising above the mire, bringing salvation to that little white ball, and sending it to the sacred net?
Josh has harassed with the best of them, so a case could be made that Josh has more strings to his bow than other strikers in the frame, too.
Mile Sterjovski?
Well Mile has been doing a fine job as a Socceroo’s striker, more than his current club “form” would suggest. And Sterjovski is a seasoned professional, and has one of the best finishes in the squad.
He’d be very hard to leave out of the team, but definitely a squaddie one has to assume.
There are others: Archie, Johnny and Bruce for starters. But I am talking here specifically about the match day squad.
In earnestness, these players are fringe, apart from Bruce who may get a “train on” pass to SA 2010 (if we have indeed the fortune to perform well enough in our final group games next year).
So how many strikers do we need on the books for World Cup Qualification?
Pim has shown conservatism over his tenure, so I doubt any of them would be completely discarded from the squad.
However, to date, Pim has shown that a squad can be as long as it is conservative. What is a discrete notion, though, is that the bench is only so long.
Especially for strikers.
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