The Kuwaiti Experiment, and other football failures

 
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By sportsfanslife.com, 8 Mar 2009 sportsfanslife.com is a Roar Pro

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You need have only taken a passing glance at Socceroos’ Coach ‘Aussie’ Pim Verbeek’s face after Thursday night’s Asian Cup pool match against Kuwait to know that the depth in football in this country is the equivalent of a kiddies pool.

Now, perhaps it was his accent, and perhaps it is perfectly normal in Holland for a coach to look and sound like he has just spent 90 minutes consuming as much schnapps as he possibly could to ease the pain of watching his ‘hopeless’ (his words, not mine) A-League charges.

Seriously, this was a man who obviously came to another stage in his realisation that coaching our national football team wasn’t all koalas, g’day mate’s and thongs.

I have to say that my budding football supportership (it’s a word, google it), is in its infancy. My knowledge is a work in progress and I still have no clue on the finer points of ‘The Beautiful Game’.

So if I could watch a game and point out how appallingly ‘un-beautiful’ the Socceroos were in patches (that became more and more frequent as the game wore on unfortunately) surely must be a testament to the quality, or lack thereof, of their play.

This was a game that was in the bag. We were playing Kuwait, whose national sport is drilling for oil, and we can’t crack it for a goal?

Our best chance came early on, with Archie ‘I love Pim, no really, even after he called me hopeless and I got up on stage to mock him after the Grand Final, I am not phased by that comment one little bit’ Thompson missing somewhat of a sitter in front of an open goal, and from there we resorted to long balls, blazing shots from outside the box (most of which ended up on the roof of Parliament House) and two misses from Mitch Nichols, who continued his wayward touch from the A-League Grand Final Qualifier (great player, but the idea is to stick it in the back of the net Mitch!).

Meanwhile the Kuwait side showed more speed, commitment and energy on their way to a deserved (albeit shocking) victory. This has once again raised the question of playing A-League only squads for these sorts of matches.

I am not sure what the possibility is of getting the European based players back for an Asian Cup pool match, but something tells me the Euro-boffins atop Everton aren’t letting Tim Cahill out to play park football against a Middle Eastern minnow. Same goes for Lucas Neill, Harry Kewell (who would no doubt be injured and unavailable anyway) and our other foreign based heroes, so in a lot of ways, perhaps FA’s hands are tied and ol’ PV will have to make do.

My biggest disappointment was the impact on people’s perception of the Socceroos. How many people are going to turn out for the next A-League-only National side, if that is the performance they will be expecting?

It’s fine to bring the big guns over for the biggest games, and have the crowds flock, but if I am not mistaken, we are still going to have plenty of games where that isn’t possible and the local stars will be turning out in their place.

I know I would think twice had I paid my money to watch the Canberra match and was considering attending another.

After all the progress and good work FA has done with the A-League, not to mention firmly hammering the game and the National squad into the consciousness of most Australians, it’s a shame that the product that many people within the governing body have worked so hard to build, took a backward step due to the very thing it is relying on to grow in this country, the caliber of it’s players….

Let’s hope it was merely a blip on the radar.

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