Socceroos 2018 aspirations to begin in Egypt

 
Davidde Corran Columnist

By , 26 Sep 2009 Davidde Corran is a Roar Expert

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FIFA President Sepp Blatter, left, talks with Football Australia chairman Frank Lowy as they arrive at the opening ceremony for the 58th FIFA congress in Sydney, Thursday, May 29, 2008. AP Photo/Mark BakerWhen Football Federation Australia chairman Frank Lowy announced that Australia were hoping to both host and win the 2018 FIFA World Cup you could almost hear the sniggers echoing around the globe.

The Socceroos squad that made such great inroads in Germany 2006 might have been filled with players of European quality like Viduka, Kewell and Cahill, but few will still be playing in five years time, let alone in 2018.

So who from the next generation will be wearing the Green and Gold in nine years?

Anything could happen between now and then, but 21 Australian footballers in camp at the Under 20s World Cup in Egypt could hold the key.

Youth football is a notoriously unreliable thing. History has shown that even at this age strong performances don’t always indicate that a player will have a great career.

Admittedly the fact that some nations namely European ones, don’t take this tournament seriously blurs this fact.

So what can we expect to draw form this tournament?

Well, here’s what we know.

If you pour through the different Australian under 20 squads from the last 20 years, you’ll see that each edition threw up same quality names who went on to be excellent servants of the Socceroos.

In 1993 there was Craig Moore, 1995 saw Mark Viduka step forward and 1997 propelled the careers of Vince Grella, Brett Emerton and Lucas Neill forward. Those five players are only the tip of the iceberg.

All that stops, though, with the 2005 squad, where only Mark Milligan has made any real impact on the senior side. Browse through the rest of that team and you have a few decent A-League names but four years on very few look like they will become senior Socceroos.

Even more alarming is that the 2007 side didn’t even qualify for the Under 20 World Cup.

That means there is a lot of need for this generation to provide some real quality. If not, it would make it three squads that have failed to provide Socceroos.

While the Under 20 World Cup hardly registers with the Australian public Football Federation Australia, and Soccer Australia before it, have always taken the tournament seriously.

Thus the 21 players in this squad are the best that Jan Versleijen thinks Australia has in this age group. No expense has been spared in preparation and support either.

When watching this squad in training in Egypt, I felt a mixture of hope and concern.

Exciting young A-League names like Tahj Minniecon, Mitch Nichols, Benjamin Kantarovski and Kofi Danning are mixed in with some peripheral European-based players. There’s some raw talent and potential there but little approaching the finished product.

The question then is where should these players be at in their development if they’re going to make the grade at the highest level in the future?

Lets take a look at the three senior Socceroos I mentioned at the start of this piece.

By the time Harry Kewell was twenty, he’d already started to make serious inroads at Leeds United. At the same age, Mark Viduka had already arrived at Croatia Zagreb (now Dinamo Zagreb) though his first season was infamously difficult.

Even Tim Cahill who was struggling to prove he could make it at the highest level in England was playing regularly for Milwall at this age, albeit in the then English Second Division.

None of the players in Egypt have achieved similar things yet. Of course, patience, which is the key to youth development, needs to be shown.

But it’s still a worry.

Versleijen also admitted before the squad left for their pre-tournament training camp in Cyprus that his players were lacking in technical ability as well.

Football Federation Australia have finally acted on this with the re-structuring of Australia’s youth development system. But the benefits from that wont be seen for at least ten years at any level.

It would appear then that Australia is still paying for its sins.

I’ll reserve my judgement on this squad of Young Socceroos at least until after this tournament, but time is running out for this batch of players.

Still, Frank Lowy’s aspirations to win the 2018 World Cup could well lie with these 21 Australians waiting for their moment in a small town called Port Said at the entrance to the Suez Canal.

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