Australia’s World Cup: one fan’s opinion

 
Damon Saunders Roar Rookie

By Damon Saunders, 2 Jul 2010 Damon Saunders is a Roar Rookie

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The Socceroos World Cup campaign looked something like this. First up, Germany, the crying game.

Josh Kennedy, I am a fan of yours but despite you trying your best you have not played well for the past few months.

Now you may have been injured. I heard reports that you had a back problem, fair enough.

But had you been able to play better in the lead up games and no doubt in training, then I am sure that Pim would have started with you in the Germany game.

The fact is that you are a one trick pony; that trick is you are tall and good in the air. Unfortunately for you, the German centrebacks are also tall and good in the air, so this would’ve cancelled your advantage out.

Pim needed someone more mobile than you were at that stage, to run and hassle and pressure the German defence so they couldn’t build up play from the back easily.

For this reason, I believe Pim played Garcia up front, with Tim behind.

Culina was moved over to the left because Chippers had bad games against USA and Denmark. Culina was there to help Chippers to deal with the speedy and skillful Lamm.

Bresciano came good later in the tournament but he is not much cover for Chippers defensively against Lamm, also he was underdone and performed rather ordinarily in the three warm up games.

(Our other left back, Carney. As we saw in the Serbia game, Carney is not much good defensively. Against Krasic he looked like he had won a competition to play in a World Cup game with the Socceroos. I noticed afterward that he had his back or ribs strapped and so it seems like he was carrying an injury into that game).

So Pim played with the cards he had chosen.

Those cards were his choice and his responsibility. But to be honest, he did not have have the same luxuries of Guus.

Guus had most of the same players four years quicker, etc. He also had Viduka, Skoko, Lazaridis, Aloisi, etc. Pim’s top players were older and injured or out of form and rusty.

Only Cahill and Schwarzer had improved.

Pim’s papering over the cracks worked for about the first ten minutes and we attacked them until everyone in defence including Schwarzer and midfield were found to be either asleep or suffering from stage fright. Except for Emerton, Valeri and Wilkshire.

Kewell obviously wasn’t ready to play a full game and Josh wasn’t up to playing a pressing game at the front, at that stage of the tournament, due to injuries.

Two goals down, Cahill got himself sent off with an hour to go.

No sense bringing Harry on now as originally planned. He would have to race around and work even harder; it was too risky. So Pim does the wise thing and brings on our two fastest, most mobile players, Holman and Ruka to try and get 10 men to cover the same area as 11 men.

Keep Harry now in cotton wool for the Ghana and Serbia games.

End result – 4 – 0.

Craig Foster says to attack and play for the shirt but he does not specifically say what moves he would have made (even with hindsight) for the Germany game or what players and positions he would have used or even what Pim should have done because Fozz can’t.

It is much easier to blame the foreigner that is leaving soon than to admit our players, who we can’t swap easily, let themselves down.

It is just a vague statement that he would have attacked them. With what Fozz? Who else was ready to go? Play them where?

Don’t forget, our players at the start of the tournament were not all ready to go and perform at the same level they did for the Serbia game, despite the best efforts of our medical and fitness staff.

Yes, those players can play really well, but only under certain circumstances. Pim had much less margin for error than Guus because of the state of the players fitness and form.

Also it was a tougher group than four years earlier as we didn’t have a gimme game (Japan) equivalent. Had we played Ghana first, Serbia second then Germany in the third game we would have had our best result and performed much better against Germany with the same squad of players and got a result.

We also played Serbia with 11 players including one of our star players Cahill for the entire game, first time in the tournament. Don’t underestimate the importance of that.

I forgot to add a couple of other points. Something strange happened before this game with Kewell and Bresciano leading to their failure to warm up with the team on the pitch. I don’t know what happened but I don’t buy the explanation that Harry gave, that it was on his physio’s instructions. Bull.

Also that still doesn’t explain Bresch’s absence. I don’t know if they had a fight between themselves or it was coincidence or what. I subscribe to the Harry Bosch (detective) theory that there are no coincidences.

Both players being senior players and proud, I suspect that they were probably told by Pim that neither of them were starting the game and spat the dummy big time, maybe refusing to warm up. Like I said, I don’t know but that seems the logical explanation.

Also Pim has said it was difficult to give instructions on the pitch in the first half of the German game with the din of all of the vuvuzelas. So he was able to do that at half time in the dressing room.

Post blitzkrieg: After the German game, Harry’s comments were Pim’s the boss and it was his decision I didn’t play, I wanted to play and felt ready to play, words to that effect.

Bresch’s mate Vinnie had a training pitch argument with Pim.

Bresch later played against Ghana and set up the goal with a great free kick. He was annoyed when he was subbed off and refused to shake Graham Arnold’s hand (you gotta admire him for that, at the least he has good taste).

Harry was saved until the second game and before it he had an incident with the press, Mike Cockerill specifically. Then he got sent off but gee he looked the goods until then.

I have heard rumours from a few different sources that two star players don’t get on with each other, won’t talk to each other and wouldn’t be photographed together. This rings true with my observations of what is said and done and what is not said and done with the squad.

Sorry to be cryptic.

Pim had to manage the group and keep everyone working together with this unfortunate rift. We may hear more about this later but the rift, as I understand it was not between Pim and the players over tactics but rather between two players over other stuff.

After the media frenzy of the Germany game which galvanised the whole group and then the second sending off and an improved showing in the Ghana game it is possible that they banded together more.

We should have won this game and would have with 11 players on the park for 90 minutes.

After Ghana: In fairness to Carney, Krasic does seem like a fine right winger but defense is not Carney’s strong point as we saw with the cracker of a goal he scored against Ireland.

Josh seems to have struggled lately, perhaps he is carrying a back injury, perhaps it is the step up in class of the opposition defenders from Asian qualifiers. Ivanovic and Vidic are star defenders in two of the biggest clubs in the world.

Josh almost had a goal against Serbia but it skewed slightly wide. But apart from that he didn’t seem energetic enough in chasing or holding up the ball. I’m not 6ft 6 but if I was I reckon I wouldn’t be much of a runner either.

Conversely when he did use body position to advantage in the Serbia match, to shield the ball he was unfairly penalised by the referee in my opinion, when it was just good work on his part. I guess it was because he is tall, rather unfair on him though, he plays fairly always.

Him as a tall target attracts the best defender in the air, which opens up heading opportunities for Cahill. I suppose that’s what Kennedy meant.

He’s a nice guy and just wanted to play all of the time, as you would expect. Roller coaster of emotions for all of our team. Still he did get a fair run of the friendly games and the World Cup games. I think Pim actually showed plenty of faith in him (no pun intended) and gave him lots of opportunities.

I really feel for Dario Vidosic who I reckon was quite unlucky not to get some game time at the World Cup after his performances in the friendlies. But his time will come.

None of us are perfect but I think any errors Pim made were in the choosing of his squad, not at the World Cup itself.

Honestly Scott McDonald has played crap in all of his games for Australia (not his club) so far. Pim also gave him a number of opportunities, as he did with Nicky Carle.

(Carle has played crap for us so far, so did Holman pre-tournament but his running at defenses panics them).

As most people predicted, I think Pim got it wrong choosing Moore and Milligan over Ogenovski, Colosimo or Bosnar. I would also have liked to have Brosque in the squad instead of Garcia.

To me Pim picked Milligan & Garcia out of a love of their versatility, jack of all trades but master of none. He picked Moorey out of a misguided sense of loyalty. Moore should only have been called into the squad as strongman and organiser if Neill got injured before the games started and had to miss the tournament. Neill and Moore together were too much the same.

Moore first game was awful as were all of his warm up games. Perhaps Pim felt he owed him something. He did improve, through sheer will and pride, in the Ghana game. Still one of the other three I said should have been in the German game instead, or even Beauchamp, whose tackling against Serbia was surprisingly top notch.

On the subject of Nicky Carle, I can not for the life of me remember anyone in our team playing a single defence splitting through ball, not in the friendlies or the World Cup itself.

Sure we overloaded them on the wings sometimes with two on ones but we didn’t open up anyone’s defence. Shots from distance, headers from distance but no turning their defence around. Amazing.

Jason Culina is not nearly the player he was when he played in Holland. Grella played barely average. Looking back we would have got a higher standard in this tournament from Valeri and Jedinak instead of Jason and Vinnie. Sad but true.

Bresciano is a class above and a true professional, a valuable asset in attack not defence, he improved as the tournament went along, following being injured & unable to play most of 2010.

He obviously wasn’t ready to go in the Germany game, his form in the lead ups was average but his determination and pride shone through in the second and third games.

Pim is a realist and just didn’t have the talent ready, able and available. He didn’t want to attempt it with A-League players and rightly so.

Imagine the difference minus Moore, Milligan perhaps Grella and Culina.

Who was injured? Who wasn’t? Missing from our squad through injury, Kisnorbo and Williams. They would have made a big difference to our defence.

As I said, Colosimo and Brosque would have been really handy to have.

Our players in the squad that were semi injured, recovering from injury, carrying injuries, out of form or generally rusty were: Grella, Moore, Bresciano, Emerton, Chipperfield, Carney, Kennedy and Kewell.

Apart from Vinnie who got injured, the rest got physically better the more it went on.

Kewell was out with suspension. Against the odds they still performed admirably through pride, guts and determination.

Cahill was unavailable for one & a half games. Kewell unavailable for one and a half games. We played two out of our three games with just 10 players.

If not in the Group of Death, we were in the group of Near Death (or chronic injury, pun intended).

When the performances are analysed along with the circumstances at the time, it’s actually damn impressive that the team lost one, drew one and won one game.

At the World Cup the coach did not have the necessary quality of cattle fit and available for all three games.

Looking for our next coach:

I think the best coach for our Australian team would be Arsene Wenger but we probably can’t get him.

Next & more realistically I think we should try to get Aime Jacquet, Johann Cryff, Marco Van Basten, Frank Rijkaard, Radomir Antic, Oswaldo Oliveira, Jose Peckerman or Dragan Stojkovic.

Ronald de Boer would also be a good young up & coming coach having played at Ajax, Barcelona and at a few World Cups for the Netherlands. Currently assistant coach for the Dutch team.

I’d also be rapt if we got Marcelo Bielsa or Jurgen Klinsmann but wishes combined with realism I feel Oswaldo De Oliveira is both very good and gettable.

It’s a very interesting question, how old is too old to successfully coach a national team (as distinct from club coaching)? How young is too young?

I just did a bit of research on some of the coaching names I have thought of on Wikipedia, I don’t know if they’re available, but as Dick Advocaat proved, if the money is right they are available. Some of these may surprise you.

I don’t know if there is such a thing as the best coach in the world but if there is then it is probably Jose Mourinho, at the moment. Needless to say we can’t afford him.

Coaching a national team seems to be more the realm of an (older) experienced coach.

The best coach is not necessarily the best coach for us he needs to also be compatible, preferably to speak English, preferably to live full-time in Australia for four years, to understand our culture, he can’t be too old (experienced), nor too young (inexperienced).

He has to get us through Asia, coach and educate our young players and also Australian coaches, work with Aurelio Vidmar and be media friendly as football here is competing in a tough sponsorship marketplace. He has to work with Hans Berger and Jans Versligen, too.

It has to be a win/win relationship.

We also have to be realistic, despite the money we have to offer we are probably not considered a really plum job. We can’t be snobs and just get anyone we want, under the above conditions.

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