Watching the Socceroos give such mediocre performances in their last four friendlies means the World Cup afterglow has well and truly faded.
Without the pageantry and excitement of the world’s biggest organised piss-up of the FIFA World Cup that included the buzz of full stadiums and the gaze of the world’s eyes, the Socceroos have fallen into Holger Osieck-like bad habits again.
About a month ago David Gallop’s State of the Game speech coincided with the latest official FIFA World Ranking Tables. And the news was bad, very bad, the Socceroos had fallen down to 84.
With the Asian Cup on the horizon the cynic in me hopes that the announcement by the Football Federation of Australia’s National Plan was not just a big distraction dreamed up by the suits to make us look away from these latest FIFA rankings.
The Socceroos are now ranked just one spot above Cyprus, a country that’s been divided since 1974 and that has a population of just over one million people. Australia is also ranked below countries like Benin, Uganda and the Democratic Republic of Congo, a country that’s been ravaged by an ongoing civil war.
Only last week I read a piece on DR Congo player Gabriel Zakuni, who plays for Peterborough United in League One. In an engaging interview the 28-year-old defender Zakuni spoke of hearing gunshots and being in shaking buses during some of DR Congo’s international games.
“During our training session there were gunshots in the background, then during the game [against Libya] there was a military helicopter hovering just above the stadium,” Zakuni said.
I’m a blogger not a fighter but I think Ange Postecoglou should ring up Tony Abbott and ask for the use of military planes to fly over some of the Socceroos training sessions just to give them a bit of DR Congo-style motivation.
After some better than expected performances at the Brazil World Cup, some of the Socceratti started boasting that an Asian Cup victory on home soil was there for the taking.
The Socceroos have plenty of excuses why they played so badly. Sure it’s hard to rise up to and match the performances that the Socceroos gave against Chile and Holland, especially when you’re playing in half empty stadiums in Belgium, London and in the heat of Asia.
Yes, Postecoglou has been using these friendlies to widen the Socceroos selection net, so he can add more depth to the national team’s small pool of players. But talk about a World Cup comedown! I haven’t felt so low since the late 1990s and early noughties when I crawled through a decade of Tuesday’s.
My misspent youth, how I yearn for thee.
The Socceroos post World Cup performances have been pedestrian, lazy and as Alan Partridge says just too “cas” in defence. The midfield is an ongoing saga and the attack is the same old story: a lot of conversation and very little action.
If the Socceroos don’t improve the Asian Cup could have the same ending as another disastrous and embarrassing home football tournament. The Sydney 2000 Olympics, anyone?
Con Stamocostas is a football writer check out episode one of his Australian football podcast with co-host Rob Toddler.
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