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Ange Postecoglou has the worst record of any Australian soccer coach.
He’s overseen a slide to Australia’s lowest-ever world ranking.
He’s won just two of 12 games.
But Postecoglou is adamant it’s short-term pain for long-term gain.
“We had a plan post World Cup to try and expose some of our less experienced players to a good level of football. We have done that,” he said after Japan downed his Socceroos 2-1 in Osaka.
Of any man to coach the Socceroos more than once, none has a worse winning percentage than Postecoglou – 16.67 per cent.
That’s equal worst with Rudi Gutendorf’s 1979-81 tenure – but the German-born coach recorded eight draws and seven losses with his three wins.
Postecoglou’s balance sheet is two wins, two draws and eight losses.
Only three of his games in charge have been in competition, though when he took over in October last year, Australia’s world ranking was 57 – it’s now 94.
Pundits are getting increasingly nervous ahead of the Asian Cup on home soil next January, and ex-captain Mark Viduka is among them.
“I honestly think that we’re going to have some big problems going forward, and we’re already starting to see it,” Viduka told Fox Sports.
“After Timmy (Cahill) goes, it’s going to be hard … because we’re not producing top quality players any more.”
Australia remain jammed on the Cahill expressway.
Under Postecoglou, Australia have scored 13 goals. Cahill has nine of them.
Two other goals have been Mile Jedinak penalties, with Bailey Wright netting the other.
That’s glaring evidence of one of Postecoglou’s big two headaches: finding another avenue to goal than Cahill, who will be aged 35 when the Asian Cup kicks off.
The other big’un is defence.
In Postecoglou’s dozen games in charge, the Aussies have conceded 22 goals. And kept just two clean sheets.
Postecoglou knows his defence is culpable, as it was against Japan when loose defending cost a set piece goal.
“We talk about wanting to progress our football but if we are going to be that sloppy about a key part of the game, set pieces, then it doesn’t matter what we do, we are going to pay a price,” Postecoglou lamented.
The boss has tried 42 players in his reign – a revolving-door of defenders among them, yet solidarity at the back remains a theory not practised.
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