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Dejected Milanista.
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When Napoli announced the appointment of Maurizio Sarri in June 2015, many were skeptical on whether he could turnaround the Partenopei's fortunes. After missing…
Australia didn’t fail miserably in 2007, they lost to Japan on penalties. It’s a thin line between success and failure. Postecoglou even said on FOX after the Asian Cup that he still considered Japan to be the best team in Asia. We have to be careful and not overglorify the Asian Cup success. Remember, an Asian side didn’t win a single match at the 2014 World Cup.
The narrative in some of these comments is that the glory days are back. If that’s the case, do you really see this current Australian side beating the 5th best South American side(Chile at the moment)?
How Postecoglou is keeping his players on their toes
Postecoglou has done a very good job, but let’s not overglorify the accomplishments of this team. Under his tenure, the only World Cup tournament level team Australia has beaten is Korea. It’s still very much a work in progress. Losing 3 games and conceding 9 goals in a world cup group stage is still a big blemish.
Football has changed a lot since 2006, so a like for like comparison between teams is futile. It’s better to look at Australia’s relative position in the world, and in that regard, i don’t think Australia has improved. Australia had the quality in 2006 to make the last 16, whereas I remain skeptical on whether this generation can repeat that in 2018 (draw depending).
In my books, beating a Uruguay team over 2 legs is a bigger achievement than winning the Asian Cup. Yes, that Uruguayan team was not world class after finishing 5th in South America. However, we are still talking about Uruguay, a team that is always difficult to beat for anybody, anywhere. It is still a team that is stronger than any opponent Australia has beaten in recent time.
How Postecoglou is keeping his players on their toes
Well said.
If English clubs are to dominate Europe, they need to recruit better or develop word class players from their own academies. Having most of the top coaches in the world will not result in dominance when the vast majority of genuine top players are in Barcelona, Madrid, Munich etc who don’t need. The core of Barca (Pique, Busquets, Xavi, Iniesta, Messi) and Bayern (Lahm, Alaba, Schweinsteiger, Kroos, Mueller) consisted of academy graduates. None of the top English academies have come close to producing this amount of quality for their senior teams since Fergie’s Man Utd team of Scholes, Beckham, Giggs etc.
Premier League manager exodus could restore European dominance
I said they didn’t fail miserably. Losing to Japan on penalties was not a disaster in the context of that tournament. 2007 was a more difficult campaign because of the conditions and the fact that it was held in mid July. When most of your team plays in Europe and the season finishes in May, it’s obviously difficult to maintain peak physical condition and match sharpness with such a large gap between competitive fixtures. Japan had a material advantage in that most of their players were in peak condition because they were playing in Japan where the season runs from March to December
I said Ange did a good job rebuilding the team, but finishing with 0 points and conceding 3 goals in every game cannot really be considered a success. Subsequent to the World Cup, the Dutch have lost to Iceland (x2), Czech Rep (x2) and Turkey while Spain lost to Slovakia. Upsets do happen.
All I said was that beating Uruguay is a bigger achievement because they are a stronger opponent than anybody in Asia. Postecoglou’s Australia has yet to beat an opponent of this calibre.
How Postecoglou is keeping his players on their toes