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Now, there we were thinking Graham Arnold was having a bad week.
Matildas coach Tom Sermanni, when asked why his team was pulverised 5-0 by China midweek, explained it thus: “China is deep in preparation for the Beijing Olympics, and we are not and a number of our more experienced players did not travel on this short trip.”
“We are not?”
Why is so hard for a coach just to admit he was outdone and outplayed? That his team was hopeless?
Sermanni, it seems, is from the Graham Arnold school of fudge and obfuscate, though to his credit, he does a better line in contrition than his Olyroos counterpart.
“I was extremely disappointed with some of the errors we made; errors you wouldn’t expect from even a much younger side. I was also extremely disappointed in our limited mental toughness and concentration.”
Goooooo Matildas!
What a way to promote a game.
The fans are going to be smashing down the barriers to get into North Sydney Oval for tomorrow’s “crunch” friendly with New Zealand.
I can see the tumbleweed gathering already.
You would assume following Arnold’s truculent media performance during the week where we are all told Frank Lowy “wants a medal” that Sermanni would be being held to the same level of expectation from this year’s Olympic campaign, but apparently not.
Truth is Arnold is desperately trying to makeover the reasons why he dropped Bruce Djite and Nathan Burns and opted for relative safety in the form of Archie Thompson and more defenders than a siege of a Scottish castle.
It’s all Lowy’s fault, you see.
If a medal were the ulterior motive of Arnold’s campaign you would expect to see at least one top-line Germany 2006 Socceroo in his 18-man squad, as one of the designated three overage players.
But let’s count them out.
Jade North. David Carney. Archie Thompson.
Something just doesn’t stack up.
On one hand Arnold feeds the media the line he’s building “the squad around them because they are going to bring experience”, yet a simple check of the playing statistics shows that North has played 16 internationals, Carney 10 and Thompson 30, mostly as a sub and against cannon fodder such as American Samoa.
Is it just a coincidence that all three were players who either played their international debut or played most of their international career under Arnold?
With the likes of Messi, Ronaldinho and Co. wanting to come to the Olympics, how hard, really, would it have been to persuade an Emerton or a Wilkshire, two old faithfuls, to come to China?
Arnold led his Socceroos team to conspicuous failure at the Asian Cup and when the going got tough wasn’t afraid to single out some of his players for criticism.
Who could blame them, then, if they didn’t want to go through it all again?
The omens – high expectations, demanding chairman, under-the-pump national coach wanting to prove himself – are chillingly similar, don’t you think?
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