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Before Pim Verbeek batons down the hatches, and really gets down to business for qualifying Australia for the World Cup in South Africa 2010, he needs to take stock. And stock is something of which he still has in abundance.
There are a multitude of questions that any prudent national coach should ask at this stage of a squad’s development. Especially only moments away from facing your own country’s national team, and having to live up to the inevitable Hiddink comparisons.
Whether or not Pim uses the upcoming Netherlands game for sorting out any positional queries, it is becoming very apparent that the squad is fleshing out.
But perhaps, with the inclusion of Shane Steffanuto (LB) and Jacob Burns (LM/Holding), Pim is proving to us all he really is still clutching at straws.
Especially when you consider there are no less than 4 goalies being summoned across the dikes of Holland. Perhaps the dikes have finally given way, and they could use the extra pairs of hands.
It may seem to these players, as with Nick Carle, that a squad is just a squad: a mock team for the first team to play and train against. No less, no more.
I wonder if the irony is not lost on the left footed Carle, whose latent ability to play more as a holding midfielder in the second tier English league is being stretched with good success. I am sure he wishes Jacob Burns all the success, and sympathy.
Which brings me to an oddity. Chris Coyne. Trialed over the last round of World Cup Qualifiers, when Michael Beauchamp couldn’t track a forward if his visa depended on it, Coyne’s “stop gap” inclusion seems to be a flowering success. Maybe even to reach a fuller bloom than of Jade North, for this Socceroo’s tilt for South Africa 2010.
Chris has been around the National set-up for years, and like Jacob Burns, missed the cut for the 2000 Olympics squad. Pim is either a visionary or a gambler.
It seems the preparation is cutting it fine, with the Uzbek’s just around the corner, the tinkering must all be but complete. The squad must have had the final inspection. The casualties, those that were deemed unfit for Pim’s plans would surely know where they stand by now.
And the Verbeek/Arnold success stories would be scripted right from the coal face that they have been digging around in since Verbeek’s, and his wing man, Duut’s, appointment last December by the FFA.
The persistence with David Carney, Brett Holman, Michael Beauchamp, Chris Coyne, Bruce Djite, Scott MacDonald, and more recently with Matthew Spiranovic, and Mark Milligan, have all reaped important intel for Pim and his team.
Some players, though, haven’t been so fortunate to have such focused attention. If Chris Coyne can be unearthed from Colchester, why hasn’t Serie A’s Richard Porta of A.C. Siena, or SPL stalwart, Kilmarnock’s Danny Invincible? Perhaps Garcia’s inclusion in this squad is an after thought, after his surprise equalising header with Hull last month.
Last I heard our Socceroos had just as much a scoring problem, as a defensive problem. But in the last 9 months, only Djite and Holman have been seriously trialled as a solution to this problem. It seems the management team have a preference to defend, not score.
So, are our ‘Roos ready? By this weekend, surely. Other than that, and banking on the return to form and fitness of Mark Viduka and Tim Cahill, it would be fairly rational to assume that the squad has been given it’s provisional rubber stamp for the upcoming road to South Africa’s hosting of the next World Cup.
Are we all happy with the process since Germany ’06? Are we happy with the trialling, the quality of the football and motivations behind this squad? I am far from convinced, but one would have to suggest a minor catastrophe, to cock it up from here.
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