Socceroos coach Pim Verbeek believes Jason Culina has put his Australian shirt in jeopardy by agreeing to join A-League newcomers Gold Coast next season.
The PSV Eindhoven midfielder has been a regular feature in Verbeek’s squads for the 2010 World Cup qualifiers but the Dutchman was blunt when asked on Tuesday whether he felt leaving Europe would jeopardise Culina’s Socceroos spot.
“Yes, I’ve never made a secret about that and Jason knows it also,” Verbeek said.
“It’s up to him to try to keep the level he has at the moment. He’s a great player, a fantastic player and, like I always said, if I’m honest he’s coming a year too early if you’re in my seat with my responsibility.
“On the other hand for the A-League it’s a great player to have.
“What Jason promised me and told me was `you’ll be surprised; I will be ready’ so I keep him to his word.”
Verbeek’s comments came after he delivered a talk on the differences between Australian and European football at the Football Federation Australia national coaching conference in Sydney.
During his talk, Verbeek said he enjoyed the open and attacking nature of football played in the A-League but it wasn’t a style of football which matched the results-first needs of international competition.
Verbeek had a full compliment of available European-based stars for last week’s 0-0 World Cup qualifier in Japan.
But the Socceroos will again turn to an all A-League squad for the upcoming Asian Cup qualifier against Kuwait in Canberra, similar to the one selected recently against Indonesia.
And Verbeek said the difference in tactical organisation between domestically-based players and those from Europe was noticeable.
“If you play as open as some games I’ve seen here, you do it against a European or South American team, you would get slaughtered,” he said.
“If you see the game we played against Indonesia, it was also a 0-0 game, but if you see the game you can easily see that the players are used to playing more open.
“They try to be more defensively-organised than they normally do, so they tried that and they did well but still if you compare it’s not good enough.”
Long a critic of the standard of the A-League, Verbeek said the level of competition won’t be the only consideration for Culina.
The man Verbeek describes as one of the fittest players he’s ever coached will also face a battle to train at the level he is now experiencing in Holland.
“If you see training sessions in Europe for teams like that (PSV), they are like games, they’re fighting and the tempo, the intensity, of the training session is so high,” he said.
“You play 45-50 games a season there and here he will probably play about 21, so in the end you will lose.
“Even if like Jason – he will train two times a day probably – but in the end he will lose, hopefully I’m totally wrong.
One option available to Culina to maintain his fitness levels approaching the 2010 World Cup in South Africa could be to move on loan to a Japanese or Chinese club in the A-League off-season.
Culina himself admitted such a move might be needed following last week’s match in Yokohama.
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