Did Pim have to be that right about A-League

Where is Nicky Carle!!! Comeone guys time for some playmakers and people who can win games off their own boot!!!!!!!!! ARRRRRGHHHH!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Had to chuckle to myself when I read this. http://blogs.sunherald.com.au/matthewhall/archives/2009/02/pim_verbeek_rad.html Although I can sense the Pimbo uninventive backlash just about now . . . “Vat the farrk, we’re gettink resuults aren’t ve?” “Well actually Pim, no, we lost one nil to Kuwait. Although you mightn’t have seen it because you weren’t in the manager’s box and . . . ”

Towser, Agree with what you’re saying and not only is Pimbo high profile – he’s the bloody coach of the national team! Bizarre – nowhere else in the world do you get this. I’m still not convinced the FFA decided who was picked for the team and how much preparation they got. That’s Pimbo’s job and he gets all the support he wants from the FFA. I don’t know if it was arrogance, overconfidence or deliberate, but that’s the team we got and the preparation we got which led to the result we got.

Pim isn't telling us anything we dont know already know about our football progress. Its just that he's high profile. What I dont accept though is sitting back on our laurels with the A-League players & waiting for development to occur. The difficulties regarding player availability are not going to change,so the scenario whereby a team put onto the park with zilch International experience does. How does the FFA do that? What about some matches with our old friends the Kiwis,before the likes of Mitch Nicholls is thrown into the International arena against experienced Kuwait. Or as Foss suggested the Olyroo team is our Asian Cup team. Whatever formula is worked out we dont want repeats of last Thursday. What amazes me is that this sort of thing has happened before a few years ago when we were beaten by New Zealand 1-0 when trying to qualify for the Confederations Cup & Scotty Chipperfield played his guts out to no avail after paying his own airfare. md Potentially destructive or not I'll take high expectations above any of the expectations prior to 2005. What comes with high expectations is High planning then theres less chance of destruction. On that point Pim & the FFA failed against Kuwait.

Well - possibly, but "lean time" is a probably a bit harsh. I think more likely, we are not going to see real improvement from our home-based players until the current youth league crop and those who follow them are coming through. That shouldn't result in too much damage to the national team, provided that they take things a bit more seriously - i.e. they should still qualify for the finals of major tournaments. Its also the case that there are some very very good players reaching their peak between 2010 and 2014 - heaps more than we had in 2006. For example, Dukes never scored as many for Celtic as Scotty Mac has and will. Garcia, Triosi, Djite, Spira and probably a dozen others, all have masses of potential. So there is a crop out there that will potentially be every bit as good as the WC2006 set and they can carry the team for the next 4 years with reasonable success. Not many of them play in the A-league though that that will continue for the forseeable future. So either we will need to do away with entirely local based socceroos teams, or we will have a few more years of struggling along at the current level before things improve. There needs to be some expectation management too. We have gone from really happy just to be at the WC in 2006, to a scenario where, if we don't qualify for WC2010 on 1 April 2009 (with 3 games to spare), there will be general mass hysteria and panic, many time the scale of what we have seen this week. In a way its great that we have such high expectations - that will drive improvement, but it's also potentially very destructive. Cheers md

In fairness, I should note that my very mild 500 character admonisment of SBS has appeared on the Micallef blog overnight. Better late than never. Cheers md

Tactical and technical deficiencies aside, the game is still making a transition to bona fide professionalism that will only be completed with expansion, a longer season and most of all improved coaching and more intense training. The lower leagues of Europe have the same training regimes, for most part, as top-flight football.

md Loved your last two posts will add some more latter but well said

Stama, Unfortunately, some people take a very short term view of all things A-league related and then shout about it far too much. The quality of the current players is one of those things. Some of those who played against Kuwait are of the same vintage as the Cahills, Kewells and Emmo's - eg A Thompson, Allsopp and obviously Moore. For the group directly behind them, unfortunately the solution caused the problem. The death of the NSL was a huge break in career continuity for the same players that we are now relying on and happened just when it was critical for their technical and tactical development. Whereas in the NSL days, there was a seamless transition from youth to colts to state league to the almost-pro NSL and then OS if good enough, the kids who followed those you mentioned suddenly found themselves without anywhere to go just when they needed to be eased into professional football. Some of them went to state-league. Some of them went OS and threw their hat into the ring along with all of the other juniors and youths, many of whom are playing for hometown clubs... that's a pretty hard road to hoe for a young kid. Unsurprisingly, they are probably not quite as good as those who got a seamless and uninterrupted introduction to professional football. The kids coming behind them have a much better chance, and I'm confident they will be as good a group as the people you mentioned. To be more specific, compare that to what the likes of Ben Kantorovski, Shannon Grant and Kofi Danning will get to do with the likes of say Brosque who had to go to Belgium via Holland to get not many games after the NSL is cancelled, or Musialik who does back to Weston Workers for 18 months, after just making it into the NSL with Newcastle. So, there is a problem. It's a problem that was an unfortunate consequence of the collapse of the NSL. The solution to the problem is already in place, but the benefits won't flow for 3 - 5 more years when the Kantorovski's, Grants and Dannings of the league are experienced pro's, who have been playing Asian teams since they were teenagers and know precisely what they have to do (as well as the styles, if not the phone numbers of their opponents). How great is that going to be? That is not to say that we do not need an increase in coaching quality - we do, mostly because very few of the current coaches were as good players (or have previously coached as good players) as these kids will be. Cheers md

I think Robbie Slater let slip last night that Ricky Herbert was actually Australia's scout in NZ. Apparently either the major sponsor or the FFA isn't good for a quick trip across the dutch (about 100 bucks each way on jester, and they apparently won't charge you for carrying on a writing pad to make a few notes about the odd football match whilst you are there). I must say, I think the blogsphere has gone completely berko on this one - SBS in particular. There is nothing fundamentally wrong with having an A-league team play these matches. There is also nothing fundamentally wrong in the way the A-league is developing. Some things need a bit of a clean-up, but plenty seem to want to not only throw out the baby and the bathwater, but the bathroom and preferably anyone who has ever been in it, and start again. Again. Others clearly want to bring back the old bathroom, because they think the 70's decor might now pass for retro-chic if they can hide all the stains and disguise the smell, but that is another story... The reason we lost was not the quality of the A-league, it was failure to heed the old addage that perfect preparation prevents piss poor performance - or to put in another way, piss poor preparation prevents perfect performance. The FFA screwed this one up. They underestimated and they under-spent. Every aspect of the match was done on the cheap - including the scouting (which apparently involves a reciprocal promise to tell the Kiwis about any Asian teams we meet, in case they come 5th in the WCQs - sorry bro's you will have no chance of qualification with that approach). There was probably no budget allowance for camps and scouts, because the FFA never expected Kuwait to play in the group (having been suspended by Fifa, they are now temporarily "unsuspended" by Fifa whilst they renovate their own bathroom). That was a pretty naïve position to take, but the FFA have been known to do that. So, once again, we got caught short by underestimating opponents in Asia. In this case, opponents with buckloads of money who were taking the match seriously because they have a political point to prove to Fifa and the AFC. That is the lesson. That is what the blogsphere should be going crazy about. Instead we have an asylum of idiots deathriding the A-league and our good mates on the SBS blogs back to their censorious best, whilst rolling out waves of irrational and illogical 'we told you so's' to their retro-bathroom loving cheersquad. Stama - sorry for ranting on your blog. Obviously, I agree with most of the points you have made. Cheers md PS for those who were wondering - yes, this is why the A-league trophy is a gold and silver dunny-seat, because it's all about who has a better bathroom. Personally, I never liked the green paisley tiles or the orange sticky lino floors of the old bathroom. The new one is much sleeker and frankly more satisfying on every level.

I know that there isn't a great deal of talent locally. And that the players the other night did not perform well at all. But Pim Verbeek didn't exactly do much to get the most out of them. The formation was wrong. Some of the players selected were not the best available A-League players in the position. All bar Thompson and Moore were on their first or second cap. This particular XI was never going to succeed. I'm well aware of the HAL's many deficiencies but in the scramble to blame either the HAL or PV... I choose PV. We've only seen quality performances in our games against Qatar. Against other opponents, no matter how good the XI looks on paper, they perform badly.

I'm not too sure who to blame for the lack of preparation but I find it hard to believe that Pim would deliberately give himself little preparation for the Kuwait match. Pim recently said that he likes to coach club football after the socceroos (he said he wouldn't mind coaching A-league) as he likes to have regular contact with players everyday instead of limited time with players that we see in national team. Hearing that makes me think it was the club and FFA that stopped training camps from occuring especially since John Kosmina had oppose training camps in the past..

Con, I might be wrong, but wasn't it Pimbo's decision to play the A-League players and not the FFA's. He is the manager and selects and prepares the squad. I don’t think it was a cost cutting exercise. The team that played Kuwait was not even our second best team, there are lots of "fringe Socceroos" like Carle, Spiranovic, Djite, Leijer, Burns etc who mainly warm benches and their managers would have had no problem releasing them for the game. The whole selection and preparation of this squad was bizarre, given Pimbo is based here in Australia and has a lot of free time on his hands between Socceroos games. The A-League players were available for weeks, no one asked the fringe Socceroos if they wanted to play and there was no lead up practice games, just a couple of days training.