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Socceroos coach Pim Verbeek oversees a training session at Docklands Stadium. AAP Image/Julian Smith
Pim Verbeek got one thing right yesterday afternoon in explaining the omission of Nick Carle, Jade North and Scott McDonald from his 28 man preliminary World Cup squad. McDonald, he claimed, simply didn’t fit his system. Sure right.
A system which essentially asks the sole striker to start around the half-way line, chase shadows up and down the pitch, as McDonald was asked to do in the first half of Monday’s night’s scratchy win over New Zealand, is barely going to suit anyone.
Let’s see how Josh Kennedy goes about playing in a formation that is parked on its 18 yard box, trying to play counter-attacking football, as the Socceroos started on Monday against a team ranked as low as the All-Whites.
Indeed, let’s see how Harry Kewell, who has barely kicked a ball in 2010, gets on with the workrate required to play this role.
The problem is not simply the players at Verbeek’s disposal. The problem is his system, its defensive outlook, and his fascination with fitting players into it, even if that aren’t playing or struggling with injury.
Two and a half years since he started with a 4-4-2 which featured influential performances Kennedy and McDonald, and on the eve of his first World Cup as a manager, the feeling is that Verbeek has more headaches than solutions.
While Guus Hiddink, in his short stay, showed all the flexibility and innovation in the world, tailoring systems and transforming players (think Scott Chipperfield to left stopper, Brett Emerton to central midfield), all the while explaining his moves with clear, positive, sound logic (“to control a game we need to take risks at the back so we need defenders with pace”, “Emerton has the speed to recover into defensive positions”), Verbeek tells us why players “can’t”.
Whereas Hiddink rattled the status quo and got the team functioning, Verbeek’s lot look more dysfunctional today than they ever have.
For the first time in his career he is front and centre, with the eyes of the world fixed on his every move.
There are signs he is feeling the pinch.
His reaction to Vince Grella and Tim Cahill’s reckless challenges on Leo Bertos were, from memory, the first time he has publicly berated his senior players.
Hitherto he has backed and praised them, even when they haven’t been playing.
He has made public statements about the need to play games, and contradicted himself by picking players who aren’t.
He has let his senior men say as they please.
Take Tim Cahill, for example, who has come out publicly, on more than one occasion, in support of Carle. How would he be feeling now? How will Verbeek deal with that?
While the names and claims were different, Cahill’s words are the same sort of rhetoric that was doing the rounds before and during the ill-fated 2007 Asian Cup campaign.
Who is running this show?
One thing that was clear under Hiddink is that he was the boss, fully in control. He made all the calls, invariably getting them right.
Even when he made the Zeljko Kalac call against Croatia, it wasn’t as far-fetched as many have since made it out to be. Mark Schwarzer wasn’t anywhere near the keeper he is today, and the battle for number one was real.
Some players might have questioned Hiddink later, but for him it wasn’t about popularity. There was a job to be done.
Verbeek has taken a different path, choosing the engage and back his senior men. They have done the job for him throughout the qualifiers, and there is no doubting it was an excellent job, from all involved.
Luck may have been on Verbeek’s side for much of the qualifying campaign, but it eventually ran out in December last year, at the draw for the World Cup.
Ultimately he will be judged on how his team gets on in South Africa.
He will be judged on how prepared and primed the team is? On what type of football they dish up? On whether they make a positive impression, even if they don’t make it through a very, very tough group.
His every move will be assessed, as it was at the announcement of his 31 man squad, as it was again yesterday.
He will ultimately be judged on his decisions, and I feel he erred yesterday.
It is particularly hard not to feel for Carle. Who said lightning doesn’t strike twice? Six years after missing out on the Athens Olympics, Carle is again considered excess.
Verbeek has gone down the same path as Frank Farina.
While he claimed yesterday that he had many options in Carle’s position, the truth is that Carle, like McDonald, is rendered useless chasing shadows up and down the pitch for 90 minutes.
The pity is that Verbeek won’t be around during next season’s A-League to see how a thoughtful manager in Vitezslav Lavicka, seeking to control matches, can build a team around a number 10.
Not that Carle and his agent are totally blameless. Some two years ago, while he was still at Bristol City, I wrote that he had to move on from the English Championship.
As I noted in that piece, the stars simply haven’t aligned for Carle, but he might yet have the last say, one day.
For now, Verbeek has had his final say on Carle, McDonald and North, and the proof will be in the pudding.
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