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On the eve of this, what could be some sort of World Cup Alamo for the Socceroos, it is important for us to have a look at how we have stacked up, and I am referring to the entire World Cup process, from Aloisi’s penalty-inspired-nudie-run, until now.
This article is not going to be about grit, or Anzacs, or Pim, or red cards, limb amputation, or refs, or diving. This article is about quantifiable results, that show consistency and the hard slog and grind of what 95% of football is about. This is the work that goes in to the Socceroos shirt, the real work. There has been a lot of focus on this World Cup, but not a lot of it in any real perspective.
Let us start with goals scored. Out of the qualifiers played since the last World Cup, we have scored 17 goals. This gives us a goal average of 1.3 goals a game. If we include our World Cup finals performances in Germany and in South Africa (so far), this drops, but only to 1.21 goals a game.
In contrast to this, in qualifying, we have conceded .3 goals a game. If we include World Cup finals matches in this, it rises to 0.7 goals a game. Most games played, we have not conceded a goal.
In terms of results, looking at qualifiers, we have won eight qualifiers, drawn three, and lost two of our 13 qualifiers. This gives us a winning percentage of 61 per cent, and a losing percentage of 15.38 per cent.
When we include World Cup finals in to this, we see that these change to nine won, five drawn, five lost. This means we have a winning percentage of 47.36 per cent, and a losing percentage of 26.3 per cent. It is obviously the first of these that we need to address, and no matter how we look at it, we need to start scoring more goals.
Whether this is something that needs to be addressed through youth development or tactical development is not an issue I am going to go into here. However, bearing that in mind, if our goal scoring average to date is 1.21 goals a game, and the average to date of this World Cup is 1.96 goals a game scored in total, maybe we are not so far off the mark in modern football.
Finally, we all know who we have beaten, but let’s have a good look at who we have lost to.
First up, Brazil. Our first World Cup loss since “new football” began. Brazil are the five-times world champions, and a country that pumps out players like Manchester City pumps out transfer requests. We lost to them two-nil.
Second loss, Italy. Everyone will say we were robbed, but that is hypothetical and not the point of this piece. They are however, four-times world champions. Again, no shame to lose to them really, even if we were sore.
Third loss, Iraq. Iraq were actually a good side until their Football Federation disbanded, and they did win the Asian Cup. Everyone loses from time to time, and we lost to Iraq.
Fourth loss, China. This was a one-nil loss by a largely inexperienced (internationally) side, and we had already qualified from this round. The result was not important. It could be discarded, without trying to be unfair to the
Chinese who turned up to play.
Fifth loss, Germany. Three-times world champions. We lost four-nil. Everyone knows this story, but the facts are, regardless of the team sheet or anything else, that we conceded the second two goals with a man down. Again, no shame to lose to Germany. I am not going to comment on the manner here, that has been done to death.
Everyone wants to win World Cups. If we don’t believe we can win them we never will. But for all the talk about “the sleeping giant” and becoming a “footballing nation” and other various abstract concepts that sell newspapers, the stone cold, boring, trip-to-Tashkent-in-the-dead-of-the-night-results, the fact that we have a functioning professional league with promotion to the ACL, and our participation rates around the country, show that we are, in fact, a footballing nation.
And that is a wonderful thing.
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