You’ve heard it more than once or twice before: ‘Hindsight is a virtue’ or ‘hindsight is a beautiful thing’.
For the Socceroos, they will look back at their 2010 World Cup campaign with plenty of unanswerable questions, despite the fact they matched their 2006 efforts.
What if we had Tim Cahill playing against Ghana? What if we had Harry Kewell and Craig Moore playing against Serbia? What if we had come out and played aggressively from the get go against Serbia? What if we hadn’t left our run so late? What if Mark Schwarzer hadn’t fumbled and let Marko Pantelic pick up the crumbs for an easy goal?
Too many questions for such little shuteye.
But the following question is the one that will continue to be asked and pondered over during the next few weeks: what if we had actually believed that we could beat the Germans in our first game?
Australia was bundled out of the World Cup earlier this morning despite a 2-1 victory over the Serbs. It was a gutsy, gritty and determined performance but one that was left far too late.
Sometimes sport is purely a mental game. It is all about your attitude to the contest and the belief you have in yourself and your teammates. You might be hurting physically or have no energy left to exert whatsoever, but when a team- or individual for that matter- has the mental edge and a bigger will to win, they already have a massive advantage.
The Socceroos went into their game with Germany- one of the biggest soccer powerhouse in Europe- with little to no belief that they could win. Even our coach Pim Verbeek conceded defeat before the match even began by saying, ‘a draw would be a fantastic result (because) Germany are a superior team to Australia’.
The Socceroos’ 4-0 was embarrassing to say the least. We played negatively, almost hesitantly. We played that game as if we feared them. It was as if a baby was trying to take its first steps of its life.
What made our performance even more bewildering is that after looking at some of the other surprising results in the tournament so far, we had every right to feel confident about a victory.
Who would’ve thought that New Zealand would salvage a draw against Italy, or that Algeria would share points with England? Even more astounding, who would’ve thought that Switzerland would beat pre-tournament favourites Spain by a goal?
We had no reason to fear the Germans. The ingredients were certainly there on the field with players like Cahill, Kewell, Moore, Schwarzer, Scott Chipperfield, Lucas Neill and Brett Emerton- all world-class players. Not to mention an entire nation was behind the team and the support for them over in South Africa was the equivalent of a home crowd advantage.
However you can’t expect a team to make up a four goal difference in such a hig pressure tournament such as the World Cup. The Socceroos exposed themselves after that horrible loss to the Germans and it was always going to be an uphill battle from then on.
Let’s not take anything away from our final two performances against Ghana and Serbia. Coach. Verbeek seemed to have learnt his lesson from the first game and made a few changes that seemed to work. And it always helps when players like Luke Wilkshire decide to stand up as well.
Our slim hopes of progressing through to the next round sprung to life against Serbia when Cahill cleverly headed through a long cross from Scott Chipperfield at the 69 minute mark. Then just four minutes later, Holman scored his second goal for the tournament and probably the goal of his career with a sensational long range strike to put us two goals ahead. Unfortunately, Pantelic pounced on a very rare Schwarzer fumble to bury our World Cup dreams.
It is always a terrible situation to be in when your fate lies in the hands of other teams or individual athletes. No matter what sport it is, to know that you can’t control your future is an extremely frustrating predicament.
The Socceroos’ 2010 campaign will always be known as a ‘what if’ campaign and one that we probably deserved more out of.
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