A slick Egyptian side provided Socceroos coach Holger Osieck with plenty to think about before the Asian Cup courtesy of a 3-0 thumping of Australia on Wednesday night.
Goals from Ahmed Abdul-Zaher, Mohamed Nagy and Mohamed Zidan in the friendly in Cairo were enough to provide the first defeat of Osiek’s short time in charge of the national team.
The Socceroos were chasing a decent hit-out against a skilful, quick side before January’s Asian Cup and the world No.11 and reigning African champions provided that.
It was the last match before Osieck picks his squad for the tournament in Qatar and he didn’t appear pleased with his side’s flat performance.
“When you have a negative experience you cannot be too happy,” said Osieck.
“But we cannot lose our heads and we must analyse.
“Basically we did not find our game, the way we wanted to play and some players, probably the travel, the short notice, the last players arrived 24 hours before the game.
“It is normal there is a lack of freshness and it should not be an excuse but circumstances were not ideal.”
Fresh from leading the Korean side Seongnam Ilhwa to victory in the Asian Champions League, Sasa Ognenovski made his international debut at the age of 31.
He became skipper Lucas Neill’s latest central defensive partner and was solid at the back with the two goals during his time on the pitch coming from lapses elsewhere.
Scott McDonald earned a start up front but was starved of opportunities in his pursuit of a maiden international goal while his fellow striker Tim Cahill was strangely off target.
Mile Jedinak bumped out Carl Valeri for a midfield position and looks likely to hold that position despite the scoreline in the mid-week result.
In ideal conditions, the 76,000 capacity Cairo International Stadium was a third full at best but those who turned up made their presence heard.
In-form Everton star Cahill, who has scored six goals in 12 English premier league matches for the Toffees, fluffed a great chance in the 25th minute.
After being played in by Brett Holman, he splayed his left foot shot wide.
Four minutes later, the home side pounced.
The Socceroos’ defence was opened up and Abdul-Zaher seized on a blocked shot and found the back of the net from ten yards out.
Brett Emerton was taken off for a hamstring concern five minutes later and replaced by Richard Garcia.
Jedinak muscled up by putting Islam Awad into the signage early in the second half before the home side inflicted scoreboard damage in the 59th minute after some sloppy work from the visitors.
Two of Egypt’s star players, Ahmed Elmohamady and Nagy, came off the bench to combine and make the equation just that bit more difficult for Australia.
Elmohamady burst down the right flank and put in a fine cross that Egyptian star striker Nagy, also known as Gedo, drilled home only moments after coming on the pitch.
Cahill continued to find space in the box at corners but could not direct his headers before Neill wrapped up a forgettable performance for Australia by giving away a penalty.
Not that Osieck believed the penalty was deserved.
“I do not know what kind of penalty it was, the only person who saw the penalty was the referee,” he said.
“Nobody knew what was going on, only God and the referee.”
Zidan rifled his spot kick right of Schwarzer in the 89th minute to complete Australia’s miserable evening.
Australia’s next match is against the United Arab Emirates on January 5 in the lead-up to the Asian Cup, where they meet India, South Korea and Bahrain in the group stages.
Khattab
Guest
Have you seen the last CONTINENTS' cup held in South Aafrica? Egypt delivered a class a performance against Brazil and Italy, also we won the last two African cups at Ghana and Angola. in fact we sometimes play poorly when all the odds are with us.
pete
Guest
Yeah look Egypt are always solid at home (not so much away). Need to re-group for first game v India in the Asian Cup now!
midfield general
Guest
Speaking of the Roar why did Osiek take Mckay all the way to Egypt just to give him 10mins? If Culina is an automatic choice for the socceroos then Mackay should be in there, based on their respective club performances. He should certainly be ahead of Jedinak, with Culina in the holding role. Partaalu might be worth a look too, he certainly looks a better player than Jedinak and Valeri in current form. I'd lke to see Osiek make a difficult decision of giving Neill the chop, but he won't. Spira and Sasha probably make a better combo for now. And Holger should be kicking himself for letting this Turkish bloke slip through the net, judging by how Carney played.
sydboz
Guest
They played with almost half their starting XI missing, Bresciano, Grella, Valeri, Kewell, Kennedy, Emerton etc etc, You can't go up against Egypt in Cairo with more than half your first team missing. Egypt are the Number 10 side in the world and they are even more of a force at home, Australia were unlucky with the last goal, clearly not a penalty and the main thing was Harry Kewell is needed in that side, no matter what idiots such as Robbie Slater may say. Why? Because he is class, he brings fear into opponents, he can pull off moments of magic that make all the difference and he takes pressure off the likes of Cahill. What was proven was Mcdonald's and Garcia's time in the national team maybe extremely limited in future. I don't think either of them are good enough for the Socceroos and they should probably be cut loose. The likes of Leckie (who is injured), Robbie Kruse, Alex Brosque, Archie Thompson etc must be brought in as decent strikers. Mcdonald and Garcia are just a sham.
whiskeymac
Guest
Fuss, you make good points - and lets not get too carried away with one result away from home - it takes time to truly get an idea on a coach and their impact. look no further than Ange at Roar. its ok to try and fail during a tough friendly (and no mistake it wld have been against a tough team at home) to learn to get it right when it counts.
whiskeymac
Guest
exactly - we are in illustrious company re:teams getting beaten. portugal 4-0 over spain was a whopper; as is england losing at home. but at the same time by all accounts we were shown up... the honeymoon for the coach is over. hopefully the result will spur him on in plotting to blood young new talent to build his future teams with
Fussball ist unser leben
Roar Guru
Realfootball If you were in charge of recruiting, whom would you would have chosen to manage our National Team? How some of the world's best football managers performed overnight: * Joachim Low's Germany played out a boring 0-0 draw with Sweden (Egypt is ranked far higher than Sweden) * Dick Advocaat's Russian team was beaten 0-2 at home to Belgium * Vicente del Bosque's World Champions, Spain, got smashed 4-0 by neighbours, Portugal * Fabio Capello's, EPL stars got beaten at home 1-2 by France * Guus Hiddink's Turkey team was beaten 1-0 by Holland * Cesare Prandelli's Italy needed an own goal to scrape a draw against Romania
Stevo
Guest
I gotta lot of perspective this morning and I didn't much like it. We were slow, ponderous, lacking in vision or creativity. What was our game plan? Long balls to Scotty doesn't work for midgets. We haven't found our feet with Holger however Pim summed up our strengths and weaknesses pretty quickly and devised a game plan to suit. It wasn't (always) pretty but it was damn effective. Call Pim arrogant, pragmatic or wotever but we got results on the road in Asia which by all accounts, including this mornings effort, is a pretty hard task.
Realfootball
Guest
A poor side, poorly coached. Osieck is showing why he has never coached a major side. We needed someone who could ring the changes and not be intimidated by the dressing room. We didn't get him, and its looking awfully like Verbeek groundhog day. This is not a one off. Holger's previous games we were played off the park too for most of the 90. There is no getting around it - this is an old team chronically short of both pace and talent. Unfortunately, I believe the Roos are in for a tough time at the Asian Cup. Carney, in particular, will be targeted by every coach who lines up a team against us. And yet a player like David Williams can't even get a look in, when a small, slow mediocrity like MacDonald gets game after game without result.. Like it or not, Osieck's approach is still moribund in Eurocentrism.
Fussball ist unser leben
Roar Guru
A bad day at the office that's for sure. For me, result is not an issue - Egypt is ranked No. 10 in the world, are current African Champions and were playing at home. My concern is the way we played tonight was very poor - heavy 1st touches means players were under pressure straight away; sloppy passing restricted the supporting runs b/c players knew they would have to track back immediately; and long balls into the box are not the answer to our scoring problems. From about the 5-28 minutes in the 1st half - whilst we weren't brilliant - I thought we had more of the ball and created some good chances. In particular, Holman, with some fancy footwork, put a beautiful pass that reached an unmarked Tim Cahill in the box. Unfortunately, the ball fell to Timmy's left side but he still should have buried it with only the GK to beat and the whole goal beckoning. After Egypt scored we were hopeless. There seemed to be no method in our attacks. Either we meandered through the midfield without purpose, or simply lofted the ball into the box hoping that Tim or Scotty would head it in. By contrast, Egypt were technically excellent, had purpose to their tactics and were strong and quick. But, let's not lose perspective. It was a practice match, away from home. And, when we look around the world lots of highly-fancied football teams performed dismally in their practice matches, including: Spain, England, Russia, Italy and even Germany.
Khattab
Guest
We weren't in our best day though! Egypt produced far better performances than the last match before.
Phil Osopher
Guest
Unfortunately, be it right or wrong, for some reason that's how I expect Australia to play, that familiar sloppiness. I hate it when they do.