Socceroos to test and cap new players?

JB Some excellent points

Midfielder -You sure come up with some posers.At a given level Australia is ,through the efforts of this coach,quickly building a group of players who already have quite extensive experience playing at International levels.If you were to take a punt & pick what Holger would consider his "top" side at this point in time,there would not be too many "new" boys on show.So where to from here? Unfortunately, through a fact of life, this man has got to start considering his future.Under present arrangements FIFA has made it possible for countries to call in their best players,from wherever,at certain times of the months.This opportunity cannot be ignored for pretty soon he is going to have to "fine tune" his best side & the best way to do that is to get them playing together.That should take care of the "friendly" games arranged for these aforementioned dates. Now to enter your other areas of discussion Australia has a huge "distance" problem in getting together (can I call them promising ) players who appear to have emigrated to all corners of the world.This of course demands a huge financial investment by the FFA to overcome & I'm not so sure the budget stretches that far at the moment So our coach will be forced to use indefinables like,- Is a player playing regularly in first team football ?, How does that league standard compare with others ?, What is the player's physical & mental health at a given point in time?,Will he fit in with players already earmarked for my "best" team?, the questions go on & on so Holger's job is not easy in this area & therefore your questions cannot be answered by people who have little or no experience in picking an international team to represent a country. jb

two new players a game is wholesale experimentation, Mid, as it constantly disrupts the team. Maybe into the squad, but not so much on the park

All it takes is one loss (or even worse, a bad loss) and any thoughts we have about experimentation will be out the window. Because after this is the final round, when things get interesting. Much harder games than these, and you would want to see the team keep improving. Also, these guys all have to go and prove themselves week in, week out for their club teams. Step 1 is prove your worth to your club, and play regularly. Step 2 is prove to a bigger club that you belong at a higher level. A player can keep improving even if he goes nowhere near a national team. The chances that someone who can't prove themselves to their coach will be ready to contribute to the NT is minimal. And just being round the NT won't turn you into a good player. Are there guys on the edge that could improve the team right now? It shocked everyone when McKay did it. No disrespect to Federici and Williams, but I could see Theoklitos and Franjic from the Roar providing something different (better?) than what they do at GK and RB.

Midfielder what about your mariners player in Oliver Bozanic. I'm sure he'll be thereabouts in near future.

We should Cap the following: PRIORITY: Shane Lowry, Dylan Tombides, Chris Herd, Bradden Inman and of course Mr Langerak.

James Holland as a defensive mid... maybe ... I still think this is our weakest position ... not totally convinced that Jedi & Valeri are the answer .... Jedi passing game lets him down at times and Valeri's defense lets him down at times as well...

I would not be surprised if croatia has football scouts in Australia head hunting player sof croation heritage. the prime minister of croatia at the time tried to get mark viduka ot play for them. they got joey delucca, and that greta defender Siminic he would of walked into a starting spot for the soccer's if we had treated him better in his junior days, he was much better than, Neil,moore,vidmar,popover, and even big Ljubo milosivic. Ljubo would of liked ot have turned out for Croatia to probably as the FFA have treated Lubjo so badly.

The kid is Croatian, you don't think that there were no tabs on him from Croatian agents that might have swayed him to go to Croatia? These things just don't happen out of the blue, as you say he was in the shop window with the young Socceroos. I reckon he is better suited to play for a Croatian Club in any case---not that we would not want him to play for Australia, good luck to him.

He looked like Santa Claus when he talked about Adam Sarota - good to see Holger thinks he's the go. Another touch and go midfielder. Exciting times for Aussie midfield. Holman, McKay, Valeri, Zullo, maybe Sarota in time, Emerton. Mobile, fast and all good touch. Well Emmo mostly:)

That is rubbish. He played two years in your Youth team - and was Captain as well. The guy was the only Aussie to go to and play in every camp, Young Socceroos games in the last two years prior to the World Cup. Every time he went into Camp he slipped from Miron's view it seems. I reckon he always wanted to go to Europe - but is that different to any other Aussie young player in the last 40 years? He's not alone not many young Aussies getting game time in the A-League.

Holger had something to say about this last night on Foxsports FC. From what he said, I doubt you'll see wholesale "experimentation", but as he said "bringing players in". I read that as broadening the depth of the squad while maintaining the squad we all generally recognise. What Holger seems to be doing differently to Pim is creating a deeper squad and adding players that suit the roles he wants, rather (incremental additions) than making wholesale formational changes or experimenting. He's like a Santa Claus. You could give him a cuddle!

Griffo Agree with the players you mentioned maybe add Mitch N from the Roar as well...

The other side of this problem coin is the Olyroos (and U20's to some extent). A bit of chatter some months ago about fast-tracking some of those players into the Socceroos setup. Perhaps we'll see some of this occuring over the next few months to a year. Kantarovski, Thombides, Amini, Berni...even the likes of Bulut would all be candidates as well as other players mentioned.

As above Chris Herd (Aston Villa) should be one and is getting chased by Scotland last time they spoke about him

Timely article for me Mid as I was thinking about this yesterday. ;-) I'm with Ben on the page that we should use the potential 'dead' WCQ matches to give the backup/fringe players in the squad valuable experience in a still meaningful game. Australia will still want to qualify top of the group, and hopefully without losing, conceding points or goals. That is a good environment for the backup players to prepare for mentally as well as game time. It will only benefit Australia further into WCQ games (again: assuming we qualify, which we still haven't yet...) Friendly-wise: Still a case of giving the fringe players valuable game time, but also an opportunity to evaluate a couple of players that may have cropped up into reckoning in the meantime. You can never have too many backups. My feeling is that the squad, at least from Holger's point of view, will need or has already become fairly stable for the next few years. Large scale experimenting and evaluating as he has done in the first year has given him the 'extended' squad list. Just the opportunities to evaluate a few new players is all that I see going forward. On the Gulum front: sure, pressure him if he still hasn't played for Turkey, and he is playing well and there are no other candidates in his preferred position to try out. He's been injured I think, or may only have started playing again...but I can only imagine if he hasn't been capped by Turkey and is playing well, he might re-evaluate his 'options' :-)

it's a great position to be in, discussing possible 'experimentation' in competitive matches, or capping to 'lock players in'. we should be careful though, as momentum is a valuable thing in any sport, and I think this team is still a work in progress as far as the main squad members are concerned, so every game is a crucial chance to further work on what's already in play. having said that, from holger's comments last night it seems he would like to give adam sarota a decent chance pending him cracking some more game time in the nederlands. also, there's been a heap of talk here for a while now about rhys williams' potential to play in the centre of midfield... has anyone seen him in a club game lately, who could possibly elaborate? I don't doubt his potential, I just haven't seen him playing there as yet..

Ben The article says two players each game... say three to four games is ... six to eight new players... the question is as Futbanous argues do you cheapen the shirt and send the wrong message if you do this..

MD4 11 November 2011 Oman v Australia MD5 15 November 2011 Thailand v Australia MD6 29 February 2012 Australia v Saudi Arabia so yeah, the only likely chance for a friendly is the weekend just before MD6 (which is on a wednesday).. given the large gap from november you would hope there might be one organised, especially given the need to test a few things out..

Lustica was playing in our youth team last season. I reckon he had always wanted to go to Croatia to play and not for GCU. It was reported that Miron felt he was not strong enough for the HAL. Somewhat strange I know, however it could have been that Lustica always saw himself playing football in Croatia and not in Australia.