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We are paying the price for our obsession with qualifying for the World Cup. It made sense in 2005 but seven years later, the Socceroos are going backwards.
The problem is a succession of European coaches who view their duty as no more than to guide the Socceroos to the World Cup finals.
With Guus Hiddink it was understandable, while Pim Verbeek flat out refused to entertain the notion of either playing attractive football or bothering to regenerate the squad.
He repeatedly inferred, if not said it outright, that his job was simply to qualify for South Africa.
The way Holger Osieck has behaved of late, you’d have to think a similar mission statement was passed down to the German.
Why else would he repeatedly refuse to blood new talent in the face of a rising chorus of dissent?
It’s as if Osieck can’t bear the thought of being undermined and so routinely sends out his predictably conservative teams as a means of saying, “I’m in charge here.”
But what exactly is he in charge of? Surely after the Verbeek fiasco it was in Osieck’s remit to revitalise the national team?
There were rumours at the start of his reign he was brought in to do exactly that but these days Osieck’s squads look more like a version of Dad’s Army.
And whatever urgency Football Federation Australia might have felt to qualify for the East Asian Cup seems to have been lost in translation en route to national team headquarters.
Perhaps Osieck is shrewder than we think.
Has anyone stopped to ask whether the East Asian Cup is actually worth qualifying for?
When I lived in Japan, I remember the Samurai Blue sending a third-string squad along to the 2008 tournament in China to have their national anthem routinely booed and seven shades kicked out of them by their terminally bitter East Asian rivals.
So brutal has some of the on-field treatment been at past tournaments it begs the question of why Japan even bothers to send a team in the first place.
As Australians, should we expect any different?
Now there is talk of the tournament prize money being slashed, once again begging the question of what the actual goal is from our participation in the qualifiers.
If it’s to give young and domestic-based players the opportunity to play against high-quality international opponents, why not play them now?
If they can’t perform against North Korea, there’s no way they’re going to make a difference against South Korea.
It’s perhaps understandable that Osieck didn’t blood too many youngsters in the recent friendly win over the South Koreans in Hwaseong, for the simple reason that a severely understrength Socceroos would have been torn apart by the technically proficient Taeguk Warriors.
But when it comes to East Asian qualifiers, it’s hard to see the point of starting Eugene Galekovic ahead of Mat Ryan or perpetually keeping Tom Rogic on the bench.
Perhaps that’s because Osieck’s role hasn’t adequately been defined.
Maybe he’s been told to qualify for Brazil at all costs and consequences for the future be damned.
At any rate, Osieck’s relentless conservatism doesn’t exactly come as a huge surprise.
This time five years ago the rumour flying around the press box at the Club World Cup in Yokohama was that he was a dead man walking in charge of Urawa Reds.
I remember watching them against Milan when he employed double defensive midfielders to “minimise the risk” of being hurt on the counter-attack. Sound familiar?
There’s been a lot of criticism of Osieck over the past few days – much of it deserved.
But maybe it’s time we turn the scrutiny onto ourselves as a football nation.
If we weren’t so obsessed with qualifying for the World Cup finals, would Osieck be less pressured to stick with his rigid conservatism?