Ever since the AFC Asian Cup 2011, Australia has been playing poor football.
Apart from a few good performances, such as victories over Germany and South Korea in a friendly, a battling one-all draw with Japan and our dominant victory against Saudi Arabia, Australia has played poorly and have been unable to develop any attacking fluency.
This has been combined with questionable, conservative selection and scapegoating of young players in the team.
Even when Australia wins, it is usually done in an unconvincing fashion and often involves a fighting comeback after a poor first half performance.
Australia is now equal third in their World Cup qualifying group with six points.
Australia are in the position where the only way to guarantee qualification without relying on other results or via superior goal difference is to draw with Japan away from home and then win the two home matches. Three victories will do it as well, but this is unlikely.
This is a tough scenario and Australia are on the precipice of either missing out or finishing third in the group where they will have to qualify through a playoff against the fifth best South American team.
I hope that Frank Lowy and company are considering replacing Holger Osieck as the national manager.
There is precedent for this, considering that Lowy intervened and sacked Farina (against the advice of the CEO) after the Confederation Cup performance.
The question, of course, is who should replace Osieck.
Guus Hiddink is ‘retiring’ from management at the end of the Russian Premier League season, where he currently the manager of FC Anzhi Makhachkala.
The last game of the season is on 19th May, weeks before the crucial World Cup qualifier in June
So I’m wondering whether Frank Lowy has given him a phone call about the possibility of postponing his retirement?
Guus Hiddink has mentioned that the World Cup is a special occasion, and on previous occasions he has even put it in his contract of PSV that he is allowed to manage a national team to coach for the World Cup.
That’s how he managed to coach Australia, while holding down his PSV job.
Surely the football carnival of the 2014 World Cup in Brazil would make a more fitting swansong to his career.
Maybe the bitter defeat to Italy has left him with some unfinished business at the Socceroos.
This is an unlikely scenario, but I’m hoping the people at FFA are keeping their options open and Frank Lowy is considering giving him a call with a gentle enquiry about the possibility of Aussie Guus returning to the Socceroos.
If FFA manages to succeed in postponing his retirement, it is guaranteed that the general pessimism surrounding the Socceroos will turn to hopeful optimism in their bid to qualify to the 2014 World Cup
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What if we celebrated all of the achievements big and small, and weeded out those hell-bent on bringing down a game that is doing a hell of a lot right?
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