Mariners bow out of ACL with 3-0 defeat

gumpy - As you are obviously a concerned fan I am going to try to pass some words on your comment.. Firstly my comments re, 4-3-3 and SSG's were not based on uses these factors had in Europe & / or South America.The 1974 Socceroo team played a 4-3-3 formation & I have in my possession an article from a local football magazine written by a Qld D of C in 1976 advising that they,the SSG's, should be used as a great help in teaching skills to Under 12 kids. That leads me to view the "saving" curriculum with just a little suspicion as to how it was "sold",at considerable cost, to our games "top brass",7 or 8 years ago. Then to the "purveyors " of the said "New Curriculum". You try to differentiate between their "pedigrees" but under investigation I find very little difference.Both appear to have been "round the traps" at lesser levels without ever having hit the high spots in the numerous jobs they have held,mostly briefly,as players or managers. Craig Foster is in a unique position. he has a voice in a public forum, Whether he uses that voice to it's optimum effect I will leave to the reader but I should tell you I was managing teams here in Australia ,at local and National level 2 years before Craig was born so am not exactly a "dunce" in the subject of junior coaching,but agree wholeheartedly with you ,& Craig, that it is the root of our problem today.The blunt truth is that after 8 years of fully professional football,the HAL, our kids emerging into the top teams are no better than those well known names of the past,Kewell,Viduka,Okon,Zelic & the others you know of. Gumpy,my main gripe is that I dont have 25-30 years to see football in this country attain the position I would like,so I will continue to criticize where I think criticism is warranted.Nothing personal for I think you may be of the same mind. Cheers jb

Well the short answer j binnie is that when EVERY single junior clinic/club in the country, no exceptions, is using the Curriculum book and verse...is anyone's guess. I hear you re. the 4-3-3/SSG principles being roughly 30-40+ years old but again, regardless of how commonplace these practices are in Europe, they were still very much alien to our domestic scene till a few years ago. You refer to Rob Baan(who as I understand it, has very much an inferior pedigree to Han Berger) and that' s understandable given he was tasked with rolling out the NC. Again I appreciate all that, and you refer to doctors being trained for 7 years, which brings to mind comparisons that Craig Foster makes in his book between Euro and Oz coaching education. Mate I don't have all the answers at hand; if you haven't read Fozzie's book 'Fozz On Football' I strongly suggest you do as it sheds more than a bit of light on this wider subject. What I do know is that as long as football coaching/education in this country shifts toward emphasis on technique/skill and tactical nous/proficiency, we WILL get there eventually. It should take no more than the next 25-30 years MAX, but WE WILL GET THERE. Remember, it took the Israelites 40 years to reach the Promised Land...but they got there in the end. That is the perseverance and commitment that this too requires.

Gumpy- My apologies for the typing error that caused me to misquote your original 'post' but my calculations were correct re. time to reach maturity as players,under your data. Now to your other claims. Forget the dates of when things were implemented, for the first Director of Coaching was one Robert Baan,appointed in 2006 & "retiring" in 2008. In those 2 years he was purported to have designed & planned a curriculum using the "Dutch" ???? 4-3-3,plus the small -sided game as the cornerstone of the system.This was to cure all our ills.The Dutch were NOT the first to use 4-3-3,Brazil was using the system in 1958 in the World Cup, That was 1 year after Holland set up it's first professional football league.!!!!!The small sided game as a coaching assist was introduced into Australian football in 1976. Now if you could explain why it took 2 years to design a system using base material that was between 50 (4-3-3) years & 30 (ssg's) years old I'd be eternally grateful. You then go on to criticise what is in vogue today as you wander around fields in Victoria. I'll surprise you now & agree wholeheartedly with you.It is the same in Queensland. Now in pointing out those facts are you not actually criticising exactly the same curriculum that you lauded in your first post. That is precisely my thoughts.HOW LONG IS IT GOING TO BE BEFORE THIS CURRICULUM PENETRATES DOWN TO GRASSROOOTS LEVEL????.Using YOUR dates we have now seen 4 years pass & an unknown,but huge, amount of capital spent in employing coaches & assistants at all levels of the national teams & yet you & I, & countess others, are still witnessing what we see at junior grounds around the country. THEY TRAIN DOCTORS FROM SCRATCH IN 7 YEARS!!!!!!!!. ps It may be of some interest but that original D of C. who "retired" from football at age 65 when in Australia, is now doing exactly the same job in India being appointed in 2011.Doesn't that seem just a little sus.to you, after all he is 70.. jb

JB FTA will help if done right .... but the lack of coaching ability for most teams is one of the biggest and hardest issues we have ... Many have said as people understand the game more they become fans... then come to matches and watch TV... they are a far bigger group than the Euro snobs ... I used to hold coaches nights and was always amazed that maybe over half the coaches did not even know the rules ... try and explain how a small player can defend against a big player .... talk about shape and touch and it was like talking Chinese ... then those that did have some knowledge got bored at the explaining to others very basic concepts like how to throw a ball in... It is still an issue today ....

Mid - After having had 8 years of highly paid Directors of Coaches,highly paid Youth coaches,with all the assistants they appear to have one would think that talent identification would be a necessity in order that the Coaching Curriculm is given only the best talent to work with, and if that argument is accepted it should actually have been "first cab off the rank" when setting up that curriculum if it was to be successful.Has this been done????? Results don't back the argument !!!!!!. jb.

Mid - Your friend Roy has certainly described the game in detail & has covered most of the flaws in the Mariners performance ,flaws that were pounced upon & punished by a much better team of players.Some of the retorts here to his views miss the point completely. CCM have been arguably the best team in the HAL for the last 3 years & yet this game showed that all around the field they were outplayed,out-thought,out-run,out-passed & out-scored by a very competent looking team.Forget the huge amount of dollars being cited as the reason & look at each individual player & on the night you would be hard pushed to get any CCM player who could compare favourably in the basic skills of the game with his immediate counterpart,(goalkeepers excepted). This is the real problem with our game & I am sorry Roy didn't get into the area of how he thinks we can improve for,without action in that area, we will continue to lag behind in our improvement for they,the Asians, are not going to stop until we catch up.This is a real worry for also behind the fact is the reason many of our young promising players still find overseas an attractive alternative.jb

j binnie, First up, my post clearly states '2016-17', so where did you get 2013-14 from? The curriculum was implemented in 2009; whenever it was 'first touted' is irrelevant, as it was implemented in 2009. But the sticking point is that no matter how you slice it, small-sided games were NOT common practice in this country prior to 2009 - yes they may have been used by a thimbleful of coaches here and there, but they were not the norm. Even today I walk past junior clinics here in VIC and 9 times out of 10 I see (approx)7-9 year olds being made to run laps and 'beep-test' type crap by coaches who quite plainly are either saboteurs or have NFI what they're meant to be doing. Now you might say 'they're just warm-up exercises'...but I don't think so. It's a sign of how far Berger's work still has to go, and shows the extent of the cultural obstacles in his way. Put simply, in any bonafide football nation(UK ones excepted) you don't have pre-pubescent kids running laps or any such bunkum; every second of every clinic/training session is spent with the ball at their feet.

Gumpy - Could you perhaps clarify something that has puzzling me for some time. You state we have to wait till 2013/14 to see the fruits of the much lauded National Curriculum so I assume you must be referring to youngsters who were introduced to that same curriculum when it was first touted to us in 2007 at the age of say,7. Those same kids would now be 13 so I can understand why we would have to wait another 3 or 4 years to see if the system is working. My puzzlement???. What about the kids who were introduced to that same curriculum back in 2007 but who were aged anything between 7 to 15. Have we to assume it only works with 7 year olds and anyone over that is to be cast to the waste pile.??? That's the point I don't fully comprehend. As an aside you do know that the system laid down for the kids to play,4-3-3, was not a Dutch development but was practised by Brazil in the 1958 World Cup.Also "small sided games" were in Australian coaching manuals by 1976 and many of our Golden Generation have already said they played in small sided games as juniors. Hope to hear from you.jb

"We may not have won last night but 8 foreign imports would make us more competitive." The flipside is, Johnno, that we could raise the salary cap/no. of marquees/imports but it would most likely result in the further neglection of improving our domestic juniors/players tactical and technical standard. I believe the National Curriculum under Han Berger has the right idea, and we only have to wait till roughly 2016-17 to see the first batch of players produced by it roll out of the conveyor belt. By rights the best of these could well make even Tom Rogic look like Leigh Broxham!

It's clear more foreign import's are needed in the A-league to generate revenue and compete. Increase the foreign import rules to 8 per team, otherwise forget winning the ACL. -What comes first the ACL or socceroo's. The ACL otherwise there won't be no socceroo's. -Good A-league teams bring in the revenue, that can then be spent on junior's the next line. And the NPL will provide plenty of opportunities for our up and coming star's. More money in the game is more revenue. -And fan's want to see the best. Guest spots are silly, slapstick. England has 4 divisions unlimited foreign import's, same with france and Spain, and they are doing fine. And locals if there good enough get plenty of opportunities there, even if only in the 2nd division, that's good enough it's fine it's pro. -France and spain have won world cup's, and England and Germany still do well with lot's of import's. 5 is not enough to compete at the elite ACL level. The a-league is our central revenue driver, for grassroots', more foreign import's, it's what australian soccer fan's want. We want the best possible A-league team, and the socceroos's will get more money that way too, as more revenue will fund junior football in OZ. More foreign import's for A-league 8 per team. It does not bother me in the slightest that Man United and Chelsea sometimes field team's with no English player's, that's not a bad thing. It shows it put revenue no 1. And that will filter don to the junior's. We may not have won last night but 8 foreign improt s would make us more competitive.

I enjoyed reading the posts on this thread very intelligent bottom line its all about technique

Their Foreign players won them the tie, without them CCM would of gone close to winning the tie, Guangzhou probably has the most talented foreign players of any Asian team, the Japanese teams have good ones aswell but the Japanese players are a lot better than the Chinese. This was the 1st Chinese team I believe was better than their Australian opponents in the 6 years our A league teams have competed in the ACL the Chinese teams have been the easiest opponents and A league teams have a great record. But just the spending power of Guangzhou got them through, CCM were just unlucky they got them. I believe A league will continue to improve in the ACL, we have a decent record already without really knowing what we are doing, we are starting to get better at how we prepare for the ACL and in future I see multipule A league teams progressing to the latter stages.

striker1 I think the answer lies in improving our coaches ... in the end its about money ... how do we train say 50 coaches around the country to develop our youth... As a committee member of my local club for years I always despaired when a team had to select a coach and manager... there was rarely anyone available to coach with any knowledge and it often fell to the person who could commit to turning on one night a week and for match days .... I remember a young boy I coached he was in this was an U 7 team my son was playing in... then I had this kid in U 8 & 9's... he was without doubt the most natural player I have ever come across in my entire life... could naturally kick with both feet had unbelievable balance and speed... He lived with his mum after what I am told was a bitter divorce and he only came because the girl next door went and the girls parents brought him along... I spoke to his mum and the club and our local association about this kid ... but no one had the time and there where no funds available to take this kid to reps or any higher level... When the girl stopped coming and joined an all girls team he left and I never saw him again... It's a huge question how do we identify and then train our best youth...

The lesser technical ability of our players to that of the rest of Asia in particular Japan and China will always be there unless we start bringing in ( like the japs did with Zico back in the 80s and chinese are doing) south American coaches instead of English, Dutch or Germans. I'm not saying that they should come and take over the HAL. No! It wouldn't work. We should bring them in just to coach and develop our talented youth. All coaches of our national youth league and juniors of the NPL should be coached by Brazilians or Argentinians. The Spaniards did it and look at them now. Spain was horrible at national team level. They were very similar to the way Australia plays, all guts but no brains. For the past 25 yrs they've been implementing and developing their youth on the technical aspect of the game.Buying the guidance and training of the best of south American coaches has paid off. They're the actual world champions due to their technical supremacy. We do produce quality players in Australia ( Antonis, Petratos, Caceres, etc) but because of our current coaching mentality these type of players are left behind. Most of the present generation of coaches in the HAL prefer the Hutchinsons, Zadcoviches, rather than the Antonises or Cacereses. Mariners and the rest of the HAL clubs will keep on struggling against technically superior opposition unless we change our unsuccessful approach to how we play football. Australian fans and coaches must change if we want to be respected by other nations. It's not all about pace and strength. A player that is technically gifted can be improved on physical strength and pace. A player with pace and strength but no technical ability won't go any further.

I'm not worried the a league is still developing and the room to improve is huge There are obvious ways the a league is going to improve. For one thing the mobility of players in the a league is very poor. You might just throw up your hands and grumble money but look at Tom Rogic - he has jus gone to the SPL (hardly the world's best league) yet his mobility has improved enormously in a number of weeks. This is an easy thing to improve and I expect it to over the next few years Also with Ange, Arnie, Popa, Mulvey, Edwards, Farina, Gumby, Merrick we have possibly the best group of coaches the a league has had by a significant distance. The team that ends up on top of that list will be competitive in the ACL I think. For all the difference in money I thought CCM almost matched them over the two legs in most areas. If you take out mariqui and Conca I think the CCM would have been equal at worst over two legs

Not entirely fair to say that Nelson. CCM were unlucky to be drawn against Evergrande in this round. We saw ADL beat Bunyodkor in previous iterations (they are also wealthy), and Buriram beat them this year so it can be done. Having said that, perhaps FFA could look at some sort of concessions for ACL qualifiers.

We do have an overemphasis on level playing fields...these concepts seem to work ok in ring fenced sports like AFL and NRL. If we want to have competitive clubs in international football, there does need to be a football specific approach. At the other end of the scale, in order to ever embrace the whole country of Oz beyond just larger catchments we also need to assess the salary floor along with the cap. So reassessing the current approach could allow our naturally 'super' clubs to be just that, while also allowing up and coming clubs the flexibility to operate in a two division league. Makes sense as a future looking strategy. Some may argue u need to wait twenty years to do this...i would argue do it sooner than later and grow into something really special in twenty years time...from the right base...

Titus For those pushing the athletic Football line,I put this to them, how many of the greatest players were/are athletes in the sense of lightning speed physically. The lightning speed of the greatest players lies in the head,because they had total command of the ball at their feet,freeing the mind to express,create. As you rightly say about Australian players this often leads to "decision making that is just too slow and laboured.",therein lies the real problem for A-League teams when confronted by Top clubs in Asia.

I actually start to feel a bit sorry for our guys in games like this. It really illustrates the lack of technical development that we have in this country at the moment. Players who are top of the pack at home and dreaming of big money moves to European clubs can't even shield the ball effectively, have a first touch that too often lets them down and decision making that is just too slow and laboured. I'm not having a go at them, the boys were fantastic and played a good game, they were out resourced in the end but it really highlights the need for greater technical development. People made fun of Antonis because he rose to fame as a trick performer but it is exactly that kind of dedication and commitment to the technical skills that is needed. It is also no suprise that our other great hope, Tom Rojic, came through the Futsal setup. Anyway, well played Mariners, I hope we can all grow from this experience.

realfootball You can have the best athletes in the world if they cant contro,l pass,the ball at speed they aint worth a dime. Pointless having a team of fast runners 'knowing when to run into space "if they fall over the ball when they receive it. Roy Law sums it up nicely. "The Mariners patiently moved the ball around, they passed from right to left and through midfield but Guangzhou moved the ball far more quickly, rapier thrusts to rapid runners, exposing the Mariners time and again with lightning, technically perfect passing. Only sheer guts, a determination not to yield, and the genius of Mat Ryan kept the Mariners in the game." Difference in a couple of word superior skills on the ball,better technique,you either develop them or buy them as it stands currently we aint developed them in numbers & cant afford to buy them,snookered by the rules.