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Socceroos: the striking truth

Roar Guru
19th June, 2013
41

Would Brendan Rodgers or Roy Hodgson play Steven Gerrard as a lone striker? Genuine goal scoring midfielders like Steven Gerrard, Frank Lampard and Lionel Messi are rare and would never be asked to do hackwork up front as a lone striker.

They do their best work as box-to-box tyros who put themselves in goal scoring positions when it matters.

It’s a knack that’s hard to learn.

Holger Osieck’s genius FIFA World Cup Qualifying substitution to replace Tim Cahill with Josh Kennedy was just undoing his wrongdoing. Tim Cahill is not an out-and-out striker.

Playing Cahill up front on his own has never worked at international level. Cahill’s best and most prolific period for the Socceroos has been when he has been playing with a genuine striker like Mark Viduka or John Aloisi driving opposing defences backwards and creating space for him to create and often convert goal scoring opportunities.

And when Australia’s playmakers see Cahill standing on his own, surrounded by at least two defenders, what do they do but loft the ball in his general direction.

It’s been described as one-dimensional, agricultural football, a style that Australia has been trying to leave behind for decades.

Sophisticated and well-bred European football managers like Holger Osieck and technical directors like Han Berger were hired by the FFA to provide Australia’s emerging and elite footballers with the techniques and skills to play the beautiful game beautifully.

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Western Sydney Wanderers currently play a better brand of football than the Socceroos.

Tony Popovic didn’t employ Shinji Ono as a lone striker. He was feeding off Dino Kresinger and Mark Bridge, who like to do the work of strikers and occasionally score themselves.

Yes, of course I am thrilled at the Socceroos qualifying for yet another FIFA World Cup Finals tournament and so genuinely pleased for Holger, Timmy, Josh and the boys. But at times it was frustrating to watch, so I can only imagine what it was like out there playing to that script.

Let’s not sugar coat things, if we are going to persevere with these tactics and this over 35s squad, Australia will make a quick exit from Rio and leave a lot of genuine Socceroos fans embarrassed by their performances.

As Johnny Warren once said, “we shouldn’t just be striving to qualify for World Cups, we should be trying to win them.”

While I don’t believe we will win the World Cup in Brazil, we have made ourselves an opportunity to nurture and develop a squad that could take us further than we have ever been before, especially if we get a favourable draw in December, and then build a platform for future Asian and World Cups.

Surely Australian football has moved beyond scrappy wins against teams we should put to the sword, especially at home.

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We let Oman and Iraq drag us down to their standard, rather than impose ourselves on the contest. We are struggling to beat teams that are ranked by FIFA around 100 or more.

Timmy himself has said he is not an out-and-out striker. He seems to be shoved in there out of desperation by managers like David Moyes and Osieck.

Cahill’s greatest assets are his ability to make late runs into the penalty box to meet corner-kicks, free-kicks, crosses or convert simple knock-downs.

Mr Osieck, you have 12 months to find yourself a decent striker and groom him as Australia’s next World Cup hero. If you persist with these tactics, I’m just going to have to leave Australia out of my World Cup tipping competition and Timmy out of my World Cup fantasy team.

Even the boys from World Cup Fever will start poking fun at you.

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