Osieck sacking a bold day in Aussie soccer

Jukes -Common ground at last!!!!!. I was not defending or sentencing Osiek ,his retention or dismissal was something I could not influence, but what does get up my nose is the continuity of the status quo,hire a figure & if the basic play of the Socceroos does not improve,sack the coach & start again.This has the potential to go on forever with the "standard" of football continuing to be "static". That's what I mean when I say we have to start thinking "out of the box" for the present system/method is not working ,& hasn't worked for some years now despite those 3 qualifications for WC finals. The team that played the 2 latest Socceroo games had only 1 HAL player so the matches you & I would like to see played would not be hard to arrange.Could we learn something from such games or from a "home" Socceroo team playing weekly matches against other HAL teams during the season?? & before all those irate club supporters start screaming, remember Socceroo performance is the top of our football tree & international success can only help the HAL. "Out of the box" thinking again. Cheers jb. ps, you mention summer football.(started in 1989). The Arok "era" fell into the NSL played in our winters but Thompson's was in the summer football era.The NSL had a life span of 27 years, only 12 of those were played in our winter & believe it if you can, the access to our better players from Europe was part of the reasons for the change. Since then of course our local football set up has improved greatly. jb.

I totally agree JB, I am 42 right now so I am fully aware of what we went through during the Arok and Thompson era. In fact considering the NSL was played during the Winter also made it near impossible to secure our players as our calendar was out of whack with FIFA's. I like your idea of a home based socceroo squad vs Imports squad. It might actually be a worthwhile exercise. I have often thought about what would happen if we played an overseas aussie XI vs an A-league XI. If you gave me Kruse and Rogic and the rest of my squad were A-league players I would beat our current starting XI.

Jukes Why I mention Frank Arok's time, I was involved in football administration at that time & the goings on that man had to endure from HIS employers is nothing short of scandalous, Thompson & his coaching I never have mentioned, for by the time he took over from Arok the teams Arok had built were moving offshore as their reputations were winning them contracts overseas.When I have "pushed" the Arok " time " as one that should be re-examined it was because almost 95% of the players he used were playing in the NSL.Thomson,like many who have followed him had to suffer the same problems concerning the getting together of players from far flung regions in an effort to build that "something" that changes a group of individuals into a successful football team.I feel Arok accomplished this & with the talent now available in the HAL & the ability to have regular camps & even games to aid in team building,who knows what could be accomplished. Let your mind explore.How much could be learned & taught from a game held between a "home" Socceroo team playing against a selection of the imports playing in the HAL. That's what I mean when I say we have to start & think outside the box for we have a unique problem that requires that type of problem solving jb

I cant see anything wrong with losing to a Slovenian side away by 2-0. That's whats supposed to happen in a side that is regenerating. Things get worse before they slowly get better. I think from what I have seen of Holland despite playing for Austria Vienna who I would term as a good team in a mid tier league I dont think he is good enough and yet here we are still playing him. In regards to Williams, Ruka and Vidosic they have hardly been mainstays of recent starting XI's. In regards to Jedinak, he looks more like a centreback than a midfielder. We certainly dont need 3 defensive type midfielders in the side, being Holland, Jedinak or Milligan. Give me Milligan anyday as a DM and put Jedinak as a centreback. You put Rogic in as a Number 10, Kruse as an attacking option and you already have a spine of a good Australian team. You throw in Langerak, and the quickest defense you can muster, players like Zullo, Behich, Rose, Sainsbury come to mind. Then you have other options like a creative midfielder, players like Oar, Troisi, Ikonimidies, Amini, Bresciano. You can persist with players like Cahill, Bresciano and Archie who despite their age have still performed great and would be a good option coming off the bench. Then you look at other players who are on the fringes of selection like Spiranovic, Vidosic, Ruka, Bozanic, Duke, Juric. I would work around our two best players who are Kruse and Rogic. Find your weakest link which right now is our speed at the back. Defenders do not have to be as technically gifted as other players, at least they have to be able to keep up with quick attacking players. Right now we cant do either.

Johhno & Jukes This words "re-generation of our squad" has appeared quite frequently these last few days, not only by commenters like yourselves, but people like our CEO David Gallop have been using them in public statements made the other day. Lets go back to 2010,before Olger commenced work for the FFA,those exact same words were used just previous to a friendly game against Slovenia,by the stand in Socceroo coach for the game,one Han Berger who is still today holding a position of some power in our heirarchy.Han went justa little further in his quote stating that that particular game was "THE START of a regeneration period for the Socceroos.They lost that game 0-2. Re your other comments,the apex of tight defence & successful breakaway football was around long before 1990 being perfected by the Italians in the years 1963-67.Football tactics are, as you say constantly evolving , & tend not to last more than 5 years befoe subtle changes take place. Lastly you talk about our recent squad consisting mainly of aging veterans but examination does not hold this up for Holland, Williams,Jedinak,Rukyvista,Vidosic & Oar who were all in that 2010 squad only had at that time 23 caps between the 6 of them so were actually back up players then, but if fit ,would have played in these recent games. These are the facts lads,so Holger is not the only one to blame. jb

You know what JB, I also know who Atti Abonyi is and I have total respect for the man and what he has achieved in football. I am not afraid to call a spade a spade here in this instance, whether its Les Murray, Atti Abonyi, Craig Foster, Bozza or Ned Zelic I could care less. We all want the same thing, to move forward and progress as far as we can with the national team. In regards to Frank Arok I was never a huge fan of either his coaching or Eddie Thompsons coaching. I can appreciate they both did ok and had the national teams interest at heart and always produced the best they could with what we had. At least Frank Arok understood the Australian mentality as did Eddie Thompson. With Regards to Eddie Thompson he was the first coach to employ one striker for Australia which at the time was beyond our technical capabilities. I know poor Graham Arnold suffered as a result of that system but it has been proven over time to be a tactically superior way of playing modern football. While I could forgive Frank Arok for losing against Scotland who had a pretty good side at the time, I cant say I can be as forgiving against the likes of Israel or even the All Whites.

It would be interesting to verify if this is a nom-de-plume being used or if it is in fact THE Atti Abonyi, who was a member of that group of part-time miracle workers who got us to the World Cup in 1974.If it is THE Atti he does speak a lot of sense in parts of his comment although I,as an "amateur analyst", don't accept everything he has said. I do feel Holger has been made a scapegoat for the sins of many others, both past & present position holders in our halls of power, & of course one should not forget the media pundits who do ride with the hare & hunt with the hounds depending on what they are commenting.Since the inception of our "great leap forward" promised & planned from 2007 we have seen 3 "Dutch" coaches,of a much lower standard than Michels,Cryuff et.al, but all with one thing in common,they have rarely held a job for more than 2-4 years in their travels around the world & the 4th coach has just informed us he will be leaving after the world cup,another 4 year tenure coming to a close. Atti of course has experienced how a junior coaching programme was sabotaged back in the late 70's when an Englishman (pity about that? tried to set up a system where every State would have a State Coach whose job it was to run coaching classes for ALL coaches in their state.When the money dried up at ASF that was the first thing to go.This guy was crucified for daring to try & ensure his State Coaches were also qualified school teachers ,that is, able to teach in a proper professional manner.. What did surprise me that in his general comments Atti did not mention the very successful record Frank Arok had when coaching the NSL based Socceroos between 1983 & 90. Atti had stopped playing in 1980 so was not part of those teams but he was still involved & had enough football "nous" to appreciate how those teams performed against some of the biggest names in world football at that time despite the machinations of the administrators of that era. Finally,Atti,if it is in fact Atti, knows only too well that a coach's job is fraught with danger especially when results are not going his way & I'm afraid Holger took one step too far when making team selections. I have experienced the goings on behind the scenes in football's higher temples & it doesn't take too many of mistakes like that to bring down the chop where it hurts most. Atti,if it is you,all the best from one who saw you play many times.You were a credit to the game & all it stands for. jb

Johnno you are absolutely correct. I cannot understand how anyone can defend Holger here. The matches against France and Brasil were matches that were supposed to find out exactly where we were at. In both matches Holger played what was in his eyes the best squad we could assemble. Most of the squad contained aging veterans from the last two World Cups and were found wanting badly. I have been calling for the regeneration of the sqaud since after the 2010 world cup but we took the short term view of the Asian Cup. This is also why we had success in the 2011 Asian Cup. However after the 2011 Asian cup we had a dilemma, we had World Cup qualifiers coming up in a years time and little if no regeneration of our squad of players. You paid the price in football if you allow yourself to stay still and this is what has happened. We did not look at the big picture of who would actually be at their peak for the 2014 World Cup and now look at us. Needing to rebuild before the reality of Brasil or France hits us like a brick at the World Cup. Like you I prefer we found this out earlier, unlike people like Atti Abonyi here who wanted this to be found out at the tournament itself.

Italia 90 was over a long time ago, when he was the Kasier's right hand man. 20 years ago, and football was a totally different game. Holger's game plans were so Italia 90. The long ball, compact defences, he should take a leaf out of Klinsmann or Joachim Louw, his countrymen about how to play modern football, and design modern defensive patterns and shapes, and also ho to counter attack. Holger is trapped in the 90's.

Well said and I totally agree

The sacking of a man that was part of Franz Beckenbauer's World Cup winning team just goes to show how backward Australia is when it comes to football. I will accept Beckenbauer's word about Holger Osieck over any "football expert" or "analyst" and the likes of Robbie Slater or Craig Foster or anyone else who thinks Holger Osieck's sacking is justified. He was testing us out and look at the results, the next step was to decide on who would go to Brazil and Holger would have done this after these games. FFA are useless and don't understand the bigger picture. This decision is an absolute disgrace and the FFA are cowboys and should hang their heads in shame. It's Holger's fault? Just like it was Robbie Deans fault that Kurtley Beale and James O'Connor could not kick a single goal and cost the Australians the series against the Lions and then Deans gets scapegoated as Holger has been. Drop Lucas Neil he was poor, he's been a good servant but he's finished, you can still play at that age Del Piero is proof, but Lucas Neill has lost so much pace and got torn to shreds, pacewise and technically, and furthermore he's incapable of organising his defenders which is what he should be doing. Holger could have developed players in the next 2-3 years and look now, pay more money to a new coach, what a joke. If it is Hiddink he failed to qualify with Turkey and Russia. Yes, I am sure all the experts like Slater would have substituted Tim Cahill with Josh Kennedy when we needed a goal desperately and beat Iraq 1-0. Australian Football FFA you losers. As for Slater and his falsehoods that we "have never been beaten this badly", we were beaten by Brazil 6-0 21/12/1997, Croatia 7-0 6/6/1998, and don't forget the unlosable World Cup match we drew at the MCG against Iran 2-2 in 1997 when in those days we qualified to play off by playing Solomon Islands and Tahiti, you were part of that Robbie and we missed a World Cup, but of course Terry Venables was a great manager wasn't he Robbie, couldn't protect 2-0 against Iran at home and playing the offside trap and Azizi says thanks very much, great strategy. "Football analysts" the words should be used loosely indeed, and what chance was Holger given? Qualified us with an ageing squad, should have beaten Japan in Japan but for a handball, then we play 2 of the best sides in the world, what was your expectation with this squad? Name the players you would have played or blooded in qualifying or please be quiet. You can't name them because it is impossible to do so when you're trying to win games. This is a disgusting disgrace scapegoating Holger for this. I didn't see him playing in defense, midfield, or forwards. Furthermore, this is the fault of people like Boultbee and others, where is the blowtorch for the appointments of Boultbee, Buckley, Gallop, Berger. Baan, Versleijen. Losing 5-1 against Vietnam at youth level with no disrespect to Vietnam shows you the state of our juniors. What have these Dutch coaches ever achieved in comparison to Scheinflug, O'Connor or Blanco? In what other country would you put a CEO in charge of a sport who is directing our future who is not from football? It's a disgrace and something has to be done about it. The development of our juniors is the problem, if we had juniors who were being developed properly then Holger could have had talent to draw on, obviously he doesn't and didn't. That is the result of having had Hiddink here and then putting the Dutchmen in charge of our youth. Changing the Manager just goes to show that the people running football in this country are cowboys and have no idea, because it isn't the problem with the Manager it is the problem with our juniors. If Guardiola, Ferguson or Mourinho were in charge we would have had the same results because we just don't have the quality available and this is what Osieck was doing, finding out about who to take and who not to take. Fail FFA, and fail the people who have decided this is Holger Osieck's fault.

I agree, the whole "expecting too much" is absolutely garbage Even if we used the standard set by Osieck reign. It was only 2 years ago we came to Germany and defeat them 2-1. So Osieck showed that Australia had the potential to go to Germany and give them a bloody nose playing good football HOwever now Australia is in free fall (and it seems like he lost the dressing room) and we go to Brazil and France and get smashed 6-0. Australia already prove during his reign this isn't where Australia is at and so he is responsible for the rapid decline in standards over the last two years.

Hiddink is the right man no question IMO. He can salvage this situation and make the necessary decisions

Too many expectations here in Australia. Looking at the players availabe it would be a huge success to reach the knock out stages in Brazil, even if we had a top 10 coach in the world. Trapattoni couldn't even get Ireland to qualify for Brazil...

Question is will they get Guus Hiddink to coach again, he's a successful coach and he's available they could get him to him to fill that position. Holger Osiek would've known that his position as coach was on the line, he was being brave in denying that that was going to happen. I think they should focus on getting Guus Hiddink to be coach again.

From the line "Perhaps they're just expecting too damn much" I'll assume you're a casual observer. Let me give you an undeniable fact, you only get better by expecting more. If the FFA ran our national team expecting to be a middle of the road squad with the potential to occasionally test the world's bigger teams then they'd be remiss in their duties and we'd be a lot worse off. Sure they've made mistakes but I can see a lot of honesty in the way the FFA are moving. Tell me why I can't expect more from my national team? I'm not saying I expected them to win 6-0 both times, but they were just making some abysmal mistakes out there, even if it was a loss, if I could say they made few mistakes and fought hard, I'd still be happy, but that isn't the case. The FFA are charged with making the best out of Australian football at every level, now at face level they don't have much to work with but let me give you a few facts to display why we should expect more. We achieved our highest ranking ever of 16 around 5 years ago in 2009, a lot of players have moved on since then but we really should have been steadfast in determining what went right during that period and kept that up, with the current football landscape I have no doubt we can push back in to the world's top 20. Our young players are constantly being targetted by European clubs with 5 players moving to Europe in the recent off-season, another 5 in the last off-season and many moving to better leagues in Asia. This brings a constant flow of talent playing in better leagues than our own, given some better scouting I'm sure with our talent pool we can find solutions to problems bigger teams face. We can't look anywhere and say there's a "Next Harry Kewell" In our pool, the point of looking a player to take this mantle is beyond me, what we do have is a few good players in their early to mid 20's slowly gaining a good reputation for themselves, chief among these players are Robbie Kruse, Tom Rogic, Mitchell Langerak and Curtis Good. I distance these players from the likes of Harry and co. because they chose a different path, they came up through the A-League rather than join a European youth team early on and the fact that Kruse and Langerak are so well regarded at two of Germany's biggest clubs speaks volumes about the potential of the A-League as a talent prodcer. Sure during the Hiddink era we had the likes of Neill, Kewell, Cahill (At his best) Culina, Grella and Kalac all plying their trade at some well reknowned clubs, but on the flip side we had Lazaridis, Kennedy, Beauchamp. Wilkshire and Covic, all playing for lesser fancied clubs, if we could have a group of players playing in such a diverse range of teams playing effective and organised football then why not now? Damn right getting there isn't enough, I want heart, I want a team I can believe in, a team that can play strong football even against the world's best and why the hell can't I expect that?