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World Cup draw means Socceroos have nothing to lose

10th December, 2013
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The Socceroos have their toughest qualifier, against Jordan. (AAP Image/Mark Dadswell)
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10th December, 2013
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So the groups for the 2014 FIFA World Cup have been drawn and the Socceroos have fallen into what many are calling the “Group of Death”.

And even though the moniker given to our group seems terrifying, it’s not exactly a bad thing to be placed with the likes of Spain, the Netherlands and Chile.

Okay, the current world champs may be Spain and they may have beaten the Netherlands in the last World Cup’s final to take the mantle, but there may be a glimmer of hope.

And Chile may be seen as one of the top seeds of this tournament as it is being held in South America, but all hope is not lost.

And the Socceroos might be the lowest-ranked team in the comp, but we can still keep the faith in our boys.

Sure, everything seems to be going against us already but the fact nobody gives us a snowflake’s chance in hell might actually help us.

For us, there three certainties going into this World Cup for the Socceroos:

1. The other three teams will be trying to score as much as possible against us. This is to help their goal difference in the event of a tie-breaker situation to determine who goes through to the second round.

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2. Because we are ranked way down at number 59, we aren’t going to get the rub of the green from the officials playing against the best in the world. It’s just the way it is. The Socceroos need to accept that now so that when the bad call happens, they can just shrug it off and move on instead of letting it get to them.

3. We won’t be respected. We will be seen as a means to an end for these three teams. An easy win to help them through to the next stage.

Despite these three factors, we have two things on our side that we think will help the cause. For the first time, we have an Aussie coach who understands what it is to be an Aussie.

Guus Hiddink came close but wasn’t quite there. Pim Verbeek didn’t have a clue what the Aussie way of doing things was and it resulted in a diabolical start to our last campaign against Germany.

Our latest coach, Holger Osieck completed his mandate of getting us to the World Cup but we had the impression he felt he was asked to do a tough job with what he thought were inferior players.

With Ange Postecoglou as our new coach, there is a familiarity that we have never had.

This should enable the Socceroos to play the Australian way, which is to attack when possible. With or without the ball.

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Our job now is not to sit back and wait for the inevitable flogging while playing “Pim-Ball”.

They say attitude is everything and this statement has never been more correct than in these circumstances. The Socceroos have to play “Aussie-Ball” if they have any chance of making an impact in this group.

When we say impact, we don’t necessarily mean winning these group games.

We mean making this group of top echelon team’s work very hard to get the win.

The world will take notice if the reigning champions can only sneak away with a 1-0 result.

They will take even more notice if the Socceroos can gain a point after the group stage has concluded.

What if we can sneak two points? What if we can keep a team scoreless? The Socceroos could turn this tournament on its head if they play the positive way that we all hope they can.

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We could be dreaming. We could be wearing a heavy prescription pair of rose coloured glasses here.

But is it such a bad thing to live in the world of “what If” for a while?

The Boston Red Sox had a motto during their curse-breaking American League Championship series against the New York Yankees back in 2004. It was “Why Not Us?”

Well then Australia, why not us?

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