Sheek's best Socceroos XI (1967-present)

In March 2016 I will celebrate my 60th birthday. Next March will also be the 50th year that I have been following most sports.

I thought I would have a trial run with fellow Roarers and offer my best selections of the past 50 years in football, cricket, tennis, Australian football, rugby league and rugby union.

By presenting my selections to fellow Roarers, they might remind me of a player I have inadvertently forgotten, or put a compelling reason forward why another player should or should not be selected.

Hopefully, it can help my memory in the places it may have failed me.

I also want to select an Australian men’s and women’s Olympics track and swimming team from 1968-2012, but that will require further research before I’m ready to submit.

With the Socceroos having just won the 2015 Asian Cup and the Cricket World Cup commencing next week, I thought I would start with these two sports. So let’s take a look at the former first.

It just so happens that football was the very first game I played in my primary school back in the mid-1960s. The first major football tournament I heard about was the 1966 World Cup.

Ironically my earliest heroes were the English World Cup winning champions. Guys like captain and defender Bobby Moore, midfielder Bobby Charlton, striker Geoff Hurst and keeper Gordon Banks.

Then in 1967 Australia travelled to South Vietnam for a tournament which they won against other Asian countries and New Zealand.

This tournament would have passed me by except that I was at the time fascinated with military history and I had become deeply conscious of the Vietnam War following the Battle of Long Tan in August 1966.

And so I then realised that Australia had a football team. Without being aware of it at the time, I have followed the rise of modern Australian football from the ground floor of those early struggle days in 1967 up to the glorious present.

It’s been an often tortuous journey, full of false dawns and bitter disappointments, but now it seems that football is finally bearing the fruits of the painful restructuring it was forced to undergo in the early 2000s.

Back in 2012 the FFA announced its greatest ever Socceroos XI.

The team was generally well received with minor surprises in the selection of defenders Alan Davidson and Craig Moore. This was mostly because the defenders were hardest of all to separate.

After some deliberation, I feel no need to alter the team except for one forced change. Defender Joe Marston was before my time so I will need to find a replacement.

Most conveniently, I have the perfect replacement who will also be my captain. That man is Peter Wilson, who led our Socceroos to their first World Cup participation in 1974.

The Englishman Wilson may have been in Australia less than six years when he went to West Germany, but he already displayed the qualities that we Aussies like to believe we have – stoic courage, indomitable spirit, quiet determination, calmness under pressure, quiet authority and leadership.

Using the same 4-3-3 formation as the FFA, here are my team selections.

1967-2016 Socceroos First XI
Mark Schwarzer (GK)
Lucas Neill (FB), Craig Moore (CD), Peter Wilson (c) (CD), Alan Davidson (FB)
Johnny Warren (vc) (MF), Ned Zelic (CMF), Tim Cahill (MF)
Ray Baartz (FW), Mark Viduka (ST), Harry Kewell (FW)

Coach: Rale Rasic.
Assistant Coach: Les Scheinflug.

The beauty of this team is that it can work under several other formations as well, either 4-4-2, or 4-2-3-1. Either Baartz or Kewell could drop back to form a lethal attacking midfield pairing with Cahill. Or Viduka could be left up front as a lone striker, with Baartz, Kewell and Cahill causing havoc from midfield.

I am comfortable with the selection of both Davidson and Moore in defence, bearing in mind the competition for places is super hot. Rasic also gets the coaching gig ahead of Guus Hiddinck because he contributed more to Australian football over a longer period.

With these exercises I also plan to select a second XI. Most people would agree that Mark Bosnich was a more naturally gifted goalkeeper but Shwarzer had the runs on the board to get the top gig. Bosnich is the obvious second choice.

However, selecting the field players for the second XI was an onerous task.

1967-2016 Socceroos Second XI
Mark Bosnich (GK)
Scott Chipperfield (FB), Alex Tobin (c) (CD), Charlie Yankos (CD), Tony Vidmar (FB)
Mile Jedinak (MF), Paul Okon (CMF), Brett Emerton (MF)
John Aloisi (FW), John Kosmina (vc) (ST), Aurelio Vidmar (FW)

Coach: Frank Arok.
Assistant Coach: Raul Blanco.

I’m particularly aggrieved I can’t find a place for Milan Ivanovich, but who do I punt to accommodate him? Then there’s Ron Corry, Jack Reilly, Stan Lazaridis, Col Curran, Ray Richards, Jimmy Mackay, Jimmy Rooney, Graham Jennings, Oscar Crino, Paul Wade, Frank Farina, Atti Abonyi, Adrian Alston and Mark Bresciano, among others.

It will also be interesting to see how some of the 2015 Asian Cup champions continue to develop. Names such as Mat Ryan, Ivan Franjic, Trent Sainsbury, Matt Spiranovic, Mat Leckie, Massimo Luongo, Robbie Kruse and Tom Juric.

Now wouldn’t it be just dandy if in the future we could have the calibre of players in the Socceroos first and second XI all playing at the same time?

That would be something to see!

In my next installment I will offer Roarers my Australain Test cricket first and second XIs and also my Australian ODI first and second XIs.