Socceroos' World Cup hopes take hit after Oman draw

Thanks!

Maybe they read your comment and now want to ensure they dont say anything just to enrage you even more?

Last player outside the box = red card and free kick If the offence is inside the box = yellow card and penalty. Unless its for violent conduct which is a straight red no matter where on the park.

Not you - the soccer (sorry football) followers who automatically think that because it is more popular, there is no other game. I follow all codes, and many different sports and struggle to understand the myopic view many have about other sports or codes of football.

Waz, not doubting a word you saying there. However, to totally deny the change of mentality in English football was not affected by the foreign influx is also maybe incorrect. But the mentality has changed since the 80s when I lived there where Byran Robson was more appreciated then Glenn Hoddle or even in 00s & 10s where Lampard & Gerrard was more appreciated then Scholes.

Hard to type when you can't get your head out of your hands

You mean like in 2004 qualifying for 2006 when we drew 2-2 with the Solomon Islands??

We'd have a lot of countries - including ones near Qatar - on our side in that.

Foz could be talking about the mens team here...https://www.smh.com.au/sport/soccer/foster-shreds-matildas-style-of-play-20220202-p59td2.html

I left a club, (very big club in Melbourne that historically could not give a @@@@ about developing players to make it to their senior team) because the U12s coach that year took on the job as it was 'his turn.' He'd coached a wallabies team the previous year and it made him unhappy. Fair enough. This guy was a big figure at the club. All of preseason, for 8 weeks, he has 16 or so kids spend 20 minutes in a physical warm up, and then he has them line up and take shots one after the other. So you have 16 kids for 40 minutes taking shots. How many touches is each kid getting in an hour I wonder? 30 or 40? Just could not believe it. He could have had half of them doing something else and rotated but he would not let anyone else help out, pride I guess. Same guy said 'I don't believe in practice games.' I thought 'Why?' It is afterall a game that we are playing. There was no small sided stuff, the cornerstone of virtually every decent programme in the entire world. Two years later same guy has the U13s, so that's three years of footballers who he has wrecked all by himself.

Still nothing from Tuckerman, Thomas or Harper…….they all have Australian Football at heart

"Most of the world has association football first ,second and third in their sporting interests . In Australia only SBS would have this as a lead sports story . That’s our real problem." I don't know about this. There are still huge levels of participation, even if the A-League and 'Roos get little media. I think the problem is that we don't harness emerging talent well with a coordinated national approach. Plenty of skilled players fall by the wayside or are badly coached. There is a clear idea in Australia that if you have not been picked up by an elite academy by 13 you are done. The NPL club coaching is often abysmal. Parents need to be extremely proactive to promote their kids into elite groups. It's rare for clubs to develop their own kids into first team. They get as many young ones in as they can to get the fees so that they can buy a third division player from overseas to bolster their squad's shot at comming mid pack in the second Div NPL. Meanwhile, it's usually Dad coaches who get no support, and internal politics. The focus is on the pointless NPL comp, not player development. Watch most youth teams play and its all so conservative. A wise man once said 'No-one remembers that you came first in the U12s." Australia's main problem is the inability to produce senior players who are creative, bold and have solid technical ability. That;s a coaching issue at youth level. Football is a game where the fans apprecite (a cringe word for me) 'quality.' If we produce more quality players then the fans will come to the A League, we might get a second tier and promotion/relegation ... this will help the National team. It all starts at the grass roots, that's where the failures are, and as I said we have the player numbers to do much better. If you were talking about rugby I'd agree, that;s a sport where there is a combined lack of fan interest and corresponding lack of participation at grass roots which has led to the gradual death of the National team from the force that they once were. Soccer has no such excuses in my opinion.

2007 failure with the so called golden generation dream team. Against nobody teams outplayed by every team. That was under Arnold as well. EPL Viduka, Kewell, Cahill, Schwarzer, Neill, Emerton Serie A Grella, Bresciano La Liga Aloisi So it doesn't matter how many top level players you have when you have Arnold and logistical problems you will fail. Our world cup qualification 2010 2014 2018 was mainly off the heads of Cahill, Josh Kennedy. The matches we dominated was more due in that period was actually more due to the hard running of Valeri and Culina than anything else. Jedinak is a funny one people forget when we lost to China his awful performance, Jedinak wasnt an ideal dm for Asia when the opposition got a lot of space he got shown up by the faster trickier players. Neither was Jedinak good at playing out under pressure. However was strong in the tackle, if he could corner the opposition , great in the air both in defense and could score from set pieces, rocket like free kicks, great penalty kick taker. The amount of rose coloured glasses about the past here is pathetic.

Not sure if that’s in reference to myself or Grem?

I did the patriotic thing and watched a replay of the game. And it didn’t get any better. Oman’s subs in the second half provided spark and the team asked questions of the Roos. But you could no way say that Oman were ripping the game apart. They were competent and competitive. Their first goal was spectacular the second a pen which on balance could have been given by any number of other refs. Not entirely controversial. Karacic got caught making a late challenge which looked worse in real-time than in slowmo. But VAR wasn’t going to over turn the refs decision. Then the Roos. Apart from taking the pen JMac was anonymous. Did he get more than a handful of touches? Next, the mysterious case of Tom Rogic. He was at the game but was he really at the game? Then Leckie. Some touches but his output compared to Boyle on the other wing was not what was required. He’s not providing the spark. Basically our front third of JMac/Rogic/Leckie we’re ineffectual. In the second half Goodwin, Boyle and Duke combined to give Mooy a shot on goal. Well worked and maybe our best combination play apart from the great work of Boyle in the first half. Goodwin needs to start ahead of Leckie. Matt has been picked on seniority but his time has come. Oman was weakened by some absences from the team which should have given the Roos a solid edge. That they couldn’t exploit that edge says that we’re not good enough to qualify. Oh well :crying:

Our curling team lost - what's left now?

When we looked likely to qualify for a tournament not this shhht show now

Most of the world has association football first ,second and third in their sporting interests . In Australia only SBS would have this as a lead sports story . That's our real problem . We have been close in so many games . The draws against Saudi, China and now Oman coulda been wins . The loss against Japan coulda been a draw . But that's four ( out of eight ) coulda games -realistically we aren't just good enough . Still I'd say we still have a 20% chance of WC qualifying . We have maybe 10% of finishing in first two and then 75% chance against UAE in Asian playoff but maybe 25% against South America #5 in intercontinental playoff ( we really drew the short straw there -we'd be favourites against the other continental playoff teams ) The Matildas are similar -their only one very good result was against GB (really England ) at the Olympics . Even some of their wins in tournament play ( like 2-1 against both NZ and Thailand ) are just so so They seem to be perennial quarter finalists in the world tournaments ( like the England men has usually been ) Maybe a semi final at the Olympics ( where one group win can put you in the quarter final )

Why didn't we get Volpato in?

Simmo - Ron Smith has been around Australian football for a lot longer than most, first coming as a player to Melbourne in 1974. In those 48 years he has been better known for his contribution to coaching than to the playing side of things, game analysis being his strong point. He has tried team management in various countries but has always come back to coaching as his forte. Don't know what Gary Cole asked him but it would be interesting to hear Ron's comments on one of his countrymen, Eric Worthington, an extremely highly qualified coach who came to Australia with the aim of setting up a country-wide coaching academy, not for players, but for potential coaches. His ideas never got off the ground through lack of foresight, and or money. That year too was 1974. Worthington's wages were being paid by Rothmans, the cigarette people and when the government banned cigarette advertising so too did his wages disappear. Worthington was "preaching" small sided games on small pitches in 1974, 35 years before we were "given" the Dutch Curriculum supplied to the FFA at great expense. This is another story that will please ADM. Cheers jb.