'I'm living a dream': Bruno Fornaroli set for sensational Socceroos debut after switching allegiances to Australia

Brisbane top scorer is Miluesnic not a striker and he doesn't need to play striker as he runs enough to score from the wing and for some reason Arnold doesn't want the team to have more wingers moving Hrustic,McGree and even Mooy there, the reality is the tap in kings Mclaren , Taggart would have 1/5 of their goals without wingers in the A-league setting them up time and time again and the Socceroos main contributors are Boyle and Mabil but dumbass Arnold doesn't want more wingers in the squad, Ivanovic has had heaps of chances and missed been ordinary, Dehmie has chronic laziness syndrome at a young age as well. Hore and Parsons I think would be the best strikers at the club if ever allowed to play there by the Moonshiner. The coach has played deadweight Lescano who has been useless and kept a local from doing the job despite Lescano missing heaps of chances. When you have dumb duds like Moonshine coaching that is the main problem. CCM Cummings is slow and CCM have run into a road block with him and Urena being lazy at pressing , he doesn't lack ability but cant see how he is going to get his shots off, and if he is this slow at 26 how slow is he going to be in a few years time. Sydney Wood is the big prospect much younger than Buhagiar, Buhagiar more one on ones than anyone in the league and hardly scored. WSW Swibel not a striker ,a winger at best, what about Ibini what happened when he used to score goals in the A-league and run a bit, another player affected by laziness syndrome and going downhill, Burns , Williams two players careers ruined by becoming lazy both had good striker potential. Australia has lost more potential strikers to laziness syndrome than to injuries. Players should get better as they age and move central, instead something is stopping that. What about Bulut 4 year suspension for cocaine use in Turkey. AFL and NRL you can do it off season but even during and get a slap on the wrists, and when the standards and skill requirements are so low then players can take drugs and have a career, in the highest standard sport in the world its totally different. Bulls you have Giannou he has improved a bit and scored a few goals and is the starting striker now and a Socceroo, your forgetting Lachlan Rose who scored 3 goals at a decent rate before he was moved away from striker and hasn't scored since being moved to wing and wing back. That highlights a key issue Santalab at Sydney was played on the wing by dumb coaches and hardly scored but he hit the odd long range beauty. He was also fairly useless on the wing otherwise as well, then much older he scored a lot as a striker for WSW. Certain players if not played as a striker will hardly ever score, some players can do it from the wing but others cant. Another one is Sotirio while he is only better than Buhagiar in finishing, he also gets penalties and send offs as a striker and can set players up better than on the wing even. So Talay has made a mistake having Sotirio wide now he did his hammie. Wenzel Halls he has gone down the drain, he is totally dependent on effort and if its not there he is a useless players. Newcastle you forget Babalj he was the one big Australian prospect as striker that scored a decent set of numbers as a teen in the A-league , injuries have derailed his career but he actually looks better physically in Newcastle then previous sightings just needs to regain his touch.

Arnold struck with Covid. Well this could be the best blessing in disguise, and no Mooy could make the Socceroos a little more mobile, which could help D'Agastino the most. I will go as far as to say D'Agastino's energy might be what we need up front. He might not score every game and probably has lacked confidence only until recently, which has affected his finishing but he seems to be playing with more and more confidence with the more games he plays. I think his exuberance (defending) could match that of Dukes, but I believe D'Agastino is by far a better finisher than Arnie's poster boy Duke. I agree with the sentiments that Maclaren should rethink his career if he choses to wed his wife during one of the most important times in Australias short WC qualifying history. You should do anything in your power and fight for that cap you have been given.

Thanks for responding clearly there are issues within the system as you mentioned. Which questions me is how will the proposed NSD be different given alot of the clubs will form part of this league? If they continue to go on there usual way then this issue won't be fixed unless serious rules are put in place so they are in line with the requirements of the NSD.

a lot to do with the coaches. Take D'Agostino, who Craig Moore at Roar said was the best young striker he had seen, Aloisi tried to make him a midfielder and Poppa at Perth didn't play him until he scored goals for Arnie's U23 national team in Olympic qualifiers.

i'm probably a good person to answer your question (especially as 90% of the players you listed have been in my database since they came to this country or were playing juniors and have been asked to give assessments for several years) based on what i do for a living the talent is here in australia, its how they get through the system where the issue is. alot of junior NPL clubs will push players through thier age groups ahead of more talented ones, just because there background is the same as the clubs (eg italian, greek, serbian, croatian etc) also i will sound like a broken record, but money talks - if the parents pay enough, at certain clubs it guarantees there child paying, no matter how poorly skilled they are. naturally skilled, technically gifted youngsters are having their creativity stifled/coached out of them by coaches more concerned with the team's shape and defending. its also incredibly frustrating when you are given pre requisites (height/weight/endurance) in terms of criteria to assess players in certain positions - players are being judged on their athletic probability rather than their actual technical skills

non socceroos related, but i will break some news.............. pelligra group have completed the takeover of adelaide united, the fee paid is less (not by much) than the mooted $20 million that the previous regime wanted. Multiple (more than 6) high ranking administration positions at the club have already been told they're not required for next season (including the director of football, who's only been in the role less than 12 months - rather than see out the season, he will leave in 2 weeks) at this stage, i have not been given any indication of how this effects my role within the club, under its new management I've mentioned here already a few times, that certain players will be sold at season end and some players wont have there contracts renewed. I would expect confirmation of the sale, to be announced once the season is wrapped up for adelaide

I have no problem with Bruno's inclusion into the squad, he will bring something different to the other No.9s we got with his hold up play and bringing others in the build up phase. In terms of local options is it the case of lack of opportunities or are they not good enough for a-league and in general? This is a good question. To be honest I think a bit of column A and B about this answer. Looking at some of the local options per a-league club: Brisbane: Dehmie, Ivanovic CCM: Cummings(even though hes from the UK) Sydney: Wood, Buhagiar WSW: Swibel from the NPL team? MacArthur Bulls: Ruhs, Al Hassan Toure The Nix: No one apart from Kiwi talent Western United: Wenzel Halls, Botic(who has barely played) Melb City: Colakovski Melb Victory: D'Agostino Adelaide: Yengi(whom is injured), Mo Toure Perth: Bramwell? Basically apart from a couple of promising prospects, the cupboard looks a bit bare on the striker front from what is out there. Again it could be down to lack of opportunity and given a-league clubs are signing 5 foreign spots per team and one often being a striker doesn't help there cause. But also is the quality lacking too? is it down to the development system in terms of talent ID and coaching potentially not correcting the type of No.9s we are producing? Maybe someone could answer this. But good luck to Bruno, I hope he does well and hopefully we get behind him and boys in the quest for qualification to Qatar 2022.

Based on what I saw of him at the Olympics (and importantly having played under Arnie at Olympics understands the way Arnie plays) and that he is also getting regular game time as a right wing-back at Hearts since joining a couple of months ago, I think Atkinson should be playing in at least one of the two games. My "one of the two games" comment is a segue into what could be the biggest trap in this upcoming round. If we can pull off a win against Japan (big if) we still need to rotate key players for the 2nd game (with key players from game 1 coming on later in game 2 or vice versa). It is no co-incidence that the three games where we have dropped points against Japan, China and Oman that the late goals came from mistakes conceded by guys playing another full game and backing up again a few days later (Behich v Japan, Jeggo v China, Karacic v Oman). We have to rotate. The travel toll playing in Asia is brutal and I don't think it is a coincidence that the late loss (Japan) and late draws (China, Oman) have come late on in the 2nd game. By the way -if Japan win and that closes door to automatic qualification we should be giving the peripheral players like Genreau, Metcalfe, Jeggo, Tilio etc a chance to play decent minutes against Saudis so we can see what they can do to offer a point of difference.

A few former Roar youth players, just starting to kick in.

Other nations to get a top class player they will try to break every rule in the book to do it let alone worry about whether they should do it if its perfectly legal. In the old days they used to pick overseas players in the season they came over in Australia. My issue is Fornaroli is no good anymore, Boyle has been a great addiition , Souttar was supposed to be the Australia weapon from set pieces however firstly he is not a good offensive header, like Topor Stanley and the minnow teams he scored against their highest players were about 5 foot 8 and hasn't looked like scoring since. Karacic, has been a disaster why pick a player who is worse than other options and has cost the team a lot of points, his lack of game time and fitness doesn't seem an issue for Arnold either he keeps picking him.

He should join the Socceroos in Sydney asap to develop group dynamics so he should not play on Saturday.

Desperation --> + X-factor --> luck

Excited to see how Atkinson goes. His form this year has not been what it was last year and Olympics, but he plays so positively, making good runs, has great skills.

Have far less of an issue with Bruno than I do the Scots giant who has never been here. And I don't have an issue with him either.

Lots of cries of “desperation” and similar adjectives - well as far as qualifying, it is desperation time. Irrespective of what we think of the national coach, he is there for the time being and is in desperate need of two wins and to do that the side needs to score goals. Like many club and national sides, finding someone to regularly put the ball in the back of the net is the biggest hurdle. They are few and far between and the better sides build up a group of creative players who between them are able to fashion a goal or two. GA does not appear to favour Maclaren irrespective of his A League record so I doubt whether he will be upset by any wedding plans. Conversion rates amongst the rest of the squad are way below where they need to be for a side to be in winning mode and so the attention turns to someone who up until recently was scoring regularly and creating chances. This is the last roll of the dice so why not? Besides, the commentators just love saying his name and exaggerating all the syllables so they will be drooling over his selection.

I really don’t think this should be a controversy I much rather Bruno plays for Australia who actively helped develop the A league and support Australia football for many years then let say players who are only eligible by parental of grand parental heritage and never been to Australia before until they represented our national team I take residency far more seriously as commitment to the country over heritage and demonstration of nation bond One is putting money where your mouth and a reflection of a choice is and the other just luck of the draw of who your parents might be

Is this Bruno the guy who once worked as an actor playing a fashion designer about 10 years ago? It matters not as with Bruno playing it is surely only a matter of time before the Socceroos win the World Cup. Those that say he is long in the tooth are wrong. France and Belgium will be quaking in their boots if they are drawn in a group with these soccerwhos at the World Cup.

Fornaroli was a good player when he first came to the A-league, now he is on his last legs. His recent form is pretty ordinary as well he missed a lot of chances against Sydney and a penalty against CCM. Dagastino so called great form is from people who haven't watched his matches , he should have scored more given the chances MV create. His two goals against Kobe were tap ins, Folami's goal and setup for Dagastino tap in were top notch and he should be in the Socceroos squad.

has been very consistent in the MLS, which is a big step down from being in europe. degenek has always been reliable and partners sainsbury well, both are comfortable playing the ball out and have recovery speed (unlike a souttar) which they will need against a very nimble japanese attack

More concerned Degenek is still being selected.