Qualifying for five straight World Cups is a great achievement, but now it's time to plan for the future

He had a great finish to the year. I did think he was younger than 30.

Kewel did you watch all the previous games for the 23s? To say there were two standards of refereeing i.e. one for Australia and one for everyone else is an understatement

5 World cups in a row yes....and now with the 48 teams from 2026 onwards, Australia will continue to qualify all the time. Even better and zero excuses.

Josh Risdon?? you gotta be kidding, he is playing well atm but well and truly at his limit – and over 30 soon

All those countries all throw money at qualification. The biggest worries is they crackdown on Chinese players off the field. China is the NRL and AFL of world football, they were not that bad when they had no money, and then they got heaps of money, and went backwards because that money went into players indulging off the field. NRL and AFL are in a nice little bubble here. Australia is also the most expensive place in the world for indulging off the field, China the local players get big salaries , and all the so called off the field stuff is dirt cheap. Thats why you see this AFL player DeGooey going to Bali and the USA because you can get so much more for your buck there. If they had professional leagues in Indonesia and Thailand, the players would struggle to make it on to the field.

They had fresh super players with huge engines on the bench. Australian Technical director Trevor Morgan didnt want to use Yazbeck and Nisbet though. However fatigue wasnt the problem with the center backs, they back pedalled like crazy like they were doing Riverdance all game.

Olympic games is in 2024, this is the in between championship.

Maybe those lads were so fatigued mentalky, with the constant batteri g they've received from the refs they weren't game to look sideways for fear of another send off. And you're right about the funding. I read that Canberra has one of the densest football populations per capita/provincial area yet the ACT government gave a million bucks to the bloody Raiders. What a joke!

Good work that man. Absolutely and the ABC staff knew it. The ABC. Staff were like Tanks in Ukraine....sitting ducks and Hill was just picking them off

Jake Brimmer for sure deserves a look in. As does Peupion and Rich-Baghelou. I also like Francois from the u23's. But time is running out and I doubt Arnie is going to cloud the issue by bringing in too many new faces. I do think the future looks good and if we can get Mabil, Kuol, Yengi scoring regularly we could be in for a good 5-10 years. The u23 play quality football but are a little naive when defending. That can be fixed as it's more to do with positional sense rather than physical capabilities.

The U23's were great with Rich and Bility who look to be superb center backs and compensated for some of the other selections. The U23 kept getting players sent off for no reason at all though, but they played superbly. Courtney Perkins and Trewin came in and suddenly they become a complete mess, the defense was a retreating rabble who moved back before the Japanese attack, Francois while he had an incredible game with the ball, he also gave up in defense a couple of times, Darrigo was a disaster with and without the ball and completely out of sync with the retreating backline, he would run the other way so the gap between the midfield and backline expanded as Japan got the ball. Was it anything to do with the new keeper Bilakopic, the first 5 minutes where he tried to play the ball out under pressure he gave the ball away twice to Japan then started hitting the ball long. How is Trevor Morgan Australias technical director, how could he preside over that and not correct it. While things did improve at half time in terms of playing out, if you look at the Japan third goal it was complete joke. With Yengi not bothering to press they had no point putting 4 players on the edge of their penalty area marking man to man while not pressing. Meanwhile Courtney Perkins has the backline retreating in Australias half and the Hamnmond goes forward to press the center backs. It was complete buffoonery.

I think some of the young coming through look to be quite promising, the u23s did well to make the semi's but is room to improve with the style of play Australian teams play at this level at all levels especially. But individually technically they look quite good and can play that technical style which we crave but we need more if we want to go into the level. I love to see Football Aus. go for a tactican guru like Marcelo Bielsa who could get the best out of our players an play an exciting style of football that could potentially take us into the level as a football country I think the way we play we hold our talent back and we don't let them play with there natural instinct and take risks. Otherwise what's the point of making the World Cup if we don't try and do something and eventually aim to win it one day?

I was disappointed to hear that as now we won't be at the Olympic Games next year. I was wondering if there were players in the Socceroos' squad that should have been with the U23s such as Tilio and Stensess, who didn't play for the Socceroos. I felt Garang Kuol should have been with the Socceroos, so if he wasn't there he should have been with the U23s. I'm not sure about Cam Devlin's age as he would have been a great choice, too. Perhaps the squad could have been better, but Japan and Saudi Arabia as well as other Asian countries obviously place a higher value and put more effort and money into youth development. We are still a country that probably punches above its weight given our lack of funding for junior development. We also need to find and develop more indigenous talent - we need to get them before AFL does!

Grem, our under 23’s lost 3 nil against Japan. That’s a bad loss in any ones language. What is going on.

Plan for the future? our under 23’s are not good enough to beat same countries that beat the Socceroos. There are clearly issues with our youth talent and development, we are off the pace in Asia and it’s the CEOs job to fix it.

He is a great advocate for Australian football. I also loved his answer to the water bottle question. That answer was a pointed response to the quality of football journalism.

It may have come in useful at McDonald's a few years ago if those stories are true!

Nailed it!

You also have to factor in a scenario such as the U23s Asian cup. With a player sent off in just about every group game our lads played, in instances that could have occurred in a lawn bowls match, you have to ask how a team who won more than one match with 10 men on the pitch is playing the third place play off against Japan, whilst Saudi are in the final. The whole thing reeks.

Completely agree about the the AIS, look what it produced. Thanks go to our unbiased politicians for the disappearance of this federal capability. I have some suggestions as to what Scomo can do with his Sharks scarf.