15 October 2014
A woeful night for Australian football last night. First, the Young Socceroos were shirt-fronted out of the U19 Asian Championships in Myanmar at the group stage. Needing to beat Uzbekistan after a loss to UAE and a narrow win against Indonesia in their earlier games, their hard fought 1-0 lead vanished in the final 10 minutes when Uzbekistan equalised to secure a draw. In truth, Uzbekistan were the better team and deserved to progress with the UAE. Later, another shirt-front, this time on the senior team, which lost 1-0 in Qatar. This result came after a 0-0 draw in the UAE Friday night.
In a way, the youth team’s elimination might do some good. Asia was never meant to be a walkover. Moving there from Oceania was to be mutually beneficial. Australia would be challenged while the challenge of Australia would help the other Asian teams. Missing the occasional World Cup will be part of this process. Given the volatile nature of talent at this level, it’s also difficult to be hyper critical of the team. The elimination could just be symptomatic of Australia being down while the UAE and Uzbekistan are up. Where Oceania never exposed these flaws until actual World Cups, Asia exposes them much earlier. We know we must improve. It’s been 20 years since the country had a decent youth team. The famed “Dutch experiment”, now going almost 8 years in this country, so far has not produced anything and is almost at a point of examination.
The senior team has bigger problems. Clearly Australia don’t have the players. The front third is a joke. The defence barely any better. UAE had the best chance of their match with a shot cleared off the line. Alex Wilkinson was the saviour after Jason Davidson was caught out of position (again) on Australia’s left flank. Qatar simply waltzed through with a slick one-two move to score that match’s winning goal. In attack, Australia was mostly impotent and could barely fashion a well constructed chance. To not score in either match seems unfathomable.
Australia has one warm-up match before the Asian Cup – against Japan in Osaka next month – and that’s it. It looks like Australia will be experimenting at the Asian Cup proper when the team should be long settled. The perplexity being faced by Coach Ange Postecoglou is this contrast between coaching a club and a national team. With a national team being a representative team, there’s neither the time or the capacity to create a “Team Australia”. You pick the best players available and then get them to play their best.
Ange is also finding, much like his predecessors, that the cupboard is bare. Would you return to the older players? Certainly not on a grand scale. Would you have one or two for experience and a tad more potency? Why not. Joshua Kennedy has always proven a handful for Asian opposition, and even the long forgotten Scott McDonald might suddenly click under the new coaching regime. Even as bench or squad players, there just needs to be other options than going to an even a less experienced player.
Socceroo Realm 