Tag Archives: qatar

United Arab Emirates 2019 – Asian Cup Review

Posted on by
Reply

26 February 2019

The Asian Cup of 2019, held in the United Arab Emirates, came and went without much fanfare, as seemingly much of Socceroos in recent tournament appearances have been. An opening group game loss to Jordan 1-0, a 3-0 win over the far inferior Palestine in the second game, and a scratchy 3-2 win in the final game against Syria, didn’t inspire much hope that things would change this tournament. Indeed, it took penalties to overcome Uzbekistan after teams couldn’t score in 120 minutes, before elimination 1-0 to the UAE in the quarter finals.

Qatar win the 2019 Asian Cup in the United Arab Emirates, beating Japan 3-1 in the final

Qatar win the 2019 Asian Cup in the United Arab Emirates, beating Japan 3-1 in the final. Image: the-afc.com

Possession of 73% for 3 shots on goal against 4 for Jordan typified much of the Australia’s performance, both in the UAE and in recent years. While it might look nice, this “keepings off” style has always been a coward’s way of playing. Ultimately it’s about results with the ball, and Jordan showed Australia how it’s done. Although Australia was a bit unlucky, and there definitely should have been a penalty in the first half, it was a well deserved win by Jordan and we were simply out-smarted (another reoccurring theme these days). The one salvation is the Socceroos lost to Korea in 2015 and won the Asian Cup. With 24 teams in this edition, it means 4 points from Palestine and Syria would likely be enough. A reminder: Tom Rogic still can’t shoot.

The response to the 1-0 loss to Jordan as being an embarrassment was an embarrassment in itself. Facts are that Jordan are a decent side, played disciplined football, while Australia lacks quality and is too obsessed about looking good. Forget the crap about styles and play the opponent. This isn’t figure skating. Then Palestine comes along, and how quickly it changes. Australia were 2-0 up at half time and commentators were inexplicable at describing the difference between this game and Jordan. It was simple: one team was Palestine, the other was Jordan. Palestine are effectively the Jordan D-team so Australia should be dominating. While they did that to a degree, that the third and final goal came so late was a concern. Australia again seemed to lack ideas with the ball and should have scored more. Overall a good result, with hopes to improve further against Syria, where only a draw was required to feel safe.

In the final group game against Syria, it seems two wrongs do make a right when it comes to penalties. One was a penalty and not given, while the other one was clearly not a penalty and was given. You suspect the referee was told of his first half error and try atone for it in the second half. Finally Rogic actually hits a shot to secure the win. 3-2 a fair result as the Socceroos dominated chances.

The round of 16 match against Uzbekistan was only notable for the comprehensive 4-2 win in the penalty shootout after the game ended with the score 0-0. If Australia had such clinical finishing during the actual game that they did during the shootout, then life wouldn’t be so difficult for them. Overall, they performed a tad better than Uzbekistan on the night so deserved to progress.

In the quarter final against the UAE, it was a deja vu of the match against Jordan. Dominate the game, dominate possession, waste chances, give away possession, concede a goal through a mistake (a poor backpass), cannot recover. Ironically, the UAE goal originated from a successful backpass by them, which the goal-keeper launched forward. The 1-0 loss was so predictable and a sad realisation, at the completion of this tournament, the team isn’t good enough. Even worse, there’s no signs of any improvement, and it’s doubtful results would have been any better even if the team’s best player, Aaron Mooy, wasn’t out injured before the tournament. The World Cup will expand to 48 teams for 2026. Australia will want it brought forward by four years the way things are going.

Qatar won the tournament with a superb display. As hosts for the 2022 World Cup, they’ll want to perform on the pitch, and if this Asian Cup is any indication, they should be competitive. They never conceded until the final against Japan and scored some cracking goals. Against Japan, they dominated the opening half with two great goals, and then held out to win 3-1. There was a bit of controversy about their third goal, whether the handball for a penalty was intentional or not. FIFA are moving away from this spurious concept, as intent can never be known. It was a clear handball and prevented Qatar to further attack the ball after it was headed towards goal, so a definite penalty. It wasn’t a blatant foul, so the yellow card was wrong. If you want to add intent into the handball rule, then it’s only for disciplinary action, not the infringement itself.

Overall, it was an enjoyable Asian Cup, and it was pleasing to see plenty of people in attendance. The expansion to 24 teams meant group games were kept alive much longer, and we saw unfamiliar faces, not only in the tournament, through to the knockout phase too. Kyrgyzstan lost 3-2 to the UAE in extra time in their round of 16 clash, while Vietnam reached the quarter finals before narrowly losing 1-0 to Japan. India were the highlight on the first main day of group matches when demolishing Thailand, 4-1. Losses to UAE (2-0) and Bahrain (1-0) meant they finished last in their group. So much for the theory that the first game is the most important to win. It’s always about total points collected, not when you collect them.

Advertisement

Uzbekistan and Qatar hit Australia with a double shirt-front

Posted on by
Reply

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.

Full site: Socceroo Realm

Qatar not the “mistake”, negligence of other bidders the mistake

Posted on by
1

18  September 2013

FIFA president Sepp Blatter stunned the world last week by declaring Qatar as host for the 2022 World Cup that “we made a mistake at the time”. This adds to his comment in May that a summer World Cup is “not rational and reasonable”, and Executive Committee member Theo Zwanziger in July calling it a “blatant mistake”. The mistake being that the weather in Qatar’s fierce summer is just too hot and for some reason FIFA didn’t realise this at the time. Forget that the Qataris believe the can cool the stadiums; you can’t cool an entire country. The real mistake is, especially knowing the corrupt nature of FIFA, is why the other bidders didn’t twig to this reality of an impossible World Cup in Qatar’s summer and the future shenanigans that FIFA would play. Qatar was always certain to win the bid for the simple reason that if weather was the issue, FIFA would have told them much earlier not to bother bidding at all.

From the Socceroo Realm prior to the World Cup announcement:

“The only real conspicuous negative for Qatar is the weather. Qatar speak of air-conditioning all venues. That’s pointless for most of the other time when fans are not at games. The heat is debilitating, and would virtually kill any outdoor activity. It’s a wonder that FIFA just didn’t tell Qatar straight out to not bother. That’s unless the World Cup will be played in January. Nowhere have FIFA ruled out a proposition of a January World Cup, only citing that it is hot in June. That doesn’t mean that there hasn’t already been some backroom deal that January is OK. It almost defies logic that Qatar would attempt a bid knowing that a June World Cup is impossible with the heat. Remember, a January World Cup is not at all impractical. Many leagues are closed for winter. Other leagues can easily adjust by suspending their league for 4 weeks and extending it into early June. It actually makes so much sense. With FIFA, nothing would surprise if they announce Qatar as a winner and the idea is to play it in January.”

The only error in that pre-announcement analysis was FIFA not immediately announcing a winter World Cup. Obviously the furore would be huge, so FIFA allowed the idea to cultivate on its own through various consorts and media to the point it became so compelling that FIFA would be seen as derelict in duty if it not propose a switch. While it was expected FIFA may wait a few more years for a regenerated Executive Committee to really propel the idea under the guise of fixing the past mistake of others, the mood is so strong and media rights both domestic and internationally need to be sorted that the time is now. Blatter will propose the move to the Executive Committee, which effectively guarantees the switch. Not so much because of Blatter’s input; the ExCo will make the change as it was always the plan and now is the perfect time to take advantage and lock it in.

Qatar is remaining silent in this controversy, as it should, as the move is always a FIFA initiative. It’s also perfectly allowable in FIFA’s agreement with the bidder to change many aspects as it wishes, including the schedule. The real issue is that such an idea was not readily known, or that bidders believed they could realistically plan their bid at a period any other than June and July and be successful. Bizarrely, only now, and on behalf of Qatar and other nations, Blatter raised the idea of discrimination if the World Cup can’t be moved…

“If we maintain, rigidly, the status quo, then a FIFA World Cup can never be played in countries that are south of the equator or indeed near the equator. We automatically discriminate against countries that have different seasons than we do in Europe and we make it impossible for all those who would love to host the world’s biggest game in a global tournament to ever get the chance to do so. I think it is high time that Europe starts to understand that we do not rule the world anymore and that some former European imperial powers can no longer impress their will on to others in far away places and we must accept that football has moved away from being a European and South American sport. It has become the world sport that billions of fans are excitedly following every week, everywhere in the world.”

Ironically, if Qatar had used this themselves as an argument they would have gained broader sympathy. More relevant would have been the consequences for Australia’s bid. Stymied by a crowded calendar of domestic football codes and a recalcitrant AFL, Australia had no hope. If it wasn’t enough the lack of unity for the bid with the AFL, much of the resources into new stadia would leave the greatest legacy for Australian Rules football, not the round ball code. Perth’s Subiaco, Adelaide Oval, Gold Coat’s Carrara and Geelong’s Kardinia Park all get upgrades, when it should have been a new stadium in Perth, with Hindmarsh, Robina and Bubble stadiums upgraded in the other cities. If renovating AFL grounds was to appease the AFL, it clearly didn’t work, and would have sent strange signals to FIFA about the organisation truly running the sport in this country. Is it the FFA or the AFL? Add to that the appalling presentation video of cartoon kangaroo and tacky and irrelevant icons of Hoges, Freeman and Thorpe, it was a disaster. Getting one vote was simply a message of thanks for participating, not an endorsement of any facet of the bid.

Consider had their been an open schedule then Australia would have suggested March, as the Socceroo Realm always proposed. Nicer weather, cricket over and domestic football yet to start. No need to appease the AFL or anyone. In hindsight, its critical benefit would have been to hold FIFA accountable to their traditional June schedule. No doubt Australia would have been knocked back on interrupting the club season. If so, then absolutely no avenue to consider Qatar then or now for a January tournament. The big problem was that Australia, as the immature amateurs stepping brazonly into the world of FIFA slime and sleaze, chose to play that game, and lost. Had it marched with integrity and a March schedule and boasted of a brilliant World Cup wrecked by a discriminatory scheduling tradition, then already FIFA could have opened the schedule or slammed it shut.

Right now FFA CEO Frank Lowy is demanding compensation for the $43 million spent on the bid. Australia’s definitely owed something in that it was forced to make a compromised bid. That won’t be money as FIFA has already snubbed the idea, reaffirming that “as part of the bidding documents all bidders accepted that the format and dates, though initially expected to be in June/July, remain subject to the final decision of FIFA”. While not compromised on a technical matter, as there’s nothing stating a World Cup must be June (it’s there as tradition), the compromise was ethically, as the scheduling flexibility was not transparent. Had it been, even Qatar would bid on a winter Cup, along with its summer Cup proposal, leaving FIFA to decide its preference.

Australia’s best case now for compensation could only be to argue for the bidding to be re-opened. Remember, this was an unusual process with two World Cups decided at once. Normally 2022 would be decided late 2014. Of course, if FIFA decided to re-open the bidding and for an openly flexible schedule, they’d probably still choose Qatar, using discrimination as Blatter just described as an advocacy tool, and also discrimination of fairness in that it’s not Qatar denying it can’t host a summer Cup or even demanding a change of schedule for the World Cup, it’s FIFA driving the change. With the 2018 (Russia) and 2022 World Cups proudly boasted as spreading the game to new territories, FIFA will just be more resilient to hold it in Qatar, especially now without high temperatures – the key flaw of Qatar’s initial bid – a problem no longer existing.

The best thing for Australia is actually Qatar does have its World Cup, and hosts it successfully. That means Australia can target a friendlier schedule itself for a future bid. Despite much criticism from clubs and commentators that domestic leagues will be ruined by two months of a shut-down and players will be burnt-out, that’s nonsense, and a World Cup easily slotted into January. First of all, it’s not much more than two weeks between the end of the domestic leagues and the World Cup starting in its traditional June slot right now, so the preparation period needs only be two weeks, and when you consider that it would start on a Monday after a weekend’s round, only one actual round is skipped pre-tournament. During the Cup itself, only four teams make the final week, so it’s no problem for the world’s leagues to resume after 3 weeks. Of course, the A-League could resume after two weeks, or not close at all if the Socceroos is primarily overseas based. The maximum season break is four weeks, and easily accomodated by extending the season by two or three weeks and adding a midweek round or two. Note, this break mid-season only applies to leagues that do play through the winter. Most have a winter break through January so a winter World Cup is zero effect.

All FIFA need to do is set the dates and let the individual leagues and competitions decide how to manage their scheduling. For only a few clubs in a few leagues to be affected, and for such a rare occasion, it really is snobbery to the highest degree that they can’t make one small sacrifice in the interests of the broader world of football. So many of these elite clubs talk about a fair go for minorities, and even FIFA has their “fair play” edict. How about acting it?

For a full chronicle of events surrounding Australia’s World Cup bid:
socceroorealm.com