It's just.... for me it's the level of the elite domestic competitions. I strongly believe that as the A-League and even, hopefully/naturally the NYL, rise, that the players entering these 'Aged' NTs will be coming from a stronger and more intense club competitions, so the leap from the domestic arena to International is not soo vast.

For instance, one of this team's defensive stars, Scott Galloway, actually one of the more experienced members of this team, being RB at the last U20 World Cup too, he was decidedly ordinary this game and one of the worst defenders/culprits for some of those goals.

This is a boy who is/was, again, a regular feature for the last U20s generation and more importantly, for Victory in the A-League and hopefully that continues this season.

But one can tell, when viewing the games, the intensity at some of these youth games and youth tournaments, is at times even superior to the A-League.

The stakes are just soo much higher and mistakes are ruthlessly punished. You CAN get away with the 'odd stray pass' in the A-League, but NOT at International level.

Our A-League teams still struggle to make a dent in the ever more competitive ACL too and so that again reflects the need for the A-League to continue to rise and meet more the intensity of that level atleast, and suddenly then all the players then coming from the A-League, who reach A-League level, will then be considered more capable of handling these more intense, high stakes, fixtures and tournaments.

the general coaching mentality in Australia is to adopt the national curriculum and that will fix everything....the problem as i see it is that it is assumed by doing so the problems have been rectified and success will shortly follow.....the art here is for the coaches and technical directors to make sure the technical attributes are passed on WITHOUT killing the passion and creativeness, but as an addition to the young players skill set....

IE: technical attributes utilised at the appropriate time and place on the pitch and to leave some level of personal flare & skill.

of course there is a balance...we all know of the kids who can juggle 1000 time but can't carry out the coaches instructions, and vice versa, the player who can't think without the coaches input..................

I well understand what you say and brought it up during the game, but it doesn't entirely sum up or even partially explain, the level of 'performance' seen.

Tight scheduling (3 games in 5 days) too and players coming from pre-season ALSO contributed, pitch was relatively crap as often in AFC...

But again, they DON'T make the whole - Just like the Socceroos last night in 'the opposite' conditions (location, weather, travel, bowling green, lowest intensity game for years - opponents who'd GIVE us the ball), the passing was poor and at times just mindlessly loose. Telegraphing rife. Stagnant play and lacking urgency. I know tiredness can play it's part, but again, when not even under pressure, players would AGAIN (This is historic) have trouble working the ball through.

The amount of times we'd 'turn over' the ball in our half, due to poor interplay between defence and midfield... it was embarrassing. And in ALL this context, conditions - Dannny De Silva STILL shone.

So that alone ALSO proved to me, it again ISN'T JUST all about Fatigue/conditions, poor pitches and players not match fit or something - though it can be half that - again I saw the quality of De Silva shine through and when he was central to the play, in our half, switching play with clever turns, under pressure and then relieving that pressure in 1-2 touches, those were the occasions we actually looked half effective and dangerous - we even scored that goal through De Silva's play!



or THIS. Happens ALL levels, for years, happened with the Socceroos last night too, despite all the self-congratulating pats on the back!

Edited by gloryperth: 16/10/2013 06:17:58 PM

Once again it looks like We are passing for passing sake.
After about 10 passes we turn it over.Happening at all levels it seems.

it was our last 3rd game in 4 days in the pretty humid conditions.

I come from the coolest part of Australia. So heat and humidity are bigger factors for me than people who live in Darwin and Cairns.

I'm still only at the 35 minute mark of this game .


The heat and humidity factor makes it a lot easier for Indonesia, Singapore, Vietnam, Thailand, Myanmar or Malaysia to play us in any of the other countries, as they have similar climates. I've travelled in most of these countries and I wouldn't be able to cope with playing football within a few days of arrival.

The whole of Korea southwards is hot and humid in summer too. Other than the Gulf, Uzbekistan, India, China and North Asia in winter, there are no easy conditions in Asia.

Blaming the heat and humidity would a benign explanation 'i'd be happy if it's true. We may not know till the next round...

I'm surprised by this assessment I could swear we had more ball...of course I didn't have possession stats. Also the first goal involved very quick passing as did the rest of their game...

I've seen about 35 minutes of the game.

It seemed the Aussies were listless.

In the hot and humid conditions found on the South Asian coastlines, there is always high heat and humidity. This would present a problem for anyone in Australia, apart from those who live in Cairns and Darwin. Most of the opposition countries In Asia, live in these conditions year round.

It wasn't so much the handling speed of the ball that was an issue. This is the speed from when a player receives and then passes the ball on. I don't think the Vietnamese had faster handling speed, but they had more of the ball.

It would be interesting to see Australia play them in a neutral country, with lower temperatures and lower humidity.

by the way here is the full match

dont worry bout the bad vid in the first few minutes irt gets better

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KwcM0z4ZEOg

Watching the u20s performance against Vietnam. The full match is available on the seventeenth page of the thread in the Australian football forum on this site. I would love to hear a detailed analysis of it.

I think they probably were completing less passes than us but their speed of passing was faster. Is there a problem with our development process that we couldnt handle their speed of passing? Thats my naive analysis of what went wrong