...you basically just agreed with almost everything I said... we need to learn to increase our handling speed .... the top teams have this and if we wish to compete  we need to learn to do it too.
We need more players playing in Europe at higher levels to have this pressure every week but I think Ange could speed up our passing a little almost immediately by insisting players stop carrying the ball so much and know where their next pass will be before they receive the ball. This is also made easier by team mates providing more options , more often...our players are far too static and don't make triangles nearly enough .  

I know what you are saying and partially agree . It is very difficult when it it is not your main sport but Aussies are good at punching above our weight.
I don't think football has to be our main sport for us to be a good footballing country.
I think with technical improvement and the natural improvement in our youth we may get more players back into better leagues in Europe .
This would give us the ability to compete better internationally. 
I don't see us as being a consistent top ten team in the world in my lifetime but I think we could become a consistent top 25 nation with 20 years.
However to do this we need to work smarter and start at grassroots level and build from there.
Our current national side is as good as we have right now but fortunately there are always new young players coming through. We just need to raise the numbers of good young players to optimize our chances or finding the gems .
I look at a Rugby league player like Jonathon Thurston and wonder how good a man with his attitude ,brain and athleticism could have been if he was well trained footballer instead of Rugby League player.....imagine that !

I thought there was pretty decent one and two touch passing building up under considerable time and space pressure in defence and midfield at times.

The huge difference against the teams in the last few weeks, starting with Brazil, is that there is so much less time and space on the ball due to far more intensive squeezing within the modes of pressing.

In Asia, I've virtually stopped doing Socceroo stats. This is because the Socceroo defence, and sometimes midfield, have so much easy, uncontested ball against so many Asian opponents who defend deep and try to hit us on the break.

Conversely, the last three opponents have had a real go at winning the ball high up the pitch. Our players have  had to play out under a lot more pressure.

Playing long balls is often easy to defend against. Joachim Low, the German coach, stated  how much harder it was play against Ange's Socceroos. Pim's  2010 Socceroos  played so many more long balls that were easy to defend against.

Our opponents have most players who experience closer to this off the ball intensity on a weekly basis in their club football. They also seem to be able to anticipate our play better and are used to faster handling speed in club football than our players.

Small technical factors like handling speed (the amount of  time taken to receive and pass the ball on to the next player), both footedness and off the ball speed of movement and thought in opening viable passing lanes for  teammates, are more likely to break down against the world class opposition we've faced in the last three games.

 Let  us not kid ourselves, in leagues like the English Championship, probably Holland, Belgium, Denmark, Turkey, Switzerland, and China, where most of our best players play club football overseas, they will rarely have encountered teams anywhere near as good as Germany, Brazil, Chile, and probably Cameroon, in terms of technical qualities, athleticism and off the ball intensity.  

Our expectations greatly exceed our current mid nation ranking as a football country. It is virtually impossible to become a top ten ranked country in football, when it is the main sport in virtually every other opponent.

A lot of good points raised in this post, Azza.

Ange suggested the extra day's rest was critical in Cameroon finishing stronger than us. Nevertheless in Australia there is a large talent pool of very good athletes who prefer to play Aussie rules where athleticism is a much greater component than skill.

I'm not sure how many are also lost to league and union too, where the backs have to be explosively quick?



With Mooy I thought he did quite well at  DM.

I think Degenek has improved quite a lot in the last few games. Agree there is a strong argument to play Davidson as left CB in place of Wright, who mostly struggles at this level.

The quality of Brazil, Germany, Cameroon and Chile is very high. One is current African champ and the other trio are three of the best current teams in the world.




The only other countries in the world who would have a national football team playing in the Confed Cup, and still their national media would have  far more focus on sports barely played in the rest of the world, like AFL, or little involvement like league and union, and receive so little media coverage, would be the USA, Canada and New Zealand!

It speaks volumes of how little progress we've made in the last 11 years. We are still similar to these English speaking countries who are obsessed by sports hardly anyone else plays.

It is one of the biggest frustrations living here. Everywhere else I've travelled to in some 25 odd countries, football is king by so far it isn't funny!

A few comments for perspective...

We are an average middle ranked footballing nation and we are playing teams way above us in technique and experience in this tournament.
Most of our players play in 2nd tier teams (or lower) . 
We have only had a professional League for 12 years.
Frankly..the fact we have not copped a pasting (yet) is a credit to whatever Ange is doing.

Whilst I don't agree with all Ange's tactics and subs etc I do understand his overall mantra and why he wants us to persist with taking teams on and not sitting back.
We may cop a few floggings doing it this way but we do need to develop a national footballing mentality. We may not have the technical skills and football experience right now but they will develop as our League matures....and as we gain them the floggings will become less and we will have a national spirit of being a good attacking and entertaining team to watch.
BTW... I am not saying any floggings are a good thing,because the fans appetite for an attacking mentality could be weakened considerably if we lose too much and too heavily...but we need to be a little patient ...Rome was not built in a day.
Ange is looking very long term (which is very unusual for a national team coach of any nation)..credit to him for that.

Criticisms..
Rogic...for a player of such talent and being an ex- futsal player, his first touch is not very good. He obviously knows this because when a ball comes to him he usually throws a feint ,or directs his first touch away from his opposition player (and he does that well)...however his actual touch is woeful, in that it often ends up a metre away from him. I can never understand why professional players who have a ball at their feet so much every day don't improve their ball control. 
This is a problem with most of our team.
Unfortunately , if you wish to compete with the speed of passing of Brazil,Spain ,Germany etc you have to be able to control the ball very quickly and keep it very close.
This show us up even against teams like Saudi Arabia who were tactically inferior to us but technically far better.
We struggle when playing against technically superior sides because they can control and pass quicker.

Passing.....Ange was renowned at the Roar for insisting they pass rather than run the ball.This worked well for him and the Roar.
Now with the national team they get a ball and run with it for a few metres ( at least ) before passing.
This slows up the whole game and allows oppositions to reset themselves.
It also shows that players are receiving the ball without knowing what they are going to do with it next .

We need to cut the time on the ball and speed up ball movement around the field.
The old adage "let the ball do the work" has never been more relevant than in today's game...and in tournaments conditions  it saves legs from tiring doing pointless running .
Speed up the passing and save your legs .
Sorry for the length of this post but I needed to make these points  for my own sanity

Probably true.

While Ange still plays Kruse and Leckie in attacking roles, their goal conversion rate is simply abysmal.

Leckie has converted a few goals recently, but Kruse is something like 4 goals converted from 40 games, which is atrocious. Kruse missed a couple against Cameroon.

Agree with your comments on Borrello. His excellent interplay has resulted in quite a few MacLaren goal assists.

Fair observations.

I really enjoyed watching Australia play a team like Cameroon who have different strengths.

Both Germany and Cameroon have really got on with the game, attacking whenever possible. None of the time wasting tactics of some our Asian opposition.

At the end of the game Ange discussed having one less day's rest in between games, which he claimed  was decisive in Australia running out of gas.

The Confed Cup is a great tournament with such diverse representations.

 I was in Europe and watched the last Euros there. Outside the powerhouses Italy, Spain, France, Germany, Belgium, Portugal, plus we can add Croatia and Poland, most of the rest of teams in it were simply plodders devoid of creativity and unpredictability. They defend deep hoping to nick results.

African and South American teams usually have plenty of flair and unpredictability. This creates a lot more excitement.

Was thinking how many players that have not reached there potential with injury.

Williams and Herd for sure. Spiranovic should have been playing at the top euro clubs by now but he is always crocked.

If that back 3 reached there potential we would have top top defence

If Juric made something of the age he had on the ball there, and Luogo didn't go full MMA in the penalty area against Germany, we'd be sitting pretty right now.

After watching the replay,I was reasonably happy with the first half.Most of the time we controlled play and Cameroon hit on the counter and didnt press very well.The goal was a bit lucky.
Despite playing reasonably well,we never really created serious chances.Juric was always a split second too slow to the cross.Their defence covered the half chances as did ours, except for the goal.
In the second half we were reasonably even up until our penalty goal.Then we wilted.Rogic and Kruse went off and we lost composure and control in the midfield.There was way too much space for Cameroon to exploit and they kept up the pressure with lots of chances ,which they should have converted.
Leckie in the second half was terrible at keeping the ball.Just like the last game.He does some good runs forward and uses his pace to track back in defence.But seriously he gives away fouls and falls over ,passes to noone and loses possession more than anyone else.Gersbach in his first full game never turned the ball over half as much.I can't believe a player like Grant can be any worse.I can only assume he is making so many mistakes because of tiredness.But to me he is part of our problem.He is all energy,but really holds the team back.I hope Borrello has a good year,because he looks like the upgraded model,of Leckie.Not much better.But still better.
With the back three,I just can't see is ever getting rid of errors against good teams.The backs don't have pace ,strength and skill to do what is asked of them.
I think we are probably expecting too much with the current players and we just have to get used to being where we currently are in the world order ,until we get better players coming through.

occured to me while watching that cameroon had alot of players that combine pace with very good touch and control, the socceroos have a few speedsters with average touch and a few players with good touch and control but who lack pace

overall alot of the team whilst having albility dont seem in synch with each others movement, like their strangers to each others, maybe send tommy J and tommy R on a getting to know you camping trip together for a week or two and and they could form a lethal combination when they get back

i actually thought they looked more tired than us.

we should have started maclaren in that game.  their CB's were really slow.  even juric was outpacing him.  cahill made zero impact.  juric should have come on as a sub to maclaren.  

all around i actually thought we did pretty well to match it with the african champions.  i thought it was a good game.  they shut out our attack.. other than that it was one of best performances for a while.  probably since the england game we lost.  we should be playing more teams in the 15 - 40 world ranking range.  games where we are competitive and it could go either way.. we will grow from there.

definitely our best effort since the change of formation.. this comp is crucial to settling us into the 3 at the back if we are going to take it to the world cup.  considering we are throwing away the great way we played with 4 at the back in the asian cup we really needed this.

I stayed offline for this game, the ridiculous comments on here shit me at times.

I really enjoyed the game. Sure some say Mooy doesn't play the through balls etc, but I couldn't give a crap about that - he was doing an awesome job of judging his distance to opposition, drawing them around at the back and making space for others to then let them carry it forward. It worked well.

And I'm a big fan of Rogic, but his game was pretty bad. His excellent touch receiving a fast through ball and turning is nice, but he really needs to learn when taking on his man isn't working and get his passing game on.

There were some others, particularly as the game went on, also guilty of trying to take a man on and failing miserably. I think the physical strength of Cameroon was a factor. We were out passing them and shifting them around, there was no need to trying going 1-v-1 all of the time.

All in all I feel that this system can work. Yes the backline needs some new faces, I think (hope) we can find some improvements there.

A one off ? who knows Enzo but I wouldn't consider were fit on that 1 game......
Maybe they were underdone as well ?
Maybe being on the gas all 1st half cooked em ?
I sure wouldn't say were super fit basing on that 1 game as said.

And yet Germany were physically done against us after 70 minutes and we finished the stronger?  And they all play in more intense leagues than any of us.?

Many posts have covered some good and the bad points, more bad points imo.
I only watched the 1st half this morn, watched Germany game live and obviously like all Brazil and KSA game weeks before.
Sheer pleasure watching Gersbach's style, action over the ball, crisp pass's back OR taking on his opposite and seeing decent cross's. Being a SFC supporter I really hope he can keep improving and climb in the game - one of our only true future Roos hopes IMO.
Someone said the same was said of Behich's recent performance's - yep granted BUT the big diff is Gersbach can and will improve Behich, known quantity nothing more will come from him but still a valuable player at this stage....I do like his fight.
Leckie, sorry to the fanboi's seriously is that the best we have at this stage ?!, well feck me dead lets start developing someone likely for he drives me nuts, lord help us if he's all we've got come WC IF we make it......
We've persisted long enough !
Kruse, well I'm no real fan for years but we need his pace and running game for now, nothing becomes of it but at least he turns the opponents, wish they would close their eyes for a mo so he could achieve a decent cross without pressure and importantly so as he's not shoulder to shoulder - the porcelain doll.
Mooy, maybe he is fatigued ? GTFO, are you going to tell me Ronaldo Sanchez and all the other competitors are not, FFS, some play at higher more demanding levels than he as we all know....
I'd say more so he lacking "vigour" "spunk" - a creative mid sitting near on the backline passing back and forth just so as to retain possession at times, another FFS, get someone else on till he lifts his fecking game, I think so many are so desperate to having him on and the fapping over Hudders getting up IF he was a good contributer to that WTF isn't he playing out of his skin having been on such a "high". Ronaldo surely isn't backing off for eg and don't tell me not a fair comparo, hey, if you've had a good season your on a high, your feeling good, your enjoying it no matter what level your at.......
Thank the Lord for Rogic as mentioned by many, yep his technic at times is questionable but he's trying and our best go to player, I admire his efforts in our shirt.
I'm even happy for Juric, he has got the bit between his teeth finally, he's getting it, IF he could get more service he could be banking some more goals for us.
I feel for our 3 backs no matter who they are - were not used to this nor very capable at it but the Gaffa wants to play it - Sains does his best but the other 2 - we need Wilko Spira imo........
Milligan, yes is slowing up but he has fight, push's ball forward thankyou but his time is running out.
People mentioning Jedi, I'm sorry time has run out for him - if we think Milly is slow, he's slower, his distribution is shyte. Only IF we have no else due to injury etc imo.
Loungo needs time on the bench or not even picked at this stage - either he finds his mojo - its either put up or shut up.
Need to give McLaren some game time....
Ryan, I feel for him, who would like a 3 backline in front of them as well as having technical issues with your own game.
Time to give Langerak OR Vuka a run. What have we to lose now. Ryan needs to work on his game.

only if he's leaned to play offside as a defender

Just on our back 3. All told, we know the problems and limitations at the back. But I do also understand that they're doing alright vs world class players in a shit system formation.

That's not excusing them as professionals, but we just don't have the best Cattle out there sadly, and pound for pound it's a miracle we aren't conceding 6 in a match every game

The poor guys earn a smidgen of my respect for sticking at it

I'm a big mooy fan but fee his through balls have been shit as have his set pieces

Kruse and his I was so close smile triggers me.

Gersbach runs it into the box. Whoa!!! Remember when we used to have players that regularly cut through the defence and ran into the box? Me neither

If we can't put it high don't play Timmy, play Mclaren.

If we can't get it into their goal box then we need to start again

Our goals just don't seem like they're coming from in front anymore, unless it's a shot from 30 metres

I think that's a problem

Yeah I think if we spend 40-50 mill we can get some nice upgrades at CB and DM, at least champions league quality. 

Because we can't cross and do stupid things like short corners. Better to play mclaren if this is who we are now

There was more than a day between the two teams in terms of fitness. I remember Hiddink clearly saying about the GG that they lacked tournament fitness [i.e the ability to back up 3-4 days later and put in another intense 90min display]. 

It was a big problem at the last WC that as the games progressed, we seemingly faded/wilted under the pressure of maintaining our endurance. 

This cannot be discounted leading in to the next WC should we qualify. Too many players unable to see out the 90mins is not good enough at international standard. 

On this,  If Jedi plays more CB for Vila next season,  can we see ange going for a back three of Milligan - Sainsbury - Jedi ?  that would actually be a pretty strong trio, all have the ability to step up in attack, generally good on the ball (jedi has a weaker passing game  but no worse then the other CB options) and aerially /one on one these guys are all exceptional, so why not ?

I just can never understand Ange's substitutes, first he brings off Kruse and basically we lose most of our forward runs, then brings Irvine on for Rogic? Just felt like last night was a great chance to bring on Hrustic to run at tired players... we saw what the big stage can do to young players like Gersbach.

I though it was a positive game,  i like the new system,  i think the only thing letting us down is a lack of quality CBs.  If Sipra was fit/in form and one other higher level CB this team would be performing much better.

Who is coming through in CB position for the future? behind Spirra and Sainsbury is a plethora of mediocre CBs (Wright, Dengenak, McGowans)  I thought Devere would be a shout for this squad and would have performed well in this system, so surprised he isn't with the squad.

If we can stop conceding soft goals we will win more matches 

I never said anything about speed, the word I used was "fitness". The team lacks endurance first and foremost. 

I found by far the most frustrating thing about that performance was how slow the ball is released into the midfield from the back line.
Never in my life have I seen a 'deep lying playmaker' struggle so much at getting the ball forward to feet. I would love to see what percentage of mooys passing goes sideways or backwards and his actual success of forward passes or possession under pressure.
Makes it exceedingly difficult to use rogic and our pace up front when our opposition have so many behind the ball due to our faffing around.
Having said that, if we ever needed to hold the ball to close out a game, Mooy would be the man haha
At least we still have a chance to get through and might surprise Chile