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.

Probably true.

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

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!

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.

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.  

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 !

...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 .