We were all rightly happy to see that list of the Socceroos XI with the A-League teams they played for as seniors, but where were they at u16 level, or u12, or u8?

It's great that we have Melbourne Victory, Sydney FC etc doing well as clubs, but you are spot on in that the baby was thrown out with the bathwater.

Bert was glowing during the first minutes. Yeah unlucky and sad how it went. 

Absolutely, the squad improved immensely in a very short time. Wish we could have him longer.

That is always the case in a political environment. In every building in every business in every office. Intelligent people out, sycophants in.

Soccer Australia used to be a $18m business employing 25 people showing no profit but at least there were results at the youth level and a development stream. Now the FFA is a $100m business employing 200 people and still cant show a profit with no results. What do you think the last 15 years was really about?

The system has become bottom up where the money goes from the bottom up to the top. Do you know what they call that in the finance world? .....a Ponzi scheme.

Certain people have finally figured it out and we now have a civil war at the administrative level.

Development has suffered because its a cash cow for the FFA. Do you think the money is going to flow the other way? Hell no.

I don't think it's as simple as that. 

There are plenty of people within the FFA ecosystem who are interested in the development of the sport. I just think there are a few people at the very top who have little idea about the game, yet seem to be making all the "captains calls". The system is very un-democratic. 

Yes.

Not the clubs specifically, but the system. It worked. It got us to the 1997 WC youth final. Remember those heady days?

I have to disagree with you on your first point.

Although understandable, the problems of the game were lumped onto Soccer Australia and the NSL clubs. The propaganda was designed that way to achieve that outcome. The Crawford Report was designed to topple the Soccer Australia board although it was sold to the Australian public as a prescription to the ills of the sport. The rest is history.

Were the recommendations in the Crawford Report implemented? Only the ones Lowy wanted. The rest were ignored. That wasn't its function. Its function was to manufacture consent.

Now we have a civil war at the adminstrative/political side of the game. People were sold a lie.

If you actually believe the FFA is interested in the development of the sport you just don't get it. It's interested in its own survival. Lowy still believes the wolves are at the door waiting to take him down.

The morning after. I'm so sad. We had 4 pretty decent chances. The two created by Rogic were golden. Juric being free might have been something. Leckie going to ground was unnecessary. Behich just wide and Cahill had the shot blocked.

Being a large contributor on Aussies abroad it's really hard to see them all scoring for clubs but it didn't work as a group in the green and gold. 

That was my question really. What produced Viduka, Aloisi, Kennedy, Zdrillic, Agostino, Mori and Zane? Was it the NSL system?

If a young A League striker goes abroad they can still improve but all of them get tied down at shit levels and even worse clubs. There's so much room for improvement but the ones we have now keep getting stuck down there. 

Here's to hoping Folami and Popovic kick on. 

I don't get who he is speaking to on here. I'd hazard a guess the majority of people on 442 did not support the treatment of the foundation NSL clubs [I certainly didn't]. 

442 members support ALL football in Australia. Not just the closed league system the FFA has developed. 

Furthermore, most on here, if you read the other topics, have vehemently supported a national 2nd division and pro/rel. 

wouldve been very interesting to see luongo ahead of jedi in every match. Too late now I guess

Good observation - but it would have been a very brave coach to not select the captain who has scored 5 goals in 3 competitive matches and in three successive WC games.

By "you", I think he meant those of "you" who wanted these traditional clubs thrown out of the top league.

The NSL wasn't just a bunch of "wog" teams playing at the top level but it was an ecosystem. Development clubs playing from U/12's to the top.

But there was no showpiece competiton relevant to "Australians". The strong desire to compete against showpiece comps like NRL and AFL and Super12 lead to this move to ditch the NSL and the clubs. But people with good intentions didn't understand that the NSL wasn't a shit comp with wog clubs who had no mainstream appeal but a ecosystem of development. They threw out the baby with the bathwater.

15 years on we are just starting to see the insurmountable problems this has caused. I'm pretty sure in 4 years we'll be lamenting the loss of Milligan and Jedinak.because we can't cover those spots

Well said.

Some of us knew this was gonna happen 15 years ago.

So very true and there has always been infighting in Governing sport bodies but I don't know of any in my time that a well off invested party walks out and sets their own league up.........
I agree WE should ALL be together in the fight to better our game BUT this drew such an ugly line through the sand the precedent set has contributed greatly to the current state of sad affairs.
The gloss camouflaged the "cracks" and here we are.
IF we are ever to recover from this, NOW is the time for that broom to clean the FFA out and start clean asap and get that peace pipe out as once done long long ago.

if the aafc start a 2nd division things could be different

so true sadly it will never change

I doubt Arnold will actually be our coach in 2022.

the only person happy about this result is Graham it makes taking over the team easier transition since we didn’t win a game.

The in-fighting had occurred LONG before 2005 unfortunately. It's disingenuous to lay the blame at those who axed the NSL/SA and instituted the A-league/FFA.

There are two elements to this:
1) SA's ineptitude that led to the Crawford Report in 2003
2) FFA's nepotism and knee-jerk reaction leadership style that has stifled player development. 

Without getting into a detailed discussion about these points, we are all in this together and we should be fighting together to reform the game for its betterment. 

It is a results based sport. In saying that we had so much more space to attack than against Denmark or France. Just frustrating as hell they were offside and had a deflection and then Guerrero shouldn't have even been playing.
I'm so pissed off that we had the same 11. Risdon and Jedinak were exhausted on 50 and couldn't track against their attack for the goal. 

Why on earth didn't we start Cahill, Arzani, Luongo and even Irvine for Rogic? Like the Chile game in 2017 I think the fresh legs make a massive difference.

Wtf was up with Juric? I love all the boys but I'm pulling my hair out with how they played at times. Even if they all have the perfect season and preparation, it has to work out on the day.  

There can be a lot of excuses for the Peru game.The third game in quick succession,same players,opposition tactics,our tactics,our selections,our poor finishing..etc..etc.
Personally I think a major problem was BVM choking on replacing Luongo with Jedi.

The two lead up games against the Czechs and Hungary ,we had Luongo and had no trouble scoring goals.
Jedi is safe ,but slow and stuffs up midfield alongside Mooy and Rogic upfront.

If we play Mooy,Rogic and Jedi we have a slow immobile midfield.Thus we are restricted in the way we can play.We need to sit deep and allow on the wingers and fullbacks to get forward.
We need a fast striker to keep up eith the wingers.Nabbout.
If we lose the ball high up the field we are exposed.Hence the first goal.

In the Peru game we had the slow midfield and slow striker.We had Peru sitting deep and hitting us on the counterattack ,with our slow midfield to cover.End result was to be expected.
We could have drawn that game if we played more safely.But we were never going to win that game with the selections and the strategy.

Denmark showed what you can do with a simple game plan and squeezing out results.They are on a long unbeaten run and ranked 11 .Their star player Ericksen spends a lot of the game uninvolved.But they stick to their plan ,whether they look ordinary or not.

The fairy touch and dilly dallying was embarrising, I'm actually sick of watching , it will hurt in future. 

It appeared Kruse and Leckie thought they had the skills to actually score against all these nations but fuck were they so delusional thinking they were the combination to help us win anything. Utter garbage on both sides. 

I know hey, that has said it best for me. Utter bullshit shooting, and lack of being able to service our actual quality players 

ROGIC

Any current A-league foreigners young enough for 2022 and able to be nationalised? Seems like the only way.

those directions were pulled in 2005

Thanks guy who supports Australian club in Sydney but calls other Australians "you". I see this sentiment as part of the problem too. We are all pulling in different directions. 

Basically i imagine someone like Wood before he made the jump to the prem, pretty much a good championship striker but is actually capable of leading the line effectively at international level.

All blame must go to FFA and HAL. 

Since 2005 all you wanted was the "show piece" and too put bums on seats, but youth football and development suffered.

This was a long time coming, and it's not going away anytime soon, got yourselves to blame.