But notice how, for only 39% possession, South Korea had almost as many Shots on Goal and Shots on Target? And ofcourse more effective shots and goals. Those stats look good for us, but it wasn't looking that great within the first 65-70 minutes of the game where we struggled for any shots and effective possession in the front third. South Korea would have lead us in those stats for most of the game. Most of our best chances and therefore goals were in that late period, with the subs on and we going all-out with the Koreans sitting back and tiring. And many of those 'Shots on Target' were either blocked by Defenders or straight at the keeper, which he managed easily. Perhaps four of those shots on target, he had to tip away for a corner or palmed away including the one that lead to Cowburn's goal. We were pressing high, sitting in their back third for most of the last 10-15 minutes of the match, more than we had the entire game and that's when we were finally more effective in the final third, with numbers in the area against a tiring, ever deeper, defence. I think even some of the Koreans dropped in concentration late in the game, with such a lead, we up against it and the conditions and tournament schedule kicking in along with their long periods defending on the counter. That lead to some errors which we failed to capitalise on - they were basically inviting us to match their goal count.

I haven't been following the tournament closely, thanks for that Paladisious. BTW I didn't mean to convey that, only that our group was quite strong. Those are some impressive results against some fancied opponents there! Indeed, credit where it's due and perhaps also reflects how nobody an easy beat in the AFC and how the difference quality is shrinking.

They all shit , not even raw talent. They're all rubbish

Can we qualify for the olympics with a team like ....

GK
Glover (1)
Margush (2)
Holmes (3)

DF
Ouzonidis (CB)
Rowles (CB)
Deng (CB)
Koutroumbis (RB)
Gersbach (LB)
Atkinson (RB)
Strain (LB)

MF
Laws (DM)
Wilson (DM)
O'Neill (CM)
Mcgree (CM)
Akbari (AM)
Pasquali (AM)
DeSilva (AM)

FW
Arzani (RW)
Champness (LW)
Armenekas (RW)
Theoharous (LW)
Popovic (S)
Iredale (S)


Other A league/Overseas players
GK
Maynard-Brewer, Dragicevic, Delianov
CB
Reardon, Metcalfe, Flottmann
RB
Pierias, Alessi
LB
Vujica, Otoole, Scott
DM
Baccus, Rose, Berry
CM
Brimmer, Caletti, Timmins, Youlley
AM
Italiano, Prinsen, Genreau, Najjarine, Tokich
RW
Buhagiar, Leck
LW
Wales, Odoherty, Shabow
S
Blackwood, Stamateopoulos, Juric, D'agostino, Lokolingoy, Scott, Majok, Mustafa

I don’t want to slag off the kid but I refuse to believe that Blackwood is in the top ten young strikers we have, let alone number 1 for a crunch match.

Cracks me up how we have 70% possession in these games yet our opponents fire off the same amount of shots and actually create better chances.

I think we won more duels though

I think this is a really good point. Not just in regard to popovic but in general. I'm confident Milicic is going to be a very good manager in the long term but he also needs to release the shackles on these players. At U23 level it is time to be going out to win all matches. Do what you need to do and what you believe in Ante to get the results

~30 appearances since he became a professional three and a half years ago. He's 20 now and not exactly showing anything for the international side nor his club imo.

Destined to be a journeyman it seems. Pity he hasn't seemed to improve much. I reckon any Sydney fan would've seen this coming for the last three seasons. 

Utterly average. 

It's especially funny considering the FFA's insistence on anything and everything Dutch. 

The exact opposite of total football is to have lots of the ball and do absolutely fucking nothing with it. 

Blackwood needs to learn to drop deep to get the ball, hold it up, receive ball to feet, see players like Riera and Bobo. If he doesn't do this then our game becomes simply getting it wide, hitting in crosses and hoping.

I agree and I wonder how much of that was instructions? When he plays for us he does present as a target.

I admittedly didn't watch much of the game last night but I wonder if the plan was always to get it early to the pacey wide players.

Man, some of the touches I saw where simple passes would hit a foot and rebound 5 metres away from Gersbach and Blackwood (and I'm sure others when I wasn't watching) made me feel embarrassed for them. Honestly looked like they have square feet sometimes. Especially when you see the way the korean kid brought down a long ball in the box on a dime. Blackwood is a prime example. He can do lovely little turns sometimes yet 1/3 times it will hit his foot and get away from him. 

Do they just not play enough football from a certain age to smooth out these things? They just all look rusty, even the ones that now do play most weeks in the a league

Probably harsh to single out Blackwood because everyone was not up to the level technically with the exception of maybe Da Silva. From memory, Blackwood played a bit of time as a #10 and out on the right at Sydney, so he should have it in his game. 

I thought things seemed to change a bit when we upped the tempo and started moving the ball quicker, there was a ridiculous amount of turnover early on because the receiver was standing still and the ball wasn't hit exactly to them or they were too easily closed down, that has to be a coaching issue. Passes started to stick more whenever everyone was moving and running onto the ball. In the first half I was thinking Hrustic was useless but when the game was moving I could see his abilities same with Wilson to an extent.

Possession game is fine but you need to move it quick in the opposition half or on a counter. Korea were just so good at using their attacking opportunities effectively and it was a combination of technical abilities, everyone moving forward and playing short sharp combination passes. How often did you see Korea play backwards when they were attacking our goal? 

When I watched this game all I could see is more of the failed system we have adopted nationally.
As good as it would be to play aggressive dominating football.The cold hard truth is our players are not good enough to play that way.We have seen it at all levels.
Playing with three at the back and players high up the pitch is fine if you have quality players up front who convert their chances.The problem is there will always be turnovers playing this way and this will leave huge areas for counter attacking teams to exploit.That means goals conceded.
Last night was just another example of a failed system.Three goals presented on a platter.The opposition didnt have to work to create the opportunities.All they need to do was wait for a turnover up the pitch and move the ball forward,where defence was paper thin.Too too easy.
What amazes me is the coaching staff don't see the bleeding obvious.We will never ever win playing this way.Our players are not good enough.Despite the national curriculum ,the players coming through are still not good enough to play this way.
What's the definition of insanity again?

Much like the Socceroos we are good at holding possesion on the half way line but thats it. Funnily enough we actually look much more dangerous on the counter in both teams and have the talent for it.. but people wanna be barca... we just don't have 7 brazilians is all.

At least statistically the socceroos possesion play generally yielded a lot more shots and better clear cut chances across the qualifying games. 

So another failure at youth level & another Olympics in which we have failed to qualify.

This wasn't an Olympic qualifying tournament. 

We haven’t not qualified yet , but if we don’t change some of the selections of the players we won’t .
A lot of this squad were picked on underage reputation and not current form , so many not playing at club level yet called up?
Why was Aiden O’Neill taken over and not play one min ?
Baccus current form was at DM yet he played at RB ? Cowburn , Buhagiar , Gersbach And Hurisech getting little or no club game time yet all start in a must win game ?
Baffling

Buhagiar played really well last night. Surprised me, since he was one of our very worst against Vietnam.

He's never been prolific at any level. He simply isn't a no 9 and the fact that we still persist with him in every single national team squad is mind boggling. If there are no other aussie strikers in the world other than him we won't qualify for a world cup for another decade!
At youth and npl level Lokolingoy had about 50 goals in 60 games for SFC. That includes games against men in NPL 1+2. Blackwood was barely a goal every 3 games at youth level yet he consistently gets picked. He can't finish, full stop. But then he's certainly not a winger, and he's not creative enough to be a no 10, or hard working enough to play in defence. 
He's a guy with the occasionally delightful first touch, and nothing else to his game. ANYONE else up front would increase our chances of winning 

I'm just tired of seeing our age teams fail. Over..and over

If you took out the u23s from an afl team you'd have half a team. 

U23 in soccer is a joke. Treat a 20 year old like an adult and maybe they will play like one. Do only loser and developing countries have u23s?

I'd never heard of blackwood before and on the performance of the game I'm watching I doubt I will again. 

WTF Vietnam qualified ahead of us. In 5 degree weather we . Ah fuggedit this is vidmar esue shit

This might be the worst post I've seen on this site. Even worse than the guy with a Tony Abbott avatar. 

He just plays for Adelaide every week and the rest of your post is utter crap. Only loser countries having decent u23's have a word with yourself...

Same old.

I was happy with the squad picked to be honest. Just need to adjust our style and we will be more successful

Keep saying that eventually it will come true.

"It's the coach". No ...."formation"


No. Preparation.

I mean humidity.


The heat

There are a few things to consider in the Korean game and the whole tournament.


* For 55 min Korea squeezed aggressively in the front half of the pitch in BPO. Then they ran out of gas, as it is difficult to sustain  this level of  intensity in BPO for the 90 min. In the first 55 min they relied on winning the game.


* That Korea  had less shots, coupled with low possession, and most likely territory,  with so much of  the Aussie superior shot count hitting the post and creating near misses, it showed Australia's deficiency in shooting from first time shots with either foot, or side of the body, or head. This needs to improve immeasurably.


*  Australia had more shots at goal and dominated possession and territory  against all teams. Smart alecs like Zelic keep complaining about sterile possession. What he fails to mention is if one observes teams from back to Guus's  2006 team, and before them and Zelic's Socceroo epoch, is the number of turnovers created by moving inexorably forwards on every occasion. Australia turned over a lot of possession in past eras by being able unable to maintain possession. Most powerhouses in the world play by dominating possession. We have a curriculum based on their practices.


* Against Korea Australia had a penalty shout dismissed when it was exactly like Lucas Neill's tackle against Italy.  



* At senior level  in particular, a decade ago Asian goalkeepers seemed to make a lot of mistakes. Now we are presented with reiterating scenarios where so many opposition keepers  have had blinders against  our teams - at all levels. This is the  antithesis of past eras. 



* Milicic's major coaching mistakes were in the second game against Vietnam. He played the innocuous Juric as a central striker for at least half a game. In the same game he should've  instructed more early balls to force Australian players to be moving forwards, whilst Vietnamese  defensive  players should've been turning and chasing - not facing the play in front of them most of the time. Instead there were too many slow build ups, without the quick rhythm changes needed to break down a stacked, half press defence with five at the back.



* Like most , I was annoyed that Australia didn't qualify for the next round. Nevertheless, they showed enough, apart from some lapses of concentration  in defence, and most significantly our atrocious finishing,  that a lot of things were good about  this under 23 team, who underachieved.

 Blackwood often made some poor runs.

He ran towards the near post when he should've been at the far post, and vice versa.

At times he failed to anticipate  the build ups and attacking interplay quickly enough, or proactively enough. However,  he hit the post a few times, probably scored a goal that could've been counted against Vietnam, and had some near misses. His worst miss was the header in the last few minutes, when he should've buried it.

He wasn't too bad. He could've been better though. Juric was much worse.